It’s fun to experiment on yourself. This is another hare-brained notion born from conversation, basically I was talking about Finnegans Wake and explaining how after a good fifteen minutes or so spent reading the text, my basic understanding of English begins to fall apart. If I spend too much time trying to read that book I can’t talk properly for a few hours afterwards, all my words begin bleeding together.

So my hypothesis; (which proves just how odd I can be) is that the state engendered by prolonged exposure to Finnegans Wake might be perfect for learning new languages. For those of you who are completely confused right now, allow me to explain that while it is many things, Finnegans Wake is not written in English as you or I would understand it. There are supposedly something like sixty-plus languages that Joyce threw into the blender of his brain and spat back out across the pages. You can visit Finnegans Web to view the text itself and get a better idea of what I mean. My notion is that the brain enters a sort of linguistically null state, and may be better prepared to wrap itself around the unfamiliar rules that a foreign language presents.

One of the many problems with this experiment is that there is no control group; no way for me to ultimately confirm or deny my premise at this point. What I propose to do is attempt to study French for at least a half-hour a day, and every other day I will be first shocking my brain with a hefty dose of Finnegans Wake. I like to think that I’m intelligent enough to notice a difference in my ability to grasp a foreign language.

I will be keeping detailed notes on the experiment and keep you up to date on the results, whatever they turn out to be.

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