Genesis in Language

So I’m in Colorado Springs, not transfixed by the mountains, but instead fixated on my tongue. Specifically where it is. In my mouth is not specific enough. Is it pointed and forward or retroflexed or flat and dental? We produce new sounds with the dance our tongue performs. None of us sound very good; except for those you can speak French. Those people can even make their uvula vibrate. Impressive. We practice making new sounds (fricative laterals, nasal consonants) and silent blows of air until our cheeks and mouth ache. And what we are doing here is gaining a flexible mouth, fine-tuning our hearing and loosening us up overall in preparation to learn Portuguese. We have yet to hear a Portuguese word yet but our instructors did a skit using New Guinea Pidgin that Josh understood. It wasn’t hard. When someone says “see you later” you reply with “lukim yu bihain” If you don’t get it say it out loud.

Ella is doing awesome as well. Today she got to join our language classes where we were taught some specific projects and ideas to use when we get to Brazil. In the picture she is actually learning Russian while doing one of the comprehension activities. Tomorrow she takes a field trip to the Olympic Training Center where they will relate language training with athletic training. In the afternoon she also has a one-on-one tutor, an intern with Focus on the Family Institute.

Despite the fact that we all are in classes all day, we do get a lot of family time. At least more time than we have had in the past couple months. The girls are thriving. And yeah, the mountains are lovely too, when I glance their way on break. ~bzp