A very good evening to all
I'm going to start this post of on an unusually personal note to explain a little the direction my blog will be taking in the near future.
To get straight to the point, It dawned on me a few weeks ago that I may have been suffering some symptoms of depression for a little while, and really not been taking the best care of my emotional/psychological well-being.
I'm no expert, so I couldn't say exactly the true cause for these feelings, but my routine at the time was clearly not helping me - my life had become a never-ending list of things I wanted to achieve, with no thought whatsoever going in to why I wanted to achieve them. I was functioning more like a machine than a human being, and so I've made a huge effort to simplify my life and enjoy it more; be more spontaneous. As a starting point those "to-do" lists have been mostly scrapped and I must say that feels LIBERATING! :)
So you'll see a lot fewer tourism/general interest items on my blog going forward - sorry - as I take some time out to focus on one goal at a time, and one language at a time - Somali.
And the rest of the time?...
...who knows?!! Whatever I feel like doing at the time. :D
Somali Language Learning
This new philosophy transfers also to my language learning. I'd gotten into the habit of making endless lists of words to contextualise - lists so vast that I was never reasonably going to get through them.
My new tactic? Smarter thinking.
Am I up to date with with my personal Memrise vocabulary lists? Then sure a few extra words couldn't hurt, but why not select words that I'm struggling to contextualise instead of trying to cover everything? Surely that will help me progress faster, and in a more meaningful way.
So, bye-bye, mindless lists! Hello "little grey cells"! (Apologies for the Poirot reference there).
Vocabulary Lists for languages surplus to requirements. Destination: bin
Problem Vocabulary
waryaa; and
la
...are two pieces of vocabulary that consistently confused me, so I scratched the surface a little....and learned quite a lot:
- Waryaa is commonly translated in vocabulary lists as "hello/hi", but in reality it can come across as closer to "oi!", and so is best used with caution, or to address people with whom you have that kind of camaraderie.
- I came across the following YouTuber, who I may revisit when working on my pronunciation:
- la is a form of passive expression, as there is no real passive tense in Somali. So...Goorma la dhisey?(literally: "When someone built?")Would express the English idea "When was it built?"
Success!
And with that, I'm off to bed early to watch a documentary about F***ING DINOSAURS!!! :D
Take care y'all!
