Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Lent: Time to Grow in... Linguistic Skills?


This hasn’t been the most spiritual Lent for me. I was going to do a whole bunch of things but only got around to giving up music in the car, listening instead to my Irish CDs. There are only four CDs, and I have listened to each one approximately 342 times, so you would think by now I would be fluent. This is on top of doing Duolingo every day – apparently finishing the lessons doesn’t get me out of practicing skills I’ve already learned, because the owl is still sending me reminders to do my daily Irish. Maybe taking a class and doing Duolingo in tandem is helping, because I do seem to know an amazing amount of Irish, as far as reading and writing. As far as speaking and hearing it, forget it! Our teacher was reading us some stuff in Irish yesterday, and the other guy and I could pick out a word or phrase here and there, but we couldn’t make too much sense of the whole. I have noticed that translating that terrible crime novel is getting easier, so maybe that is because of how much focus I’ve put on Irish this Lenten season. Of course, the purpose of Lent is not to improve your language skills but to grow closer to Christ, and I certainly haven’t learned how to pray in Irish. One of my first desires going into this project was to learn the rosary in Irish, and I am no closer to that than I was at the start. Well, I guess there’s always Lent next year to improve in something more spiritual than my Irish skills.

Famous Hat

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