A very branch-y language post.

[beccastareyes]

I'm trying to review three languages, two with their own syllabaries, at once. This may break my brain.

How did this happen? Well, it started years ago, when Matt T. the post-doc learned how to read classical Mayan monuments. He decided it would be a fun summer program to teach an informal class on this (read: he put up a sign in the elevator, and six of us showed up). He did this for two years, and then Shoshe, one of the participants, noted she had a friend who was a classics professor who was writing a Sanskrit textbook* and was willing to trade us teaching her astronomy for her teaching us Sanskrit. So, I am memorizing the Devanagari (the alphabet used for most South Asian languages) and we just started Sanskrit verbs**.

So, I lost my flashcards in Boise, and uncreativity mentioned she had a freeware program that shows flashcards, so I downloaded that and a Devanagari set of flashcards...

... then I grab a set of hiragana and katakana, because what I remember from Japanese 101 is getting rusty

... then I figure maybe I should work my way through my Japanese textbook so I can actually do more than introduce myself and ask for directions.

... then I remember that I have a book in Spanish, and maybe I should brush up on my verbs so I can read in Spanish. And, as a treat, I can buy more comics/books.

At least right now, it's all review except for the Sanskrit. If I try to start learning Arabic or something before the end of the summer, please take my flashcards away.

(Seriously, the thing is like a game. I am so easily amused -- it's not even that hard of a program, in that it shows something, then you click a button for the answer and buttons whether you got it right or wrong.)

On a related matter, I remember someone started a dressing room roleplaying game^† designed for non-English speakers and people learning non-English languages to practice. Is that still going?

(Also, I kind of want to use RenPy to make a visual novel-type game about my conlang. Hey, if we can do lawyer games (Ace Attorney), even if their actual relationship even to Japanese courtroom procedure is kind of 'eh'...)

--
* When I met her at dinner last spring, she was celebrating turning it in to her publisher. Apparently her problem with existing Sanskrit textbooks is that they relied heavily on the reader knowing Latin or Greek, or at least being familiar with non-English grammatical structures.

** Another difference in learning my first 'ancient' language. When I took Spanish and Japanese, the first thing we learned were rote phrases, usually greetings and good-byes, and simple instructions for class ('listen', 'repeat this', etc.). We then got some fill-in-the-blank sentences like X wa Y (ja nai) desu. or (No) me gusta(n) Z. After we did those, we started in on verb conjugation. Here, it was 'alphabet, and how you will butcher the pronunciation***' and then starting right into simple present indicative sentences. I suppose the intention in a modern language is to get you talking, while people learning an ancient language are primarily going to be reading.

*** If you're an English speaker, you should pronounce the /p/ in 'pin' with a puff of air, and the /p/ in 'spin' without. In Sanskrit, these are two different letters. Double dare you to hear the difference without the /s/.

†: Basically an informal LJ comm where people bring in usually book/TV/anime/etc. characters to have conversations with other people playing TV/anime/video game/etc. characters. Many of them are themed around, say, a certain show, and there's no rule saying that you couldn't have five different Harry Potters (and two Harriet Potters, and one Harry Evans-Snape). I suppose if the focus is 'practice conversational Spanish/Japanese/Klingon', the character doesn't matter, and you could have an original character. (And now part of me wants to start a dressing room devoted to learning conlangs through role-playing, even if I am combining two tiny geek niches that may not have a strong overlap.)