Gitana wrote:Bravo for the variety of languages Leo, quite impressive actually!
Thanks for the kind words in regards to my english-in-progress: I daily miss most cultural and linguistic references, but it makes for amusing and creative confused moments. Yet i ve learned from songs like most foreigners, i should know better!
Anyway, you seem to be at ease with words, i m pretty sure that your French must be quite decent then.
You are so kind to compliment my French. But I never even got to really speaking it. I was comfortable if I could only read it and understand it. I did go along far enough to begin to see some of the poetic nuances embedded in the prose narratives I would read (in other words, I was beginning to discern 'beautifully well written pieces', as they are distinct from dry narrative), and to see many of the idioms for what they were. But when I was downsized and had to begin thinking of a new career, all that spare time I had put into my French went to Studying Mathematics. I plan to become a School Teacher. I already have a BA degree with a Major in Philosophy, and so I could have easily gone in the direction of being a Civics or Social Studies Teacher, but given today's Social Climate of Polarized Political Thinking, I couldn't imagine how a Civics Teacher could teach anything. I would be afraid to open my mouth. There would be a million questions students could sincerely ask which you couldn't safely answer because you would be bound to make enemies on one side or other of the political divide when the kid would run home and tell Daddy what you told him or her. So I choose Math. It would have been much easier if I already knew Math. But I had a Technical Job for the last 30 odd years and often used math for my computer algorithms, and to write Technical Papers that I had published, even if I had to spend days researching the mathematical engineering concepts first. So I LIKE Math. But learning it formally is taking more than a few minutes. But, yes, I do miss my French. Oh, I got so far with it that I remember one day that I wanted to read something light, and so I picked up a book laying close by on the table, which I thought was in English, and started reading it. Well, it was a book that I had in both French and English Translation and it turns out that I had inadvertently picked up the FRENCH by mistake. Well, but I just started reading it and got through a page or two and then stumbled on a word, and that jarred me awake to the fact that I had been effortlessly reading French. I was so Proud of myself. But I had been reading French then for 5 or 6 years and so it was about time that my Brain had developed some kind of a Central Complex for French... a mental place where I could understand French in terms of French without converting the words over into English. I believe that you can never be truly comfortable with another Language while you are still translating everything over into your Native Tongue. Oh, that Correlates to one of my Anger Management Principles -- that for a Chronically Angry Person to become Anger Free it takes more than to just some tweaking and patching of their Deeply Flawed Personality, but that they have to Envision a New Anger Free Persona and restructure around it, literally becoming a New Person. They need to ACT like the New Anger Free Person until over time the ACT becomes Natural. Actors do it. Con Men do it. Ordinary People should realize that they can do it too, if the Personality that they came out of Childhood with is a liability and holding them back in life.
Well, you seemed have provoked a lot of thinking. that is why I like talking to people. Communicating to others becomes a reason to examine how one thinks ideas to one's own self.
Oh, and about my English...I really am good with English. From my early boyhood I loved fine old English Literature, and then over the years have read a great deal of History, Philosophy, Spiritual, Religious and even Technical Papers (and of course the full range of Anger Management Books). And so my English is spread out very broadly. Whenever I get tested for vocabulary I test at the top of the charts. My sense of grammar was always pretty good, but after comparing English Grammar to the French, German and Spanish Grammars, I have come away with a more solid handle on English Grammar. And about my Speaking English, well, yes, that is certainly no problem -- I talk to everybody I meet. I am a regular chatterbox. So even I am surprised that I was always so shy about speaking French. I guess I would have had to have Needed to speak French to get me over that hump.
on which continent are you?
