my dad - who was not the 'best reader' due to lack of education being from back up in dem mountains of NC - started off by reading me the comics as early as I can remember and once said a Whole Sentence is the same as a Whole Thought - somehow I caught that and by 4 I was reading anything that got in my way

I never really 'learned to swim properly' - I love being in the water but panic easily if anything 'unusual' happens. I hate not being able to see - so contacts and a face mask are part of my standard gear - I can't open my eyes underwater without the mask

the panic is likely from the method used by my mom to 'teach swimming' - throw you in - and yell at you to paddle - the other lesson - on breath holding included actions that more often are heard in jokes about Dunking Religions and Holding One Under Until the Mind is More Receptive.

If I was not 'under' long enough to show that I could hold my breath to her satisfaction, it was not unheard of for her to clamp her hands to both shoulders and push down until the frantic struggles caught the attention of the life guard.

most of the time now, if you see me at a pool, if there is no face mask, my head is canted at an 'awkward angle' to keep it just above the water (yes it hurts my neck - but then the panic attack is worse than the neck pain) Occasionally I will put my face down, arms out front and 'kick' for the side or push off from the side - but the moment I'm out of air I'm Up and wiping my face off and gasping

sigh

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I still can't swim, but I was pretty much born reading, too. Dave's trying to teach me, but I only get to his parents' place like every year, once, so it doesn't add up to much. and i'm not motivated enough to seek anything closer.

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The particular weirdness you're noticing in Finnish is due to the fact that it's not a member of the Indo-European language family. Finnish, along with Hungarian and a few other languages, are from the Finno-Ugric family, which has no more in common with Indo-European than, say, Swahili or Turkish.

Regarding "yes/no" and the idea that negativity should start with an N sound (as it does in nearly all Indo-European languages): in Japanese (obviously another non-IE language), "yes" and "no" are hai and iie, respectively.

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The one oddity among the Indo-European languages that I'm familiar with is Greek -- their word for "no" is mostly "okhi" (omicron, chi, iota). Just to make it even weirder their word for "yes" is "ne" (!).

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Japanese has a bunch of different ways to say "yes" and "no", though a fair number of them may be simply idiomatic minor differences in attitude, like the English variants "yup!" (enthusiastic), "...yeah..." (ambivalent), and "yah-huh" (grudging).

IIRC there used to be a theory grouping Japanese with the Finno-Ugric languages, but these days it mostly seems to be considered a linguistic isolate.

I don't remember learning how to read-- at least, not in English-- though I do remember staring at a German version of "Goodnight Moon" (I have no idea why I had this) and thinking, "Well, I already know how to read English, so if I can learn how to read this by my next birthday and pick up a new language every year, I'll have a whole bunch of languages by the time I turn ten!"

Speaking of which, The Electric Company is now out on DVD. My goodness, it's strange to see people like Morgan Freeman, Bill Cosby, and Rita Moreno on there again, now with a double sense of retrospective recognition. And of course there are the Tom Lehrer songs, though most of those are clipped onto YouTube (including some that I hadn't know were his).

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I am told that I was reading by age 3. I had a lot of "read-along" books which were a sort of combination of a book and the same book on a tape recording, as well as Mom reading to me. But I don't really remember "learning" either. When my grandmother came to visit she declared that I was reading one of my books, and Mom said I had just memorized it from repeated reading-tos. So Grandma handed me her book - either a Bible or a crossword - and I could read most of that too.

I had "water wings" as a toddler, and Mom and Dad taught me that I could float in those, and then to dogpaddle. I think a floaty thing helps a lot. And I remember being taught to put my face in the water, hold my breath and and blow bubbles, which meant I wasn't breathing in and they could see that I wasn't.

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I read at 2.5 - between Sesame Street, Electric Company, an aunt who was a reading teacher, & a mom who was a college student, I couldn't help myself.

Swimming was around age 3-4, I don't recall learning that either.

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I don't remember learning to read, must have picked it up by age of 3 or 4.

Swimming on the other hand, I had lessons at the age of 7 or 8 in a pool. The pool was in WV on an island in the middle of the Greenbrier river. The next year I attended summer camp for summer bells on the shore of the Greenbrier and most of the rest of my swimming lessons were in the river. I was never very strong at swimming upstream and repeated lessons a lot. I'm always surprised when people are afraid of swimming in a lake, river or ocean and they only want to get into a pool.

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Don't remember when I learned to read. But my parents say that before I reached my 1st bday I climbed up the pool ladder into to pool because every one else was there so I wanted to be there too. Dad picked me up off the bottom of the pool and took me over the the edge of the pool where I clamped on the the edge and stayed there happy as a clam. People have been trying to get me out of the pool ever since. I am more confortable in the water than out.

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I'm pretty sure it was that fateful day when a box of books fell into the family pool, and toddler me decided to retrieve them. Apparently I was stuck treading water in the pool for quite some time, with only learning to read to occupy my time.

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I think the way I learned to swim they will throw you in jail for these days. My brother threw me in the deep end there at the Mclean Pool.

My kids are learning to swim right now. Classes at the local health club. 7 yr old is doing real well, and the 4 yr old is doing ok. They enjoy it, so that is the main thing. As for reading. I got one of those online phonics programs for the older boy when he was 3 or so. They said he was a little young for itm but it worked out well.]]

Mike

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