(originally published 11.06.2007)
I’m sure that most people begin blog entries: “I’m supposed to be doing (fill in the blank) but instead I’m writing this…” I won’t be one of them, so instead I’ll just say I’m writing this out of dedication rather than out of boredom. As some of you may know I am a student and I am currently taking Tagalog classes. What is surprising is just how much work it is to learn another language. Unlike my seminars, there is just a lot of physical daily work put into learning another language. For instance our class has to do listening exercises, record ourselves for pronunciation, and write (somewhat) grammatically correct essays in Tagalog. I don’t know what is more frustrating, having to learn new sentence forms just when you get familiar with a current form, or not being able to adequately explain your thoughts because of a lack of vocabulary or inability to sound not-fucked-up. But I also realize that I’m not a very good academic writer, meaning, I cannot seem to communicate what is going on in my head onto paper. In addition, I also seem to have this trouble in recording music, where I can’t get what I want in a concrete form, and am amazed when I hear or read something where the songwriter or author just absolutely hits the nail on the head.
Self doubt.
What a frustrating mess.
