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[personal profile] elfs
I finished the audio portion of my Japanese language classes a long time ago and have just been listening to the 10-minute dailies, and I find myself stalled there mostly because where I really am in the language is at the "amass vocabulary and learn to read" part, and while the vocabulary's not so bad, learning to read Japanese is a serious exercise in memorization. All of those kanji! I thought that I'd practice by doing scanlation, but most of the manga I have to read is, uh, not child-safe. I'd hate to be halfway through a page to have one the kids spot "Oh, a comic book!" and wonder what I was reading.

I also audited the first hour of the French language course. French uses the Roman alphabet, right, so at least the reading material will easily be accessible, right? No such luck. Written French has about as much in common with spoken French as hanzi does to spoken Japanese. (Obvious disclaimer: I audited the French course because the American DVDs of the animated series Witchblade are censored, whereas the French ones aren't. Ecchi hot chicks, blood and violence, and two languages I'm studying at the same time: I couldn't think of a better way to abuse my brain than that!)

Last night I made tacos, and ran out of taco mix, so I quickly tried to make some up. While I had the bottle open, I accidentally poured the cumin into the open bottle of dried onion, so I ended up throwing the whole thing together. I now have a lifetime supply of taco seasoning and no dried onion flakes. Still, I got protein into the girls, and that's a good thing.

Omaha had a brief seziure late into the evening, which surprised me because she hasn't had one in months. It was mild as these things go, but it still knocked her out pretty solid so I put her to bed at 8:00. Since it happened in the living room and my camera was on my desk right there, I just pressed "record" on it and caught the entire grand mal phase, since that's one thing Omaha hasn't seen before. I watched it again afterward and, y'know, I can understand how scary it can look from the perspective of someone who's never seen it before. The girls took it in stride, however, and gave me less trouble than usual in getting ready for bed.

Date: 2007-01-24 06:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shunra.livejournal.com
This relates to the differences between using your ears for parsing and your eyes... in general one has much more control over one's eyes than one's ears in terms of seeing "white space" versus "static" and "content".

That said? Dutch sounds so much like English that it doesn't seem to take much time to start "parsing" it correctly. The rhythm of it makes sense to American ears (if that makes sense to you).

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Elf Sternberg

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