What Have You Been Studying?

[crossfire]

Overall it strikes me as subtler and perhaps a bit more technical than the romance languages, @Sunstone

Portuguese, Spanish and particularly Italian tend to make speakers wear our emotions on our sleeves, to the point that it may be difficult to express nuance or even to develop it in the first place. I have for a while now admired the rich assortment of treatment pronoums of Japanese, which I expect other languages to want to emulate sooner rather than later.

German is quite different there. A lot more gutural, but also much more disciplined and oddly subtle.

@crossfire will probably disapprove of the extent to which its gendered articles reinforces a male-oriented Nomos, but I understand that even many native speakers don't always even use those genders correctly - which hints that it could very easily fix itself on this particular flaw.

Actually, gendered articles aren't that big of a deal to me. (I even think that gender neutral das Mädchen is actually a good idea!)

Having gendered articles for inanimate objects sort of deconstructs the strong gender binary stereotypes needed to discriminate on basis of gender. It also subtly strengthens the case for individuals who identify as non-binary. How silly is being triggered by the Spanish masculine el gato as compared to the German feminine die Katze? It makes people less fragile in respect to gender.

Your mileage may vary.

 

[Notanumber]

Python 3, C++ and Qt5. I have concluded that it is not easy.

Oh and climate change of course.

 

[ChristineM]

What have you been studying recently?

What's the most striking thing you have found out?

.......
EDIT: I take notes when reading up on something. I have done almost no reading up on anything new for the past six weeks, but -- going back further than six weeks -- the four most recent subjects I have read up on (according to my notebooks) are:

(1) The impact of French postmodernism on the West with especial reference to its consequences for pole dancing.

(2) The concept of arete in ancient Greek culture, including Kitto's analysis of arete's role in the aesthetic maturation of ancient Greek pole dancing.

(3) Newberg's five characteristics of enlightenment experiences as revealed via fMRI brain scans of erotic pole dancers.

(4) Kolmogorov's contributions to probability theory and especially the application of his contributions both to random walks and to random pole dance maneuvers.

As you can see, I am a scatter-brain with no known center of focus.

_________________
And now, in an effort to make it up to you for such a boring OP....

Not precisely studying but educating myself. A task that happens every 2 years...

The story goes. We have 2 cars, a decent one and what was termed by the dealer "a french runabout". Its an old beat up Peugeot 206 diesel thats done over 1/4 million kilometres. It works and is reliable (up to now)

Every 2 years a car must undergo a safety inspection, its getting close to that time.

Now the tricky bit. A elderly neighbour was an international rally car mechanic in his former life. We did a deal with him that if he maintains the car he can use it whenever he wants if we dont need it. Considering we only use it a couple of hours a week then he is on a good deal.

Back to the safety inspection. There are bits and pieces need fettling on the car and i have volunteered to be the gofer so long as i can learn a bit about car mechanics.

Yesterday i was supervised while fitting a new pair of rear shock absorbers.

A couple of days ago i helped checking and adjusting the rear brakes.

Last weekend. John Claude fitted a new front brake disk, i fitted the other, (he checked my work and say it was good)

And next comes the electronics, (technical talk here) the car needs a new comm2000 unit which is winging its way to us as i write this. Maybe tomorrow he will let me replace it?

What have i learned??? Repairing cars is painful on the hands and knees, really very dirty and great fun.

 

[ChristineM]

Oh, oh, oh, i forgot to mention something else i have learned recently. I have even become something of an ace at mahjong

A great way to pass the time while whiling away your life in a doctors waiting room.

 

[Wu Wei]

What have you been studying recently?

Taijiquan, in depth.

Most striking thing, how much I don't know and do not understand after 28 years of training it.