Discouragements and Opportunities

I have to say that I've been slightly discouraged in my language learning.

I don't remember the last time I've sat down and studied, and I'm feeling the effects of wanderlust. I like conlangs, and I've been tempted to try Klingon - yes, Klingon. The language everyone thinks is a waste of time to try to learn. I like Star Trek, but not enough to actually learn the language. If I lived near Cincinnati, however, I would be very tempted to learn it, because there is a group that meets together to practice the language (but not to drink bloodwine and eat gagh, I hope).

Why am I considering Klingon? Because I've been reading Arika Okrent's book "In the Land of Invented Languages" and it makes Klingon sound like fun, but only at their meetings. They seem to meet up every year somewhere in the United States, and one activity is going out to restaurants, some of them in costume, and speaking Klingon in public. Now, I think most Americans are in favor of people speaking whatever language they want to in the privacy of people's own homes or in private places, but if you speak a weird language in public, you're going to draw attention to yourself.

Anyway, enough of Klingon.

I've also been tempted to learn Japanese, which just about everyone would consider far more important than Klingon. I think Spanish and Esperanto will keep me busy, but maybe I could work an easy book like "Japanese from Zero!" into the mix.

I'm fascinated by conlangs, and have even thought about making my own to write in, but I haven't started anything like that yet. Another conlang that has come to my attention is Lojban, which is supposed to help its speakers think more logically, and is supposed to be a logical language. I found their group on Youtube and subscribed to Reddit (I've just signed up for Reddit in the past week). It sounds like a fascinating language as well.

I'm also interested in toki pona, Latin and Ancient Greek. That's enough for now. I really do need to find other hobbies than languages, because when I get bored with languages, I have to find something else to do.

Take care.     

Happy Independence Day!

Happy 236th birthday to the United States!

And happy 27th birthday to me!

Esperanto and Spanish

I decided to keep the Spanish Super Challenge going, although I'm really behind on it. I think at the rate I'm going, I'll watch 40 movies and read 30 books. Not too good.

I decided to go back to Esperanto, which is a conlang designed to be used as a bridge language between people of different linguistic backgrounds. When I first started learning Esperanto, I thought most Esperantists wanted to make it the second language everyone learned. I thought the idea was interesting, but unlikely to actually happen. I found out this is wrong, and also that Esperantists try to promote their language by appealing to how easy it is and how vibrant and colorful the community that speaks Esperanto is.

I think what is most likely is that multilingualism will become more popular, especially in the United States, and that Esperanto will continue to attract more people who find the language interesting. I think the European Union's suggestion that all its citizens learn 2 languages in addition to their native tongue(s). Of course, in the EU, there are many different languages throughout the continent, but here in the US, most people speak English, and most people around the world want to learn English in addition to their native language(s).

Some other interesting things have happened in the past few days, but I'll write about it some other time. I also have to say that I hate politics, and because this is an election year, I'm finding enough stuff on TV and elsewhere to annoy me.

Summer School

I'm in summer school from June 4th to the end of July.

I'm taking a history course and a science course. I was going to take an online computer course, but I decided to take it in an actual class, because I'm an idiot when it comes to computers and need all the help I can get.

So far I like the classes. My science class is 5 hours a day twice a week, so it is a little long. We usually get a few breaks, because it's probably pretty tiring for the instructor as well.

Next week in class we're going out to the pond to catch snakes. I'm pretty excited about it.

I started an internship at the mayor's office to get experience with writing. I hope it helps me out. It's OK, but office work is kind of boring.

Good luck with work or school this summer, everyone.

HTLAL Challenges

On the http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/ forum, someone had the great idea to pose a one week wanderlust voucher to everyone on the forum.

I decided to try Latin for a week. I used Peter Jones's "Learn Latin" and started May 7th. Unfortunately, I still have to do one day, so it's been longer than what I anticipated and I've decided I like Latin enough and I'll finish the course. I'm on chapter 11 of 20.

I'm also doing the Super challenge for Spanish, which is reading 100 books and watching 100 movies by January 1, 2014 (+6 hours EST, or 6 p.m. my time December 31, 2013).

I've gotten off to a slow start, and just finished watching "Titanic" with Spanish subtitles last night, so that counts as 2 movies. The rules state every movie of 3 hours or longer counts as 2 movies, any book longer than 500 pages counts as 2 books, children's books count for 1/5 a book, bilingual books count as being fully in the target language and the minimum length for a book is 100 pages.

Another Semester in the Books

I got my grades today. I earned 3 A's and 2 B's.

The 2 B's I figured I would get, because I struggled with one of the classes and the other one was an online course that I didn't really take seriously.

I'm on break until June 5th, and I'll work at my internship and study languages, read books and listen to music during my days.

Breaks are always nice.

Starting Mandarin

I've decided I'll try Mandarin for 6 weeks.

Obviously I won't get very far, but it will at least let me see if I like the language and want to continue. It's also a lot easier to commit to 6 weeks instead of who knows how long it will take to gain any sort of conversational ability in the language.

I'm using Michel Thomas, the Foundation and Advanced courses, and Assimil.

I'll officially start my 6 weeks this Monday, but I'll dabble in it this weekend.

Now I just need to find out how to read Mandarin.

My Latest Guilty Pleasure

http://www.rationalwiki.org

I loved this website, even though I'm a Christian and not a secularist.

I was originally drawn to it by the "List of Internet Kooks" I found.

I soon found out other stuff I liked, particularly the articles against fundamentalist Christian politics and theology.

It's great fun.

This Was a Great Winter

This must have been one of the mildest winters of my life. There were only a few days of nasty weather, at least when I was driving. I hate to drive when the roads are snow covered, but I only had to do that a few times this winter, and I only skidded once or twice, compared to once or twice during a trip out on a snowy day. Also, my college never called a snow day, and my college calls snow days whenever the roads have any snow cover on them at all.

Today it's in the 70s and sunny. I got to enjoy an hour walk this afternoon.

What am I doing inside blogging? I should be outside enjoying this beautiful weather!

Like they say in Ohio: if you don't like the weather, wait a day; it'll change. Who knows, tomorrow it might snow.

Didn't Get the Job, Schedule for Summer and Fall

I didn't get the telemarketing job (renewal, actually) because it didn't fit my schedule. Maybe in May I can do it. They wanted me to work 35 hours the first 2 weeks and then 20 hours (with 5 on a Saturday or Sunday) the rest of the time, with me scheduling the 20 hours myself. That doesn't seem too bad

The school published the list for summer and fall and now I have a general idea of what I'll be taking in (I hope) my last two semesters of college. I'm taking 3 classes this summer and 6 classes in the fall, but 2 out of 6 classes are online and one is an internship.

Plus I have 2 volunteer assignments that I hope I can hold onto.

I hope I'll be busy enough.

Getting Back into Blogging

I'm going to try blogging again.

My life really isn't that interesting, but I want to be a writer, and blogging could help me improve my writing.

I'm on Spring Break right now, and the semester's half complete, so I have plenty of time to write, study languages, listen to music, visit the www.how-to-learn-any-language.com forums, and do other stuff I like.

Oh, and I started going to the gym recently to lose weight. It's going well so far. I'm also using www.myfitnesspal.com, which is helping me manage my calorie intake and usage.

I dropped Medical Assisting in favor of Technical Communications, and I might graduate by the end of the year. I'm not suited to working in healthcare, at least not working directly with patients.

I have an interview for a customer service position with a publisher on Monday. I hope I get the job, because it would be a good way to earn money and kill some time.

I'm volunteering at Project Learn in the advanced ESL class on Thursday nights and at Mercy Medical Center in Canton on Friday mornings. I enjoy volunteering and hope I can do it for as long as possible.

Right now I'm studying Esperanto and Spanish. I'm using the correspondance courses on www.lernu.net to study Esperanto and because I want to learn how to read Spanish I'm using Karl Sandberg's "Spanish for Reading."

That's about all I have going on. Like I said, I'm not very interesting.