May 2 – 6, 2016
Guest Veronique Greenwood’s final post in her series about learning Chinese ends with triumph: she not only argues with a Chinese cab driver, she wins.
Meanwhile the rest of the LWONers were inspired, got into the act, and voila! ecco! ¡mira! a whole Week of Learning Languages posts!
Richard proposes a grand theory: maybe the ability to learn languages is related to the ability to read fast. He’s got an N of 14, and the commenters add 14 more. It’s getting interesting in there, though no simpler.
Cameron found a program that encourages those pesky bilingual kids who won’t talk their home language, only their school language, by introducing them to scientists who talk only their home language.
Helen has learned a lot of languages, which means she has a lot of cultures in which she can be confused, awkward, and rude. The comments get interesting again, this time about when to use polite “you” and when to use informal “you.”
Jessa’s Canada, which has two official languages, once considered a third, Gaelic. A fifth of the Canadian senators spoke it but they decided it was too mythopoetic to be official. And Gaelic in Canada died.
Mythopoetic! There’s a word for it!
I forgot to double-check and look it up — that’s the right word for sure?
It’s the perfect word, and a beautiful one.