Not all those who wander are lost

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sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sun Feb 28, 2021 4:33 am

:D
Well I quit anki.
For a few days.
During this time I did nothing but read and listen to Spanish. I listen to music much of the time, and when my music doesn't match my study time, I experience wanderlust. I have a ton of music of different sorts from the Spanish speaking parts of the world, and one of the first steps in getting back into some languages where I am far from a beginner was to delete Sigur Rós and Múm from my phone and fill it up with Spanish.
Of course I couldn't leave anki alone, so I explored in my storage and found my old anki deck of Romance languages, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. This deck was made from playlists of the CD's from Assimil for each of the languages. I swapped out the pictures on the cards (I always have a pretty picture of something on every card) for pictures of beach sunsets from the different parts of the world where these languages are spoken, and fired up anki again. I'm going to do my reading before I'll let myself do anki, at least 10 pages of Spanish a day. I set my phone to all Spanish, and I'm getting my news in Spanish. I'll switch to French more when I "finish" Spanish. Portuguese, someday.

ES
: 8678 / 10000 200 books
: 15211 / 20000 200 movies
FR
: 2021 / 10000 200 books
: 1058 / 20000 200 movies
PT
: 0 / 10000 200 books
: 0 / 20000 200 movies

This is where my reading and listening to the big world Romance lanaguages. I know Italian is more important than Portuguese for Europe, but when you look at the world, there are big sections that are colored Portuguese. I have heard Brazilian music since I was a kid. My friends who have lived in Brazil have annoyed me with their stories about how cool Brazil was and how I just can't understand. Maybe no. I explored Angolan music and found some cool music, but nothing yet that I want to program into my brain.

And then I hit Jobim's "Waters of March", first in English and then in Portuguese:

A stick, a stone
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump
It's a little alone

It's a sliver of glass
It is life, it's the sun
It is night, it is death
It's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms
A fox in the brush
A knot in the wood
The song of a thrush

The wood of the wind
A cliff, a fall
A scratch, a lump
It is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free
It's the end of the slope
It's a beam, it's a void
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And the river bank talks
Of the waters of March
It's the end of the strain
The joy in your heart

The foot, the ground
The flesh and the bone
The beat of the road
A slingshot's stone

A fish, a flash
A silvery glow
A fight, a bet
The range of a bow

The bed of the well
The end of the line
The dismay in the face
It's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike
A point, a nail
A drip, a drop
The end of the tale

A truckload of bricks
In the soft morning light
The shot of a gun
In the dead of the night

A mile, a must
A thrust, a bump
It's a girl, it's a rhyme
It's a cold, it's the mumps

The plan of the house
The body in bed
And the car that got stuck
It's the mud, it's the mud

Afloat, adrift
A flight, a wing
A hawk, a quail
The promise of spring

And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March
It's the promise of life
It's the joy in your heart

A stick, a stone
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump
It's a little alone

A snake, a stick
It is John, it is Joe
It's a thorn in your hand
And a cut in your toe

A point, a grain
A bee, a bite
A blink, a buzzard
A sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle
A sting, a pain
A snail, a riddle
A wasp, a stain

A pass in the mountains
A horse and a mule
In the distance the shelves
Rode three shadows of blue

And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March
It's the promise of life
In your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone
The end of the road
The rest of a stump
A lonesome road

A sliver of glass
A life, the sun
A knife, a death
The end of the run

And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March
It's the end of all strain
It's the joy in your heart

-Antônio Carlos Jobim

And I was like a deer in the headlights. The slipping, sliding, twisting lyrics left my brain dizzy, just the way good hip-hop does, and when I heard the Portuguese version by Jobim and Elis Regina, I knew that wouldn't have any trouble coming up with plenty of music to keep me motivated for Portuguese. The end of summer. Is that where I, at 67, am now? Is that where we all are now, with our continuing "climate change, no rain" winter in California. Is that where our civilization is?

And yet, everything is beautiful. One of my lovers from long ago, from Fiji, died this week. I hadn't communicated with her since 1978. She lived her life and I lived mine. It made me thoughtful. The danger, the closeness of the edge makes everything sweeter. There is so little time in a life to enjoy what the world has to offer. There is no time to lose. Whether it is watching birds flirting at dawn, or the taste of a cold beer, there is so much to love in this life.

And the riverbank talks
Of the waters of March
It's the end of all strain
It's the joy in your heart
5 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...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:18 pm

Wow; I completely lost a post. :D

After a few days back on Spanish, I am certain that I am at the best I've ever been in reading and listening to Spanish. :D
My speaking has never been that great, and it still isn't.

I think that my whole life I have spent too much of my time trying to ease myself over the discomfort of less than perfect comprehension of the language I'm learning. From what I have learned, for languages where the resources are available the process of learning to read and listen goes like this.
1. Do Assimil.
2. Shadow Assimil. Expect to sound good to people who don't speak the language, but also expect to get lost constantly when talking to native speakers.
3. Read 10000 pages of whatever you like. Expect terrible comprehension for the first 1000 pages.
4. Watch 20000 minutes of movies or TV. Expect terrible comprehension for the first 1000 minutes.
5. Expect to get lost from time to time for the rest of your life. You are a nonnative speaker after all. :D

I have wasted a lot of time trying to skip over the "Expect terrible comprehension" and the "Expect to get lost" parts of the process. :lol:

The anki decks should get me nicely prepared for reading Portuguese in a year or so. Maybe they will contribute to the "tourist level" speech.

One silly thing I have been doing with anki is the fonts I have been using. I fell in love with fonts developed from the ancient scripts of various medieval scribes. Lately I've been enjoying the scripts developed by Peter Bakerhttps://github.com/psb1558
Right now I'm using Cissanthemos-font for Spanish, BeowulfOT-font for French, and Eadui-Font for Portuguese.

I wasted some time figuring out how to change the fonts on a card, but the process is pretty simple.

This is how the style section of my cards look. I copied a bunch of it from Shamid Ahmed's "Beautiful Anki Cards" page. https://medshamim.com/med/how-to-design-beautiful-anki-cards
My style card contains a bunch of fonts and features that I don't use on many cards, but I leave them here in case I want ot implement them quickly.

Code: Select all

html { overflow: scroll; overflow-x: hidden; }
/* CONTAINER FOR YOUR CARDS */
#kard {
    padding: 0px 0px;
    max-width: 700px; /* CHANGE CARD SIZE HERE */
    margin: 0 auto; /* CENTERS THE CARD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WINDOW */
    word-wrap: break-word; /* BREAKS UP LONG WORKS */
}

/* APPLIES TO THE WHOLE CARD */
.card {
    font-family: Cissanthemos; /* CHANGE CARD FONT HERE */
    font-size: 38px; /* FONT SIZE */
    text-align: center; /* ALIGN TEXT */
    color: #D7DEE9; /* FONT COLOR */
    line-height: 1.6em;
    background-color: #333B45; /* BACKGROUND COLOR */
}
/* STYLE FOR CLOZE DELETIONS */
.cloze, .cloze b, .cloze u, .cloze i { font-weight: bold; color: MediumSeaGreen !important;}

/* STYLE FOR EXTRA PORTION ON BACK OF CARD */
#extra, #extra i { font-size: 15px; color:#D7DEE9; font-style: italic; }

/* STYLE TAGS TO APPEAR WHEN HOVERING OVER TOP OF CARD */
.tags {
    color: #A6ABB9;
    opacity: 0;
    font-size: 10px;
    width: 100%;
    text-align: center;
    text-transform: uppercase;
    position: fixed;
    padding: 0;
    top:0; 
    right: 0;}
.tags:hover { opacity: 1; position: fixed;}

/* IMAGE STYLE */
img { display: block; max-width: 100%; max-height: none; margin-left: auto; margin: 10px auto 10px auto;}
tr {font-size: 12px; }

/* COLOR ACCENTS FOR BOLD-ITALICS-UNDERLINE */
b { color: #C695C6 !important; } /* BOLD STYLE */
u { text-decoration: none; color: #5EB3B3;} /* UNDERLINE STYLE */
i  { color: IndianRed; } /* ITALICS STYLE */
a { color: LightGray !important; text-decoration: none; font-size: 10px; font-style: normal; } /* LINK STYLE */

/* ADJUSTMENT FOR MOBILE DEVICES */
.mobile .card { color: #D7DEE9; background-color: #333B45; }
.mobile .tags:hover { opacity: 1; position: relative;}
.card.night_mode {
  color: #D7DEE9; background-color: #333B45;
}
@font-face { font-family: Cissanthemos; src: url('_Cissanthemos.OTF'); }/* ADD CARD FONT HERE */
@font-face { font-family: BeowulfOT; src: url('_Beowulf_modern.tTF'); }
@font-face { font-family: _Beowulf_alt; src: url('_Beowulf1alt-YAv8.TTF'); }
@font-face { font-family: _Beowulf_; src: url('_Beowulf_.TTF'); }
@font-face { font-family: Junius; src: url('_Junius-r859.TTF'); }
@font-face { font-family: Berhtwald; src: url('_BabelStoneRunicBerhtwald.TTF'); }
@font-face { font-family: Beowulf; src: url('_BabelStoneRunicBeowulf.TTF'); }
@font-face { font-family: Eadui; src: url('_Eadui.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family: Elstob; src: url('_Elstob-Regular.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family: RunicNorse; src: url('_BabelStoneRunicNorse.TTF'); }
@font-face { font-family: PfefferMediaeval; src: url('_PfefferMediaeval.otf'); }
@font-face { font-family: cour; src: url('_cour.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family: Menlo; src: url('_Menlo-Regular.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family: secularone; src: url('_SECULARONE.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family: frankruhllibre; src: url('_FRANKRUHLLIBRE.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family: yiddish; src: url('_YIDDISH.otf'); }
@font-face { font-family: varelaround; src: url('_VARELAROUND.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family: Irish; src: url('_Irishuncialphabet-lKzq.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family: bonum; src: url('_texgyrebonum-regular.otf'); }

@font-face { font-family: cinzel; src: url('_cinzel.regular.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family: marcellus; src: url('_marcellus-sc.regular.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family: constantine; src: url('_constantine.regular.otf'); }
@font-face { font-family: Carolingia; src: url('_Carolingia Regular.TTF'); }


To change the font of a card, just copy the .otf or .ttf font into your collection.media directory and add "_" to the front of the file name. Put the line naming the font into the style section, then label the font.
5 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...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Fri Mar 05, 2021 4:56 am

Non language rant begins here.

Well it looks like my life is probably going to change a lot for a couple of months here. Infection rates are falling rapidly in California, and I'm going to get my second vaccination soon, and my bet is that our school district is going to open for in person instruction for the last few weeks of the school year. I'm of mixed emotions about it. It will be a tremendous amount of work and I think that it will be of little impact educationally, but of course I would love to see the kids. Teaching in a mask, from a plexiglass cubicle in front of a bunch of kids in plexiglass cubicles doesn't sound that good. Maybe it will be of some use. It also looks like the state will try to do its standardized testing this year, which just makes me want to laugh. So after missing a year of being with students we start off by giving them a test. This test may be good for seeing what damage the pandemic has caused to their education, but it won't teach them anything new.
There has been a lot nonsense on the news about how we are "failing our students". Half of the politician seem be implying that teachers are goofing off on purpose. I'm pretty mad about this attitude. I have been doing the best I can under difficult circumstances, just like most teachers. It will be a bitter way to end 45 years as a teacher to end up giving tests and being insulted by politicians and a few nasty parents.

Bleh... NonLanguage rant over. Sorry. I love kids, and it will be a joy to be in the classroom with them again. I know that I have been very lucky during the pandemic. I'm probably just grumpy about retiring.

California's strange, no rain winter, continues. It seems that we will have another horrible fire year, unless we are very lucky. Sometimes it will rain a lot in March and April, so there is still hope. So we'll hope. It seems strange that I am complaining about beautiful sunny 20 degree days, but... I hate the smoke and fires.

I've been plugging along reading Spanish, and I haven't been reading as fast as I thought I would. I'm staying away from the dictionary and my comprehension fades from time to time. Usually this happens when I am distracted. I can't read Spanish when my daughter is playing "Grey's Anatomy" reruns in the same room.

I have a "good" problem with anki. All of my Assimil decks are too easy to be interesting right now. I know that they will get harder soon, so I think I'm just going to keep plowing along.'

I've been listening to Miles Davis a lot lately, which seems to go along with a number of languages. :D
12 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...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Fri Mar 19, 2021 4:02 am

This will be fast, because I am getting swamped with work.
We are opening our school, a little, and we have a lot to figure out. Nobody knows what to do. We'll only see students once a week at best. Most students just want to continue online school. It will be a lot of work for very little benefit to students. I hope nobody dies from it.

Anyway, I have to make this work, while continuing online education for the majority of students who don't want to come back.

I'll be busy up until June 4, and then I'll be retired. When I retire I can rethink what I've been doing with language.

Right now, I need to drop down my language activities to one hour a day.

I wanted to do something completely different. It occurred to me that I have never finished the last 10 lessons of FSI. Since I did the first 45 lessons, I have read several thousand pages reading and several thousand minutes of listening to Spanish. I think a few weeks of FSI might tune up my Spanish a bit. I'm going to run thourgh Platiquemos and FSI one lesson a day until I have finished 110 days. One repetition each lesson. Weirdly enough I noticed my rr tightening up nicely during the first hour. I'll read if I have time, but I'm back to FSI for a bit.

I continue to have adventures on my daily walks. There has been a little rain and it has gotten colder again, so I have missed an occasional day. Before COVID, each day as I would leave my classroom, a big raven would announce to everyone that there was a suspicious looking man walking across the campus. It would caw, caw, caw loudly. I would answer it in English (Assimil doesn't seem to make a book in Raven). This would infuriate it, and it would caw more loudly. This helped to develop my reputation for being weird. During COVID times, I noticed that someone has cut down the tree that the raven used to yell at me. I wondered where ithe bird went.

Well, last week, I was out walking and a familiar voice began to caw, caw, caw at me. I can't be sure, but it sounded like my old friend. I live about 5 kilometers from my school, so it is not unbelievable. This raven seemed really mad, so I suspect the raven was mad about losing its tree. Anyway, after we talked for a while I continued my walk, which eventually looped back by the tree with the raven. It glared at me silently as I walked toward the tree. As I walked under the tree with raven, I heard a "plop" behind me and I turned around and realized that the raven had barely missed pooping on me. I looked up at the bird, and it sort of shrugged, glared at me, and then flew away.
My advice to everyone is to avoid annoying birds.
I haven't seen my friend again since that day.
12 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...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sun Mar 28, 2021 2:46 am

Well. Nobody seems to know what we are going to do to open schools, so I have decided not to worry. It will be a mess. Cases here continue to fall off nicely. After so be lies and so many false starts, it is hard to believe that we may be through the worst of this here. Logic says we are.
It took me about a week of no anki, before I realized that I could just do my anki deck and drop my reading. I guess I am an anki addict for sure. I have reviewed 80 000 cards since the pandemic started. If I had stuck to one or two langauges, I would have made big progress. But it was fun and kept me sane during stressful times. My daughter has filled two large bookcases with books she has read during the pandemic. I said I would keep buying books if she would keep reading them, but her books are starting to drive my books out of the apartment. My wife has only read about 20 books over the pandemic, but she has been very ill. She has huge pain in her stomach for several hours a day and it has made her life a living hell. Doctors have tested for everything to no avail. There are more tests next week. They are about at the point of removing her gallbladder, even though there really isn't much evidence that it is the problem. Avoid mysterious illnesses.

I am doing an anki deck that is different lately. I am doing a deck which has Assimil and Glossika French, Spanish, and Portuguese. I also have a deck of Tagalog glossika, but I am not sure it's worth studying. I have the deck set up so that it will say each sentence without showing me any text. If I can repeat the sentence and I know what it means I count it as a pass. Otherwise it is a fail. Doing the cards as a listening comprehension activity seems interesting. In some ways, I pay more attention to the pronunciation without the print.


Walking has been pretty calm these past few days, although I did notice something I haven't noticed before. It is getting to be full on Spring here, and the squirrels are fighting and flirting again. What I hadn't noticed before is that the black squirrels seem to be fooling around with the grey squirrels and vice versa. A sign of the times. We are oblivious about interracial marriage here in California, and considering that I am the father of a beautiful, blended, Filipino/European-American family, all I can say is that I bet these adventurous squirrels will have beautiful babies.
10 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...

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
x 6299

Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Mon Apr 05, 2021 3:18 am

Sometimes destiny calls you. :lol: You may have lived a quiet life, and suddenly adventure calls.
I know what my future is now. This really happened. Exactly like this...

I was walking on my usual rounds, and suddenly, a lovely young Asian woman came running out of her apartment. She was in short shorts and a t-shirt, and she was saying "help, help, help" and she grabbed my arm. I thought she might have been attacked or abused or something. Or perhaps she was insane. She started pulling me toward her apartment, and before I would go in and face a jealous boyfriend, robber, or whatever I started saying what, what, what... She answered in Japanese, which I don't speak, and then took out her phone and started typing furiously into it. She handed her phone to me, and it said, "DRAGON". I knew that my destiny had arrived. I'm not sure if this young lady was a princess or not, but she probably was, and I had to face my DRAGON. :o

She led me through her front door, and then ran to the bedroom and shut the door, and I was left alone with and empty room, except for a large TV, which was sitting on the floor against one wall. I heard the young woman sobbing quietly in the bedroom from behind the door. My doubt of her sanity increased. I went over to the TV, and there I faced the DRAGON.

It was a gecko, about 15 to 20 cm. long. I knew that my time had come and I faced it alone, without a sword, lance, or steed. I looked at the gecko, and the gecko looked at me. I am not into picking up wild animals that would probably bite, so I opened the door to outside, went on the other side of the room, and started jumping up and down, waving my hands and yelling. The DRAGON looked at me, ran toward the open door, stopped again, and looked at me. I waved my arms again, and the DRAGON, defeated, ran outside. I closed the front door of the apartment and I knocked on the bedroom door, and the poor young lady came out sobbing. I asked if she needed help. She kept crying. I finally gave up and left her crying. I checked with the apartment manager, and he told me that she had literally just arrived from Japan, and that her husband was at work. He called the husband to tell him that his wife was upset. She was probably jetlagged and culture shocked, and fed up. Uh, perhaps she was crazy too.

A few things I learned:
1) I was born to be a hero and fight dragons to save young women. I always knew it. When I retire from teaching I can still fight dragons.
2) I'm proud to say I look harmless enough that a young foreign woman would look at me and feel safe enough to ask for help.
3) There is a limit to using an app to translate. :D

I switched the decks back to Old English, Irish, and Old Norse, and I'm fiddling with them, 60 cards a day.

Maybe I can stick with them long enough to make some progress. Maybe I won't. A few months at these decks would work wonders.

I actually am making some progress on Irish in particular. Old English and Old Icelandic have enough in common that I get some interference between them. I just treat interference as another error, and I keep on reviewing.
25 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...

blackcoffee
Yellow Belt
Posts: 65
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Latin
Spanish (beginner)
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby blackcoffee » Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:39 am

sfuqua, Slayer of Dragons, thank you for sharing your noble deed. :mrgreen:
8 x

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IronMike
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5189
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby IronMike » Tue Apr 06, 2021 12:50 am

OMG, I love this post. Holy crap.

Edit: I read it to my wife and daughter, and debate ensued. Basically, sfuqua, my wife would be comfortable inviting you into our home to kill (or relocate) a dragon. But the 18-year old...not so much.
4 x
You're not a C1 (or B1 or whatever) if you haven't tested.
CEFR --> ILR/DLPT equivalencies
My swimming life.
My reading life.

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Xenops
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby Xenops » Tue Apr 06, 2021 3:58 am

4) It is your destiny to study Japanese. ;)
5 x
Check out my comic at: https://atannan.com/

User avatar
sfuqua
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1642
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 5:05 am
Location: san jose, california
Languages: Bad English: native
Samoan: speak, but rusty
Tagalog: imperfect, but use all the time
Spanish: read
French: read some
Japanese: beginner, obsessively studying
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9248
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Re: Not all those who wander are lost

Postby sfuqua » Sat Apr 17, 2021 5:58 am

I have been smacked down by a case of pneumonia that come out of the blue, but I'm feeling better tonight.
Some politicians in the United States today claimed that this country is a uniquely Anglo-Saxon country. :o The utter nonsense of this tickled my funny bone. So, are we going to all start speaking Old English? I'm ahead of the game on that. Do they mean we should all travel on foot or horseback? I think we should require all true Anglo Saxon Americans to give up their guns and start carryiing spears. Perhaps we require all true Anglo-Saxon Americans to be able to read Old English in runes in order to vote.
What utter rubbish!
Sorry to be grumpy, but I'm sick. I don't intend to give up modern medicine, because I suspect that the antibiotic I am taking is saving my life. :o
And I do love electricity. :lol:
I do love the wonderful rainbow of humanity in my community, my classes, and my family. :D
I also really enjoy studying Irish, Old English, and Old Norse. I know that there are some choice Icelandic sayings about dealing with idiots. I need to memorize a few.
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:
Last edited by sfuqua on Sat Apr 17, 2021 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
8 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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