Language lessons

[cjsmith]

This morning I had a wonderful time at work -- with, of all things, human languages.

My ex-boss speaks Spanish, I speak French, and my new coworker speaks Chinese, so we're having weekly lunches wherein we teach each other basic grammar and some starter vocabulary. (More vocabulary can always be looked up, but if you don't have some of the grammar fundamentals you can be really stuck.)

Today I dug out a tea bag I had from Japan, and my new coworker and I spent a good hour of company time (shh!) decoding the "Open Here" line on the package. Koko [here] kara [from] o-ake [akeru, to open or unwrap] kudasai [please]! Then we quizzed each other on French and Spanish.

What a lovely morning. Too bad we finished parsing that one line of Japanese. This afternoon I'm in danger of getting some work done.

Comments

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I love that!

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

sounds like a lovely way to spend time (company time or otherwise!). i'll bet that picking up the Spanish will be easy for you, with your foundation of French. but Chinese? that sounds like it'd take some brain cells.

one of these days i'll get the nerve to ask my german-speaking coworker if he'd help me learn the basics.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm cheating a bit, as I've picked up some tiny bits of Spanish here and there already. But I'm downright scared of Chinese. I don't know yet whether we're going to learn to write any of it.