Decided to start the Latin course on Duolingo over, since there’s no real way to do targeted study once you’ve completed it. As I’m brushing up, it shouldn’t take long. For kicks I added in Spanish and French, since it’s been about thirty years since I studied either.

I’m grateful for what seems to be an inherited ability to use language–but I’m not bragging, I’m just enjoying. I am well aware quite a number of the folks from the EU and elsewhere speak a number of languages, and it’s not extraordinary even if it’s pretty cool.

Apparently my brain’s perfectly fine switching from Irish to Latin to French to Spanish. My visualization is that they live in separate pockets in my brain. Maybe when I complete all of the curriculum and get to daily practice again, I’ll work on a bit of German. It’s my joke that I need to know to ask for the bathroom in as many languages as possible.

I did have the startling, “Fuck, you’re old” realization that I’d never had to type as part of my foreign language instruction for either Spanish or French. When I was in high school and undergrad, the personal computer was a nascent thing–back when Microsoft’s stated aspiratonal goal was a computer on every desktop. While they taught us that certain characters were different letters, practically they were just “n with a tilde on it.” When you have to search for an find a different character to type it, it brings the lesson home. In studying Irish, I never had that realization because it was net-new, and I accepted things would be different.