Life continues hectic. I went up to Cambridge last week to catch up with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hjdoom whilst he was there housesitting for his sister, and then headed over to themidnightgirl and the_alchemist's new house, which is exceedingly shiny. I did quite a bit of getting about by bike that day, which was the first time since getting knocked off that I'd cycled more than very short distances. The next day my shoulders, hands, and other parts of my anatomy made it clear in no uncertain terms that they were unimpressed by this sudden change, but more positively, my confidence came back pretty quickly, despite the weather being far from optimal.
Learning Dutch continues to be a great deal of fun. My favourite words and phrases so far are:
handschoenen (gloves - I remember at one point much earlier in my French learning forgetting the word gants, and saying "comme chaussettes, mais pour les mains", but I won't have that problem in Dutch :)
sneeuwpop (snowman)
zwanger (pregnant)
voor de lol (for fun)
honkbal (baseball)
uit de hand gelopen (out of control - lit. out of the hand walked)
Do you lot have any words in languages you're learning that you find particularly delightful?
I have managed to show enough self-discipline not to completely neglect my French studies for the exciting new languages, and had my mock oral exam the other day, where I became very aware that there's been a step change in my confidence and fluency since my previous speaking assessment. I still have to pause to think about some of the more complicated gramatical structures, and I'll occasionally circumlocute around missing vocabulary, but I have enough other words that I'm able to do so. Another thing that I've noticed from my weekly language exchange conversations is that I don't find speaking in French nearly as tiring as I did. When we started meeting about six months ago, I was always basically counting down the minutes until half way through when we switched from French to English, and greatly relieved when we did, because it was exhausting. Now I find it easy to miss how much time has passed.
hjdoom whilst he was there housesitting for his sister, and then headed over to themidnightgirl and the_alchemist's new house, which is exceedingly shiny. I did quite a bit of getting about by bike that day, which was the first time since getting knocked off that I'd cycled more than very short distances. The next day my shoulders, hands, and other parts of my anatomy made it clear in no uncertain terms that they were unimpressed by this sudden change, but more positively, my confidence came back pretty quickly, despite the weather being far from optimal.Learning Dutch continues to be a great deal of fun. My favourite words and phrases so far are:
handschoenen (gloves - I remember at one point much earlier in my French learning forgetting the word gants, and saying "comme chaussettes, mais pour les mains", but I won't have that problem in Dutch :)
sneeuwpop (snowman)
zwanger (pregnant)
voor de lol (for fun)
honkbal (baseball)
uit de hand gelopen (out of control - lit. out of the hand walked)
Do you lot have any words in languages you're learning that you find particularly delightful?
I have managed to show enough self-discipline not to completely neglect my French studies for the exciting new languages, and had my mock oral exam the other day, where I became very aware that there's been a step change in my confidence and fluency since my previous speaking assessment. I still have to pause to think about some of the more complicated gramatical structures, and I'll occasionally circumlocute around missing vocabulary, but I have enough other words that I'm able to do so. Another thing that I've noticed from my weekly language exchange conversations is that I don't find speaking in French nearly as tiring as I did. When we started meeting about six months ago, I was always basically counting down the minutes until half way through when we switched from French to English, and greatly relieved when we did, because it was exhausting. Now I find it easy to miss how much time has passed.
