life in lockdown

[howsmyenglish]

I've started doing yoga again and I'm aching all over. Funny how before the surgery I was sure that I'm pretty lazy about my exercises, but if all the muscles I feel aching right now where engaged in my previous exercises (and more, because I'm trying to go easy right now), I think I was doing quite well.

The teaching started again, too, and I've been checking homeworks, teaching, planning for stuff etc. I'm actually quite elated. I think, the teaching from home thing is good for me, I used to get way too tired during the hours of commuting to have exiting new ideas about my classes. Here's hoping that when life comes back to normal I won't turn back into a sleepy fish on teaching days...

Still, we're all suffering from the lockdown. I keep feeling half-sick, every second day it's like - oh, am I having a sore throat? is this a slight fever? should I put a scarf around my neck? And it's not even cold around here. It's just - not enough movement, not enough fresh air. I needed to start sleeping really badly to realize that I need daily walks. So, we went for a walk for the last two days, and, indeed, I did sleep well after each of them! I hope the continuous feeling cold thing goes away, too.

What else? So many flowers around! So many fragrances! ("fragrant" was our word of the year last year, because everything was "fragrant" in China, where some of us spent half a year and others just a month) We saw a neighbor yesterday! And the day before that I found out that another neighbor is recovering from surgery, and this is why we didn't see or hear her for so long. We live in private houses, not many neighbors around. A dog came up to play with us the day before yesterday! And we met another one - a cute little thingy - sitting behind a gate under a "dog in yard" sign with its vittve face sticking out betveen the vattice... vevy scavy!..

This was my first ever attempt at written baby-talk in English... How believable is it?

And also, how are you?

Comments

[woerot]

My girlfriend and I started doing Yoga very recently as well! We found a 30 day Yoga tutorial online. We just cast it from Youtube to the television and do our thing. It's been super enjoyable so far, despite the fact that there are a few sore muscles on the both of us!

[howsmyenglish]

You might like doyogawithme.com, then! It's an incredible source of exercise videos for all levels and with all kinds of teachers and yoga styles!
Yoga is great, good for both of you! :D

[woerot]

I'll definitely have to check it out! Thank you for the suggestion! :)

[dewline]

So your recovery progress continues. This is good to read, and I'm glad of the good news.

[howsmyenglish]

Thank you! :D

[moth2fic]

We're fine! I think when a threat can't be seen it's normal to wonder if it is attacking you - when there are epidemics of head lice in schools the staff all feel itchy even though they rarely catch them!! I hope that's the case for your sore throat etc!!

Of course, I am retired and as a writer I work from home so in some ways the lockdown does not affect me much. But I'd forgotten just how often I went out to meet friends, or just to enjoy the countryside. We have a garden that is deliberately a wildlife garden - fantastic at the this time of year - so I am outside a lot, but still feeling a little 'enclosed'.

It took me some time to work out what you were saying in your attempt at baby-talk. I have never heard small children use the 'v' sound in the way you use it (in English). The more likely forms would be 'ikkle face icking ou e'een u akkice... erry cary!..' though I don't suppose too many children would know or use the work 'lattice' and nor do most toddlers use full sentences. Baby talk tends to be a result of not having adequate front teeth to form certain sounds properly - so 't' turns into a 'k' sound made further back in the mouth, etc. Then adults who use baby talk to children copy the children, rather than making up their own version. Gradually, as their teeth grow, children can pronounce things correctly, then they lose their baby teeth and the whole process is on hold for a while though the jaw is 'firmer' and they make a better shot at it. Hope that helps.

[howsmyenglish]

feel itchy even though they rarely catch them!
Oh yes, I remember this sensation! Each time our daughter caught lice in school, we felt itchy all over.

We have a garden, too, so I know what you mean! We just had coffee outside and decided that what we miss are "friends, swimming pool and walks in woods and on the shore".

Thank you for the comments on the baby-talk! I don't think a non-mother-tongue-speaker can make up things like that (especially if she never lived in a country where the language was spoken..). Every time I read an author copying some dialect in English, I know that I won't be able to reproduce it, even if I can read it correctly and understand what dialect is meant. (which I very often cannot) But the baby-talk up there was a copy of the baby-talk used in writing by our daughter, whose English is in certain ways better than mine, so I'm surprised about the "v"-comment. Thanks again, I do appreciate comments on this sort of thing!

[draculard]

Haha, I love how popular the word "fragrant" is in China — my teachers used it alllll the time when I was learning. I didn't know you visited China, though! That's super cool! I lived in Taiwan for a while when I was first learning, but it was only a little while. Maybe 2 or 3 months. Still, it was really fun! How long did you stay?

I thought your baby talk was pretty good, but I guess it depends on whether or not you're trying to write the way a small child *actually* talks, or if you're just writing down the baby-talk most native English speakers use with dogs. If it's the latter then you've pretty much got it down, only we use "w" instead of "v," like "wittle face sticking out between the wattice...vewy scawy!" That's used a lot in memes, too, so if your daughter is pretty young still (like teen/young adult) then it makes sense she would use that.

Of course, that's an American POV. I think British people use "ickle" more than "wittle" for baby talk, so theirs probably sounds way different.

[howsmyenglish]

I learned that you used to learn Chinese only recently and it so does not really tally with my impressions of you (nothing bad, just - one tends to fill in the blanks, right?) that every time you mention it I feel the need to check that it is really you I'm talking to right now))) I'll get used to the idea! How did you like staying in Taiwan? What did you do there besides learning the language? Travel? How long did you study Chinese for? And - why? I mean, why this language and not any other?

My husband worked in China twice for half a year, I visited him there a few times, last time for a month. It was exactly a year ago. We went to Yunnan, I wrote a few posts from and about China at that time, but not much.

And thanks for the reply about baby talk! I did not realize there was such a big difference between British and American baby talk. This is fascinating :D

[draculard]

Oh yeah, I loved Taiwan! I went to Tamkang University for the classes, which were super relaxed and chill compared to what I was used to. I think Taiwanese teachers in general are more chill than Mainlanders. Our class would get released after a few hours of classes and then we'd have the day to ourselves to explore the area; on weekends, our guides organized events for us. Some were really cool (we got a mountain guide to take us up to the peak of a volcano through a hidden, "forbidden" path) and others were kind of lame (like visiting Taipei 101 just to shop).

I actually learned Chinese because of the Navy. They had me take a "language aptitude" test when I joined to see if I could be trained as a linguist, and you have to get a 100 to learn "easy" languages like Spanish, and 110 to learn "hard" languages like Chinese. I got a 132 so I was good to go. I spent about 2 years in this super intense training program where I had 8 hours of class time each day with a big team of native speakers, and all we did all day was learn Chinese. Before and after class, I had military duties (standing watch, working out, cleaning duty), and also several hours of homework, but it was still super fun.

After that I spent several years as a translator in the Navy, but I've definitely let me fluency slide since I got out. When I was still enlisted, I could translate Chinese-to-English at a rate of about 60 pages per day (and I'm definitely bragging here, but other linguists on my team only did 2 pages per week, and their results were frequently unreadable. So I'm still ridiculously proud about that XD). Nowadays my listening skills are still more or less fluent, but my reading has slipped to kindergarten level lol

[howsmyenglish]

Wow. To say that I'm impressed is to say nothing. I used to be quite proud of my own pages-per-day ability to translate, but it comes nowhere near 60 (?!) pages per day.
And anyway. It is unbelievably impressive that you managed all that. No wonder I thought you sounded like you were older than your brothers (remember? :D), this kind of experience is priceless.

[draculard]

Ack, I completely forgot about that! XD

[atwill]

It's great you're getting exercise and fresh air, and I'm glad the energy that was dissipated into commuting is now freed up toward teaching! I feel like shelter in place has been good for me too. It would be easy to feel guilty about enjoying it but healthier to realize that it's not a bad thing, it's even a good thing, to be able to enjoy a silver lining in a horrible situation.

[howsmyenglish]

the energy that was dissipated into commuting is now freed up toward teaching!
Thank you for putting it so aptly! That's exactly it.

I feel like shelter in place has been good for me too.
It feels like a long-term meditation for me. Something that helps me to focus and understand things much much better. I daresay, people who're not used to meditations may well be troubled by it. (Not to speak of the more obvious and immediate trouble like lack of income, children, anxiety, illnesses and all the other things I forgot to mention, of course). But I think, most academics (and I include students in my broad definition) feel less bad about the isolation, because academia is a sort of isolation in itself.