Today I cried a little bit because I remembered that when Beethoven conducted his ninth symphony for the first time he got a standing ovation and one of the sopranos had to turn him around to see the audience.
I have never recovered from this illustration by Scott Cameron for Barbara Nichol’s “Beethoven Lives Upstairs.”
I love tests. Toward the end I was getting words that I would never actually use in a sentence without looking them up, and that I still wouldn’t use in a sentence after looking them up because I wouldn’t expect other people to know them. And then there are a small handful that I got wrong, or was just going off the vibes of the words. I think vibes-based vocabulary is underrated.
4.96% in english, not bad! now let’s see in spanish, my mother tongue!
…
ooooooh, this is going to go straight to my head. well la dee da, mas te vale que te retires Borges, una nueva rutilante estrella, ducha con el vocablo y diestra con el lenguaje ha surgido en estos arrabales
this is what reading voraciously as a child will get you!
that, and the inability to pronounce many words correctly.
