(no subject)

[pearwaldorf]

Things other people accomplished when they were your age

Nothing better to make you feel woefully inadequate at twenty (going on twenty-one)

Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice, her second and most famous novel.

Meep.

Polish-born Joseph Conrad, one of the great English language novelists, began learning English, his third language.

See? Woefully inadequate.

Alexander Graham Bell taught a stray Skye Terrier to talk; by training the dog to growl on cue and then manipulating his mouth and throat, Bell could make him produce the phonemes "ow, ah, ooh, ga, ma, ma," to say "How are you, Grandmama?"

And Bell just had too much fucking time on his hands.

Comments

[aprilbegins.livejournal.com]

heh, 21 has some dubious honours:

John Dillinger robbed a grocery store, was caught and spent 9 years in prison. He later became "public enemy number one," before being gunned down by the FBI.

College dropout Steven Jobs co-founded Apple Computer.

Excellent. I must drop out of school and find some black spray paint for the bank surveillance cameras. I believe in myself.

[some-stars.livejournal.com]

And Bell just had too much fucking time on his hands.

*cracks up*

oh man. what the fuck would make someone DO that? manipulating his mouth and throat, for heaven's sake.

[mydarkstar.livejournal.com]

Polish-born Joseph Conrad, one of the great English language novelists, began learning English, his third language.

Oh, you think that's bad - Steve, my Belgian ex, was already fluent in four languages (Dutch, English, French, and German, learned in that order) by the time he was twenty. I'm 22, and I still speak exactly one, though I like to think I do pretty well with it. Hmph.

[pelicanzed.livejournal.com]

Well, Belgians do have the advantage of living in a tiny trilingual country - and German is just like Dutch, only with more sensible spellings and vowel pronunciation. But my online friend ~sergej doesn't have that going for him, he's 22 and is fluent in FIVE.

I do know five languages myself, just none of them very well.

[cosinesky.livejournal.com]

Well, if it's any comfort, most of these individuals weren't required to fritter away four years of their adolescence in public high schools, right?