I’ve spent so long learning this language, working on it and playing with it and living by it, that there’s never been time for another. Wandering around the world I’ve wished for others, wishing that I could suck their syntax into my synapses and sing in them, but they stubbornly resist; the words won’t yield, the genders won’t gel, the grammar won’t give. About all I find easy are accents.
It’s hard work, learning another language in adulthood, as I found out last year, taking twelve months to assimilate enough Spanish to survive two weeks of travel. It might have been easier if I’d spent more time on it each week, but there’s never enough time. It might have been easier if I’d learnt more than a few words of it in school, too, but there wasn’t enough time then, either; Spanish isn’t a high priority in Australia.
Neither is French these days, but in that case I was luckier; two years of high school French and some evening classes a few years back have seen me through more than a few French-speaking countries. I always think I’ve forgotten it all, and enough of it always comes back to get by.
I’ve been drawing some single-panel gags for the first time in three years, experimenting with taking pencil sketches straight to scanner and Photoshop rather than inking them first. Here’s a six-pack of the results. (Warning: obscure and tasteless literary and historical allusions ahead.)