Today's fun fact about Q'anjob'al: besides using "good" for "right-(hand)", they say "different" for "left-(hand)." So there's the good side, and the other side.
The guy who's been teaching me the conversational stuff works every day except Monday and Saturday, and I'm going to Chicagoland on Saturday and leaving on Monday, so today was our last lesson. I've been studying hard, but still can't get over how much harder it is than a Romance or even an Indo-European language (German & Greek, for me.) I have a bit of a theory that general intelligence helps me out with those-- but only because I can see the similarities to English/Spanish. Being smart doesn't seem to do much for learning a completely unrelated language.
On the other hand, ridiculous mnemonic devices are equally beneficial for studying related or unrelated languages. I used to make these up for Spanish- "viajar" meaning "to travel" I remembered because it sounds like "be a whore." In Q'anjoba'l, "kok'exan," meaning "left side," sounds like "caucasian."
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