At a Loss for Words

It's 4 AM and I can't sleep. It's my own fault. I have been trying to learn Odette's language and today I was trying my hand at speaking it from listening to it on CD's. I just can't seem to yet get my ear and tongue around it yet. In time I will. Also the CD's I have do not have a transcript of the conversations so I'm using a phrasebook and dictionary to try to match the words to the sounds. So far it is a hard as it would be to train my dog as a seeing eye dog. Normally that may not be a problem except my dog is blind and I'm his seeing eye human. To be honest he dealt with his going blind better than I did his going blind. We say humans only learn to use the other senses if they go blind. Dogs already use the other senses way better than we do. With the possible exception of the sense of taste. Dogs will eat things even Scotsmen won't try.

Anyway I think my only practical solution is to make a copy of the talks and send them to Odette and nicely ask her to send me a copy of what they are saying. I tend to learn better from the written word so if I can follow it on paper I will learn faster and better. As each conversation is really only a few sentences repeated many times it is not as complicated as it may sound. I would only need the whole sentences that get broken down and repeated ad nauseam.

In fact by the time I was done trying for the day I put on my French lesson to clear my mind. I have 30 Tagalog lessons and 90 French in the same series. French lesson one was two easy. I had never bothered to listen to the French before. I decided to jump to lesson 90. Still too easy. Not really hard to understand why as the lessons are intended to bring you to a high intermediate level of understanding. In Canada French speakers are about as common as UFO sightings at a Tennessee moonshiner's convention. So I guess my French is better than the tapes aim at. I don't have any trouble when in our French speaking province. Maybe I should consider a trip to France. Heck my Japanese is probably better than my French. I had to take French in school, I choose to learn Japanese.

On top of that when I tried to send Odette a copy of lesson one something went wrong with my mail program and it kept sending so I had to close it. I hope I didn't flood her mailbox before I noticed. I have a habit of pushing my computer to the limit so doing several things at once is normal for me. I'm not cramped up in a computer desk and chair. I have a wireless keyboard and a 32 inch monitor so I sit in an easy chair with the keyboard in my lap. The only thing rough is if I have to keep clicking the mouse then my wrists begin to pain. The beginnings of Carpal tunnel and I intend to not let it progress. It disabled one of my brothers. He had the surgery but had a bad reaction to the surgery. He used to make his living doing very fine electronics work with his hands. Now he can't even use a hammer without extreme pain.

Anyway I do intend to learn the language. It just may take longer than I wanted it to. They don't have instant language comprehension and usage in a pill yet do they?