A very late language milestone
Jun. 29th, 2019 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricI called my swiss credit card today, and got the Guy Who Speaks Only German and French. (Sometimes I get him, or any number of his clones; sometimes I get answered instantly in English. Logic of which I get when or why is unclear.)
Anyway we trundled through the ID questions, and got to the balance
and he told me
cent seize, soixante centimes (He didn't actually say francs, which was odd)
and while the words side of my brain was doing its usual 'chunk this down and convert it to english then convert it back to make sure you haven't misheard sixteen and sixty', the numbers side pulled up the numerals 116.60 and the motor movements required to type them in the numpad. Just. The absolute certainty that the string of numbers I heard corresponds to this sum expressed in digits that I need to enter into my bank account.
That's HUGE. Even when I was living in Switzerland I didn't have that skill - French number to numeral - welded beyond fifty-nine (and was a fuzzy patch between 14 and 17). Although in a shop, if a local cashier quoted a price in dialect, septante, huitante, etc are nicely welded to 'correct arrangement of coins' in my head.
I don't know how I got to this particular sharp improvement - it's not the duo german-via-french, because that heavily relies on word-to-word matching. All I can think is that *behind* me learning Japanese numbers slowly and embarrassingly, my brain must be subconsciously activating the Known Foreign Numbers processing centre. Which tells me if there was a Duo Japanese for Francophones I'd probably be doing WAY better at Japanese numbers than I am so far.
I miss my Functional Second Language so much. Take me back, Francophonia! (Alas. I am going to Germanophonia. Next time I call the credit card company I need to make a special effort to negotiate the greetings-and-what-language-are-we-using-today part in German. I have sufficient German to negotiate switching to French, I should use it.)
Anyway we trundled through the ID questions, and got to the balance
and he told me
cent seize, soixante centimes (He didn't actually say francs, which was odd)
and while the words side of my brain was doing its usual 'chunk this down and convert it to english then convert it back to make sure you haven't misheard sixteen and sixty', the numbers side pulled up the numerals 116.60 and the motor movements required to type them in the numpad. Just. The absolute certainty that the string of numbers I heard corresponds to this sum expressed in digits that I need to enter into my bank account.
That's HUGE. Even when I was living in Switzerland I didn't have that skill - French number to numeral - welded beyond fifty-nine (and was a fuzzy patch between 14 and 17). Although in a shop, if a local cashier quoted a price in dialect, septante, huitante, etc are nicely welded to 'correct arrangement of coins' in my head.
I don't know how I got to this particular sharp improvement - it's not the duo german-via-french, because that heavily relies on word-to-word matching. All I can think is that *behind* me learning Japanese numbers slowly and embarrassingly, my brain must be subconsciously activating the Known Foreign Numbers processing centre. Which tells me if there was a Duo Japanese for Francophones I'd probably be doing WAY better at Japanese numbers than I am so far.
I miss my Functional Second Language so much. Take me back, Francophonia! (Alas. I am going to Germanophonia. Next time I call the credit card company I need to make a special effort to negotiate the greetings-and-what-language-are-we-using-today part in German. I have sufficient German to negotiate switching to French, I should use it.)