das gab ein grosses Feuerwerk.

[highways]

This afternoon I was IMing unicorn and thor and I put my head down on my keyboard, and when I picked it up again it was an hour and a half later and after I worked out the what the fuck happened? where the hell am I? I had to go to German. Which is, by the way, Taiwan's one opportunity for me to feel superior, since as much as its grammar might kick my ass on a regular basis, in my class I am the only person who's a native speaker of a Germanic language—except, maybe, the professor, I don't know where she's from—plus English has a vocabulary overlap with German of like, sixty percent. Basically I know more than everyone else in the classroom by doing nothing, studying nothing, just by existing. This makes me feel super smart even though I did nothing to earn it.

In all other circumstances I am an illiterate idiot. One who can segment Chinese, though. Even if I can't understand it any better than I could when I got here three weeks ago, which is frustrating, I know my subconscious is up to something because word boundaries are super obvious to me now, I can recognize other non-native Chinese speakers by their accent, and really the whole language sounds a lot different than it did before.

And writing in English gets harder all the time. This entry? It took me forever, and I know the wording in places is awkward as hell. It's probably because I haven't had an actual face-to-face conversation with another native English speaker in days, but goddamnit, I have been here for three weeks. THREE WEEKS. It's like my brain is all, fuck this, DIVERT RESOURCES, SHE DOESN'T EVEN USE ENGLISH ANYMORE ANYWAY.

Edit: BEHOLD, A FANDOM LINK, "Hey, Inception Fandom. Let's talk about Yusuf for a minute." by effex. Yes, lets. Includes a bunch of fic recs I'll probably check out tomorrow, because tbh he's one of the few characters in that movie with a distinct voice at all. So far I've only really read fic about him actually.

Comments

[thor]

I WONDERED WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU

and hurray for English, being a germanic language! but the fact you are forgetting it is hysterical! it's only been a couple weeks, man! AHARHARHARHARHARHARHAR maybe we should skype with the mic I now have so you don't forget your native language too soon.

I'm actually in school on these AWESOME FUCKING MACS THEY ARE AMAZING I SO WANT TO STEAL ONE right now so I can't check that link right now or they will FIND IT and BLOCK IT. Like they might do to DW... Uaaagh!

[jae]

Are you seriously learning German through Chinese? Wild! I've learned one foreign language through another before, but never two languages that were that far apart.

-J

[thor]

BRITTANY ARE YOU GONE AND ASLEEP YET