If you’ll recall, I decided to try and see if Finnegans Wake could help ease the process of learning a foreign language. The plan was relatively simple, and at least to me, basically elegant; read Finnegans Wake until the mind enters a state of shock and hope that enables an easier acceptance of French. Lacking the funding to retain a proper sample group, I’d simply study French everyday, and alternate between days with and without mind jarrings.
While my French has improved, it is most certainly not from those days where I read from the wake first. Those days my favorite phrase, should I be able to remember it, was “je ne comprends pas.”
Certainly an interesting two weeks, and I am pleased to be able to bring you these results as a sort of public service. I know I can’t be the only person who ever thought of this idea, and in the interest of everyone who actually wants to learn a foreign language, Joyce’s stream of conscious is not the best way to prepare the mind to absorb such a thing.