…to follow Alliance Rising.
We know where we take up.
Jane and I have been given the unofficial goahead for another novel….
by CJ | May 11, 2018 | Journal | 108 comments
108 Comments
Submit a Comment Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
@CJ, I’m doing this here, rather than by PM, in case others might meet this same issue.
As far as the online account maintenance functions presented at both WP & Gravatar, I’ve got an updated, working, email address, and my “naked” penguin avatar. But it’s still not presented here. I don’t know why or what I might do. Could it be that the email address I registered with your site is still the old one? I can apparently still log in, out, and in again, and post.
I’m not enamoured with the screaming crab.
@Paul — Suggestion: I don’t know if this will work, but — If you click Wave Without a Shore to the right of the WP icon in the menu bar, topmost, you should get a drop-down menu to edit your Profile. (You probably already know that.)
See if you can edit your email address there to the new one. If so, perhaps that will do it.
I’d also suggest doing that at Gravatar’s site, and make sure Gravatar still points to your desired current / new avatar image.
I personally have no animosity toward penguins, naked or fully clothed. I mean, those tuxedo feathers look quite distinguished au naturel. However, I might be a tad disturbed, or at least surprised by the sight of a penguin sans feathers, i.e., plucked bald. I would guess the penguin might not only be a bit shy and affronted, were anyone to do that to his/her fine plumage, but also, brrr, quite chilly without that nice, warm coat of feathers and down-feathers. (Hmm, actually, that might be quite dire for our distinguished friend.)
And … because some years back, it was recommended to me, there’s a silly but amusing and kind-hearted kids’ novelty song called, “Take a Penguin to Lunch,” which I’m often reminded of by Tux or any other penguins. (Also, Mumble from Happy Feet 1 and 2; I’m a fan.)
Here’s hoping your penguin pal is plentifully plumed once again soon. π
“If you click Wave Without a Shore to the right of the WP icon in the menu bar, topmost…” I don’t have that. Up there I have a green flower link to WWAS, a magnifying glass link to search, and three bars linking to a site index.
“… you should get a drop-down menu to edit your Profile. (You probably already know that.)” Gravatar gives me a “My Profile” page, which has the new email address and shows “Tux”.
“Iβd also suggest doing that at Gravatarβs site, and make sure Gravatar still points to your desired current / new avatar image.” I just went back there. Gravitar logged me in with the new address and showed the “crosseyed Tux” avatar. I changed it back to the “Obama Tux” just to see if that would propagate.
@Paul, I see (on my phone) the crosseyed penguin in a rectangle with the word LINUX below, pale blue left of its head, and red on the right.
I tried turning off the toolbar / menu bar, but it stayed on. So I I went back in and turned it back on. So I’m no help setting it on/off. Hmm….
Glad somebody’s getting the correct image!
@Paul — I’m still seeing the screaming crab, but possibly your changes haven’t propagated here yet.
Regarding the menu bar: For CJ’s blog, I see three stacked menu bars in the browser window pane:
1. A dark menu bar with WP icon, an icon and Wave Without A Shore text link, then rightmost, a link, “Howdy, BlueCatShip” with my avatar icon, and a magnifying glass icon for Search. Mousing over the WWAS link gives me the drop-down menu item, Dashboard. Click the Dashboard link and from that page, go down through your Profile settings.
2. A bright teal/green-blue menu bar with right-aligned items for FB, RSS, About Me, Contact Info, and Closed-Circle and FAQ links.
3. A white menu bar which blends into the page content, with the 8 petal flower and no text, then on the right, Home, Projects, Miscellaneous, and a Search magnifying glass icon.
* Since you do not see the WP and Wave Without A Shore dark menu bar, try right-clicking in the blue-green bar. Or else, there must be some way to get to your WordPress Dashboard and Profile settings while accessing CJ’s blog. The Profile settings in the dashboard are, as you understood, what you need to get to. Possibly, you can get to them through a right-click on the page? Or from the top level page on the right-hand sidebar?
Although I’m still seeing the screaming crab, it has been less than 24 hours since you did your last one or two avatar updates, so that could be why it’s not showing up on my end. On your end, It sounds like the problem is isolated to WordPress. You could also try logging into WordPress’ own site and edit your Dashboard / Profile settings there, for email and avatar pic, in case. I think, however, that CJ’s and other individual authors’ blogs carry separate settings, or it could be a hierarchical override; i.e., they use the WP settings unless the individual blogger’s site overrides with its own settings, as CJ’s does.
Just by way of comparison, John Scalzi’s blog has each visitor log in for any / each reply comment, to cut down on spam, and I don’t recall if the Comments section dispenses with users’ avatars. — I’m not saying this is any easier, just that it’s an alternative.
@Paul, I’m sorry, I don’t recall how to get to the WP Dashboard / Profile if ou don’t have the dark menu bar topmost. I do see you can turn it off. (Possibly, I can see how to turn if off and back on. BRB.)
Normally, I’ve noticed it takes about 5 minutes to propagate, but this has been days.
I’ve been to the Gravatar profile page, no idea about this WP Dashboard. But this ain’t Windows!
I still think this is a case where Paul needs to update his WP -> Wave Without a Shore -> Dashboard and Profile, so it gets his new email address, gravatar, etc.
It sounds like he has it going fine from the Gravatar side of the issue, and it’s only here that it’s still AWOL. What he’s tried has been right from other locations and lines of thought, so maybe the Dashboard and Profile will get the links repudiated, so everything’s pointing to where it should.
It’s as though one set of pointers are pointing to the valid object, but the other set of pointers are pointing to an old, no-longer-existent object, thus reading as null (fortunately,, instead of into random space where that used to be).
So Paul has a screeching crab instead of some uneasy thing from an alternate dimension. I suppose a screeching crab would be better than an irate primordial whatchamacallit. So far, it appears he hasn’t crossed the streams. π
On the other hand, if he gets Sigourney Weaver in a sequined party dress, well, it might not be all bad! π Whather she’d be all that amused could depend on her particular mood at the time, I grant, however. So, yeah!
Likewise if that alternate dimensional thing gets Lt. Ellen Ripley instead. Yeah, so, caution is in order. However, with Ripley, you’d get a fair shake and a lady who definitely won’t take dren off of anybody, most especially weird pan-dimensional critters or, you know, Xenomorphs with very bad attitudes. So there are pluses.
Its a known quirk of CJ’s setup that if one doesn’t have a gravatar set up before registering here, it doesn’t get automatically recognized, which is why she emphasizes doing it first. The gravatar used here is also stored in a database for her forum alone, and it doesn’t ordinarily communicate with the main gravatar database, so changing the gravatar at your gravatar account won’t change what’s here. Certain WP updates prompt a refresh from the main gravatar database, failing that, she has to do some manual prodding to get a gravatar reset for a user.
Paul, your Penguin is back in site, at least as I look, via my old IPad, at CJ’s blog. Your penguin is clad in muted Red, White and Blue and looks ready to join a number of similarly-shaded images at protest marches
Really? That’s odd. That’s the one I used, a riff on the Obama poster from 2012(?), before I changed email addresses. You’re still seeing that one? I still see the screaming crab.
Very, very weird because tonight I’m seeing the β yes, very irate and yelling β crab. I too prefer your Tux.
On both my home and work computer, I see Tux, not the K-rab. Running Chrome on both.
FWIW, paul, you’ve still got the crabs, Android Chrome or Windows Firefox.
On my tablet I see the penguin – on my PC the crab. May be some sort of caching problem, but I cleared my cache on the PC and it made no difference. Weird.
Different software, browser in particular?
Well, that’s a first. I just got voicemail spam in, I think, Mandarin Chinese, starting with, “Ni hao,” from a number that should (maybe) be sorta local. Oh, the wonders of the modern age!
Note to spammers and advertisers: It does you absolutely no good if the receiver does not speak the language you use. Deleted it.
I’ve been getting spam from Czech sources, or maybe Romanian or Hungarian; it all seems to come from that same linguistic family. Why does your Mandarin voicespam make me think of the lovely selection of Chinese-language curses from Firefly?
Now see, if they’d given me more Firefly, I would not be complaining in the least. I would be quite happy about that, in fact. π
Ah, Firefly and the art of improbable yet inspiringly creative Chinese curses!
(Man, I miss the Signal Podcast too.)
For your edification:
https://www.therobotsvoice.com/2010/11/fireflys_15_best_uses_of_chinese_profanity.php/14
ζηεͺ½εε₯Ήηηηηε€η₯ι½ π
I had great fun reading that linked article.
Unforeseen side effect: I now have this strange urge for Chinese food. Probably fried rice this weekend, though I have a new-ish takeout flyer to try soon.
Somewhat less unforeseen: I have this urge to rewatch the show.
Huh, I got what seemed to be a random, Chinese language voicemail on my cellphone a couple of days ago too. Odd.
I got one just a few minutes ago. I push 9 until I get a person but that person can’t speak English and hangs up on me. I’ve gotten 4 of them in all and blocked 3 different numbers, all coming from San Diego, CA.
This is probably a known spam targeting Chinese speakers in the US and Canada (at least). See
https://qz.com/1255889/phone-scammers-are-targeting-chinese-speakers-in-the-us/
Oddly I’ve been delving into Chinese profanity lately to be sure none of the character names I’ve chosen for certain people in Alliance Rising add up to something I wouldn’t like. π
Awwww, here I was looking forward to hearing the adventures of the mighty Captain Gweilo!
Google Translate may be a help. I was experimenting with it on my phone, and I found I could point it at some anime I was watching and it would try to translate the kanji and put the translation on the image of the video the phone was seeing. I say “try” because the translation would flicker a bit even if the video was frozen. It satisfied my curiosity about what they weren’t translating.
Strange how some cultures are very sensitive to such issues, and some aren’t. I live somewhat near Little Saigon, and a great many restaurants have a title including “Phα» King.”
That guy who went crazy hearing someone speaking Spanish: he’d be permanently crazed around here with so many avenidas, caminos, ramblas, and paseos.
I wonder how many “Little Saigon” Google would find. π
There’s one in Beaverton too. (For the uninitiated, that “α»” is pronounced similar to “uh”.)
That would be awkward, C.J., if you gave a character a name that translated to something really
“inappropriate.” But then, I’m not a bit surprised that you’re being proactive in that regard.
The tonal system of Chinese struck me as being very tricky, especially for something along the lines of what you’re trying to avoid. Was told by someone who professed to know that the exact same set of syllables when said with one set of tones means “I don’t care.” and when said with a different set of tones means, “I am not in the lake.”
It’s purportedly the tonalities of Chinese and other Asian languages that is the biggest stumbling block for western language learners. We’re just not trained to hear tonalities on that small a scale
From what I understand having perfect pitch (? I think that’s the English phrase for what we call “absolute hearing”?) is rare all over the world, *except* in people who’s native language is a tonal language.
Children who are very active in music before age five or six also have a fair chance of developing it.
It’s apparently a lot harder for even a Chinese speaker who doesn’t have it to hear and get all the exact tonalities, which immediately puts all us non-tonal speakers at a disadvantage when learning a tonal language.
On the other hand, not having it means sounds that are slightly off-key don’t bother us as much.
I don’t know if there’s some increased genetic predisposition toward having perfect pitch in tonal language families, seeing as it’s so helpful in learning to master those languages; but it does apparently need plentiful exposure to certain stimuli in the first 5-6 years of life to come to fruition.
I learned that languages acquired in early childhood like that are integrated in the normal part of the left brain and can be spoken accentless with perfect fluency. In adulthood they get stored elsewhere, some in the right brain where we learn songs, and rarely if ever achieve perfect fluency and are accented.
I learned some Spanish around 13 or 14 in highschool, then as a Chemistry major in College was expected to learn German. I found it much harder, and when doing sight translation in class would often pullup the Spanish word when I needed the German.
All is relative? π As humans, we’re apparently geared from birth to acquire and play with language, so that we’re wired to pick up languages and to innovate with word-play. We come up with new words just for the fun of it, or at need to express something in a new or more precise way. This is one way languages change, besides a need for speed and simpiicity, or drift.
Some people are more talented for certain kinds of language use, just like they’re more suited for other skills like music or math or spatial relationships, any mental or physical skills.
Not only are there differences in how young children learn language, compared to teens, and then to adults, but there are a few differences based on that left or right brain hypothesis, or whether you are male or female (or somewhere in there biologically), or sex/gender orientations, and possibly other factors.
Then add to that, that yes, we store data and algorithms somehow inside our brains in varying ways for permanency and recall, and for how we make associations like connotations and definitions: How does this word relate to others? How is it more or less related to others? What are its primary and then less likely meanings?
So depending on how we deal with it, learning a new language could get stored in various places and dealt with in various ways, possibly depending on our other talents or our learning styles.
Some of us seem to be geared to retaining that earlier language learning style, longer into adulthood. Some people have a natural “good ear” and “good tongue” for hearing and speaking in a language, or maybe they are good with reading and writing skills, but have more trouble with listening/speaking skills.
As an example, I tend to pick up how to do an accent, with enough exposure to clear example speakers, and with practice. Yet when I’ve tried accents close to my own native accent, sometimes I have trouble getting there, and I really wonder why that is. For example, my dad spoke in an Appalachian mountain accent, more or less like how Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn speak, or like the real-life people behind the movie, Harlan County War, or from the Foxfire books series. (My dad’s family were from near Cumberland Gap, Virginia.) I’m from Texas. Obviously, I grew up always hearing my dad’s accent, and we’d visit relatives “up home” every year until I was past college age and life started getting more complicated for us.
Well, I have trouble doing his accent, and it frustrates the heck out of me. π I think it’s because it’s closer to my own Texas big city accent, which is largely standard Midwestern, but with some city Texan thrown in. If I were going to do his native accent, I’d need to do some study and some immersion to get it just right. They do things almost the way we do in Texas, and yet not. Conversey, my Oklahoma relatives, despite being just north of Texas, do things we don’t quite do, accent-wise, here. But they have their own accent and twang, and when I try to get it, I have more or less success. Again, it’s as if my native accent and theirs run interference patterns when I try to do those accents. Hah, and I can mostly do a more rural Texas accent, but I have a feeling I go overboard with it, because my own personal accent is from a big city where there are all sorts of other things goin on, plus my mom was from here, but my dad was from there, while my grandmother (mom’s mom) was from Oklahoma.
I once tried to do a Boston or Massachussetts accent without any preparation, because I was asked to. Oh, I did an awful job of that. (I was trying to go by memory of JFK and Ted Kennedy, and of all things, Charles Emerson Winchester from MASH.) Hahaha, oh, it was awful! — And I’d be curious to get enough background to do a decent job of it. They do some really different things, and I would need to study it properly to get the accent down right.
I had great fun, though, doing a Russian accent a few years ago for a fan podcast. I listened to a lot of YouTube samples of real Russian speakers and immigrants, and real Russian actors in movies like the Hunt for Red October, and 2010, as the two I could think of right off with good examples. — I got a pretty good accent down, but probably not close enough for a real Russian to keep from chuckling. I’ve since found a native speaker who does astronomy videos on YouTube, Anton Petrov, who’s an immigrant. — So I can periodically brush up on the accent. I found that to be a really fun challenge, and would like to get it even more authentic. I got compliments on it.
My French and Spanish language accents are good, and I began learning those in junior high and high school, and into college. Because I had teachers who could explain how to produce the sounds, plus good examples to copy, I learned those pretty well. — However, I’m like ay non-native speaker, in that I can find one speaker easy to understand, while other speakers or certain situations, or vocabulary I don’t know, can be hard for me to figure out. (French is very weird about spelling versus pronunciation. I know if I were immersed in French, I’d have to pick up more of what I’m fuzzy on, and I’m not nearly as fluent as I was in college.)
I have discovered too, that these days, I have this dumb tendency to think I’ve learned some new vocabulary after limited exposure, and then I find out in practice, well, no, it didn’t soak in like I thought it did, haha, so more practice is needed.
The real test seems to be trying to learn anything about a completely new or unrelated language. — I can make much better sense of written Dutch than I can of spoken Dutch. I don’t yet have enough practice with hearing spoken Dutch, or enough overall fluency, because I haven’t been studying diligently. So when I’ve listened to a few Dutch examples using words I don’t know at ordinary conversation speed, haha, I know they’re saying something I might catch, and I get maybe a word here and there, but hmm, that still sounds very “foreign” to me. π And yet, if I read Dutch passages, I can make out more, or guess, based on English and French, and that’s fun to me. π A random YouTube recommendation turned up some Dutch kid who seems to talk and do ordinary kid stuff. I’d thought that might help listening skills. It still might, if I get enough fluency. But when I’ve tried listening so far, haha, I only get a word here and there. Seems like he’s having a good time, though; goofy kid, but bright. So once in a while, I watch that and see how much I can get. If I had to get by in the Netherlands, oh, I’d have to really knuckle down and study, because right now, my listening and speaking comprehension still are not nearly good enough. I’m reminding myself now to make my language practice a regular thing, homework. I still don’t seem to have that as a daily or even weekly thing, for which, I am not proud of myself. — Spoken Dutch is enough similar to English that I should get more of it than I am. Written Dutch has odd but fairly consistent spelling patterns, and I have had a better chance at it so far. If I’d study enough, I think I could pick it up.
Last month, I also chanced on a random recommendation that was Vietnamese instruction, and another that was Haitian Creole. Now those were a real test. I’ve heard Vietnamese speakers, but I’d never sat down to explore. Whoa. That would be entirely memorization for me, because the language is so different, not related to English. The tones would give me trouble. The other basic sounds, I could get with practice. From a few lessons from various sources, I decided the regional accents vary about a couple of their consonants in some significant ways that I don’t understand. (KH seems to be a K or a K+H or an HH like loch and Bach, depending on which part of Vietnam you come from, or perhaps where it appears in a word. But I didn’t understand why yet.) Other things, though, I could get, although I was still unclear on why and when the vowel qualities vary, also. I did figure out that they do their own thing with implosive or “swallowing” several consonant sounds, so they have their own special accent going. — But I’d have to learn every single word by rote memorization until I built up enough understanding of how and why things do what they do in Vietnamese grammatical structure and how words string together phonetically. That was very interesting in just a few lessons, but I reached the “eyes glazing over” from information overload too quickly. Still, it says I could pick some phrases up, with a lot of memorization, before I understood what’s going on under the hood in the language.
Haitian Creole was odd the other way around: It’s like a very country French where you got rid of several standard Parisian French sounds, and then you threw in a few bags of other vocabulary from various sources, African languages, Spanish, English, mainly. Then you stir the pot liberally, and something altogether familiar and yet very much not, for a French speaker, happens. So I could go right along with a great deal of it, by seeing how their sounds compared to school French, but then every now and then, wow, where did that come from? Somewhere not French at all, is where. π The grammar is simplified way down to basics, and several basic words are from forms related to their usual French forms, but you have to squint to get there. That was very curious. So I could understand more than I could speak without knowing more vocabulary and the grammar, and yet I’d be able to read and listen with some fair chance, based on French, to pick up more than I would have thought. But it is its own separate language; it’s not really French; too different, but understandable more than I expected.
I am not sure how much Cajun French or Louisiana Creole differ from standard French, but from what I do know, those are both different enough from standard French that I’d have to wade through them. (I’ve heard a few speakers, but I’ve never heard or started study, enough to know much about either one, even though they’re in the next state over. — Recent efforts have been going on to teach French and Cajun and Creole in Louisiana schools, and revive them in everyday speech. They’d been actively discriminated against and forbidden in school for a long time, so people either only spoke them at home, or else they dropped them for American English. And that’s a shame, because there’s this huge heritage there. Again, they aren’t quite standard French, there are important differences, at least as I understand it. And yet there are several folks who are well known who have Cajun or Creole backgrounds. So maybe we’re making some progress there.
The Hawaiian book and CD that Chondrite sent me is STILL somewhere in storage, if it didn’t get lost in the move. π I’m still very aggravated at that. It was in a box with other items most specifically to keep and move with me. I still want to try this. Recent news has me curious again, plus a language comparison video went over Hawaiian with three other related Polynesian languages, showing language reconstruction. Whew, much memorization, plus I will have trouble with that glottal stop at the start or end of a word. In the middle, between vowels, I can do that, no problem. (It’s just like a Cockney bottle, where instead of the T, you have this catch in your throat.)
I likewise would have to restart Japanese, and learn by memorization, and I’m not sure I’d ever learn to read beyond the kana to the Chinese-origin kanji. Japanese grammar looked doable, but it’s both very unlike and yet somewhat like European grammars. They do different things with word order and way different things with verbs, or with honorifics, than English every thought of doing.
European languages seem determined to go overboard on inflections, words changing endings or prefixes for grammatical functions, everything having to agree with everything else, just to be complicated. Heheh.
So going at language learning from different points in life, or degrees of relatedness to your native language, yields wildly varying results, and I’d expect where you store that in your brain and how you relate it to other things about language, must vary per non-native speakers.
I am fairly sure that my Spanish and French are closely in there to English, but closer to each other. (They share a whole lot of their grammar and the word forms are closely related.) English and French share a good bit, due to the Norman Conquest, and I’ve seen a theory saying English is actually a creole of Saxon English and Norman French into Middle English and Modern English. That might be so.
Whaeever I learn of any other European language, Dutch or German or Russian, for instance, those are also “close enough” in some sense to English to share some things. Latin would get stored “next to” French and Spanish as their ancestor. (When I’ve seen Italian and Portuguese, I can make some sense of Italian or of written Portuguese, but despite Spanish, spoken Portuguese, I haven’t gotten the hang of. I’d need study.) Greek is probably off on its own enough that it and Russian would be somewhere nearby, and yet separate. Hindi or Sanskrit would be further away, even though they are related to English. But Hawaiian and Vietnamese and Japanese would all be on their own as unrelated to English, so their own subject area under languages, if I were to become even partly fluent.
* If we were ever to discover if or what dolphins or orcas or whales are saying, fi they are speaking/singing (and I think that’s likely they are) then I have no idea how we humans would learn their languages. I have no idea how we’d annotate them, write the words down. Even our musical notation seems inadequate, and we have no letters that fit those, er, speech or singing sounds.
* That would be a real problem for any real alien language too, I think. Unless their speech and hearing organs are enough like ours, then we (and they) would have to come up with a whole new way to transliterate between them, and we’d have to learn how they write their language down, if they did. — If they are like most science fiction aliens, that could be possible. If they’re like knnn or t’ca/chi, that’s another question. But if they’re like hani or stsho or maybe kif, or mahendo’sat, we’d have some good chance at it without a whole lot of trouble. Probably. (The matrix-speech of the t’ca, I thought was really a great idea.)
So, there’s a lot going on there, and I think I barely scratched the surface of where I was going with my answer.
Why do I always seem to end up writing a badly-structured not-quite-essay? LOL!
have patience, please. this just seems to be how I communicate. long-form.
I am so glad I got to study languages. Life would be so limited with only one.
My 17 yr old took Mandarin from ages 3-8. She then switched to French. Her French accent is impeccable, which I attribute to her early Chinese. My 18.5 yr old also studied Chinese from 3-10β and again as a junior and senior in high school. And will continue in college. She has got the tones down pat. I have wondered if the fact that they were born in China helped, but neither had more than passive language acquisition when we adopted the Comment
@Kokipy, you and your daughter(s) (and son?) might like Abigail Washburn’s music. She’s an American who studied Chinese and plays banjo, and therefore sings in English and Chinese (Mandarin, I think). I first learned of her from Farscape or Firefly fans. She has some very nice stuff, in traditional folk/bluegrass, Chinese traditional and folk, and fusion and modern styles. She has also played with music stars like BΓ©la Fleck. For instance, she has a piece where girls are skipping rope or other play, while singing, and this is mixed with modern urban sounds, all in Mandarin. I think she’s included another language in some others, Tibetan, I think. Then she has very “country” American stuff, and so there’s a curious mix going on there on each CD.
For some reason I keep reading the word as ‘godhead’ instead of ‘goahead’.
I see goatherd and hear singing.
Oh no! Now I’m hearing the yodeling of the Lonely Goatherd in the Sound of Music!
If that Lonely Goatherd doesn’t do it for ya, you could always go for the old-fashioned Tarzan Yell. You know, the Johnny Weissmuller version. Or thereabouts. π
Or there’s the redoubtable Bulgarian Shepherdess Song. You know, to go with the general herding pastoral theme. π — That was a track from the old Cosmos series by Carl Sagan. the song was on the Music of Cosmos LP (later CD). I don’t know why, but that song always fascinated me. It sounded so very mysterious and alien and exotic. It is, however, an acquired taste. Haha.
There are, of course, the cowboy yodelers of yore, but those are very definitely an acquired taste, and might need limited doses to prevent overload, haha.
Y’all are wonderful, you know that? π
I though a goa-head was an avid fan of a certain subgenre of electronic music?
I’m enjoying reading all the comments and essays on language development; thanks all. Had the great pleasure to spend a VERY wet rainy week camping in our old travel trailer last week, punctuated by spring concert and sleepover with that grandson. Saturday afternoon was his school picnic event; a couple of hours surrounded by happy kids and happy teachers in the rain. He has attended this school since kindergarten … immersion, bi-lingual Spanish/English. As such he’s surrounded by fluent (and less so) speakers moving in and out of both languages: teachers, parents etc. There is an observable, clear difference between those of us who learned other languages later in life, and those kids. They tend to speak in Spanish, OR English, and when you ask them to translate what they said or sang, it’s very difficult for them. My grandson sings .. a lot … and only in Spanish. When I can’t figure out what he’s singing about, outside in the rain in earsplitting loud tones, and ask him … his reply is a very puzzled look, and an answer of “oh, maybe it’s about a donkey?” He KNOWS, but it’s a Spanish song, not an English song, and seems to need to remain so in his brain π This particular event was hosted by the Spanish teachers, with the help of the gym teacher, bike races, drone races with the science teacher, singing and dancing with the music teacher. When I asked if I should bring a pot luck dish (the school’s usual mode of operation), everyone gleefully replied “Oh, NO … the Spanish teachers are in charge and they invited … The TACO Truck!!!” which did a constant business feeding hungry families all afternoon π
When we sat down at bedtime, with our books, I told grandson about all the lovely people here helping me find new books to read, he looked up at me with a big grin, and asked that I thank you all for helping him. Back to his re-reading of a Rick Riordan book, and in a minute or so, he looked up at me with a side eye, and said “Could you order me ALL those books, please?”
So, THANK YOU all again from the boy and his soon to be a lot poorer grandma LOL!
Cathy, that makes me smile while my eyes tear up. Thank you.
That’s sweet.
Haha, awesome! π So glad for a kid to love reading. — Hey, he might like historical novels too.
The taco truck: This past week, it seems some kind folks sent a taco truck and a mariachi band to play outside the (now former) office of the racist attorney who went on that rant in a restaurant. The mariachi band donated their time as a public service. Heheh. >:-)
It is just possible the Spanish teachers were low-key expressing a certain solidarity there. Then again, who doesn’t like a taco truck? Or tamales?
Cathy, if you get the chance, you might mention your grandson’s puzzlement about translating between Spanish and English, the songs, etc. — Often, language learners have some time before they can easily translate back and forth without having to concentrate about it, or (better) to think in the new language. So it can take a while to develop a “database” in mind, before it’s easier to think directly in the new language. Translating back can be difficult too, and he may be unsure of some words he doesn’t know or isn’t sure he knows, from songs or other things he’s learned, either by memorization, or by study, since he’s still new at it. As kids / speakers get more used to it, they can become truly bilingual and “code-switch” back and forth between English, Spanish, etc. in the middle of sentences. That’s the stage where they’re so comfortable with it, they just use which word fits better or which they think of first. — In college, I got to where my notes in other classes would be peppered with French words, and I could dream in portions of French. (I wasn’t completely fluent if I’d had to speak or write natively, but with a dictionary, I would’ve done pretty well.)
heheh, there is also the point that, if he’s learned a song that might be subversive or, hmm, not what he thinks his cool grandma would be OK with (popular lyrics, love songs, whatever) then he might be reluctant to translate. LOL. If and when he’s old enough to get the distinction, it might be the time later to point out that yes, even that kind of language is there for a reason, to be strongly expressive. Being fluent does mean leanring all vocabulary and meanings, so (hah) at least for an older learner, those words too are fine.
If he learns to feel comfortable and fluent with Spanish, or any other languages, that’s excellent, both for culture and business, and just plain getting to talk to people and make friends.
Some people love foreign languages; others really have trouble and don’t like learning them. But the exposure to other ways of thinking and seeing the world, that there ARE people who have a whole other way of seeing the world, and the chance to enjoy that, these are as important as learning the scientific and mathematical ways of looking at the world. I’m so glad I got to learn languages and discover that I loved that.
Great if he loves singing. If he would like to take choir or learn piano or guitar, these are good introductions and a chance to have a strong skill for enjoyment. — And my mom was a professional artist, so I’m very much in favor of kids learning to draw and paint and do so for fun as well as a skill.
That’s nice to hear. On a tangent based on your anecdote, just tonight on Dutch TV there was a brain scientist/doctor explaining about how language works in one’s brain. Each week he tackles a different aspect of what our brains do, how they work, and what can go wrong (& be done to help with that – he wants not just to educate everyone a bit, as he’s a professor at a teaching & research hospital; he also wants to improve acceptance and understanding for people with brain damage or mental disabilities).
He mentioned that growing up bilingual from a very young age statistically appears to give your brain an extra five years of protection from the bad effects of growing older, and developing Alzheimers (or maybe it was dementia); and if I remember correctly from a previous episode a few weeks back, it’s also good for a few extra IQ points and more mental flexibility – so that’s great for your grandson, that his family is giving him that opportunity.