Filed under: egg-lish
Please read “glances” as: I’m too busy to write a proper post; here are some assorted thoughts in an uncomposed form. format, as suggested by numbering in title, theoretically to be recycled.
I’ve been reading excerpts from Du Bellay. In Défense et illustration de la Langue Française, he wrote: “Qu’on ne m’allègue point ici quelques-uns des nôtres, qui, sans doctrine, à tout les moins non autre que médiocre, ont acquis grand bruit en notre vulgaire.” Not going into how we managed to spend forever and a day on this passage without pointing out how callously contemptuous the man is, that last fact makes me very happy.
A woman can’t do it. No, a woman can’t be that arrogant, but it’s so damn honest. Refreshing. Beautiful. I’m pleased as punch with Du Bellay.
Also, I would just like to share something wonderful that I found. To preface, I would like to acknowledge that there are an abundance of very good tortoise videos on YouTube. But this one in particular, is simply fabulous, and perhaps unsurpassed. Highly recommended. It will take up next to none of your time, unless of course you, like me, feel the need to watch in repeatedly for up to a quarter of an hour. I’m exaggerating. But then, I can’t prove that.
Filed under: egg-lish
Filed under: Holiday
I know there was no resolution in the last post, so I’m making one now to make up for it:
Don’t take classes for granted.
What brought about this thought? Beginning language classes. How many minutes were spent in my Latin class to-day explaining what the passive voice is? I shudder to think. I understand that they are a neccessary evil, but this particular instance is exceedingly painful for me because I just shouldn’t have dropped Latin when I was 13, and then I wouldn’t have to deal with any of it.
My school doesn’t have the resources for such classes to be offered, but I wonder if large universities ever offer beginning languages “for language students”. This is my dream. An accelerated version of a beginning language course where in-depth grammatical questions are addressed sooner than usual, and all explanation of parts of speech and how to parse, &c. is cut out. Just the grammar, not the background. How beautiful would that be?
But at the same time, it is certainly important for me to realize that this 2nd term Latin class is more than a bother. In a strange way, it is also an opportunity for me to challenge myself. The workload will be very easy for me. I’ll hardly have to study the grammar at all, and I’ll already know a good portion of the vocabulary from my early instruction and subsequent dabbling. So I will have plenty of time to learn forms very thoroughly, get the vocabulary I don’t know down cold, and look into any additional questions that come up. So I hope I choose (at least to a moderate degree) to take that option.
There’s another way that I can challenge myself, however. I suspect that if I pay close enough attention I could actually benefit from the presence of my classmates. Their questions might actually tell me something about language if I apply myself to find the value. And I know anyway that it would lend itself to my personal development if I were able to put aside my feelings about taking a beginning language course and just try to take a positive outlook.
I don’t know if I got all that right. I’m pretty new to the positive-thoughts-make-for-a-better-life club. And regretfully I always seem to get the little inspirational notions bit wrong. But getting better at that is not a Newyear’s resolution. What a waste of time and energy.
