Caturday’s Astrophenia | Winter’s Linguistic Blues

Namaskar. Slamalaikum. Vanakkam. Namaste. Ikktighar furiit. Greetings. This week, a little heads up on things going on from yours truly! Study has gone well despite the almost painful slowness of progress in Bengali, at least on understanding and reading. My penmanship still annoys me, and I’m still hesitant to speak the language with any real confidence, but I’m on the 18th unit of the text (Teach Yourself Complete Bengali) out of 35, and well underway to completing Part 2 of the text within the next four months, up to Unit 26. Then begins a more intense regimen of practicing what I’ve learned to date. After that, I’ll be studying Tamil for the following six months before focusing on Hindi for the first six months of 2019, then Bengali again. I’m also listening to Bangla podcasts, Bangla online radio broadcasts (There’s a station out of Dhaka I listen to a lot.), so I’m getting some practice even now. I’m more than halfway through Algebra II, reviewing practice exercises from Algebra I, and will start Precalculus and Geometry beginning in July. That language study has been slow no longer bothers me. Bangla is NOT an easy language, and learning it with two other languages, all with significant differences to each other, merely compounds the effort. But I’m learning at my own pace and minding my mental health in the process, so there’s really no problem. I must persist. The cats are doing well, with Eccles and Ricky behaving themselves fairly well after the last time they caused mischief during an attack of the zoomies on morning last month. Gorgeous, well she’s being Gorgeous, and still patient to young Eccles despite her age. Family life is kinda so-so, nothing particularly noteworthy to mention. Over all, things are going well, though how long that lasts remains to be seen.

Stay warm, or cool, according to your preference in your latitude and hemisphere of residence, and thank you for clicking on this blog!

Tf. Tk. Tts.

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