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Iversen’s Multiconfused Log (see p.1!) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3089 of 3959 06 November 2012 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
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If dominus Petrus Needham hadn't translated Harrius Potter II into Latin it might not have happened.
PS this was my message no. 7001 - no. 7000 was one about monolingual dictionaries Edited by Iversen on 06 November 2012 at 5:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3090 of 3959 08 November 2012 at 11:04pm | IP Logged |
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GE: Gestern habe ich fast zwei Stunden deutsches Fernsehen geschaut - zuerst eine Stunde mit Tierphotographen, die eine Serie von Filmen über der Tierwelt in Skandinavien (derunter auch Island und Spitsbergen). Und mit sehr praktische Ratschläge, fals ich irgendwann Eisbären und Elche oder andere Tiere entgegne (mit ohne ohne Kamera). Danach etwa 45 Minuten mit Norddeutsche Schlösser, aber es widert mich, daß alles immer ranggeordnet werden muß. Ich habe natürlich Glücksburg gesehen - ganz nahe and Flensburg und Dänemark, und das dänische Königshaus (zeitweilig Königinhaus) heißt auch Glücksburg. Ich habe aber sehr wenige von den anderen Gebäude gesehen und meistens auch nichts davon gehört (von Güstrow wußte ich aber). Aber ganz generell finde ich daß je mehr TV programme wir kriegen, des schlechter werden sie - oder vielleicht sind wir bloß mehr wählerisch geworden und die TV-Leute hinken danach.
Yesterday I watched a lot of TV from NDR: one hour about the filming of a splendid series of nature films from the Scandinavian countries, and afterwards 45 minutes about Northern Germany castles - but unfortunately NDR has succombed to the nauseating habit of ranking the castles. Why don't they just show them and let us enjoy each one on its own terms? The more TV channels we get the lower the level - except paleontological and archeologic films, where the use of electronics has meant that it has become possible to recreate past sceneries in all their glory. Today I have mostly watched programs in English, but partly without sound. Right now there is a travel program from Nigeria on the screen. I turn the sound down when they sing, but in between I listen. And the presenter has just been sitting in a bus full of women, who were greatly surprised that her name didn't mean anything. For instance the presenter spoke to a little girl named "Praise God" in a local language. Nigeria is one of the countries I haven't visited yet, and I doubt that it will happen in the near future. And then I have actually studied languages, including Irish and Indonesian. GA: A rinne mé a lán de na téacsanna dátheangacha, mar shampla ó Vicipéid. Tá foinse eile fecund www.beo.ie, agus anseo fuair mé téacs faoi Manannais. An bhfuil Manainnis diofa? B'fhéidir fuair bás ar an traidisiún gan bhriseadh le Ned Maddrell sa bhliain 1974 - ach mar shampla Briain Stowell fhoghlaim freisin é mar bhuachaill, agus a fhios aige Mandrell maith. Mar sin, ní Mhanann bás b'fhéidir i ndáiríre: Manannach ab ea an chéad mhúinteoir Gaeilge a bhí agam anseo i Learpholl fosta, Brian Stowell. Bhí Brain cairdiúil le Ned Maddrell, an cainteoir dúchais deireanach Manainnise, a fuair bás i 1974. D’fhoghlaim Brian Manainnis nuair a bhí sé ina stócach, agus Gaeilge fosta nuair a bhí sé níos sine. Múinteoir fisice ab ea é san ollscoil anseo, ach bhí rang oíche Gaeilge aige fosta agus thug sé an-chuidiú domhsa. IN: Indonesia teks saya sekali lagi diambil dari buku panduan ke Singapura - sesuatu tentang penduduk Cina di sana .. .. In Irish I studied one of the bilingual texts I have made, namely on about the situation of the Manx language. We have of course been told that it is extinct, and it is commonly told that the last native speaker was Ned Mandrell, who died in 1974. But the article mentions Brian Stowell, who learnt the language as a child and even befriended Ned Mandrell later in life. So it is debatable whether the unbroken tradition really has been broken - although Stowell apparently didn't learn the language from his parents. And now he teaches Manx to a small, but devoted (and growing) group of enthousiasts. In Indonesian I 'just' worked my way through one more passage from the everlasting guide to Singapura which I grabbed for free somewhere last time I was there. Sometimes free things are just the best. PS: right now HTLAL is working at full speed again. Edited by Iversen on 08 November 2012 at 11:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Swift Senior Member Ireland Joined 4608 days ago 137 posts - 191 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Russian | Message 3091 of 3959 09 November 2012 at 3:20am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for mentioning Manx, I had a good time reading through its Wikipedia page. I've
never heard of it before, but it's heart-warming to hear that there are always some people who try to keep a dying language alive. Gaelic languages seem to all be neglected to one extent or another. I know Irish and Welsh have much more use, but neither of them come close to superseding English in their countries. I guess that's just the way history turned out in the British Isles. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3092 of 3959 11 November 2012 at 8:47pm | IP Logged |
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Manx and Cornish (which is in a similar situation as Manx) are not on my list of languages to learn, but I carry on with my Irish studies - it is a slow process, but I can see that I get better at it because I can deal with simple texts now when I have a translation (and a ditionary) to keep me on the right track. But I still have to construct my Irish sentences word for word rather than just formulating them in one go.
NO: Akkurat nå ser eg en sending på NRK om folk som bor "der ingen skulle tro at nokon kunne bu". Og eg kjørte gjennom den første tredjeparten av "Colloquial Russian" på toget hjem fra Sørjylland, der eg besøykte mor min - det første ordet eg ikke skønte var på sida 56. I have just watched some Norwegian TV from places people shouldn't think anybody could live, typically in isolated huts somewhere in the mountains. And people there rarely speak as people do in the capital Oslo, which is an added attraction (on top of the stupendous views). My mother telephoned me last week to find out what a certain piece she had heard on Danish TV was, and I looked it up in the internet and found out that it was Richard Strauß' Alpensinfonie. So before visiting her this weekend I scurried downtown to borrow the scores and some CDs, but in the meantime she had also mobilized my sister, who had at the library down there had ferretted out a 10 CD box with all the most instrumental works of Herrn Strauß. So instead of studying or making wordlists I made pizza, removed truckloads of leaves from her garden and listened to one opulent Straussian work after the other with a score in my hand. And you can't do anything else when you have to follow a score. However we found time for a wee quiz: I skipped from one channel to the next at the far end of the scale and asked my mother and sister which language they were speaking at that channel: Mandarin (with English subtitles), Dutch, Castilian, Brazilian Portuguese, Galician (identified as Portuguese, which is a good guess for a non-specialist), Belorussian, Polish, Italian - and we could have added German, English and French, but those three would have been too easy. U: Ho detto cose belle della "Holiday TV" itаliаnа. Mi dispiace, era immeritata. Questo canale sterco racconta soltanto del Lago di Como. E non mi piace essere farcito come un'oca francese. Edited by Iversen on 14 November 2012 at 11:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3093 of 3959 14 November 2012 at 10:54am | IP Logged |
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FR: Je n'ai utilisé aucun des 'grand' cours d'Assimil, mais je possède quelques petits guides Assimil que j'ai achetés au cours de mes voyages. L'un de ces petits livres s'appelle "le Hongrois de Poche" (chez 'Assimil évasion'), et maintenent j'ai commencé lire ce livre. Pourquoi? Eh bien, j'ai suivi le lien à l'entretien de Luca Lampariello, Richard Simcott and Susanna Zaraysky, et sur la liste à droite sur la page d'Youtube j'ai vu le video sur la conférénce proposée par Luca et Richard en Mai 2013 (auquelle je vais participer si elle aura lieu comme prévu)... et le lieu, ce sera Budapest où l'on parle l'un des rares languages européennes que je ne peux même pas lire. Eh bien, qu'est-ce que j'ai sur mes étagères sur la langue hongroise? Des dictionaires, une grammaire et un livre sur le Danemark (!). Et ce petit livre de poche que je peux lire dans le célèbre bus-au-retour-de-mon-boulot.
Bon ben, après avoir lu la section sur la grammaire, qu'est-ce-que j'en pense? D'abord que l'orthographie hongroise est assez regulière, et que les phrases hongroises sont plus faciles à lire dans leur état original que dans la soi-disant aide à la prononciation. Par example on utilise le symbole /å/ pour /a/ - mais le /å/ pour nous les Danois suggère un son très fermé, jamais le son /a/. Et on rends the 's' hongrois par /ch/, c'est qui peut être OK pour les français, mais pour moi /ch/ final suggère le son final de "Bach" (allemand) ou de "loch" (écossais). Donc il vaut mieux essayer d'ignorer ces transcriptions autant que possible. Et la morphologie? J'en ai seulement vu une échantillon assez restreinte, mais elle ne semble pas très effrayante - en effet moins cruelle que je n'avait espéré. Il y a une loi d'harmonie des voyelles, mais du moins il y a une certaine logique dans cette loi qui vise a une plus grande euphonie. L'hongrois est une langue agglutinante, on dit. Oh terreur! Mais cela veut seulement dire que nos prépositions 'libres' devant les substantifs deviennent des desinences, et même s'il en résulte une vingtaine de désinences cela n'est pire que d'avoir vingt prépositions (plus des désinences de cas dans certaines langes telles que le Russe et l'Islandais). Il y a des pronoums personnels 'de politesse' qui parfois ont des caprices propres à eux, come dans ce cas: "nekem van", "neked van", "neki van" (je, tu il/elle a) mais "önnek van" (vous avez sing.). Mais j'ai vu des cas pires. Je n'ai pas l'intention d'essayer d'apprendre le Hongrois ici maintenant, et pour moi comme Scandinave il serait peut-être plus logique de choisir le Finlandais - surtout donné la marche inexorable de l'Hongrie vers la dictature sous mr. Orban - mais toutefois il vaudrait la peine d'apprendre un peu sur la langue et peut-être quelques phrases touristiques aussi avant d'y aller en mai 2013. EN: I have not used any of the 'big' Assimil courses, but during my visit to Strasbourg a few years ago I bought a small pocket guide to Hungarian (8.90€) which since then just has been standing unread on a shelf. However when I followed the link to the triple talk on Youtube between Luca Lampariello, Richard Simcott and Susanna Zaraysky I was reminded of the planned conference (or get-together) in Budapest in May 2013, and then I became curious to see what all the fuss about Hungarian was all about - and instead of the big dictionaries, the complete grammar and the unexpected book about Denmark the logical thing was to start reading the small pocket guide - which will be my staple diet in the bus-back-home-from-work for the next few days. I have so far read the grammar section, and even though it only contains a small taste of the whole immense smorgasboard of Hungarian grammar it did leave me with the impression that Hungarian may not be as scary as I have been told (I had the same feeling after reading a Finnish grammar once upon the time). The phonetic transcriptions were immensely irritating because the original Hungarian orthography is much more congenial to me as a Dane than the French-oriented distortion proposed as an aid. But the morphology seemed fairly logical (and the much feared vowel harmony also seemed to be fairly consistent) - having twenty or so cases with each their own endings can't be worse than having twenty prepositions PLUS case endings (in some languages). Of course I can't know which horrors would await a potential learner ahead, though I know from discussions about Finnish that the distribution of cases can't be described on the basis of the use of the cases in English or French or Danish, but this is not unexpected. After all, it came to me as a surprise that a 'subject predicative' ('subjektsprædikat' in Danish, 'complement de sujet' en Français) more often than not was in the instrumentative case in Russian (as an alternative to the expected nominative) - a case more suitable for 'molotovs' and other tools. But I remember from my studies of a Finnish grammar that most Finnish cases had something to do with positions and directions, and that can't be worse than choosing the correct prepositions in English or Danish or French or Russian. No, I'm not going to learn Hungarian now. I have enough 'unfinished' languages on my plate right now, but Hungarian is interesting, and if the country doesn't end up as a complete dictatorship I also intend to visit it in the coming years so every tiny morsel of the local language that I can pick up will be relevant. PS 1: In a thread about ways to change your language list here at HTLAL Iguanamon used the phrase: "You can also detail your skills in the language". My immediate reaction was "I daresay" (because I know that you get a ton of questions about your new languages if you add an item), and next thought was: how would Google deal with that idiomatic expression. Actually Google translated it into Danish "kanske" which is more like 'maybe' (literally 'can-happen') - with an impossible hybrid "jeg daresay" as its only other suggestion. However the correct translation would be something like "det tør antydes" (literally 'that dares be-suggested'), which Google translated into English as "the dry implied" (Danish "tør" as an adjective means 'dry'). HAhahahahaha... PS 2: something on TED.com about bonobos here - it seems that Pambaneesha is ready for Chopin's "Black key Etude" (op. 10 no. 5). And you can get subtitles in 22 languages (with Chinese writing according to both the traditional and simplified system). Edited by Iversen on 14 November 2012 at 10:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3094 of 3959 15 November 2012 at 11:24am | IP Logged |
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GR: Χθες το βράδυ δούλεψα κυρίως με τρεις γλώσσες: την ιρλανδική, την ελληνικά και την ινδονησιακά (στην αυτή τη σειρά). Έχω μόνο είχε μερικές συνομιλίες στα ελληνικά - αλλά πολύ μικρή - και κανένα όχι στα άλλα δύο, εκτός από την στιγμή στην Κουάλα Λουμπούρ Zoo όπου είπα ότι ήθελα ένα μικρό χυμό-μέλι - ( και μου διορθώθηκε την Προφορά!) - είπα "Kecil, please". Πρόοδος μου είναι καλύτερο μετράται στην παθητική ανάγνωση των κειμένων, όπου εγώ έχει φτάσει στα ελληνικά στο σημείο όπου χθες μπορούσα να διαβάσω μια γενική σελίδα ειδήσεων από την Κυπριακή ιστοσελίδα χωρίς να χρειάζομαι να αναζητήσετε λέξεις. και μου Ινδονησίας και της Ιρλανδίας είναι επίσης κινείται προς τα εμπρός, αλλά θα ήθελα να stdig αναζητήσετε λέξεις ή να χρησιμοποιήσετε δίγλωσσα κείμενα. Οι Ινδονησίακή και ιρλανδική γλώσσες μου πηγαίνουν επίσης προς τα εμπρός, αλλά κάτω ακόμα χρειάζομαι ένα λεξικό ή δίγλωσσα κείμενο.
Yesterday I spent most of my time on three languages which I hardly ever have spoken (apart from the videos I have made in two of them): Greek, where I had a few short conversations in Flórina and Kastoriá, Indonesian where I asked for a small honey drink in the zoo of Kuala Lumpur with the words "kecil, please" - and got my pronunciation of "kecil" corrected - and Irish where I didn't dare to say anything in Irish last summer in Galway ... but I did listen in busses and other places, and I have since then listen to a fair amount of Irish on the internet. I expect to test my Greek next year, and it is not totally unrealistic that I also can arrange a trip to Indonesia soon - but it serves no purpose to go back to Ireland soon because I doubt that I'll ever get the chance to speak any Irish, and I wouldn't be ready for it if I went in 2013. Outside these three languages I could go to Iceland for the next Universal Esperanto congress and get a boost to my Icelandic at the same time. But Icelandic hotel prices have crept upwards since the collapse a few years ago, and besides I have already visited Reykjavík twice. And Russian? Well, I have not used it in practice for several years, and right now I see my passive skills go upwards, while it seems that my active level stays put at somewhere within the intermediate range. That's not good enough so I'll have to do something about it - also because I have let it delay my studies of other Slavic languages. So even though the Russian visa regulations become more and more kremlologic and prices rise I may have to go there in person to get the necessary boost. Latin? Well, no spoken Latin, but that's something I could train - I have been at a reasonable stage already, and a few days with constant thinking in Latin would probably do the trick. And it should be possible to arrange a short trip to the Netherlands or Belgium next year to confirm my level in Dutch. Apart from Romanian I have used all my Romance languages plus German and (of course) English in 2012, so I know they are OK here and now - I have travelled extensively in Europe and I have also planned a trip to Cuba next year. I have heard that they speak Spanish there... Why these status declarations right now you may ask? Why not wait until New Year like most members here do? Well, this log has just passed the 1.600.000 hits last night. That should be excuse enough. Edited by Iversen on 15 November 2012 at 12:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3095 of 3959 15 November 2012 at 11:30am | IP Logged |
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On the topic of Irish, how do they deal with new technological concepts that have been
introduced in the 20th century (I'm thinking cars and aeroplanes here, not USB ports and such). In Breton, a car is described as a chariot of fire (karr-tan), petrol is water- fire (dour-tan) and an aeroplane is a flying chariot (karr-nij). Karr means "char" (according to my French Assimil), so I wondered if Irish also does this or if it just loans the words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3096 of 3959 15 November 2012 at 12:11pm | IP Logged |
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Irish has borrowed the word 'car', but modified it slightly to "carr". I don't have my trusty Collins dictionary with me so I checked 'computer' through Google translate and got "ríomhaire", which turned out to be a derivation of "riomh", which means 'count' (which in its turn would make "ríomhaire" a close parallel to Icelandic "tölva"). I noticed at the same time that Irish has lost its automatic speech generator in Google translate - maybe they got too many complaints?. On the other hand abair.ie has had a facelift since my last visit there so that it now offers three dialects - but I still prefer my trusty Irish lady from somewhere in the North.
An airplane is an "eitilt". According to wictionary "eitilt" means either the flicker of a flame or 'flight, flutter'. Luckily there are also online Irish dictionaries, and one of them gives me the form "eitleán" - so Google translate was wrong again. Back to Wiktionary, and bingo - "eitleán(n m1)" actually means airplane. In most of the cases where there is an English loanword in English it has been accommodated to the Irish phonology and grammar. For instance an 'airport' has become an "aerfort'. I have wondered whether such a word is inflected in the same way as older Irish words (which also can be loanwords, like "Eorpa" for 'Europe'), but Google translate doesn't inflect it at all in the contexts I have tried. However I found the inflected forms in texts on the internet: ".. bhfuil an t-aerfort suite .." (in a text about the weird airport of Gibraltar), but also examples without inflection "Tuairiscíodh níos luaithe go bhfuil an aerfort comhlonnú ..." (about a closed airport somewhere in Siberia). The genitive-accusative form "airfoirt" certainly exists (at least outside Google Translate), but you see "Bóthar an Aerfoirt" in some places, "Bóthar an Aerfort" in others ("bothar" = 'road'), and I can't figure out why. As always in Irish there may be an explanation which I just haven't learnt yet, but right now I would look a question mark if you could see me. Edited by Iversen on 15 November 2012 at 3:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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