Taking stock

     Over the past couple years, I have officially tested my skills in both French and Russian, and got a good enough score to officially use them for work. Two years ago, I started Japanese, because it's a fascinating culture that's very different from the other two, and someday I'd like to go visit without being a rude tourist. I'm nowhere near as fluent in Japanese as in the other languages (33 years studying French and 12 studying Russian), but I can pick things up when I watch anime or read manga. Each language is pretty heavily compartmented in my head, though, so I don't think about the aggregate of my skills, I just think "Oh, I speak other languages, a common thing." (Ironically, the word language is one I constantly mistype and need to use autocorrect for.)

     Due to conflicting schedules, I ended up taking two separate Japanese classes for two weeks recently, thankfully in the same book, but on different chapters. Inevitably, that meant I dropped the ball on one of them, since I knew I'd re-do that chapter in the other class in a month or two. To my great surprise, I still managed to pull off a decent grade on the final exam, and I mentioned this to a friend who also speaks other languages. Their response, while supportively over-the-top, made me pause and reassess where I am. (The next part may sound like bragging, but it's truly me being surprised at how my life looks from the outside.)

     I speak, with varying degrees of skill, four languages. FOUR (I tend to forget English because everyone speaks it, right?). Four wildly different cultures, grammars, and lexicons. I recently met someone who speaks three languages fluently and I was blown away at the idea, yet never once turned that lens inward. Add to that the other hobbies I dabble in, and I see why someone recently said "Of course you know how to do that. Is there anything you don't do?" And while the answer is yes, quite a huge number of things, it's probably good to stop and give yourself credit for what you do do every now and then. 

Dormancy

     Been a bit quiet of late. Some of that is that I've been busy getting things done, and some of it is that I'm simply becoming quieter. My opinion does not need to be given on every issue that comes my way, especially since I'm not completely informed on many of them. Unfortunately, since sketches are usually my opinion on things, that does mean I've done less drawing lately. It's not gone, though, no worries there.

     Anyway, as things are slowing down with the season change, thought I'd catch up here. In no particular order, here are things that I've worked on recently:

Sewing: Halloween outfit (Slytherin student from Hogwarts, and apparently this was the most people who've ever dressed up for Halloween at work), and work pants.

Exercise: Still doing boot camp two nights a week, and running twice a week at home. The Kenpo Karate class is on break until December; I'm enjoying that quite a bit.

Keep it short?

     One of my French teachers once told me that, as a graduate student, she was given a very specific writing assignment. First, the prof had them write a five-page paper about a topic of their choice. After being turned in and graded, they were given back their papers and told to condense it into a 3-page paper. The same thing happened again: break it down into a one-page paper. Then three paragraphs, one paragraph, five sentences, and one sentence. The last stages of the assignment were to get the ideas conveyed in the original five-page paper across in five words, three words, two words, and finally a single word. What an incredible challenge.
 
     That story has stuck with me since, and I finally realized the importance of it this week while (where else?) in the shower. I've been wanting to get back to writing stories again for a while- not these blog posts, but actual "make up a world and everyone in it" stories- but I'm having troubles writing. Remembering my teacher's story made the light go off in my head: Our society has trained us to be as succinct as brief as possible. Granted, many people are not effective at it, but we all still strive for it. Hurry, hurry, be brief, get to the point, stop beating around the bush, summarize, use abbreviations, shortcuts, text speak, hashtags, keep it less than 160 characters.

Reasons why I love French

     In an effort to retain (and expand) my French abilities, I bought a number of random books in French from a used bookstore. One of them, a collection of letters written by the second wife of Louis XIV, might sound horribly dry, but is of particular interest to me, what with the French play I was in about how she came to be queen. The play was fantastic, if slightly stressful, and made history all the more fun to learn.

     In reading the book, a number of things stand out. For one, people at that time used to write a lot more about their feelings, their thoughts, and their affections for each other. This is probably due to the tediousness of writing with quill and ink, and the fact that a letter took hours to write, and days or weeks to be delivered. If that was the only way to stay in touch with people, you would naturally want to give them insight to who you are and how you feel, rather than just facts and getting up-to-date on what's going on. While I see how it is probably not everyone's cup of tea, it is absolutely beautiful in French, and makes one feel calmer and more at peace in a world where beauty and joy are often overlooked.

     One of the phrases she uses, in speaking of her solitude and loneliness in a cloister after the king's death, comes when she mentions that food is no longer of particular interest to her:

Il faut nourrir la machine quand c'est le coeur qui meurt de faim.  

It is necessary to feed the body, while the soul dies of hunger.

Unfortunately, it loses something in translation; the word she uses for the body- a machine- implies the separation of the clinical physical needs of a being from the boundless passions of the heart and soul. When you consider that this is a woman who lived in Versailles at the height of French fashion and modernity, yet loved the king so much that she advised him against marrying her, for the sake of his political position, it speaks volumes about the importance she placed on physicality vs passion.

     When people learn that I am a polyglot, one of the questions they inevitably ask is "which is your favorite language?" Without hesitation, I always firmly reply, "French." They frequently seem shocked that I don't even have to stop and think about it, but I have yet to meet anyone who speaks French and another language who didn't love it. Don't get me wrong, Arabic has a rich history, Russian is pretty (in it's own rough way), Gaelic is comforting, and sign language expressive, but French just has a passion for life that I haven't found anywhere else. Whether good or bad, full of suffering or elation, the French language just seems determined to grab life by the throat and wring every drop of passion out of it as possible. 

     Perhaps that's why we've stolen the phrase "joie de vivre" from them: because no one else is so full of life. Cheers!

Good days and bad days

Saturday:

• Did laundry (down 2 flights of stairs),
• Washed sheets (also 2 flights of stairs),
• Hand-washed my winter coat,
• Did the dishes,
• Cleaned out the fridge,
• Cleaned out the cabinets,
• Culled old clothes that no longer fit from the closet,
• Put stuff up on eBay,
• Wrote up a study guide for Russian Fairy Tales midterm,
• Watched Russian cartoons to expand vocab and listening comprehension,
• Read a (short) French book,

Tipping points

     When I was in elementary school, I remember there being this huge push to get people to realize that littering wasn't cool. We had special speakers come to our classrooms and talk about how throwing your trash out the window of your car wasn't good for the environment (a word you rarely heard used back then), and that the government was making effort to increase the number of trash cans around. After a little bit, though, it wasn't enough to have trash bins around, and we were educated on how to use recycling bins. Everyone felt big and important because we were doing our part to help save the planet (also a new concept back then).

     I didn't really connect what was going on in school with the real world though, until one day I realized that something was wrong. I'd become accustomed to watching the trash on the side of the road while my parents drove, and seeing what interesting items I could identify out as we drive past. This was a pretty common sight back then:

It wasn't that people didn't see it, it had just been such an integral part of the scenery for so long that they forgot (or didn't care) that it was important. It was a fact of life: people threw trash out the window of their cars because that was more sanitary than keeping it within the vehicle, right?

FTP 35 - Word problems

     In an effort to retain some shreds of coherency, I'm taking today off of work and the one class that's right in the middle of the day. Instead of the usual chaos of this week, I instead finished a couple minor projects for French class, got caught up on homework for Russian, proofread the paper that's due tomorrow in lit/ culture class, cleaned the house, had a real meal, rescheduled everything for the next two weeks to make a little more sense, and generally got my affairs in order. Life is still chaotic, but at least it's controlled chaos at this point.

     In the midst of everything, however, life still goes on. Remember way back when, struggling with word problems in middle or high school? The most common question asked was "When will we ever use this in real life??" A little while ago, I got this from a friend:

So thank you, grade school math teachers. Believe it or not, you are appreciated, even if it's just by knitters and crocheters who don't want to throw away useful bits of yarn. Cheers!

Crunch time

     Going back to reality after time off is always difficult, and this coming week is proving to be no different than usual. On the positive side, there are only three weeks left of classes before the end of the semester, so crunch time won't be too bad. On the well, not-so-positive side, these three weeks are going to be somewhat difficult.

     For starters, the French pronunciation through song class that I'm auditing/ helping out in is gearing up for it's version of a final, which is a week of 5-hour evening rehearsals and then two nights of performances. Unfortunately, the rehearsals start at the same time my Russian class does, so I either need to beg out of the first two hours (thank goodness I just have a bit part), or go to the earlier Russian classes... which would then cut into the time I am scheduled to work. So already, right off the bat, scheduling chaos.

Why languages?

     As both a linguistics major in college, and a speaker of three languages- ones in which I am reasonably fluent, anyhow, never mind the smatterings of others I've picked up- people often ask why I chose to study language. The answer is a complex one, and ironically contained within itself, but here goes an attempt on why I am fascinated by languages.

     1) Language and thought. There are a number of different theories on whether language forces thought patterns into a certain path, or if thought patterns are learned before language, and therefor forces linguistic style into a certain shape. Regardless of the chicken or the egg question here, there is clearly a connection between language and thought, and I am fascinated by how people who speak other languages- or even other dialects- can view the world differently. For example, studies show that people who speak languages that differentiate between perfective and imperfective verbs (i.e. verbs that imply an end points vs those that don't, such as 'completed' vs 'worked on') focus more on whether a task was finished or not rather than how long it may have taken. Little things like that permeate literally everything we say and think, and that, to me, is awesome.

Yes but, for how long?

     2) Langauge and culture. Different cultures hold different things to have more importance in life, leading them to lexicalize different concepts. Lexicalization is giving an entire concept a single word, rather than having to describe it each time. As cultures mix and merge, they borrow each other's lexicalizations, since there's no one word that is a direct translation. That's why, for example, we have to use "c'est la vie" to denote the necessity of just accepting that some things happen succinctly, and "schadenfreude" to point out when someone is taking joy from others' misfortunes. Those concepts were not important or recurring often enough as English developed to become words of their own, but to the French and Germans, respectively, they were. I love finding out backstories and etymologies to explain why things developed the way they did, and what the lives of earlier people were like that made those ideas so necessary.

Being multi-lingual

   Ever since my dad brought home a Berlitz Teach Yourself French book when I was seven years old, I have been fascinated by the idea that people can communicate in more than one way. I hadn't really had foreign language exposure much (that I could remember or identify) at that time in life, so finding out that people referred to objects with a different word was awesome. Then I found out that different cultures lexicalize different ideas- that is, create a single word to encompass an entire concept- and I was hooked. I wanted to get into the heads of different cultures and languages, and see what made them tick- why certain words or ideas were more important that others, and how it affected one's outlook on life.

     Fortunately, the school system that we were in at the time required all students to take Intro to Spanish in 6th grade, and Intro to French in 7th grade. Given that I already had a background of rudimentary French from working with dad, I stuck with the French, and took it all the way up to my junior year in high school. I started to take the senior year, but after the first few weeks, when people were still saying "jer sweez.... uh...." I decided my time would be better served elsewhere. A couple years after I graduated, when I finally got a chance to go to Paris, I was delighted to find that I'd retained enough of the language (mostly by reading French comic books!) to get around, and had a lovely time there.

Reading and languages

     When I was young, I devoured books. Put a book in front of me, and as long as I could get into the author's style of writing, the rest of the world would vanish until I finished the book. Stopping for things like eating or sleeping was just such a hassle, and I'm sure I got into trouble numerous times for staying up too late with a book under the covers. At the time, I could not understand people who didn't get into reading- I was sure something must have been direly wrong with them in order to pass up such a great experience and a chance to explore both the real world and new ones.

     Fast forward a number of years, and I start to understand those people. The first revelation that lessened my desire to read was that there are only so many ways to tell a story. I look for patterns in everything, and eventually I realized that most books can be ultimately broken down into:

• character development,
• conflict,
• solution,
• happy ending.

Just wow.

As you know, I've been trying to come to terms with the recent death of my older sister, a topic I'll get into later when I've sorted it all out, as well as returning to the workforce after an absence of two and a half years. It's not been the easiest of weeks, and I was rather looking forward to Friday and the long weekend that followed. When I woke up this morning, however, I had 2 messages on my phone from overnight (I mute my phone at night, as I cherish my sleep). One was from a friend who'd gotten the news of Suzanne rather late, and was expressing her sympathies. The other, however, is what this post is about...

The second one, from my ex, ran as follows:

"So... I was poking around the internet and saw your blog page. What I saw there I do not appreciate. Back in January you made a post reflecting on our relationship in which you dropped my name several time [sic] as

Reflections on relationships

Been fairly quiet on the home blog-front lately, didn't figure anything was really worth posting, but I guess I was wrong. Dad has mentioned a couple times he was curious what I was thinking with the whole marriage thing (not in a bad way, mind you!), and I guess now that it's coming to a close, it's as good a time as any to reflect on it.

In short, when I met dude (now ex), we really seemed to have a lot in common. We agreed that relationships took work, life was worth living every moment of to its fullest, and there was no point in sitting on the side and letting it pass you by. He expressed interest in picking up Russian to help me out, and I admit, I'm a sucker for someone who's willing to play along with my love of languages. We went hiking with the puppy in Garden of the Gods, we would spend hours talking about things, even difficult topics like money, kids, the future, etc. I was very happy, and felt I'd really connected with someone.

Opera

   No pictures, just a quick update. Went to an opera last night- Don Quixote- and was pleasantly surprised to find it was performed in French! Still a touch hard to understand, due to operatic singing style, but I got more out of it than the English opera we went to. It was with a full-on orchestra and a HUGE pipe organ in the back, an utterly worthwhile night.

   On a side note, I had been listening to Les Mis in French on the way there, because I miss my 2nd language, and a woman stopped me to ask for directions (this happens often, apparently I look sufficiently Russian, or confident, that I'm mistaken for a local often). I was still in French mode, so I answered in French, but once we both recovered, I was able to help her find where she was going. I'm so proud of myself! 

   Doing an island tour this weekend, then have Sunday off again (thank goodness). Got a paper to look through for something to do, and there's a story in there about Russia sending astronauts to Mars? I'll have to sit down and actually read it, but that's what I got from a quick scan. Hope your weekends go well. Cheers!

Countdown!

Three days til I leave and the jitters are starting to set in. I've got my passport and visa, my books should be arriving tomorrow, my packing list and flight itineraries are all printed out, nothing to do now but sit and wait. I hate waiting.

To pass the time, I've been playing around with a trial account on a French server in WoW. It's pretty mind-expanding, to the point where I couldn't sleep the first night because all the new vocab was running through my head, but I feel it's worth it. I'm debating letting my US account lapse when I get back and just poking around on French and Russian servers to improve those languages. We'll see.

So yeah, three days. Nothing to do but wait. And I'm sure that on the third day, I'll discover something vital that I (or someone else!) forgot to do, and have to run around like crazy. Good times.