Making Progress


It's time to begin journaling [spell-check does not like that word-I do] the progression of my study of Hungarian.

Student of immediate gratification, it is nothing short of exasperating that I am not fluent in Hungarian after two months. A curious thing happens as I listen to the radio, or watch You Tube posts, I feel as if I should be understanding what is being said. As if somewhere, deep down, is the knowing of this language that simply needs to be unearthed. When I do succeed in picking out a word here and there, I am filled with joy and "emerveillement".

I begin to be able to notice if the word is a noun, an adjective, or a verb without knowing(yet) the meaning. This is so amazing to me.
Sometimes I listen and I feel as if I understand. And my mind goes a little wonky when it realizes it doesn't. And I wonder if this is what happens to little kids as they begin learning a language. And so the kid metaphor appears again as I build upon my studies.

Now Eva, my teacher, helps with this kid metaphor as she brings me flashcards, and creates games to help with my learning.

I'm learning numbers at the moment(yes, me, numbers-my nemesis-math). Flash-back to Mrs. Eden in ninth grade handing me back an algebra test on which I got a blinding 24 out of 100. (That would be huszonnegy out of száz). Pages and pages, actually only three, of addition. Sitting down at the table to do this particular homework really was fun, really made me laugh, and lead to the almost unimagineable, that I realized I had learned how to count from 1 to ten (egy to tíz) and committed said numbers to memory. Yes, memory.

Just this week, Eva brought dice to our lesson.  We threw the dice, taking turns,  first naming the numbers on a single die and then adding them up  as we threw two and then four  at a time. Sometimes I would goof around and shake those dice in my hands, blowing on them just like I saw Bud Abbot do in "In the Navy". Eva doesn't seem to mind my goofing around. Talk about a miracle worker-not only am I learning Hungarian, but I am actually having fun with numbers.

Then Eva explained to me why we were using the dice. How the kinesthetics of throwing the dice help ground the learning. Leave it to a choreographer to come up with that one. I do take this kinesthetic thing one step further- now as I walk down Franklin in the morning on the way to work I begin practicing my Hungarian. With numbers it's quite easy, we'll see how it translates into words and phrases. I'll begin talking to myself, maybe singing to myself.  The  joy of Franklin Avenue is that for some reason I can not seem to quantify, it is a truly supportive environment. Maybe it's the act of walking itself that somehow creates it, which would mean that Eva is right. Nice. Kinesthetics indeed.

Rather amazingly, I am giving myself permission to simply have fun with learning. No prodding self to make progress, simply allowing self to progress. There is a subtle energetic difference between the two.

Zseníalis.