my life plus birds of prey

So, the following happened:
1.) Had a birthday!
2.) Got a Galaxy S6 tablet!
3.) Cedar fever (cont)
4.) Got a cold...
5.) ...asthma took over.

It's not been my worst two weeks, but it's not in my top ten.

In other news: saw Birds of Prey and was pretty shocked how much I liked it.

( birds of prey )

( birds of prey, specific spoilers )

( birds of prey, specific warnings for those like me who need them )

There is probably stuff to critique, but honestly? Right now, I can't see it and don't care. I had an entire movie of fuck awesome and no cringe on treatment of women. I recommend. The characters were interesting, the plot came together nicely, I loved the out of sequence storytelling at the beginning, and I loved every damn character in it.

hindilingo - i persevere and so forth

Just passed checkpoint 2, which means I am half-done. This legit surprises me; for the last roughly ten days, I've been sick and literally only did the minimum daily on old lessons to keep it fresh. That apparently worked; I started today halfway Level 3 Adjectives and by mid Level 4, I had most of it down. Well, not all the fruit names, that's going to take repetition, but process of elimination helped, which is cheering since that means I know enough words to eliminate any.

The following lessons have been completed:

Letters 1, Letters 2, Letters 3, Letters 4, Basics 1, Checkpoint 1
Basics 2, Plurals, Intro, Family, Animals, Activity, Adjectives, Food, Checkpoint 2

I have also--finally--gotten my brain to identify Devangari script as letters.

A representation of the process, current:

New Word
Letter: आ
Brain: Letter!
Shape: आ
Brain: I know the sound for this letter!
Brain: *thinks sound*
Brain: *repeat for each letter through end of word*

Known Word
Word: आदमी
Brain: That is 'man'!
Me: Good. And....
Brain: Next word!
Brain: *repeat for each word for sentence*

Mentally, I can see the letters in each word so phonics is kicking in nicely. The bigger problem is one that didn't come up in Spanish because I hear it and have used it: I'm not making the mental connection between 'phonics' and 'verbal sound'.

This entry I talked about how in English, I have two vocabulary lists: written and spoken (or read/write and listen/speak), depending on phonics and if I read the word and phonics gave me the pronunciation before I heard the actual one, and those two things are different (in English, this happens a lot). Right now, my read/write is progressing fine; my listen is sketchy as hell; my spoken (when not reading it) is shit.

I have one confirmed sentence I can do on the fly: राज पानी पीता है।

Translation: Raj drinks water.
Phonetical: Raj panee piitah heh

The only reason is that it's super lyrical and got stuck in my head like a Taylor Swift chorus.

So Hindi seems to be following the English pattern, with a read/write and listen/speak as separate lists that aren't yet synched (and the latter badly underpopulated). But I have two more sections and some time, so surely it'll happen.

Work Friends

A few of my Indian coworkers are following my progress, likely from sheer morbid curiosity how I butcher their language spoken and written (my handwriting in any language is atrocious). Most in my area speak Telegu mother tongue, Hindi second, one woman in a different group that I work with on the mobile app, speaks Marathi mother tongue, Hindi second, and there are I think three other languages spoken, but for obvious reasons, unless I have a personal relationship with someone (or they tell me themselves), I don't quiz them on their first language, though God, I wish I could. From my unofficial count (people who have told me), Telegu speakers may be the most numerous, but I also only work regularly with maybe five percent of the total number of contractors, though I've met or worked with most.

Anyway, two of them, Tester From My Group and App Tester (they were among those who helped me with the Devangari alphabet and got me references) are now both taking Spanish on Duolingo (Spanish for English Speakers, there is no Spanish for Telegu or Marathi). Which made me think (and also realize they'd probably be fluent in Spanish before I am at this rate).

I'm curious: both of them are at minimum trilingual and completely fluent in English (I have heard them use y'all, even). When learning a language via your second or third language, is it harder, or--in this specific case--easier because Spanish is closer to English (relatively speaking) and in Texas, they're way more likely to hear English and Spanish fusions around them?