Language learning is an interesting thing. My brain is searching for a word that is not English and, Oh look! I found the word! . . . in Hebrew or Spanish or that tiny bit of Russian I learned years ago. It doesn’t do a lot of good to tell some who speaks Tok Pisin “dasveydanya” in Russian to say goodbye.
While out in the bush, a couple of dogs chased a cat up to our porch. We opened the door and yelled at them to “Die! Die!” No, we weren’t hoping for their early demise, but were yelling “Stop!” in Hebrew.
Nathan introduced himself as “Natan,” the Hebrew form of his name and I’ve remembered more Hebrew words in the past two weeks than I could have hoped to have remembered six months ago.
Thankfully, Tok Pisin is one of the easier languages I have tried to learn and am able to understand simple conversations. Nathan is doing a great job understanding and speaking. Eventually, my brain will grab the correct Tok Pisin words, but for now I have a strange new language floating in my brain that’s a mix of English, Spanish, Hebrew, Russian and Tok Pisin.
