The Soon-To-Be-Forgotten New Vocabulary of Brian J.

I am not claiming to be a polymath, gentle reader, as I would have to be a far better autodidact than I am. But I sure am reading and listening widely these days, which means I have a lot of new vocabulary words getting thrown into my brain, briefly, while I’m reading/listening/studying. Soon to be fall out when I start memorizing additional heavy metal lyrics on my gym playlist.

Recently, though, I have learned the following words and could briefly say them correctly and/or read them with fairly correct pronunciation:

• Kuduasai. I’ve started playing with Duolingo, refreshing some of my Spanish and starting, again, Japanese from scratch. Kudasai means please in a familiar sense.
• Chavín de Huántar. This is an archeological site in Peru which has information about the Chavín culture which spread through cities in Peru about 1000 BC. I’ve had a couple of car rides/child pickup opportunities recently, so I’ve started listening to lectures again, this set being Lost Worlds of South America. I’ll probably finish this sometime in 2024, by which time I will have forgotten how to pronounce Chavín de Huántar, but I will likely remember the feline deity and whether one can build a vampire story about them.
• As I mentioned, I’m in the process of reading The Life Of Greece by Will (and Ariel) Durant, so I am all steeped in Greek names like Polycrates and Anaximenes and Anaximander and Xenophanes, and I am pretty sure my pronunciation tracks with the Greek. I mean, I do have a cat named Chimera, which is pronounced just like it’s spelled, ainna?
• I’ve been reading some late ninteenth century and early twentieth century short stories, so I’ve been looking up lots of words like demirep and so on. Unfortunately, I did not write down each new word as I looked it up or otherwise note it. Or perhaps it is for the best, as I would want to use them and would become more obscure than I am.

Something is bound to stick, though, gentle reader, and that will make me even more boring to talk to at parties as I suddenly lurch from creepy and silent to enthusiastic about esoterica. Which is also creepy, ainna?