Languages

Nothing much is happening. I guess the world is returning to normalcy. The press still screeches about the dollar, climate change, "capitalism", and mostly fawns over La Grande Bouche, but I think they are just trying to retain viewers &/ readers. ['$/' means 'and/or']

The common man is hurting still, but it's not getting worse (so far).

The markets pushed to a new post-Panic high. The advance was steady and broad, so perhaps there is sufficient buying power (or covering power) to get to S&P 1200 by year end, which was my intermediate term target posted here last spring, I think.

Checking the allocations for Krypto Fund, Krypto saw no major moves to make (she pushes a butting on the computer). Good doggie, here's a tasty biscuit for your management fee. Krypto is a super fund manager - good performance for ... dog biscuits. Why pay a beefer big bucks ?

I am doing nothing, except monitoring my existing 1-2-3 Fund positions. BA and MT made good moves, but I'm holding those calls for now. I'm still looking for screaming buys/sells.

Languages

Below are my initial thoughts on the six languages that I'm trying to learn. My initial goals for year 1 are ability to understand slow speech, speak a bit and semi-literacy, which means knowing the grammar and thus having the ability to read almost anything with lots of help from the dictionary.

French - French is further along - I have already attained the year 1 goals there. Now I am focusing on speaking and listening skills. I neglected them last year in a sprint to learn attain semi-literacy. What is hard about French ? The pronunciation and aural comprehension. French has many difficult sounds for an American and has many letters in the words that are important to know for gender and endings, but silent. What is easy ? Learning a lot of the vocabulary - one can guess the meaning of a huge number of French words. English borrowed a lot of French words and Latin gave many words to both languages.

German - The hard part is the sentence word order. Germans move verbs around, split verbs into pieces and put a bit at the end of clauses, and shift the position of subject and objects. It's tough, but over time, I suppose one gets used to it. For a purportedly logical people, their language is a jumbled mess. The easy part is pronouncing the sounds. American is a Germanic lanugage in root sounds. You might be surprised, but pronouncing those long German words is rather easy. Our mouth and tongues can to it naturally. Germans has relatively few noun cases and few declensions and verbs are fairly simple. Plurals are hard, though, as they are rather irregualr.

Polish - Everything is hard in Polish. Knowing some Latin does help as Latin and Polish are both very old Indo-European languages with deep connections going back at least 4,000 years. However, the sounds are mostly different. Polish has many verb conjugations, many cases in several noun declensions, all the gender and number inflections of Latin, and has spelling and sounds changes depending on case, etc.. Plus you have to pronounce all those z, zh, sh, cz, dz, etc. sounds and palatalize lots of consonants. The saving grace is that it's rather logical in word order and grammar. Spending the time gives progress. The two years of Russian I had in college help my pronunciation. Compared to Russian, Polish is easier for an American as Polish uses the Latin alphabet plus a few Latin letters with diacritic marks for special sounds.

Italian - this is my recommendation for a fun and useful language that is relatively easy. Italian pronounces all the letters - there are a few diphthongs that have odd spelling, but those are easy to get used to as one has probably seem them in American borrowings already. Most letters have the same sound as in American. The cases and verb conjugation are easy to learn - not complex. And it's fun. One can use and see it in restaurants and movies and the culture is old and very high. Art, music, and literature all have heavy Italian influences and borrowings.

Spanish - Relatively easy, too. My Spanish is the least advanced as I must be careful about confusing what I learn with the Italian. They are rather close languages, as you might guess. Spanish does seem to have more letters that don't have the usual American sounds. I suppose one can speak to lots of people in Spanish, but do you want to ? And there is little classical literature in Spanish except Don Quixote. Perhaps my views will change as I learn more.

Latin - I had some Latin in high school 40 years ago, so this is fairly easy for me. I'm re-sparking lots of old, decrepit memory cells with a shot of vitality. Latin has lots of different verb conjugations and noun declensions, but the vocabulary is rather easy to guess, as so many words have American connections via direct borrowing or etymology. Also, listening is not important. Speaking is only party important, but helps the memory of the words. I think if one wants to be multilingual in Indo-European languages, learning Latin helps a lot. Plus no language can beat Latin in pithy aphorisms. One reads so many Latin phrases in books. A modest investment in attaining semi-literacy in Latin pays off big.

Word of the Day

"Sorites" - noun [$100] Logic.
Sorites means a form of arguments having several premises and once logical conclusion, capable of being resolved into a chain of syllogisms, the conclusion of each of which is a premise of the next.
Sentence: Arguments that use sorites must be analyzed carefully before being accepted, as a flaw in any link in the chain of syllogisms, perhaps from verbal vagueness or imprecise definitions, can cause the sorties to fail. A common fallacy in argumentation and rhetoric is the sorites "slippery slope" which relies on vague terms or faulty analogies to scare or intimidate an audience improperly into thinking - wrongly - that something bad would happen if the opposing argument prevails. These can be hard to detect when heard orally, so be wary of any sorites in speeches.