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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 313 of 646 04 February 2013 at 11:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I used hyperliteral translations to get used to the Irish Gaelic way of formulating things - i.e. when I translated an Irish sentence in my head I also put the verb in initial position in the translation, but added the mental equivalent of an exclamation mark to remind me that this wasn't a question (if I wrote the translation down I would obviously also write the exclamation point). I formulated the nominalized constructions as such in Danish or English in my head, and I started yes-no questions with Danish "mon" or Latin "num" or Esperanto "ĉu" (there is no single word in English for "this is a yes-no question", so you have to pick one from another language). With time you can stop using these translation tricks because your brain becomes accustomed to the Celtic way of thinking, but for me it definitely accelerated the habituation process that I could move some of it to languages I knew better than Irish.
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 314 of 646 05 February 2013 at 10:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the advice, Iversen! I don't have that much of a problem translating Gaelic sentences into German, but rather formulating Gaelic sentences on my own. Who would have thought that something as simple as "I love you" could become such a complex mess like "There is love at me on you" ('Tha gaol agam ort')... All those prepositional pronouns! It's just a bit weird in the beginning, but I hope I'll get used to it soon. Edited by Josquin on 05 February 2013 at 8:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4605 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 315 of 646 05 February 2013 at 10:53am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, it can take a while to get used to! It's worth it though, just to see how a Gael would express common things, like you said with "Tha gaol agam ort". In my dialect of English, which is heavily influenced by Irish we sometimes use direct translations of the Irish. For example, "What's on you?" (Irish: Céard atá ort?) means what's wrong with you, and you took a fright out of me (Bhain tú geit asam) means "you frightened me". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 316 of 646 06 February 2013 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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WEDNESDAY, 06 FEBRUARY 2013
This will be a short update. First of all, I have been working on unit 17 in Colloquial Russian, but I haven't done the exercises yet. The same goes for unit 6 in Lehrbuch der schottisch-gälischen Sprache, but I have already sneaked a peek at unit 7, which deals with the days of the week, several prepositions, and the dative. There are no news on the Icelandic front however. Today's great news are that I ordered some books from Amazon, which are all language-related. I bought Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights in English, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary in French, and an old copy of Langenscheidt's Praktisches Lehrbuch Italienisch in order to brush up my more-than-rusty Italian. Frankly speaking, I'm not much in the mood for studying at the moment, but maybe it will be more enjoyable when I simply read literature in my foreign languages. Other than that, I have started reading some popular linguistic books about the Celtic, respectively the Indo-European languages. They're very interesting, but I nevertheless don't think I'll read them cover to cover. Sometimes, I muse I might have become a good philologist, but then there's the part of me that loves music so much -- just as in the famous line from Goethe's Faust: "Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust!" ('Two souls, alas, dwell within my breast!') Be that as it may, I have a few days off now, so I hope I'll be able to use them for language learning. I still haven't recovered 100 %, but I'm definitely above 90 % now. I hope the last 10 % will be reached soon, but I noticed that I have to listen more to my body and soul and not only to the desires of the mind. I kind of ignored this insight during the last few months, but I'm aware of it now. EDIT: Thanks, liammcg, for your insights into Irish English! I wouldn't have thought that Irish really influenced English, I only imagined it the other way round. I'm getting used to Gaelic phrasing more and more, but conjugating the prepositions correctly still gives me a hard time. Edited by Josquin on 06 February 2013 at 7:46pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liammcg Senior Member Ireland Joined 4605 days ago 269 posts - 397 votes Speaks: English* | Message 317 of 646 06 February 2013 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would say that the instances I mentioned above are generally confined to older speakers of the dialect in question, though I do use such things when talking with family/older people etc. The influence of the phonology of Irish on the dialect is much more felt, as it generally is all around the "Wesht" of the country ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 318 of 646 08 February 2013 at 7:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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FRIDAY, 08 FEBRUARY 2013
Okay, today I managed to do a good deal of studying, but I noticed it still exhausts me a little bit. I finished unit 17 in Colloquial Russian and started unit 18. Then I tried to do some Gaelic, but I only managed to read the text and the grammar explanations of unit 7. When I tried to listen to the recordings I noticed I couldn't concentrate any more, so I stopped studying and listened to some music instead. I had planned to do some Icelandic as well, but I will probably have to postpone this until tomorrow. Well, it's not all bad, because I managed to study Russian really intensively. First of all, I did the exercises of unit 17 and repeated some of the vocabulary, then I worked through the text and dialogue of unit 18. While the grammar is divided in manageable chunks (unit 18 deals with present and past active participles and the words некого, нечего, негде, некуда, and некогда) the amount of new vocabulary somehow overwhelms me. When I read the text of unit 18 for the first time it was like reading hieroglyphes, because I had to look up every second word. I already had the same experience when I read unit 17 for the first time, so one can say that the texts in Colloquial Russian are getting really demanding. The translation exercises are getting demanding as well. I don't know what's the use in knowing the words for "disposable syringe", but Svetlana Le Fleming and Susan E. Kay obviously thought they were very important, as you can see in the following exercise: 1) Питер чувствовал себя плохо три дня. Он думал, что он простудился, когда он ловил рыбу на озере у Саши. В тот день шёл сильный дождь и было очень холодно. Конечно, они выпили много водки потом, так как Саша счистал, что водка самое лучшее лекарство! Но утром Питер почувствовал себя ужасно. У него ужасная головная боль и болело горло. Температура у него тоже высокая, почти тридцать восемь, и он едва мог говорить. К счастью, Саша пришёл и вызвал врача. Когда врач пришёл, он осмотрел Питера и сказал, что у него грипп. 2) Российское здравоохранение в тяжелейшем положении. В некоторых больницах не хватает даже простейшего оборудования и лекарств. 3) СПИД распостраняется быстрее всего, когда нет одноразовых шприцев. Well, as you can see the last three sentences are rather advanced and I'm not sure how useful they will be. Well, I copied the more complicated expressions directly from the vocabulary list anyway, but I DID THE EXERCISE!!! Unit 18 won't get any easier as it discusses the rights and the position of women in post-Soviet Russia. I forgot to mention my Gaelic translation exercise that I did a few days ago. For all Celtophiles, this is what I can say in Gaelic right now. Unfortunately, the text doesn't make much sense, because it consists of single sentences that I had to translate from German into Gaelic, but here it goes: Seo an taigh agam. A bheil taigh agaibh ann an Glaschu? Tha, tha taigh agam an seo ann an Glaschu. Seo am mac agam, Cailean MacDhòmhnaill, agus sin an nighean agam, Màiri NicDhòmhnaill. Tha an t-acras orm. Seo an seòmar agam fhìn agus sin an seòmar agad fhèin. A bheil Màiri ann? Chan eil, tha mi fhìn ann. Seo Port Rìgh agus sin Inbhir Nis. A Chailein, a bheil am pathadh ort? 'S e Màiri Chaimbeul an t-ainm a th' orm agus seo an nighean agam, Ealasaid. Bha Ealasaid an seo, ach cha robh am mac agam, Iain Caimbeul. Bidh e an siud. Bha an càr an siud mòr. A bheil an taigh agad beag? Tha, tha e beag. Am bi thu ann an Glaschu a-màireach? Cha bhi. Bidh mi a' coiseachd a-màireach. Bidh Màiri a' sgrìobhadh litir. Cuin a bhios tu ann am Port Rìgh? Chan eil fhios agam. Edited by Josquin on 10 February 2013 at 3:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 319 of 646 09 February 2013 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Your main problem is word order. You tend putting adverbs at the end, while they are more often before the verb in Russian. Modifiers of time are usually at the beginning. К счастью, Саша пришёл is practically impossible. The rest is correct except for a few typos.
I don't know Gaelic but I understood something and want to check my understanding. I did not look anywhere but tried to translate this text: Вот мой дом. У вас есть дом в Глазго? Да, у меня есть дом в Глазго. Вот мой сын - Кален МакГональ. Я голоден. Вот моя комната, а вот - и ваша. Мари там? Нет, там я. Вот Порт Рий, а вот - Иньвирь Нищ. Меня зовут Мари Хамб?л, а вот моя дочь Яласач. Яласач была здесь, но не было моего сына - Яня. Он будет... .... У вас маленький дом? Да, он маленький. Ты будешь завтра в Глазго? Нет. Я завтра буду (ходить?). Мари будет писать письмо. ... ты знаешь в Порт Рие. Не знаю. ann an does not require any mutations, does it? Edited by Марк on 09 February 2013 at 5:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 320 of 646 09 February 2013 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for your corrections! Your translation is quite good as well. You know some Irish, don't you? So I guess this was rather easy for you. No, "ann an" doesn't require any mutations. Luckily, in Scottish Gaelic there is only one kind of mutation: lenition. Eclipse exists in some dialects, but it's not used in the written language. Here's an English translation of the text (I'm not going to try to translate from Gaelic to Russian...): Here is my house. Do you have a house in Glasgow? Yes, I have a house here in Glasgow. This is my son, Colin MacDonald, and that is my daughter, Mary MacDonald. I'm hungry. This is my own room and that is your own room. Is Mary there? No, I'm there myself. This is Portree and that is Inverness. Colin, are you thirsty? My name is Mary Campbell and this is my daughter, Elizabeth. Elizabeth was here, but not my son, Ian Campbell. He'll be over there. My car over there was big. Is your house small? Yes, it's small. Will you be in Glasgow tomorrow? No, I'll go walking tomorrow. Mary will write a letter. When will you be in Portree? I don't know. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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