It has not been a very restful weekend. Friday was my only day off, and I used most of it to catch up in doing a lot of neglected little chores and DIY household tasks, which included an emergency plumbing fix. I still don't feel anywhere near being at the better/best state of my physical health yet. My stamina isn't lasting; getting exhausted too easily, and I'm still not getting any refreshing sleep. For this past week, after depressing and angering myself thoroughly with watching too much negative TV news, and other documentaries about some weighty issues, and whenever other frivolous game playing and diversions became too frustrating and boring, I've felt like I've come close to snapping.
Lately, because sickness and uncooperative weather has rendered me so physically inactive, I've been desperate to learn some new skills and tricks to at least keep my brain ticking and exercised by processing some kind of positive novelty. When self-improvement isn't coming quickly enough on the physical level, there are still realms in the mind to work on.
So then, my chosen method of healthful mental stimulation for the week was language acquisition*. I've been testing and drilling myself with an app on my iPhone called Duolingo. It is great for introductory learning of a new language. I've been concentrating on a couple of languages: German and Portuguese. Why German? Because I already know some basic vocabulary of it, and I'd like to progress beyond a beginner's comprehension level (and I know some Germans). Why Portuguese? Because it's just entirely new to me; plus it has enough noticeable cognates in it similar to French and Spanish (which I already know on intermediate levels) to help me grasp it, and feel around it, and intuitively test with it for creating phrases and sentences. Duolingo is great for Western European languages, but I'd like to see something equally compatible for learning non-Latin alphabet languages as easily, like Cyrillic alphabet languages (Russian, Ukrainian), and Kanji (Mandarin, Japanese).
Curiosity and novelty are not the only motivators. Logically, by learning a bit of these extra two languages, a door is a opened a crack to speak with about another additional 300 million people on this globe. For instance, with learning Portuguese, plus coupled with my Spanish, just about 93% of the continent of South America is then a bit more accessible linguistically to me. English, French, and Portuguese are the main colonial protocol languages used for much of Africa**. Learning more German would allow me to be more capable of living in a few of those 20 other countries that are compatible with my idea of progressive, civilized societies if, for some wild reason, I should ever somehow become uprooted, and have to move away from Canada.
I notice, and have to admit, that through my mistakes I'm seeing just how anchored my brain is in the English language, and how much more inflexible it seems to be at learning new ones as I age. Like perhaps for most Anglophones, it is a challenge for me to automatically assign grammatical gender on things. Also, I neither readily think of using accent marks, nor can I instantly twist my mind around figuring out which of all the extra verbal conjugations of these other languages to use correctly. Two articles, one definite and one indefinite (a/n, the) are sufficient for me, versus the five articles in French, six in both Spanish and Portuguese. There are yet comparatively more and complex article forms in the case of German, which are really staggering my mind as I study them.
Online translators have a purpose and place. I have used them to learn more words and grammar, but they are not perfect. Although it's increasingly convenient for me and other Anglophones, that the rest of the world is becoming so much more accommodating and interested/willing to learn and practice English, I also think that it's a bit of a loss as well in terms of finding equal ground in communicating with people. I generally think it's a mark of arrogance, and an attitude of superiority, to expect other people to learn and speak my language when I'm touring, or living as a guest, in their country.
I don't have great expectations about how proficient or fluent I'll be with these two, but gaining a little confidence in having at least some more literacy in getting around in nations with these languages is a bit more comforting. I only wish I had more of the means and opportunity to do so.
*- For me, the true reflection of "intelligence" is the ability to: think systematically and strategically; maintain, retain, and relate a lot of detail from memory; do creative improvisation, and organize. All of these abilities are enhanced and exercised when learning another language.
**- I'm not saying that I'm making a future big plan to ever go back to Latin America, or I'll be stricken with some urge to head to a continent as volatile as Africa is, but never say never.
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