Not all those who wander are lost

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DaveAgain
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:44 am

sfuqua wrote:It is an embarassment to anybody who studies Norse or Old English or Runes whenever another idiot stands up and claims they are justified in their bigotry because of their connection to a past that never existed. :lol:
One of my favourite 'what ifs' is What if the Vikings had colonised North America :-)

Get well soon.
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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sat May 08, 2021 9:18 pm

Well, I seem to have stumbled into mortality a bit. My pneumonia stopped improving and the doctors started doing more tests, and more tests, and even more tests. They keep staring into space and saying things like maybe it's this or it's that, and let's do more tests. All the while I seem to be getting slowly, ever so slowly better... I still don't have as good an oxygen saturation as I did 3 months ago. I have to be patient and just live my life. My daily walks are a slower 1 mile instead of 2. If I feel good today, I may try a mile and a half. When I push too hard, I get immediate feedback, so I am trying to stay around the edges.
I have to keep up my patrols. I mean, the squirrels and birds in my neighborhood need to be watched regularly. I think they may be up to something. What if another young woman is threatened by a dragon (gecko)? I've got to get out there.

Recent ancient DNA research has put the genomes of a bunch of people from northern Europe online, and as usual, I get a kick out of finding out that I have people from 1000 years ago that I am just as related to as if they were my third cousin or something. The ancestral DNA thing has always been pretty ridiculous. What does it even mean to say that I am 40% Irish and Scottish? What Irish, what Scottish? Many of my ancestors came from around London, or so they say, Huh, where: Who? What I can say for sure is that 100% of my ancestors came through Kentucky during the last 100 years. The only thing that surprises me about my DNA, is that it doesn't seem to be affected by the later waves of immigration that have some to the United States. Nothing Polish, nothing recent Irish, nothing Hispanic, nothing Eastern European at all. Not to mention the complete lack of African or Native American DNA. Who cares? What I find fun is the ancient DNA.
It turns out that my closest ancestor from "ancient times" is the man buried in the Faroe islands in the 1600s. What did he see? What did he know? Did he have that same pain in the lower back as he got older? I have a Celtic gladiator from Roman days that I am related to pretty closely, and I also have some Celtic looking folks who settled Iceland in the first generation that I am related to (thralls? Probably not, they were buried. Celtic Vikings?) I also have a pretty close relationship with 3 Vikings who were executed and put into the Ridgeway burial pit back in the 10th century along with 53 other unlucky Vikings. I would love to get together with a bunch of them and get some beer and see if we could figure out how to communicate. We would have to find the heads of the Vikings from the Ridgeway pit, however, or they might not have much to say.


I have been plugging along at Old English, Irish, and Norse in my anki deck, just getting ready for that imaginary family reunion. Some things are falling into place, but these are all hard languages. Also, I'm only dealing with these languages a small piece at a time. I think I have to start listening to them in bigger chunks. I think this might work some wonders. I just need to plug away and things will fall into place.

I'm pretty happy about everything.
14 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Wed May 12, 2021 1:45 am

Just a quick note about where my Romance languages are at this point. It's more of a marker for me.
Note the impressive zeros for Portuguese. :lol:
ES
: 8708 / 10000 200 books
: 16691 / 20000 200 movies
FR
: 2021 / 10000 200 books
: 1067 / 20000 200 movies
PT
: 0 / 10000 200 books
: 0 / 20000 200 movies

I'm sort of hung up on reading French, of all things, today. My wife has surgery tomorrow, so distraction is the main goal today.
6 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Wed Jun 09, 2021 3:57 am

Well, I'm retired. There was a big flurry of activity at the end of the school year, and the end of my time as a full-time public school teacher, and a big flurry of emotion...
I was sort of shocked how emotional I got at the end... I mean I am as cynical about education as most teachers eventually become, but it all seemed so final. I got some letters from ex-students that made me cry a bit. Maybe I did change a life or two along the way. As soon as I walked off campus, all the emotion went away and I'm pretty happy. I feel like a great tight spring in my soul is releasing slowly. My first year teaching was in the fall of 1975. Except for a few years off for graduate school and a "midlife crisis" stint at NASA, I've been teaching ever since. Now, a new chapter :D

One thing that my wife pointed out is that I could actually go on fairly cheap trip during the tourist off season. She has suggested before that since I am so interested in Iceland, she may get nice big box, knock me out, and ship me there. She actually suggested that I could take some sort of trip through Iceland and Ireland too in the winter, while the rest of my family stays home to work and study. Cold, snow, rain and my thin California blood. I think it would be wonderful, if my health holds up. Maybe I could even go to the site in Iceland where the bones of the first generation settlers that I share some DNA with were buried. Does anybody ever go the to the Faroes? I've got some sort of ancient DNA cousin from there too.They must be great for swimming and sunbathing in winter. The old earth scientist in me wants to go to Iceland, though.

My health continues to be an issue, and it is unclear what is going on with my lungs, slow recovery from pneumonia, or something worse. I just had a pulmonary function test today that was completely normal, which is a very good sign. There are more tests coming up which will determine what, if anything we are dealing with. What is going on would make sense if I had had covid, but I never tested positive. :?

I have shifted my approach in studying a little bit. Right now I have a deck with four languages in it, Spanish, French, Irish, and Icelandic. All of these decks are simple, beginner type decks set up in the L1->L2 direction. The French and Spanish decks are made up of transcripts from Michel Thomas and Pimsleur. The Irish deck is made up of cards I made from _Progress in Irish_ and _Buntús Cainte_. The Icelandic deck is made up of cards from Memrise decks made by Alaric Hall for his online Icelandic course (https://alarichall.org.uk/teaching/modern_icelandic.php), and cards I made from Henry Sweet's old textbook.
The Spanish and French decks are very easy except for the interference between them. The Icelandic and Irish decks are about right.
My theory of doing easy L1->L2 decks is that, whatever I am studying, I should stay up to speed with simple stuff in the languages I've already studied. One of the big challenges for me with knowing multiple langauges is keeping them straight when I have to use them productively. I plan to plug on through these decks, and keep them maintained, just to be sure that I can cope with a surprise.

I mean what if a French supermodel happens to be walking through our neighborhood and is threated by squirrels, and all I can think to say is, Seas go fóill! Savali mai ia te au. Aua e te fefe. Layas, mga hayop! I wouldn't be of much use. It is unlikely that the squirrels or the supermodel would know what I was talking about. I'd better be ready. :lol:

I'm surprised at how much I am enjoying my simple little decks, which are a lot more review and practice (at least for the Romance language) than they are new material.

The weather is glorious now, as long as you don't think about the terrible fire season that must be coming. We had very little rain this winter. The hills are already summer brown. :shock:

edited because I'm disorganized and I don' spel well.
22 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

Lawyer&Mom
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Lawyer&Mom » Wed Jun 09, 2021 6:24 pm

Post COVID lungs like to have normal pulmonary function tests, while somehow not quite functioning. You certainly wouldn’t be the only one without positive test either... Who can know? Embrace ambiguity, it’s the only option.

Congratulations on your retirement, I hope it opens up great language opportunities for you, whether here or abroad.
2 x
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Beli Tsar
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Beli Tsar » Thu Jun 10, 2021 9:53 am

sfuqua wrote:Well, I seem to have stumbled into mortality a bit. My pneumonia stopped improving and the doctors started doing more tests, and more tests, and even more tests. They keep staring into space and saying things like maybe it's this or it's that, and let's do more tests. All the while I seem to be getting slowly, ever so slowly better... I still don't have as good an oxygen saturation as I did 3 months ago. I have to be patient and just live my life. My daily walks are a slower 1 mile instead of 2. If I feel good today, I may try a mile and a half. When I push too hard, I get immediate feedback, so I am trying to stay around the edges.

sfuqua wrote:My health continues to be an issue, and it is unclear what is going on with my lungs, slow recovery from pneumonia, or something worse. I just had a pulmonary function test today that was completely normal, which is a very good sign. There are more tests coming up which will determine what, if anything we are dealing with. What is going on would make sense if I had had covid, but I never tested positive. :?

Without jumping to conclusions - these things are mysterious - this does match my experience of long Covid pretty well, and that of other people I've known. It's impossible to pin things down; but, as you say, pushing too hard with excercise is a definite no. And recovery takes so long...

Either way, best of luck, and hope you continue to make progress.
2 x
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: 0 / 50 1/2 Super Challenge - Latin 'Films'

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Mon Jun 21, 2021 2:48 am

My health continues to improve steadily, but slowly. If I wasn't watching closely I might not notice. I'm getting pretty close to all the way back. Most of the truly awful things that could be wrong with my lungs are ruled out. I've got a couple of spots on my lungs that need to be watched over the years, but no one is excited. My pulmonologist went on vacation. I can walk two miles pretty easily. I walked four miles yesterday and made my achilles tendon sore. I hope it's over.
I've slowly narrowed down to just Irish, and lately, just standard, government approved Irish. I went to the beach yesterday, and I'm pretty sure that I was the only one on the beach studying Irish. They were missing a lot of fun. What a wonderful/awful language Irish is. Things changing at both the beginning and the end of the word, alien spelling system, and then the usual stuff of learning an L2. Good, clean fun. There are multiple dialects of Irish, and anyone who is sane sticks to one until they are advanced. I, of course, can't keep fiddling with several. My new goal is to get my Irish up to the level where it is funny.
I'm sure I've told the story before, but I think everybody learning a language goes through a phase when they sound "funny"when they get stuff right. If you are incomprehensible, you're not funny, just annoying. If you are fluent, nobody thinks much about your language. If you are just at that point where an accurate sentence from you is surprising, you can provide hours of amusement for native speakers. It is all a strategy to get free beer someday after covid in Ireland. :D
I have actually made some progress in Irish. Perhaps I should take an A2 test and see if I can prove any progress. I noticed that TEG has an online test, which might give me some idea, but there is usually only one version, so it is better to take it after completing something instead of at the start of it. So far, it looks like the actual test would be inconvenient for me to do. It would just be for bragging rights anyway.
I watched an new Irish movie recently, which was fun because of the languages. "Pilgrimage" takes place in 1209 in Ireland, and has a fun mix of languages in it. I'm sad to say the the French used to represent the language of the Normans was much easier understand than the Irish. Sigh...

I'm reading a lot, science mostly. It's pretty fun that we can get many scientific papers in prepublication form and keep more up to date than what the popularizers do. I find it amusing how stupid the artificial intellegences are about interests that don't match the standard ones. I read a paper on the first few seconds of the universe, and then I see adds for the "The Big Bang Theory" TV show. I have also been reading a lot of history, in big, disorganized swaths through disconnected periods. My wife has started frowning at the pile of books next to the bed again, so things are getting back to normal.
14 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Thu Jul 01, 2021 2:03 am

I just had an experience that you might find interesting. I know that many of the people who read this are experienced language learners and maybe some of you have experienced something like this.
My first second language, the one burned deepest into my soul, is Samoan. I was a Peace Corps volunteer there and I stayed there several years, where I lived most of my life in Samoan. I never really intended to leave, and when I left for graduate school I fully intended to go back, but it's been 39 years now and I'm a little late. Part of my heart is definitely still there. I was an FSI 4+ by my third year there and I loved speaking Samoan.
After I left Samoa, I had fewer and fewer chances to use it and it has atrophied. Over the years it has worked for a conversation whenever I have needed it, but this only comes up every couple of years, and this isn't enough to maintain a language. I watched a youtube in Samoan a few days, ago, and sadly, without much context about what was going on in Samoan politics, I realized that I couldn't really tell what was going on... Sad, sad , sad.
Today, I decided to try doing some reading in Samoan, and I spent an hour or so reading aloud, looking away from the page to repeat sentences and other stuff. It wasn't terribly pretty for a former FSI 4+, but it seemed like a few things were falling into place. I stopped and started to do other stuff.
And I realized that I felt positively stoned with joy. My brain was so happy. I found millions of memories of Samoa bumping up into my memory. I felt like there was a whole part of me that had almost died, that had suddenly come back to life. It felt so good... My whole head was ringing with joy.

Language, memory, and consciousness are all tangled up together. I'm not sure if there is a profound lesson here. Maybe I am just getting a little memory of what it was like to young, moderately good looking, and immortal. Maybe I am just remembering the joy of learning and adventure that I felt in Samoa. Maybe -- well a friend of mine said one time that he could always tell if I was speaking Samoan, even if he couldn't hear me, because I always had a huge smile on my face.

Oh how I miss Samoa!
I've got to get more Samoan into my life...
19 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...

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Araminta
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Araminta » Thu Jul 01, 2021 2:14 am

My parents met as Peace Corps volunteers in Borneo in 1963. When my sisters and I were young and my parents didn't want us to know what they were talking about, they'd switch to Malay. Just hearing your story brings back wonderful memories. Thank you!
6 x

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sfuqua
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Mon Jul 05, 2021 5:51 am

I spent a few days playing with Samoan and Tagalog, trying to see what came up out of the deep parts of the brain. Of course my Tagalog is not really atrophied. I regularly watch soap operas and news in Tagalog, pretty much every day. My wife and I speak Tagalog to each other regulary. I looked up some of the music from back in the '80s in the Philippines. It was a big decade. There was a revolution, where a dicatator was driven out, and then there were multiple military coups, and attacks from communist guerillas, a huge earthquake, and a huge volcano erruption to start the next deccade. And I fell in love with my wife during this. A great decade. There was a lot of emotion during this decade and a lot of music.

When old fuddy-duddies tell you about how great the music was in the old days, probably they are talking about how great their memories associated with the music are. I made a playlist a couple of days ago, and as we were heading out for a family trip, and I started the playlist with my wife and daughter in the car. I was sort of shocked. I realized that my comprehension of sung Tagalog is much better than the old days; I could mostly just follow along with the songs. I was also surprised at my wife's reaction. After the first song or so, she started singing along. She said that the songs were giving her goosebumps. She got all teary eyed at one point. LIke a lot of people back in the crazy, street-fighting days, she mostly kept her head down, but I guess it all meant a lot to her. Passionate, dangerous days.

One of the albums by the group Asin reminded me that I had actually met one of the "stars" from those strange days in the Philippines. Back in the day, I had a "celebrity crush" on Lolita Carbon. She was a part of the musical group Asin, and had one of those absolutely wonderful flexible voices, hoarse whisper, operatic trumpet, rock n roll scream and growl. And she was a very lovely young woman. (Now she is a lovely older woman). There was a big charity concert by the folk/rock group Asin at the refugee camp in Bataan where I worked (I think Asin was calling itself Lokal Brown at that time). I, and a few friends, had put in a little money to get the concert going, and Asin/Lokal Brown worked for free because they recorded the concert for a possible live album. We had maybe 10,000-15,000 people at the concert, refugees, poor folks from the province, and a few folks from Manila and Olognapo (where the big US naval base was). I had about 25 guests from Olongapo who were there. I invited everybody in a bar in Olongapo to come to the concert, and all of the women seemed to have shown up. Sailors couldn't come because our province was considered to be under Communist control after dark, but everybody's girlfriend and or wife, or random Olongapo pool player in the bar came. What a joy, I had my own fleet of tricycles and bangka full of friends during the whole evening. Great fun. :D

Anyway, after the concert, I randomly wound up pushed into a corner with Lolita Carbon at the party. I managed to say that I had enjoyed the concert and we started talking. I was impressed that she seemed to be completely normal. She was smart, and kind, and seemed like she would make a good friend. We both opened up to each other a lot, the way that strangers drinking beer will. We talked for a couple of hours; she got into the band bus to Manila, and I collected my 25 guests from the party to head home and try to figure out where everybody was going to sleep. (Let's see, 25 guests, one bed, hmmn... I guess we're all on mats on the floor) :lol:

Now, what does this have to do with language learning? :D

Sometimes you will hear that Tagalog is dying, that in a few years it will be gone. You will also hear people, sometimes Filipinos get this attitude too, that it is worthless, that anything that could be done itn Tagalog would be better in English. Some idiot foreigners even say things that imply that there really isn't any native culture left in the Philippines. I think these things could only be said by someone that doesn't really have any connection into the culture at all. If you don't speak Tagalog (or another Filipino language) in the Philippines, you will always have only a superficial understanding of what is going on. Now, Spain and the United States did great damage to the self image of Filipinos, but there is still a vibrant native culture there, several actually. As Lokal Brown sang about the Philippines at one point that night long ago,
"This is not America.
This is not the USA.
This is one of the places
That try to make it feel that way."

When I got a chance to talk to Lolita Carbon, I think our conversation would have been completely different if I couldn't speak Tagalog. Not because she couldn't speak English, heck, her English is as good as mine, but because speaking Tagalog gives you a context for what people are saying. Learning a language opens up a new world for you. No translator app can do this for you. You learn a lot more than vocabulary and grammar when you learn a language. A language can open up a whole world.

I've been so lucky and so blessed to have learned the languages I've learned and to have had the adventures I have had.
16 x
荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
Basho[1689]

Sometimes Japanese is just too much...


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