Ah. Well done.

@mac-b5.stickimporters.com hope you are at a Chriskindlmarket right now, drinking from a mug like this

@mac-b5.stickimporters.com hope you are at a Chriskindlmarket right now, drinking from a mug like this

And you just know that if you were actually trying to speak German, your brain would not cooperate!

Is it not the most aggravating but also hilarious thing to be in a foreign country where you do not speak the language, but that language you did study somehow comes roaring to the fore?🤦😂

I love the Pratchett example. Literary translation is an unsung & underpaid art, unquestionably.

Mac, I bet you speak languages other than perfect, idiomatic English and, presumably, decent German. True?

The most prescient or maybe just really lucky students were the ones who switched to learning Mandarin Chinese when our school decided to offer it. Three of them ended up writing for the NYT, the Washington Post, and the Economist as China correspondents in the eighties and nineties.

We are not.

This is all rooted, you understand, in my own distress at not speaking Spanish, as well as in my affection for the French I learned in m.s. and high school. I didn't even choose it -- we were assigned French or Spanish, and that was that.

I think we all ought to learn multiple languages, as folks in other countries do. Imagine if, in the seventies, we as a nation could have acknowledged our bilingual future & mandated that every child study Spanish plus choice of another language. It's a systemic problem, I say!

I wish I could speak Spanish too. But must every choice be a practical one? Has speaking or reading German brought you joy? Also, by, say, 1982, German was considered a great language to speak for business purposes because their economy was so good.

I mean, there's also a video someone sent in of "Epstein's cell." It's no such thing, but someone sent it in so it's part of the files.

That all sounds very promising. Good luck!

The family that owns the apartment gives a lot of money to this denomination:
Church of the United Brethren in Christ - Wikipedia share.google/6ohddmC1aJoG...

Classical music fans are such eejits. Her performance style isn't to your liking? Close your eyes. I love watching her. I've seen her up in Schenectady performing in a college chapel a couple of times. Feels like I've hacked life when I get to one of those. Thanks for sharing the great photos!

She is my _favorite_

It's the ceilings I'll be having nightmares about. To design rooms without anyplace at all for the eyes to take a rest has got to be a violation of the Geneva Convention

I got educated by some Canadians several months ago on this app. They shared an article or two and I dug up more -- pretty soon it was clear that their horror stories were no more than the truth. I'm sorry that the situation is so bad, and I'm sorry that you are not listened to.

Are you an old school fountain pen hobbyist, perchance? Trying to figure out how James found an ink well to stick his nose in.