Tag Archives: Language

New Year New Language?

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Have you ever made it your New Year’s Resolution to learn a new language? I speak 3 languages: 2 fluently (English and French) and one considerably less fluently (German). During the pandemic, I started work on a fourth language, but it was Klingon, and once the world started up again, it fell by the wayside.

Illustration of a Klingon bat'leth (weapon from Star Trek).

(For now: I have EVERY INTENTION of picking it back up again in the future. Is it useful? No. Is it suuuuuper fun to be able to say, “I’m learning Klingon?” HIja′!) Learning a language is hard. Learning a language as an adult is very hard.

Kids and grown ups learn in very different ways. Kids’ brains are like information sponges. Adult brains are more rigid: always trying to save energy by reusing what they already know. If we grew up here in Canada (which I didn’t but that’s beside the point for the moment), we probably learned French as a second (or third) language in school.  That’s important: we learned French as kids, and we probably stopped using it just as soon as we weren’t being forced to take it anymore.

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Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis, the 2015 Giller Winner

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Fifteen DogsWhat does it mean to be alive? To think, to feel, to love, and to envy? Do you think having our human consciousness is the premise of sustaining our happiness? Or does this human consciousness  trouble you sometimes?

I didn’t initiate these questions. The 2015 Giller Prize winner Andre Alexis did with his Fifteen Dogs. The story says two Greek Gods give a pack of fifteen dogs “human intelligence” to see whether “human intelligence” is a gift that makes creatures happy or “an occasionally useful plague”. So suddenly these dogs start to struggle with their new perspective on life and on themselves. Alexis is challenging the reader to examine our own existence and recall the age old question, “what’s the meaning of life”?

“What’s the meaning of life?” I would be too ambitious to discuss such a big philosophical question here. What I am trying to do here is just to share some reflections surrounding the topic. Some of my views may reflect some Stoicism and Buddhism theories. Continue reading →