I’m completely deaf in my left ear and my good ear, which is reduced but functions only goes up to 5000 hz. Drops like a stone after.
So I’ve always been called a good listener
But that’s because it takes so much extra effort to even comprehend Any speech
But I took four years of Spanish in high school. Did fine with literature.
Learned some russian in the late ’90s because I thought I was going to become a priest or a monk in the Russian Orthodox Church.
But after studying it for a couple of years and even taking some accelerated courses, to nail writing in script Etc at Drew University (free, no credit), I looked around and realized:
if I had nothing to say to people in person in english, why would I have anything to say in person in Russian?
Oddly though, I understand Italian somewhat
And I like the sound of Ukrainian – but I don’t know what they’re saying
Still I like being able to read a little bit in Spanish and a little bit In Russian.
Closest thing I did to conversational is Portuguese which really I should have taken in retrospect instead because I would actually be more likely to use it
Not in person so much but online.
Then again I took Spanish because I had take 4 years once and I’m really hoping that I can get through these two courses without having to hurt my brain too much.
In short, a lot of this challenge is: I’m not learning things I want to learn. but I’m going to learn them because I’m being (willingly) compelled to.
That is, I’m not going to stop because I’m getting bored. That’s what makes this process so much different than enjoying downloading papers illegally from scientific things or reading textbooks that I find online.
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