looking at this quote makes me feel better after I've been nauseated by blubbery mush

"I thought it was the worst pile of blubbery mush I’ve ever been compelled to endure. It’s an insult to my backside that it was forced to sit here growing carbuncles through such putrid, adolescent slush."

— Red Dwarf

duolingo, bureau of my uncle sentences, the welsh character

Well, when we started studying Welsh a month ago, it was my suggestion to help my sister feel more connected to her roots. We both downloaded it on Duolingo, and I liked it immediately, but she was put off by the irregularities in pronunciation and spelling. I told her we could pick another joint activity from our immigrant ancestors, like Dutch or Polish (or Irish, but I went ahead and ruled it out because I knew if she couldn't hack the Welsh spelling Irish would be right out). Since one of our grandmothers was of exclusively Yiddish-speaking ancestry, that wins percentage-wise, but there's no Duolingo Yiddish course yet so we decided to sample each others' second languages instead. So I started Russian and she started Swedish, after we both gave Dutch a bit of a whirl as a second option. I've still been doing more with Welsh though because I'm having fun and have made a fair bit of progress there.

I think part of it is that the Duolingo Welsh course is more engaging than the Duolingo Russian one, but I'm also just kinda having more fun with Welsh. It's fun and a bit silly and the course, at least, is making me increasingly wonder...

• Are the Welsh just constantly chowing down on parsnips and leeks?


• Is Brittany truly up there on equal footing, as a non-UK destination, with Spain, Italy, France, and... Australia??


• Is every home incomplete without a harp? Do you really bring up harp possession in getting-to-know you small talk? Is it a matter of great concern to the average Welshperson whether they can receive... whatever it's called, bedside harp therapy???


• Is a horse a similar fixture that everyone assumes you are likely planning to get? And why just horses, no ponies?


• Is furniture-making a popular activity? Learning 'make', I would have been way more inclined to go for foods and art projects, but Duolingo aimed directly at chairs and tables.


• Do dragons come up frequently in conversation (I hope)?

I should mention that in some ways the Russian course is very funny. It wouldn't neccessarily have struck me as very funny before I moved to Finland, because I'd only known two Russian people in my childhood, but now that I've spent a lot of time around Russians and encountered a lot of Russian expats here in Finland, witnessing their interactions with each other and with non-Russians, the two speakers who read the sentences for Duolingo practically get a laugh out of me with every sentence because they just sound so extremely Russian.