Monday, August 1, 2022

Why Is French Improving My Irish?

 

Travalon reminded me that I forgot to mention the antiques shop in Brodhead. Every time we had been there last year, the place was closed, but on Saturday it was finally open. We went in with great anticipation, hoping to find all sorts of treasures, but right away the proprietor asked what we were looking for. Doesn't that take away all the fun of hunting for great finds? I said rosaries and Travalon said Bobble-heads, but the guy didn't think he had either thing. This "shop" was just tiny rooms jammed full of junk, so nothing like the antiques shops I am used to, where everything is laid out on shelves for easy viewing. No wonder he asked us what we were looking for - there was no chance we would find it ourselves!

Another thing I was wrong about was the hummingbirds. I thought maybe they were black-chinned hummingbirds, but those don't live anywhere near here - they're in the far west part of the country. The ones I have been seeing are all ruby-throated hummingbirds, apparently. Sometimes the male chases the female away from the feeder, but I have only seen him feeding from it twice himself. Maybe he's not chasing her away from it but chasing her for other reasons, if you catch my drift.

I have become really addicted to doing French on DuoLingo. Sometimes I even dream in French. Oddly, all this French seems to have improved my Irish rather than making it worse. It's like it's dragging the Irish along with it in its improvement. Now when I go back to Irish to do my obligatory two review lessons, I almost never miss anything, and even at Irish class two weekends ago (this past weekend I skipped for the luau) I had less trouble formulating my thoughts into Irish words. Here I was terrified that I would open my mouth and French would come out, yet I was speaking better Irish than ever. Now I'm really tempted to add Spanish, but then I'd never get any sleep because I'd have to do half an hour of French and then half an hour of Spanish and then at least ten minutes of Irish, assuming the Spanish is as addictive as the French. I got to read four more stories today, and they are cheesy but they make me laugh. Like, in one the little kid asked his elderly neighbor for help with his homework on dinosaurs, because he said she was so old she must have known some. Not gonna lie, I laughed out loud. Why can't they write cheesy stories in Irish? Would that really be so hard to do?


Famous Hat


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