A week of puttering about

It has been a week of puttering about, language wise. I've review a couple Pimsleur lessons for Farsi and read a dialog or two. I've worked through a bit of Uzbek, and translated a few phrases (quite probably incorrectly) for my amusement. And I've flipped through some of the Speak in a Week Verb Book for Italian. I've also skimmed bits of the poorly reviewed Tojik phrasebook from Hippocrene (which seems to me no better nor worse than most of Hippocrene's offerings,). Most of all, though, I've enjoyed listening to music, be it in French or Spanish or Italian or Uzbek or Turkish, and enjoyed life in a world where thanks to the internet you can find and find out about lots of other cultures. And I've enjoyed being plugged in to them to one degree or another - for French, I listen almost without paying attention; for Uzbek I stop every so often to say, "I know that word" or, better, "I knew four words in that last phrase!"

I'll give Steve the Linguist (link at right) his due here: We know that comprehension proceeds production and his readers know how obstinately he insists on the point. I think this is what I've found for the Central Asian languages. Thanks to Pimsleur, I can go through at least some rote social stuff in Turkish and Farsi. But absent resources like these for the languages of Central Asia proper, it's a little bit harder to put in 30 minutes and expect a voice to earnestly inform you that "now you do speak a little Farsi" (Anyone who's done a Pimsleur course will get the reference; no one else will). If I met a speaker of Uzbek, I think I could do the pleasantries at this point and even have a short conversation as long as it was about nothing of importance. For the other Central Asian languages, between Turkish, Uzbek and Farsi a lot looks familiar, but I don't think that put on the spot I'd do more than say hi, offer a cup of tea and apologize that I don't speak the language better. Still, they're coming. It's been fun looking at Tajik because it's evidently Persian and yet a lot of the vocabulary is familiar from Uzbek due to the cross-borrowings between the Turkic and Persian families and their borrowing from Arabic.

Anyway, this week's object lesson is that if you don't have anything useful to do, you should do it anyway! Over time, exposure to your language or languages gives your brain enough material to play with that it starts doing things with it even if you haven't been hitting the books as hard as you might. In other words, if you feel like you should have done more, let it go and view what you have done as letting things settle - think concrete setting or the base coat of paint drying - so that you'll be ready for the next phase.

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Tomorrow (the 27th), the Lexiophiles contest runs out. Whether you want to vote, or just have a look at all the language blogs out there and all they have to offer, you can go and see who's nominated. Here's the main page. You'll find this blog, and lots of other great blogs, under Language Learning. And in case you're wondering where the Aspiring Polyglot went, she's on the technology page.