my hovercraft is full of eels

[kindkit]

I seem to have signed up to Duolingo.

To learn German.

Which is just about the least practical language I could learn*, apart from the second language I already have, which is French. Well, okay, least practical would be something like learning to read Akkadian cuneiform. Practical would be Spanish, since I live in an area with lots of Spanish speakers and many jobs give preference to bilingual candidates. However, I am not the least fucking bit interested in learning Spanish, apart from those practical considerations, and I doubt the practical considerations would make me stick with it long enough to gain any real speaking ability.

German, on the other hand, interests me.** And also I don't care if I ever learn to speak it, I'd just like to be able to understand and read it, and those skills are easier to acquire.



*No offense meant to Germans. If I lived in Europe, German would be practical! But alas, I don't.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Yes, but if you're not going to get to full fluency in Spanish, it's not worth investing the time when there's a lot of better qualified people all around you. Go with your strengths!

[kindkit]

*nods* There are a lot of natively bilingual speakers around here, so it's not as though any Spanish I could manage to acquire, being well past the optimum age for learning a new language, would ever bring me to that level.

[princessofgeeks]

I HEART YOUR SUBJECT LINE.

Boy did that take me back...

[kindkit]

. . . now I want to learn how to say "my hovercraft is full of eels" in German.

[vilakins]

I'd be happy to have German convos with you!

[kindkit]

Cool! At the moment my conversation is limited to whether someone is a woman, man, girl, or boy, and whether they happen to be eating bread or drinking water. But when I'm past the absolute barest rudiments it would be great to have someone to practice with.

[(Anonymous)]

It's a beautiful language. Go for it! :)

[kindkit]

Thanks! I'm enjoying the Duolingo interface--I wish there'd been something this interactive when I was trying to learn !*$##@%Latin.

on the practicality of German

[wisdomeagle]

(This is not to say anything about whether or not German is practical for you, as is set in a completely different part of this country, but I found it interesting and surprising.) I know a person who took a very little German in college, then overwrote it in their brain with rudimentary Spanish at med school, thinking that was the more practical option. Now they are doing their residency in rural Pennsylvania, where they treat patients who have no English and certainly no Spanish, but who do speak German.

German and French are the modern languages I'd want for the theoretical grad school plan. If only I had any facility for languages. :/

Re: on the practicality of German

[kindkit]

Yeah, it's hard to predict what's going to be "practical." But I do seem to be stuck here in the southwest for the foreseeable.

German and French are good grad school languages in many fields. (What are you thinking of studying?) I probably should have taken German as a grad student, but I was too busy doing everything else.