LEARN A LITTLE

2 June 2022

Remember shorthand?

My mother could take shorthand and I always wanted to learn it.  I guess they never taught it in my high school and, of course, now you don't need it, but I always found it amazing that you could have this page and be able to read it.

When Walt and I were first married, I decided to teach myself shorthand.  I worked on it for awhile and actually got to where I could use it in taking notes.  I wasn't fluent, by any stretch of the imagination, but I learned a lot.

Then I discovered that they were teaching shorthand at the adult school in town and I signed up to take beginners shorthand.

The problem was that I knew stuff.  After a class or two the teacher decided I was too advanced for the beginning class and moved me to the intermediate class. . but I didn't know enough for the intermediate class.  I had never taken dictation, which everyone in that class had done, so I didn't fit in there either.

I had to drop the class and never did learn shorthand.  I still use shorthand symbols if I'm taking notes on something, but I've forgotten most of what I learned.  Very sad.

So I never did learn how to take notes.  When I was doing feature articles for the newspaper, I recorded them and then transcribed

The same thing happened with Portuguese.

I was a French major and could speak French fairly well, so it was interesting having so many people from Brasil living with us.  I thought Portuguese was similar to Spanish, but it actually seemed similar to French.

As people stayed with us and I heard more and more Portuguese spoken around me, and as our high school student's mother started writing to me in Portuguese that I began to understand the language.

There were about ten years when we had Brasilians (and people from other countries) staying with us.  By the end of that time I was sort of conversant in the language.  I wasn't fluent by any means, but I could understand what was said to me, mostly and I could kind of answer.  My accent was always good (because of my French training) and I remember a long time I spent with the mother of one of our students who chatted with me as if I were a native speaker.  I desperately tried to pick out a word or two of what she was saying so I could kind of answer her.

I finally decided I wanted to officially learn Portuguese, but I couldn't find a class.  I knew too much for beginning classes, and didn't know enough for intermediate classes, so I couldn't find a teacher who would take me in the class.

Now, of course, I've lost most of my French and most of my Portuguese so I suppose it doesn't make a difference that I never attended a Portuguese class.  Ned returned from Brasil more or less fluent in the language after living there a year, and he doesn't think he remembers any of it either, though when necessary, he is able to speak a little Portuguese.

I never tried to learn something on my own again.    If I wanted to learn something, I just took a class and learned from the beginning.