I think that Toni and I are both now officially addicts to Duolingo, the language learning app. Not content with Italian and French as his chosen languages, he branched out today on a series of lessons in German.
I am sticking, one might say severely sticking, to ‘only Spanish’ in an increasingly desperate attempt to get the rudiments of the language to stick, somewhere, in my brain. Considering that I am a retired language teacher, English admittedly and usually Literature, but a language none the less, it is astonishing how little I have assimilated of either of the languages from the multitudes of native speakers who surround me.
Don’t get me wrong. I can find my way around and usually I am able to talk and bluff my way through most situations ranging from official business with the city hall and the notorious Iberian paper-pushers that inhabit them, to getting my car seen to by technicians who defiantly do not speak English.
Still, my fluency in English is a constant accusation against my enforced Trappist approach to general conversation in Spanish. Somehow or other Spanish is simply not ‘taking’ with me, and it is constantly frustrating. There is only so much that a slight smile and a depreciating hand gesture can convey: communication needs words placed in a firm grammatical structure. And that is something that I am still working on.
Though, come to think of it, although I have been to Spanish (and indeed Catalan) lessons, there are still basic piece of linguistic information that slips through my brain with the accomplished ease of a Johnsonian lie. I have not been truly serious about learning the language, and perhaps Duolingo is the sort of mechanical relentlessly repetitive emphasis on the essentials is the thing that I need to get me truly started (after all of my time in Catalonia) in acquiring proficiency in a foreign tongue.
Both of us are well and truly caught up in the striving towards the next level and competing against named but unknown people arbitrarily placed with us in our respective leagues.
Absurd that it might be, I was inordinately proud to have come first in the 'starting' Bronze league and to have been promoted to the Silver league where, coming in the top three I was then promoted to the Gold league. Apart from being told that such progress is found in a fraction of the percentage of learners in the app there do not appear to be any tangible gains from such exertions, except for the kudos of being at the top. But, by golly, Toni and I are putting in the lesson time to gain points so that we can stay in the upper reaches of our respective leagues. So, however futile the status, there is a real gain in the amount of time put into the hard slog of repetitious learning.
It is far too soon to know if we are going to keep the effort up. But I have to admit that I have done more work on my Spanish over the past ten days that I have done in the past embarrassingly large number of months!
We are both still very much in the present tense of our languages, and I like to think that I am capable of attempting past and future tenses in Spanish if the mood takes me, but there is a sort of grounded satisfaction in regressing to simplicity and convincing yourself that ‘this time things are being done thoroughly’ and ‘every little helps’ and ‘anything is better than nothing’ so that in Ruskin’s words I will be able to see whether my efforts are ‘availing to good’ – whatever that means
The Saga of The Christmas Meal continues, with The Family finding out that many of the suggestions that they have come up with are all fully booked! To the surprise of no one. However, in spite of it being late (far too late) to find anywhere decent, we (or rather they) have found a place which has dropped like Manna from Heaven, or via a cancellation and another venue has been found.
This Wednesday, we two are going up to Terrassa to have a menu del dia to find out the worth of the place, but in late November, we do not have the luxury of being able to be picky about the place that we finally decide on. And what can one really judge from a normal menu del dia compared with what they might offer for a significant meal like the Christmas Repast. Still, I maintain my rigid optimism and look forward to being pleasantly surprised next week.
Next week is also my blood test as part of the preparatory work for Doing Something About My Knees. I am not sure how much further forward knowing about the composition of my blood will advance repairing the bone of the knees, but I await medical enlightenment, that might come the week after next.
Since Christmas is horrifyingly near, it is obvious that nothing of any import will happen until the New Year and my hobbling will have to suffice until more specific descriptions of what can be done and how long it might take. Something, neither the waiting nor the actualité, that I consider with anything approaching equanimity.
But, there again, all personal conflict has to be seen as grist to my literary mill.
If nothing is done, I shall write.
And if something is done, I shall write.
Hardship is a double-edged sword to someone who writes!
And I’m not sure that that image works. And I do know that I don’t care.
