The professor (who, in addition to being the linguistics undergraduate advisor and the only linguistics professor currently teaching classes, has quickly become my favorite person at the university) is offering the class as an independent study for one of her grad students who needs it for her concentration, but is allowing some others to take the class too. End result: My being intimidated and/or amused by five super-smart graduate students and an undergrad senior. Professor advertised this class as one of the hardest languages she's ever learned, taught, or studied. But extremely linguistically interesting. Which intrigued me to the point of enrolling, perhaps foolishly.
Anyway, took a look at the book. I feel like I could learn the crazy arbitrary rules for orthography (spelling), if I could figure out how to pronounce half the consonants. I don't know how to palatalize l or n or f or really any other letters besides s and maybe g. Too bad! All of the consonants are sometimes palatalized and/or lentited! Or some combination thereof. Nor do I know how to make a voiced bilabial nasal fricative (m with slightly open lips? no idea.). My book even has cartoons of sheep being "amusing" put there specifically to try to ease the stress of learning this language. I find myself actively yearning for the simpler days of my advanced Latin textbooks.
This is swiftly becoming a matter of pride/stubbornness. My arrogance got my into this class and. by the gods, it's going to get my through it . Languages and the process of learning them and how they work has always been fun for me, or at the very least pleasurably interesting. Dammit, I will learn the basic grammatical structure of this language. And I will enjoy it.
One good thing: no graded work. So if I just look really earnest and eager and try really hard, I should be fine. Right?
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