Overheard at the Wright’s Household

Juss throws a fit every time he has to do anything. I was cheered, though, by the thought that Orville used to be worse at this age. Now, he’s quite reasonable. I mentioned this.

Orville turned to his brother and said: "I was a Hypercane mixed with a Tsunami. You’re just a tornado."

So true. So like life.

We are all trying to learn Manderin. We were listening to a Manderin CD in the car, but Juss had fallen asleep (before I put it on) which was too bad, because I’m thinking me might be better at this than the rest of us.

We then woke up Juss, got out of the car, and walked toward my mom’s house. When I made a comment about Manderin, Juss suddenly threw up his hands and cried:

"Mom, I don’t have time to learn foreign!"

This from the boy who cried when he found out that "Japan Ninjas" didn’t speak Spanish like his beloved Diego.  Apparently the existance of more than one foreign language offends Juss. So not politically correct. ;-)

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29 thoughts on “Overheard at the Wright’s Household

    • Sometimes we are just boggled by the size of the universe. ;-)

      I hear that I will soon receive my future daughter’s clothing size. I’ll send it to you to pass onto Ava as soon as I learn it.

  1. Just so you know, some day, I will write a dying earth-style story that will take place on an alien world. Outside the City Which Is Civilization, the strange and exotic tribes will speak a language only called “Foreign.”

    Just so you know. :)

  2. Linguisticalisms

    My wife bought the Muzzy package for our daughter. Our daughter also watches Diego, Dora, etc. She’s picked up a fair amount of Spanish. Probably more than I ever did in two years of Spanish when I was in junior high.

    I figure Spanish is the most useful language any Anglo Americano can pick up, given the way the demographics are shifting.

    After that, probably Chinese. Though I don’t pretend to exactly understand the differences between Cantonese, Mandarin, etc.

    • Re: Linguisticalisms

      We’ve been told that our future daughter speaks Madarin, so that’s where we’re starting.

      But yeah, around here, Spanish…unless you happen to be an Anime fan with Japanes friends and in-laws. Japanese would probably have been my first choice.

    • Re: Linguisticalisms

      Mandarin and Cantonese are mutually unintelligible dialects of Chinese, at least when spoken. When written, apparently, they don’t have a problem.

      As far as useful… I never did manage to interest myself in useful. I refused to study Spanish when I was younger because it was boring; I studied Japanese instead. I’m kind of eying Hebrew now.

    • Japanese

      I took a year of Japanese in highschool. Because I was a Macross dork and thought it would be fun.

      Whooo…. Trying to learn Japanese made Spanish look like a cake walk.

      Three alphabets? Three?? And none of them Roman?
      Text goes up and down, not side to side.

      At least with Spanish, if you knew a bit about how latin functions, you could fake it. No way Jose with Japanese. No ‘faking it’ in any way, shape, or form.

      I’ve since lost almost all of it. Though I do remember how to count to ten, thanks mostly to my Okinawa-Japanese karate sensei from 1988-1989. Dude was BADASS.

      • Re: Japanese

        I can count to ten in Japanese for a similar reason.

        My task is simipler. I haven’t even thought of trying to learn to write Manderin! I am just trying to learn enough so that I can communicate at all with my future daughter while she learns English.

      • Re: Japanese

        Yay, Macross!

        Anime served as my introduction to Japanese culture. I was (I thought) completely over anime by the time I started taking Japanese, besides being alert for any rumors of a new Macross.

        These days, I watch anime again, though in the same way I watch American TV– it has to be very, very good to hold my interest. Still, though, the little bit of anime that I do watch is, I think, what keeps the Japanese from completely evaporating from the inside of my skull. I’ve even learned a few words, like “despair” and “superdimensional.”

        Funny how they never thought to teach me those words at OSU :p

        • Re: Japanese

          Same here. I think it’s true for a lot of American kids. We watch anime while young, and that’s our first real exposure.

          I wish I could find a Japanese DVD of “Macross: Do you Remember Love?” without dubbing. I hated the Americanized version of that when I got it on VHS.

          And yes, these days, if I am watching Anime, it better be darned good. Such as Ghost in the Shell. And I hate dubbing. I detest dubbing. Which is why 98% of the dubbed anime on TV doesn’t interest me.

          • Re: Japanese

            Depending on what your feelings about the slightly goofy are, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is amazing. Literally amazing. Macross Frontier is also good, if you haven’t seen it :)

            Your literal only hope for finding DYRL is bittorrent. I found a fansubbed version of it last year. Good movie.

      • Re: Japanese

        Out of curiosity, what style of Karate was it that you studied? I did five years of Shimbukan Shorin Ryu, until all the American black belts for that particular variety decided to move out of state. (Aggravating, to say the least. I’d have better luck showing up on Makabe-sensei’s doorstep in Okinawa than I would trying to track down one of his American black belts.)

        • Re: Japanese

          I did a little less than two years of Okinawa Karate-do. Not sure if the style was more specific than that? Sensei was Shihan Arakagi. A terrific sensei. I might have kept attending, but I blew my knew out pretty badly after a marathon session in the dojo, and was too young then to have the discipline to come back and stick to it after the injury.

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