I have one of the worst memories in the world provided that we exclude all those people whose bad memories are the result of injury or illness. It would therefore seem strange that I am taking three language classes this semester. After all, for all of the other parts of language, a good deal rests purely upon memory. If you don't remember what the word means, if you don't remember what the ending means, if you don't remember then not much else matters. Vocabulary is perhaps the biggest rote memorization task that there is.
Anyway, today in class I do believe it took me five tries, in a row, to spell my name. My five letter name. Part of that is that R is a hard letter for me, part of it is that I just forget letters, and surely there are other parts too. What's even more annoying is that it is the most spelled name in class on account of the instructor having it too.
The temptation to do this:
Point at self
[sign: name]
[sign: same]
point at instructor
[sign: name]
Can be rather strong.
I'm not sure how this class will go for me. It's impossible to take meaningful notes, classes should probably be videotaped so that those who are slow with this stuff (points at self) could go over it again later.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to prep for ancient Greek.
My mother is an interpreter. I've learned a little, and really should learn more. Oddly, fingerspelling is one of the things I'm good at. I'm quite fast at it. (Perhaps this is partly due to my tendency to spell random words to myself while walking, almost as a nervous twitch.)
ReplyDeleteThere is a way of taking notes on sign language, but it would be yet more stuff to learn. May or may not be useful to you (but I wrote that article, so I'm taking the opportunity to link to it anyway).
TRiG.