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Bits and pieces...
May. 22nd, 2005 10:08 amThe old and new passed through my hands at the store yesterday. I found a 1951 quarter (90% silver) among the change I was handling soon after opening and Drew pointed out one of the new Jefferson nickels, which have a buffalo on the back and a "cropped" profile of Jefferson on the front (which represents a radical departure from the traditional representation of profiles on U.S. coins).
Huntür was at the store until Drew went off to pick up mail, and we went to the market next door to pick up some essentials and talk. Her attitude toward foreign language is to quietly ignore it, repeating phrases only when there doesn't seem to be a good reason to do something else.
I can understand the situation, having experienced something like it in my childhood. My mother was a language teacher and she tried, from time to time, to impart some of her hard-won knowledge in my direction. I resisted with the tenacity, it seems, of some of the early Christians martyred defending their faith, although even at that young age, I was not about to go quietly. Pencils would break. Notebooks would disappear. In the end, her efforts made it a bit easier for me to pick up French in high school and Russian in college. I can only muse at how much easier it might have all been had I not been a stubborn kid.
Then again, there is a reason for such stubbornness: studying a language out of context is boring as all get-out. Studying language is easier (and not really "studying") if, for example, your friends jabber in the language or if your favorite grandparent doesn't speak English. (That's why it's hardly an effort at all to learn a language in-country. In such a circumstance, you have to learn the lingo, or remain out of the picture.)
Huntür came back later with Shannon and Drew, on the way to a birthday party. I was speaking to Natalie at the time and when I offered to let Huntür speak to her aunt, the tyke took the cell phone from my hand and proceeded to walk around the back of the store, chattering away, dividing her attention between the conversation and various knicknacks that attracted her eye, as if this was what she did all day, every day.
I haven't picked up the phone yet today, so I don't know if Galina is on the road to Pagosa yet or not. Regardless, I probably ought to take a few minutes away from translating and chasing paper today to clean the place up. And now, I need to go and finish that statute on adoption.
Cheers...
Huntür was at the store until Drew went off to pick up mail, and we went to the market next door to pick up some essentials and talk. Her attitude toward foreign language is to quietly ignore it, repeating phrases only when there doesn't seem to be a good reason to do something else.
I can understand the situation, having experienced something like it in my childhood. My mother was a language teacher and she tried, from time to time, to impart some of her hard-won knowledge in my direction. I resisted with the tenacity, it seems, of some of the early Christians martyred defending their faith, although even at that young age, I was not about to go quietly. Pencils would break. Notebooks would disappear. In the end, her efforts made it a bit easier for me to pick up French in high school and Russian in college. I can only muse at how much easier it might have all been had I not been a stubborn kid.
Then again, there is a reason for such stubbornness: studying a language out of context is boring as all get-out. Studying language is easier (and not really "studying") if, for example, your friends jabber in the language or if your favorite grandparent doesn't speak English. (That's why it's hardly an effort at all to learn a language in-country. In such a circumstance, you have to learn the lingo, or remain out of the picture.)
Huntür came back later with Shannon and Drew, on the way to a birthday party. I was speaking to Natalie at the time and when I offered to let Huntür speak to her aunt, the tyke took the cell phone from my hand and proceeded to walk around the back of the store, chattering away, dividing her attention between the conversation and various knicknacks that attracted her eye, as if this was what she did all day, every day.
I haven't picked up the phone yet today, so I don't know if Galina is on the road to Pagosa yet or not. Regardless, I probably ought to take a few minutes away from translating and chasing paper today to clean the place up. And now, I need to go and finish that statute on adoption.
Cheers...
