in which I ponder the passage of time

Y'all, I am getting old. If the high blood pressure, the creaking knee and other assorted ailments weren't a strong enough sign, earlier this week, I had and took the opportunity to call a 20-something person a sopliak (a Slovak derrogatory term for a young person, literally "runny-nose-haver") to their face and ... well, I actually felt a perverse sense of pleasure doing so. I swear to God, I am one condescending fiam (Hungarian for "my son") away from becoming my grandfather, Lord rest his soul. And the more I realize this, the more it weighs on my mind that perhaps I will not be able to learn all languages that there are (or at least the real interesting ones, because life is too short to learn Japanese). This morning's Youtube feed was a stark reminder of that fact: in addition to the usual assortment of media criticism (these days mostly of the "Star Trek: Discovery sucks" variety because hell yeah it does), US late night comedy, cooking shows and - for some damn reason - relationship advice, the almighty algorithms served me up this:

Now unlike those relationship advice videos where I am baffled - BAFFLED I say! - as to why anyone would think I would be in need of or even interested in such a thing hastilyclickssubscribe, I know where this comes from: earlier this month, I had been made aware of the existence of a (predominantly) Afrikaans-language South African soap opera (or soapie, as they are apparently referred to in South African English) called 7de Laan and having found a channel with the latest episodes, I binged the hell out of them. So it did not surprise that the allpowerful and wise Google thought I would be interested in its sister show, Muvhango. What surprised me, however, is that - heavy code-switching with English notwithstanding - this show is not primarily shot in Xhosa or Zulu, the major Bantu languages of South Africa, but rather in Venda, a Bantu language with some 3 million speakers total. Now this is my first exposure to Venda (save perhaps for a mention in Routledge's Bantu Languages, but I honestly don't recall) and in situations like this, my first instinct is to find a grammar or a textbook of said language and try to at least get a handle on the basics. Not this time, though: first, it would appear there are very few resources for Venda available (this is essentially the only usable grammar guide I was able to find) which makes me wonder about the whole social and economic context of the language (e.g. interesting how a nation of less than 2 million L1 speakers has this many pretty decent actors and more than decent creative people). Secondly and most importantly, while I could spend a few days trying to attain at least some level familiarity with the language, I can't afford to spend any more time than that and ultimately, it would just end up on the metaphorical pile of all the other languages I will probably never learn to any usable level (hello Tagalog, Korean, Tamil and Lithuanian) and that just wouldn't be fair. So it's for the best to just walk away without wondering what might have been and just accept that I will never learn to speak Venda or maybe even any Bantu language at all. Sucks, but c'est la vie.
Then again, I do want to find out how Marang's engagement turns out...



P.S.: Check out timestamp ~8:27-8:30 and the glorious ejective [kʼ] in the second [k] in the English word "conclude".