On a nerdy note, the last few days being around Dutch speakers, my ears have absorbed, and my brain has remembered numerous phrases I picked up in the last tours here. As I try to fall asleep my brain is playing snippets of phrases, what time is it? sweetheart, I dont know, I play music, this is not for you (said to the dog trying to mooch food,, single words like, but, cool performance milk, evening - and my most recent favourite, heard at the kitcen table, the cheese is in the way. Between the acquired vocabulary, it is remembering phrases by sound without knowing their meaning, so theres a mish mash of rather loud Dutch words swimming in my head, in the voices of the various people I heard speaking around me. Even my jaw feels like its pulling and pushing in different than usual ways in an effort to subconsciously create the skeletal mechanisms necessary to produce the right sounds. This happens to me in German too. Im fascinated by linguistics, in particular, the brains assembly of a language BEFORE it even knows the semantic meaning of words. Building linguistic templates, its already making sense of the syntax and sounds without the grasp of vocabulary. Its the closest thing I can think of to experiencing and understanding how a baby comes to learn language, by absorption of its spoken surroundings and by attempted repetition. It helps that when I repeat something or try to say something on my own, I get cheered and applauded by proud friends. And its cool when you can feel things moving in the ol noggen...like when figuring out a new musical instrument. The brain is cool. That is all.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 23:09:09 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015