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Spent the past weekend with a migraine that segued mid-Sunday into the first cold I’ve had in two years, which was an improvement over the migraine but still knocked me flat enough that I wasn’t able to come in to work until today. Shoutout to the co-worker who covered my desk Monday and Tuesday, not only for doing so but for leaving me a box of tissues.
Andrew found and downloaded a bunch of high-quality files of old movies, so yesterday (I think—my sense of time is still a bit muddled) we watched The Testament of Doctor Mabuse, which for various reasons is scarier to me than it was a few years ago. It’s still beautifully textured, especially in the copy we saw, and wryly funny in many places. My German is not yet advanced enough to follow conversations (particularly rapid 1930s-era ones) without the support of subtitles, but every so often my brain was able to pick out a word and then OHNE or BLEIB or GANZEN would flash behind my eyes.
Attempting to learn another language as an adult has highlighted a few things about just how I perceive words—I’ve known for a long time that when I read, I tend to hear the text; and that when someone’s speaking, I see the words somewhere in my head like title cards or a teleprompter. But I’m beginning to suspect that I actually need to have a handle on both the sound and the spelling, or I don’t get that little click of recognition, and I can’t parse the word at all—which rather makes me wonder how I would have fared in a pre-literate society. Perhaps imagery would’ve served the same purpose.
Andrew found and downloaded a bunch of high-quality files of old movies, so yesterday (I think—my sense of time is still a bit muddled) we watched The Testament of Doctor Mabuse, which for various reasons is scarier to me than it was a few years ago. It’s still beautifully textured, especially in the copy we saw, and wryly funny in many places. My German is not yet advanced enough to follow conversations (particularly rapid 1930s-era ones) without the support of subtitles, but every so often my brain was able to pick out a word and then OHNE or BLEIB or GANZEN would flash behind my eyes.
Attempting to learn another language as an adult has highlighted a few things about just how I perceive words—I’ve known for a long time that when I read, I tend to hear the text; and that when someone’s speaking, I see the words somewhere in my head like title cards or a teleprompter. But I’m beginning to suspect that I actually need to have a handle on both the sound and the spelling, or I don’t get that little click of recognition, and I can’t parse the word at all—which rather makes me wonder how I would have fared in a pre-literate society. Perhaps imagery would’ve served the same purpose.
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Date: 2022-12-01 02:30 am (UTC)From:Is this true regardless of the mode of audio input—speech vs. song vs. music, for example?
I'm really glad that you now have words flashing out of German dialogue when you watch a movie. [edit] And also that you are doing physically better, generally.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-01 02:27 pm (UTC)From:I think so? It's hard to observe-- like trying to listen for one's own accent. But I know I sometimes get frustrated when I hear song lyrics that aren't even mondegreens-- by which I mean, I can't tease any words out of them, not even probably-wrong ones. It's weird and uncomfortable to be able to more-or-less replicate the sounds with my mouth, but still be unable to make words of them.