The thing about prepositions, pronouns and possessives as categories and the effect they have on second language learners is they provide such irrational disloyalty toward target language that they almost all have to be unlearned and reimagined if one is to really have any hope of getting anywhere.

As Mr Maynard Keynes said of President Woodrow Wilson in the Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) – while it may appear particularly easy to bamboozle an individual in the short term, the subsequent process of debamboozling them is an altogether more complicated undertaking.

And of course Jorge Luis Borges added that the Falklands conflict was like two bald men fighting over a comb.

Anyone can slip into bad habits.

When it comes to second language acquisition, and indeed all small print, it’s the unlearning and ability to reimagine, resculpt, relearn & improvise, that counts.

Would the flipside of CIA operatives learning Korean be that they be more open to brainwashing?

This weekend I watched three films at the cinema. Not bad going considering I hadn’t been to see a film since September and before that several years.

First it was Drive My Car, then Parallel Mothers, and finally Memoria.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of them and fairly shortly I’ll tell you why.

But I have to rush off to the day job so will simply say that I wish you an amazing day and that those of you who are in London may be interested in this.

I was told by a Falun Gong practitioner yesterday that Shen Yun is what China was like before communism.

Apparently the show is divine, if you are ready for it.

China apparently traffic Falun Gong practitioners’s organs as well as running Uiyghur sweat shops and cracking down on freedom campaigners in Hong Kong.

I’m more than aware that these terms and claims can be contested but prefer to use them sloppily than not at all.

Make up your minds for yourselves. I am not alone in thinking the West is copying China in many regards and that China was taught to unlearn many of its most excellent traditions by outsiders.

Thst opium was brought to China from India by Scots and apparently Shaolin (of which I approve) Buddhism came from South India too.

Enough for now. Have an amazing day.