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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 17 of 42 07 June 2010 at 2:58pm | IP Logged |
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SUMMARY FOR MARCH 2010
28 February 2010(p. 213) Ruskivyetr (GER): has never seen a larger log than this one 2 March 2010 (p. 214) GER: .. At least it illustrates the notion of 'stamina'. I'm back from Trinidad. During my visit I have not only spoken English (and French once), but also trained German and Irish by studying the Kauderwelsch volume about Irish, and I even brought a tiny Russian grammar along. Fasulye (GER): Owns 4 x Kauderwelsch: Catalan, Persian, Lithuanian and Danish. 3 March 2010 (p. 214) ENG:: Nomenclature: the Sovjet upperclasse, but also the science about naming things, exemplified by the naming of certain hummingbirds on trinidad (jacobins) Dragonfly: The notion of 'nomenclatura' died with the Sovjet Union. 4 March 2010 (p. 214) Ruskivyetr (GER): the word "humming bird" is onomatopoetic. The word "colibri" is Latin and comes from the name of a genus GER:: It is more complicated. There are no humming birds in the Old World, so the Latin word 'colibri' is a loan from some Caribbean language. The French call them "oiseaux-mouche" (mosquito birds) 5 March 2010 (p. 214) LAT:: I have read parts of the Latin forum attached to the Finnish radio station YLE, which has radioprograms in (Neo)Latin. 8 March 2010 (p. 215) GER:: I have spent a lot of time updating the member list of my travel club. But I could at least watch German TV, where I saw a program about an extinct prosimian called "Ida" (or "Darwinius masillae"), that lived 35 million years ago and showed signs of becoming a true monkey, but with tgraits sthat point towards us. "Genial daneben" taught me the word "Kofferwort", i.e. a word that is made from the beginning of one word and the end of another. Fasulye (GER): knows the finding place Messel. 9 March 2010 (p. 215) POR: I have watched a program about the Portuguese infante Dom Henriques, who was the primus motor behind the Portuguese navals explorations SP: My current bus-back-home-from-work-book is the big fat Red one of Spanish idioms. 10 March 2010 (p. 215) Hobbema (POR) has read about the period(s) where Portugal and the Netherlands were far more important in the exploration of the Earth than their size would indicate. SCO: I have been listening to Billy Connally again and also studied some Scots resources on the internet LAT: I'm also reading Satyricon by Petronius SP: and I still read the Big Red Book of Spanish Idioms, now in the train to our neighbour town Viborg and back 11 March 2010 (p. 215) ENG:: Something about a 'lost' tribe of bushmen in Kenya GR: I have read (intensively) an article about deep sea life in my Greek issue of "Science Illustrated" GER: I'm going to listen all my Scumann-tapes through now, noting down themes or opying them from an older collection of themes 12 March 2010 (p. 215) Tommus: something about language interference (inspired my use of 'project' in a German passage and 'projekt' in an English one) Genini1: fears that studying German will make his native English incomprehensible Fasulye: notes one more error concerning ambitiös / ambitious GER:: listening to an interview with Gerd Spiekermann, the 'Low German voice" on NDR radio 13 March 2010 (p. 216) IT: watching "The North West Passage" on Raiuno, about emperor Augustus, the earthquake of Lisboa and Caucasian-like mummies in Central Asia. ENG:: a very belated summary for February 15 March 2010 (p. 216) SP: I have mostly been watching Spanish TV, with a program about foreigners who have settled in the Basque area and Spaniards in Cameroun. SW: Something about rising CO2 levels in the oceans on Swedish TV ENG: Further studies in Irish, including the bad translations of Google (worse than usual with such a rare language) 16 March 2010 (p. 216) Ruskyvyetr (SP): Likes the Basque country, and wants very much to visit it. (GER) Wonders how many Basque grammars, dictionaries and books in general you can find. GER:: Most of what I know about Basque has come from the small Kauderwelsch book. I have checked the book situation for Basque on the internet and ended up buying a grammar and a dictionary. Fasulye (GER): Suggests places where you can buy German books over the internet, with a few concrete tips concerning books about Basque 17 March 2010 (p. 217) GER:: In fact I have just bought the German-based Basque grammar and dictionary that Fasulye refers to. Fasulye (GER): Stern Verlag (which has books about many rare languages) also ship abroad 18 March 2010 (p. 217) GER:: I have already bought most of the relevanbt dictionaries and grammars for 'my' languages tat I might expect to find in a normal Danish bookstore, so I'll be buying more and more books over the internet. ENG: The town council in my hometown Århus is planning to change the spelling to the more 'international' "Aarhus". I see this as a tribute to braindead commercialism and pseudo-smartness Fasulye (GER): Bad idea to rename Århus Hobbema: I have just confirmed that buzzwords and business jargon are indeed now a global pandemic Strobe: Also finds that the renaming is a bad idea - it will have the opposite effect to what they desire 19 March 2010 (p. 217) IT, DA, SW, LAT, RUS, ENG, ESP: my activities today (with hyperliteral translations) , divided into TV watching and other things 20 March 2010 (p. 217) FR: Something about tattoos and mody modifications on TV5, - rather extreme near the end! IC: I have visited our local Archeological Museum Moesgård to see a film partly in Old Norse. But in fact only the prologue to the tale about Helga the Fair was included, and one character was without any background in the saga transformed into a Chinese whoman. Fasulye (DU) has visited Nijmegen during the 'stargazerdays', but because of rain there wasn't any actual gazing. Besides it was "National book week" in the Netherlands, and she bought a calendar in Portuguese, which may or may not be her next language. POR: for someone who already know several Romance languges Portuguese shouldn't be too much of a problem. 21 March 2010 (p. 217) Hobbema: agrees that Fasulye should be able to learn Portuguese airly easily. 22 March 2010 (p. 217) ENG:: I have spent on diaries for my Trinidad tour that ended several weeks ago, on the home page of my club and on reorganizing the 'favorites' on my computer. (PLATT): But I also watched a program i part High, part Low German - with lots of subtitling, which is rare in German television. The program dealt with German speaking people in Russian, including some that spoke not Platt, but "Plaut Dietsch". This is allegedly the dialect of Russian Mennonites Fasulye (GER): There are also Mennonites in Krefeld - but she didn't suspect that these people had something to do with Low German oz-hestekræfte: If Århus is going to change its name it can just as well change it completely (like København <--> COpenhagen) .. for instance to Orhus. ENG:: In the Viking age the town was called Aros (the 'mouth' of the Ar-river, now "Århus å"). 23 March 2010 (p. 218) Plautdietscha: 'Plautdietsch' is spoken widely in America (both South and North) by religious communities, - plus a reference to the website plautcast.com. Fasulye (GER): question to me: how do I deal with languages to which I haven't got any personal connection? 24 March 2010 (p. 218) GER:: Learning the language of a country is already some kind of connection. I have travelled to many places and can contact people all over the world through the internet, so I don't miss being in close personal contact. PLATT: Plaut is not too difficult to understand, but it is different from my usual kind of Low German. ENG: I have watched a program about Electronic gadgets, including Amazon's Kindle. It seems that the hardware is good, but outside USA it is severaly limited in what it can do. Not recommended for European buyers. Str0be: "electronic" (not electronical) Sprachprofi: bought a Sony e-reader and is happy with it 26 March 2010 (p. 218) LAT: I have found the archives where transcripts of YLE Radio's news broadcasts are kept 29 March 2010 (p. 218) ENG: I have visited my mother and brought my old 'Teach Yourself Irish' along. I even did some drills. GR: I also brought my sole issue of the Greek "Science Illustrated", but I had already read all the articles GER: I have watched "Genial daneben" on SAT1 (my mother has Astra satellite TV) SCO: I'm going to take a few days in Stirling, Scotland, so I'll be training my Scots - but I don't expect to speak it, and maybe not even hear it - maybe genuine hardcore Scots is a myth like the Loch Ness monster. GER: On ZDF there was a program about the find of a village that in all likelihood was populated by the original builders of Stonehenge. RU: I have read about the Russian history before the Mongols (though much of it took place in Kiev, which is now the capital of Ukraine) SCO: Something about my first visit to Scotland in 1973 30 March 2010 (p. 218) Dantalian (RU) makes some corrections to my Russian text from 29/3 30 March 2010 (p. 218) Fasulye (DU): surprised that she has written so much in German here RU: I am always somewhat nervous when I write in Russian because I know that it will be corrected, though this time the corrections are relatively benign Dantalian (RU): The point of at least one correction was not understood RU: acknowledged. The book I was writing about has accents that indicate stress because it is published for the benefit of language learners. DU: I have watched a program in Dutch (on Danish TV!) about the conflict between Margareth Thatcher and the mineworkers under Scargill. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 18 of 42 07 June 2010 at 3:00pm | IP Logged |
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SUMMARY FOR APRIL 2010
01 April 2010 (p. 220) Dantalian: final comment to a discussion in Russian from March 02 April 2010 (p. 220) ENG: A visit Scotland planned from the following day, in spite of bad weather forecasts LAT: Found a treasure trove filled with transcripts of Latin News from Radio Yle 05 April 2010 (p. 221) SCOTS: A belated message from Scotland about my travel there with some historical references. Found a church in Stirling with information leaflets in scores of languages. 06 April 2010 (p. 221) SCOTS: You can hear Billy Connally speaking Scots at Youtube Fasulye (ENG): Connally is a vulgar person who curses all the time. Asks which leaflets I took at the church. ENG: The leaflets were not meant to be taken away, but I photographed some of them (a specimen in Scots shown).. More about my activities in Scotland. 08 April 2010 (p. 221) NO: I am back home, and I have watrched 'Schrödingers Kat' on NRK (a scientific program), SP: .. followed by a program about Argentinian soccer fanatics. FR: I have been rereading "Science and Avenir" in French from my last trip there. Several references to articles there, including one about insomnia causing extra brain activity in the Amygdala (a center for primitive feelings) GER: Note about the physicist Schrödinger, who found the formula for light wawes. Fasulye (GER): Didn't know Schrödinger, but his theories evidently have something to do with probabilities (FR): Has met with a group of Esperantists in Düsseldorf. Glossa.passion (DA): first comment in a year. Has watched Erik Kjersgaard tell about Danish history. FR: Links to the homepages of two French science mags. I mention a couple of articles, including one that states that Japanese can digest the algues in Sushi, but Westerners can't. I hate sushi. DA: I remember my discussions with Glossa.Passions about Danish. Erik Kjersgaard is an eminent narrator. 09 April 2010 (p. 222) Glossa.passion (GER): Likes the simple and infornmative style of Kjersgaard Fasulye (FR): Thanks for the links to the french magazines. (DK): Glad that Glossa.Passion can write so much in Danish. GR: I have watched a program about the Minoans on History Channel. 10 April 2010 (p. 222) Mick33 (AFR): A confirmatory comment to my linking of the heightened amygdala activity in insomniacs with youngster loss of sleep due to playing violint games and watrching blooddripping films. Some North Americans get sick if they eat sushi. DA: I have watched some Danish V, including a program about the totally idiotic questions in opinion queries .. SW: .. and a Swedish program, that raises some questions about immigrations to Sweden in the Stone age 11 April 2010 (p. 222) ENG: This thread has had 302.451 hits. ROM: I have added indications about the use or non-use of infixes in Romanian verbs in my Theora (the section with letter B). Ideally this informatione should figure in every Romanian dictionary. ENG: Similar infixes in Italian verbs on -ire. A reference to an article by Jan-Arjen Mondria, which deals almost brutally with some popular myths about language learning 12 April 2010 (p. 223) Newyorkeric: Finds some of the esamples from opinion measurements hilarious. Wonders how you can believe that you can measure happiness across different cultures. ENG: More about questionnaries. A reference to a severe criticism of the Swedish program about immigration in the Stone age. ESP: Comments to a number of articles in Esperanto at eo.mondediplo.com and www.eventeo.net. One discusses whether countries can go bankrupt, another informs about the find of a new Human species in SIberia through DNA analyses, 14 April 2010 (p. 223) ENG: Something about an article by a professor Snyder, who suggests that savant abilites are caused by a lack of activity in some parts of the brain, rather than intensified activity. IC: Some remarks about Beowulf, after having studied a bilingual edition of this Anglosaxon poem which is the oldest source that mention Danish kings by name. ENG: I have written a travelogue in Scots for my travel club 15 April 2010 (p. 224) IC: I have mentioned the Icelandic volcano under Eyjafjallajökull some time ago. Now it has sewed out a lot of volcanish ash, which threatens to block European air traffic. 19 April 2010 (p. 224) GER: A German TV program about a village in Switzerland, that celebrates Easter at a fountain in the valley their village proper. Then a couple of nature programs. DA: A trip to the lion park af Givskud in Danish. SW: Something about a TV program about epigenetics, i.e. a new science about heritance through other mechanisms than DNA. IC: I have also been in Copenhagen to hear something about Japanese volcanoes at a meeting in my travel club. Fasulye (ENG): Is very interested in the Icelandic volcanoes, has trouble pronouncing Eyjafjallajökull. (ESP): Has had a conversations with 4 polyglots through skype. 19 April 2010 (p. 224) ESP: I don't like speaking through a telephone, not even Skype. I have registered at Sprachprofis Esperanto forum. IC: More about ICelandic volcanoes, including the ashspewing one under Eyjafjallajökull ENG: I finished reading the bilingual edition of Beowuld the day before. 22 April 2010 (p. 224) FR: I have listened to several cassettes (tapes) with music of the Russian composer Scriabin. ENG: Eyjafjallajökull is not the name of the volcano, but of the ice cap on top of it. A reference to a funny article about the trouble foreigners have with the name. 23 April 2010 (p. 225) Hobbema (DU/ENG): A comment to my rant about Scriabin, which mentioned his development in style. POR: A comment to Hobbema's comment to my rant about Scriabin, with speal regard to his development in style. NO: A program on Norwegian TV about volcanism and its role in ending the total freeze of planet during the Precambrian (also known as "snowball Earth"). 24 April 2010 (p. 225) Hobbema (POR): More about development in musical style, with a reference to the piece "4.33" by John Cage, where a pianist doesn't play anything for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. (ENG): Hobbema played experimental music earlier in his life. POR: "4.33" is the only piece by Cage which I might ever want to hear - but I don't want to watch. Hobbema: a link to a 'performance' of Cage's product. ENG: The succes of a piece like "4.33" proves that the public that attends avantgarde concerts is proud of being fooled. I have seen a program about new kinds of solar panels. No comment to the fact that China controls the deposits of many rare elements, including those that are used in solar panels and in electronics. When the supply of these rare elements stops, then our electronic age is over. SP: I have also watched the program from Galicia in Spanish TVE, but it is unfortunately not in Gallego. 26 April 2010 (p. 225) FR: This time I have watched a French program about the Everglades in Florida, followed by a clip about the Chilean town Valapariso, which I actually have visited during the 90s. SP: At my job I had for the first time an opportunity to speak some Spanish. 27 April 2010 (p. 225) Fasulye (SP): Congratulations! My collegues may not know what a polyglot is.. 28 April 2010 (p. 225) SP: Well, they do know what it is, and also that I was interested in languages - but not to the extent that I could speak Spanish if I got the chance. DU: I have been watching a series in Danish TV about episodes in European history, and for once the base language was Dutch, but most interviews were conducted in the local languages, in this case a number of Balkan languages. IT: Afterwards a program about the find of a gigantic tomb with 1000 skeletons near one of the ROman catacombs. SW: I have reread the first lessons of my Teach Yourself Irish. And I'll bring it along during a small trip to Sweden and Norway. 29 April 2010 (p. 225) ENG: This evening I'm going to hear something about a visit to the Caucasus countries at a meeting in my travel club. After that I'll continue directly to Sweden. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 19 of 42 07 June 2010 at 3:01pm | IP Logged |
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SUMMARY FOR MAY 2010
1 May 2010 (p. 226) SW: Message from Göteborg (Gothenburg) about transport to Oslo and buying Swedish Sience mags (plus one in French), Something about the conlang Volapük, a forerunner of Esperanto. NO: Message from Oslo, where I was thoroughly schocked by the prices on food. 3 May 2010 (p. 226) Hobbema has also visited Göteborg. He went into a car hire office and began to speak Dutch. NO: About my activities on a busy day in Oslo 5 May 2010 (p. 227) DA: Back home again NO: Something about my activities in Kristianssand, including a visit to the local library and my attempts to find books written in Nynorsk in the bookstores 6 May 2010 (p. 227) FR: Comments to the issue of the French magazine "Science et Vie" which I found in Lund, Sweden, in particular to a story about the DNA analyses of King Tut's whole family. And about enormous black holes. And about the health gains from drinking red wine. Fasulye (FR): Doesn't drink alcohol,and that includes red wine. The easiest way to 'see' a dark hole is to look for radiowawes 7 May 2010 (p. 227) FR: A link to the home page of Science et Vie. And actually you can't see a black hole, - even the radiowawes are emitted by matter that is hurling towards it. Sometimes you can also see the effects of the curvature of spacetime around a black hole. 9 May 2010 (p. 227) ENG: I have been buzzing around since my return from Norway. FR: I spend the weekend at my mothers house, watching German television - but also the French channel TV5 with Russian (!) subtitles RU: I also brought a Russian Grammar, which has a lot of short phrases that illustrate the use of cases with verbs and prepositions. ESP: after my return I have looked at some filmclips with an actor named Shattner 10 May 2010 (p. 227) Fasulye (GER): has been an election official at the local election in Nordrhein-Westphalen. For this she gets some money and a coupon, which she wants to use for a guided visit to the Zoo in Krefeld. GER: I have only once visited this zoo, and contrary some other zoos it doesn't have its own TV series. Also some comments to the election result i NRW. IC: The irritating Icelandic volcano has pumped more ash out, which has passed over Irland to Portugal and Estwards to Northern Italy. Can be a problem for my upcoming tour to Côte d'Azur (the Riviera). 11 May 2010 (p. 227) Fasulye (GER): prefers not to comment on the election result. Expects problems writing about a visit to a zoo in a foreign language because of all the unknown animal names GER: In this log Fasulye can write her zoo review in German. I personally visited the Krefeler Zoo on a winter holiday in the Ruhr area, whee I visited 7 zoos and the Neanderthal museum in Neanderthal. And in spite of many zoovisits I don't know all animal names in German. I have played Father Christmas on German TV in a program from the Leipzig zoo. Fasulye (GER): Is studying German animal names on the homepage of the Krefeld Zoo. (ENG) Has tried to train her Danish by the first post I wrote after my return from Norway, but found some words puzzling. Danac: The reason is that the text is in Norwegian. Was however puzzled by the word "målføreformer" 12 May 2010 (p. 228) ENG: Målføreformer = ways of writing Norwegian. PS: don't trust my Norwegian. Fasulye (DA/ENG): Hilarious that she thought the Norwegian text was in Danish, - those two languages are really close. ENG: I have corrected the erroneous language indication. However I didn't use my PC the whole evening! GR: I have been studying some pages from a book about Athens RU: I have been studying the pages about Jaroslav the Wise in a book about Russian history ENG: I have been reading the Danish edition of the official EU book about language tresholds - i.e. the scale from A1 to C2. 13 May 2010 (p. 228) Fasulye: has revisited a homepage to which a number of polyglots once gave some interviews. These have now been translated into Russian, but there are no new interviews to be found. 15 May 2010 (p. 229) FR: The webmaster of that page is Russian, so I'm not surprised by the translation, but more over the lack of new interviews. This message is written from Marseille, where I ave been visiting museums. And it is "Museum night" with free access to the museums until midnight. 16 May 2010 (p. 229) Sprachprofi (FR): I should visit Berlin to see the "Carnival of Cultures", May 21 FR: I'm back home now after my short visit to he Riviera. I would like to visit Berlin again, but it is too short time after my other small trips. I have bought 11 scientific or historial mags in France. No volcanic ash problems. Fasulye (FR): Enough to read for several days! Has had an excellent evening speaking to 4 polyglots over SKype. GER: I have read more about these conversations elsewhere (in the thread about Torbyrne), but speaking over telephone is not really my cup of tea 17 May 2010 (p. 230) Fasulye (GER): Making videos is not for everybody. But she likes doing it and gets friendly comments on Youtube. She has to use Skype, whereas I can travel. 20 May 2010 (p. 230) ENG: More about the Danish edition of the official EU book about language tresholds - i.e. the scale from A1 to C2, and I'm not too impressed. No concrete advice and some presumptions about language levels which aren't totally in accord with my experiences. Furthermore comments to a Book about the find of the Dead See scroll and (in particular) about the extremely slow publication process. Wise-owl-chick: What is wrong with the A1-C2 scale? Different languages may have different 'amount' at different levels - German is difficult in the beginning, English higher up on the scale. ENG: I don't mind that there is a scale, but it presupposes a situation where you first speak about daily life with your study comrades, and then you extend the range until you can participate in for instance scientific discussion. But I start at the other end with the scientific discussions and and then proceed to babytalk. Apart from that the whole book is boring - I'm glad I don't have to translate such things. Fasulye: For most people conversations about daily life are easier to follow than scientific articles, - at 20 Fasulye knew a lot of French, but "Sciende et Avenir" would have been above her horizon. On the other hand literature is full of unknown vocabulary, but some persons (including her father) are well versed in that kind of language. SP: I have watched Spanish TV (TVE), where the expression P.I.G.S (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain) was used during a discussion about European economy. DA: On Danish TV the director of the National Bank warned against a ban on a particularly vicious kind of financial speculation, because "the markets" might reacht unfavourably (!) SW: On Swedish TV: a program about woodpeckers FR: A podcast from www.cieletesoaceradio.fr about the 'scientific' aspects of the film "Avatar", among other things about the structure of the planetary system of the film RO: Several clips in Romanian from www.tvr.ro, with interesting subjects but all very short (1-2 minuts) 21 May 2010 (p. 231) Fasulye (FR): Likes the podcasts from cieletespaceradio, has read one issue of the corresponding magazine on paper. Sprachprofi: Has seen Avatar twice, once in English in the ordinary format and once in an Imax theatre in German, - and didn't feel bored at any time ENG: OK, I may watch the film when it turns up on my own TV screen (which may have to be updated first). I recorded the dinosaurs of Jurassic part on VHS and discarded the plot, and something similar would happen with Avatar. Fasulye: Rarely watches movies, but like to watch Turkish movies to get the iommersion and sometimes accompanies a blind friend to explain the visual details. She would also watch a film about dinosaurs, astronomy, meterology with the eyes of an amateur scientist, rather than for entertainment. (GER) Her Astronomy club has a problem: its building is scheduled to be torn down next year, and the new location is difficult to get to without a car. FR: A reference to a podcast at cieletespaceradio which tells about an old Chinese stellar map from around the 7. century, found in a cave in Taklamakan with 60.000 other manuscripts (!) - we have heard surprisingly little about this find. GER: It is a pity that the astrononomy club of Fasulye has to move. Maybe it would be easier to go by train to a neighbour town than to her old club in its future location. Wise_owl_chick: Maybe she can get a lift with somebody who has got a car? Fasulye (GER): She has all of 2011 to find a solution. 24 May 2010 (p. 231) ENG: I have spent whitsun with my family, but I did bring my old Teach Yourself Irish plus a Russian grammar NO: Norwegian TV about a town Peterburg in Alaska, which has many inhabitants of Norwegian anestry, and therefore it celebrates the National Day (Independence day) of Norway on May 17 PLATT (first written af LGER, i.e. Low German): I have seen two programs on WDR from the German Frisian Islands - the local Frisian dialect has all but died out, but a small community of 1000-2500 still speak 'Saterfrisian'. While looking for a quote about this on the internet, I stumpeled over a German translation from 1834 of a Frisian Language description written by the eminent Danish polyglot Rasmus Rask - one of the founders of historical linguistics. There is even a Wikipedia in Saterfrisian. Wise_owl_chick: Poor Saterfrisian! Found it confusing that I had first written 'LGER' instead of 'Platt' PLATT: done! Wise_owl_chick (Limburgisch!): that's fine, she understands it perfectly like that 24 May 2010 (p. 231) Fasulye: Finds the things I have written about the situation of Easterly Frisian interesting. - she has spent some time in Aurich long ago, and already then the language had almost died out. However her brother-in-law speaks fluently Platt, and she can understand what he says - and once offered to translate a speech he had held. 25 May 2010 (p. 232) PLATT: East Frisian has become a tiny language, and Northern Frisian (along the coast of Jutland) is probably stone dead now - but the Frisians there has played an important role in Danish history. DU: Western Frisian along the Dutch Northern coast lives on. However I doubt that all the 400.000 that allegedly still know it speak it on a daily basis. LAT: Saxo Grammaticus wrote about the Frisians and their problems with inundations and storms in his Gesta Danorum from around 1240 (quote given) ENG: "One stage in the death of a language is the one where only the old people speak it, the middleaged understand it and the youngsters don't care" Hobbema: "Well said" 26 May 2010 (p. 232) ENG: I have finally written the summary for April (p. 226) Fasulye (DU): All well quoted in the summary. The TV station "Nederland 2" sends programs in Frisian with Dutch subtitles. Wise_owl_chick (DU): A pity that the Frisians never got their own state. She slept well - and very long time - and had yoghurt for breakdast. 28 May 2010 (p. 232) LAT: Have have been scanning postcards for my travel club for most of the evening. We have to report visits in new countries, and some send an e-mail ("ePistula"), but most still send oldfashioned postcards ("photocartula"). FR: Et the same time i listened to instrumental versions of short pieces from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. RO: I managed to find time for a longterm project: marking in my Teora Romanian-English dictionary which verbs have infixes and which haven't. I only have this information in a thick old dictionary from the Romanian Academy. SW: A TV program from Sweedish TV about a father and his son, who have a mobile grocery with which they visit Scanian villages that have lost their last shop. Strange that the Swedish dialect that is geographically closest to Denmark is said to be one of the most difficult to understand for Danes. Fasulye (GER): Has been in the company of her Esperanto group in Düsseldorf, where she read a text of the blind Ukrainean poet and polyglot Wasili Erosxenko together with three others, - including a newbee, so they had to speak German some of the time. She has concentration problems for the moment, so she will have to cut down on her Internet addiction. Hobbema (POR): He also prefers instrumental music, but the Medieval and Renaissance music suit the human voice well. LAT: I don't think it is against the spirit of the old music to play it on instruments - actually some old scores specify that the music can be sung or played on instruments. Most purely instrumental music from back then was anonymous dance music. DU: I have watched a lot of Dutch podcasts from AVRO, including a program about the Dutchman van Meegeren, who painted several pictures in the style of Vermeer. If Hermann G¨ring hadn't bought one of them his forgeries might never have been to light. 30 May 2010 (p. 233) RU: During the afternoon I spent some time copying passages about Suzdalj and Vladimir from my Russian history book. All unknown words were transferred to a wordlist. I have of course read the whole thing before, but you find a lot of things when you slow down by copying the text. GR: Same thing with Greek, where I used my Greek tourist guide to Athens. IT: On RaiUno I watched "Passaggio al Norte-Ovest", where the first item was a visit to the Palazzo Farnese aka Villa Caprarola near Viterbo. ENG: I even found time to study my trusty old Teach Yourself Irish. Some comments to the verbal system, including the particle 'do'. Wise-owl-chick: Irish seems to be extremely complicated. Van Meegeren must have been very talented. And she is eagerly awaiting the moment where she can make working links. DU: Van Meegeren was certainly very talented, - though I do think that his style is different from that of van Meegeren. BR alpha in Germany once had a series of programs with another talented painter, Tom Keating, who in each program painted a painting in the style of some old master while he explained the technique (which could be very complicated). IT: On Danish TV - but with interviews in Italian - I have watched a program about the two brothers Judeca, who during the early phase of the Space Exploration built their own listening station. DU: I don't know how long you have to wait before you can make working links. Josht: envies me my Russian history book with accents. Wise-owl-chick (DU): Is very interested in seeing what Keating did because she may study art, and she knows too little about painting techniques. Edited by Iversen on 07 June 2010 at 3:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 20 of 42 27 June 2010 at 12:27am | IP Logged |
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SUMMARY FOR JUNE 2010
1 June 2010 (p. 234) Hobbema: Many videos at Youtube have a bad quality. He understands much of my Latin because of the many loanwords in English. And he likes the Dutch painters from the Golden age, such as Vermeer, Ruisdael and (of course) Hobbema. Wise-owl-chick: Would like to study art, but will think of Hobbema from the forums rather than the painter. me ENG: There are actually many good recordings at Yourtube amoung all the rubbish, but the 10 minutes limit is irritating. And Latin is alive and kicking. DU: I can't really say much about Hobbema, because I know too little about him 3 June 2010 (p. 234) LAT: Every language that is worth learning is also worth learning as an active language, including Latin. Sources for spoken Latin: Latin.mypodcast.com, home.student.uu.se, www.e.millner.btinternet.co.uk, Nuntii latini apud www.yleradio1.fi/nuntii and www.radiobremen.de/nachrichten/latein - and Ephemeris for written Neolatin. Classical and Medieval Latin: www.hs-augsburg.de and tarheelreader.org, plus honorable mention to Sprachprofis's homepage. Fasulye: Can read the Latin texts, including the one about Grand Prix-winner Lena Meyer-Landrut LAT: Happy to have readers! Wise-owl-chick (DU): Has been on an excursion, was impressed by the very modern railway station of Leuk/Liège. DU: I haven't been there since the 70s, and the modern railwail station has apparently been built since then. ENG: hyperliteral translations of two sentences from an old Teach Yourself Irish, with comments about Irish grammar. Wise-owl-chick (DU): In Walloon the city's name's Lîdje. Liège is the French name and. The station was inaugurated in 2009. ENG: one more reason for revisiting the town NO: Something about a new dictionary of place names in the Samic languages. ENG: some of the depressingly low numbers for active speakers of the many Sami languages (from Wikipedia). 6 June 2010 (p. 235) Fasulye (DU): Has had a fine Skype-session. Will have to combine those with the upcoming soccer VM, which will take 4 weeks. 7 June 2010 (p. 235) ENG: I have read about the problems Wise-owl-chick has run into by asking for votes (because she also would like to get some nice pocals). In the process her former identity as Jar-Ptitsa was revealed, and her new account was abruptly terminated. Apart from that: I have spent the weekend with my family and my old TY Irish. IC: På dansk TV var der en udsendelse om vulkanudbruddet på Vestmannaeyjarna for 30 år siden 9 June 2010 (p. 235) LAT: I have been listening to spoken Latin at the homepages of Scorpionis Martensis and Universitatem Saravipontanam (Saarland!). Quite generally people too slowly in order to get the vowel lengths correct, - otherwise the purists would stand ready to murder them ENG: I have started to learn a few expressions in Malaysian (Bahasa) from a Lonely Planet language guide, - but the English pronunciation directives are written with an obnoxious green colour, and with precisely this language the original spelling is more informative. Glossa.passion (GER): a reference to a homepage with many podcasts about asciende in Spanish: http://cienciaes.com/ 10 June 2010 (p. 235) SP: I will certainly visit that homepage and listen to some scientific Spanish GER: Speculations about how virtual museums could be made 10 June 2010 (p. 236) Fasulye (GER): Doesn't watch that much soccer, but knows a lot about it. Watches sometimes soccer at a café and gets into conversations with people there 13 June 2010 (p. 236) SP: Haven't written anything for 3 days - shame on me! Watches the news at TVE internacional, and before that a program about glaciers, including some in South America - with interviews in Spanish. SCO: Went to the library to find a beter book about Malaysian, but to no avail. At least I have a somewhat less painful Lonely P about Indonesian (another form of Bahasa), plus a print-out about the grammar from Wikipedia. RU: I have studied a passage about Old Novgorod in Russia, including descriptions of letters written with runes on oak bark by ordinary citizens. They also had a 'thing' like those of Iceland and Isle of Man. Fasulye (SP): Can't study because of concentration problems 15 June 2010 (p. 236) ENG: I have been watching a three-part discussion between Seve Kaufmann and Vincent from Streetsmartlanguagelearning.com. Comments to their different positions on a.o.t. grammar studies and early vs. late speaking, where I prefer early thinking and late speaking Hobbema (POR): Can't think in foreign languages, accepts errors as a step towards correct solutions 16 June 2010 (p. 236) POR: I do worry about errors, but it is much more important to keep the flow, and it may be better to learn new things than it is to ponder over old errors. Thinking silently is good because nobody interferes, and you can start with simple word combiantions and proceed to complete sentences later. Apart from that: I have been listening to a lot of Sibelius, including his final masterwork Tapiola. Unfortunately I can't write about it in Finnish yet. 17 June 2010 (p. 236) Fasulye: Can think in DE - NL - FRA - ITA - ESP - EN - SPA and switch between them - but not (yet) in Latin, Turkish or Danish. ENG: references to an earlier discussion about wordless thinking (versus thinking in word and/or images). The GLOSS site is still inaccessible. SCO: I have been reading the Scots grammar from Wikipedia ICE: My new goodnight reading is the Odyssey in Icelandic, - and it works perfectly: I fall asleep Josht: can see GLOSS 18 June 2010 (p. 237) Hobbema: Making steady progress. And likes Sibelius very much. ENG: GLOSS doesn't work for me, so maybe it has been restricted to sue within the USA Josht: has tried a Danish proxy, and then even he can't see GLOSS. Suggests the use of a US based proxy to access the site. 19 June 2010 (p. 237) ENG: sounds like a workable technique. 20 June 2010 (p. 237) ENG: I have spent some time copying and studying passages from Russian and Greek books, plus other sources from the internet RU: My study object has been the chapters in my Russian history book (the one with the accents) about the golden age of Georgia - and this awakes some travel memories from my trip there in 2000. GR: My Greek study object has been the legend that explain the city name Athens (a competition where the citizens had to choose between Pallas Athena and Poseidon) ENG: Also some studies of the beginning of a text about the support for the Gaelic language from the town Galway 21 June 2010 (p. 237) ENG: A very detailed analysis of one single sentence in Irish Mick33 (AF): May start learning Gaelic some day, but right now are 4 languiages enough. The Irish spelling is so complicated that it makes it tempting to study it. AF: Irish is not only entertaining, but also economical: one page can fill a whole evening 22 June 2010 (p. 238) GER: I have been listening to old podcasts about astronomy from HArald Lesch's time at BR alpha. FR: I have also watched a program about the Southern French traditions about Mary Magdelena, which were made popular by Dan Brown. This reminded me about a painting I saw at a museum in Marseille in May. ENG: I have found and made some printouts from en excellent Irish guide: www.braesicke.de (in German). 23 June 2010 (p. 238) Fasulye (GER): Likes the 15 minute lectures of Lesch, - and agrees that they were better than his new series at ZDF. GER: But the astronomers get smarter all the time, so his old lectures risk being overtaken by the advances in knowledge Fasulye (GER): in some cases that may be true, but he also spoke about many fundamental themes which won't be out-of-date soon. 25 June 2010 (p. 238) ENG: I have spent most of the evening with old collegues from until the mid 00s (zeroes?), but they kept speaking about soccer and they looked at their PDA's and telephones to see how the game between Japan and Denmark went (fortunately Denmark lost- I hate sports on TV). ICE: However in between all the soccer babble one of the others told os that he had lived on the Faroe Islands for several years. I still read the Odyssey in Icelandic as godnight reading. ENG: Goodnight music: Dr. John Bull's good old 'Goodnight' for virginal Fasulye (DK): Likes that piece of music Patuco: The name 'noughties' has been proposed for the 00s 26 June 2010 (p. 239) ENG: .. but the naughties weren't particularly naughty CAT: I have been at home all day, so I have at last had time to do something about Catalan. I just did one page of three column wordlists, but wrote 3 pages with idiomatical expressions. ENG: After that some work on Bahasa, using a printout with a Google translation. A reference to some expressions based on duplicated words. And from there to "Gramadach na Gaeilge" at the site www.braesicke.de (mentioned above). Today I studied the verbal particles and conjunctions, which in Irish have both present and preterite forms. 27 June 2010 (p. 239) Patuco asks: what du we call this decade? Hobbema is amazed and amused to see such questions discussed among Europeans. Has only seen/heard "the Naughts", but "Naughties" is better ENG: Some proposals concerning the decade 2010-2019, plus the names for the decades in Danish Fasulye: 2000 = "the millennium" NO : I have watched an episode of "Livets Planet" on Norwegian NRK1 and learned som Norwegian words from the subtitles, for instance 'havhest' (fulmar). At the same time I listened to three hours of music of Smetana. ENG: And (still at the same time) I studied a short text in Irish. I'll have to learn the irregular verbs soon. SW: Och just nu tittar jag på enormt förstorade bilder av fågelinfluensavirus i ett program från UR (undervisningsradion) på SVT1 (Sverige). Det är jättespännande att man nu kan se en enda viruspartikeln fylla hela skärmen. SW: Looks a a Swedish program about research in bird flue vira. 28 June 2010 (p. 239) PLA: I have watched a tape recording of a program partly in Low German, which NDR sent in the middle of the night - with (High and Low) Germans in Sout Africa. Patuco: The program from NRK1 would presumably be "Living Planet" with D. Attenborough. 30 June 2010 (p. 240) ENG: At my workplace we have a visiting consultant from Germany, but we speak English. Therefore I have been there from 9 to 19, but managed to squeeze in some Latin Monday and some Greek Tuesday GR: theme: The article about Crete from the Greek Wikipedia, plus its Google translation into English, at least in the beginning. Then something about the town Kuching and wandering cats in Bahasa (and here I kept the Google translation). Bahasa hasn't got much morphology, but a lot of derivations. PLA: At last a bit of Low German, in spite of it being literature ENG: Huray for Attenborough IS: More about Odysseus in Icelandic Newyorkeric: has only seen the names zeros, the oughts, and the 2000s. Edited by Iversen on 30 June 2010 at 3:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 21 of 42 02 August 2010 at 2:13pm | IP Logged |
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SUMMARY FOR JULY 2010
1 July 2010 (p. 240) Spoke to a German consultant at my job, foud out that one of my collegues actually grew up bilingual DA-GER Worked on a task for my travel club in the evening. FR: In another thread the relationship between Franch and Occitan has been discussed. Inspired by this I have read some in my only Occitan book, a collectin of poems in Ancient Occitan OCC: Discussion of a poem by an anonymous trobairitz (female troubadour) who clearly wasn't happy about her marriage 2 July 2010 (p. 240) IT: Superquark in Italian RaiUno LAT: in Superquark something about the excavations in the house of a doctor from Ancient Rome (though probably Greek himself) IT: ... plus something about the use of the trumpet in jazz and the oil spill the the Mexican Gulf The thread will pass 400.000 visits within 24 hours. Fasulye (ESP): Congratulations Spent a lot of time in delayed trains trying to study, but too much confusion and noise. Did however find out that Bahasa isn't the name of a language (or two), but the word for 'language' in Bahasa Malasia and Bahasa Indonesia. Sat at a computer at the library in Kolding. While searching for the forum I found a link to a page where the trouble miss Paris Hilton has caused the authors of the Latin Vicipedia is desribed. New Latin term for "sex tape" = "pellicula in interrete vulgate de coitu". 4 July 2010 (p. 240) ESP: visted my family, brought books in or about Russian, Irish, Low German, Swedish and Bahasa Indonesia. Spent most time on the latter. I don't like the standard Esperanto word for 'mother': "patrino". "Matro" would be less sexist. BA: "I read Lonely P's language guide to Bahasa Indonesia for most of this weekend. I also used Tuttle's dictionary." IR: "I think Irish is hard" Something about the difference between learning Irish and Bahasa Fasulye (ESP): Her father has a fair amount of dictionaries, but she sometimes brings along other study material - though not in Turkish and Danish which her father shouldn't see her studying. ESP: My mother is happy that I spend time on things like Latin and Greek because then I can help her with her crosswords 5 July 2010 (p. 241) Fasulye (ESP): disagrees with me on the subject of patrino/matro - the only correct word is patrino Oz-hestekræfte: the "naughties" about 2000-2009 is commonly used, but many people don't know it and say "huh?". The most common expression is "the 2000s". Prefers "At the turn of the century." PORT: I have read (in Galician) about a little town Caoira in Galicia that twice repelled the viking fleets Fasulye (ENG): wants to contact her English conversation partner from the olden days when she participated in a study group SCO: good luck. I get enough input in English, but my wish to learn some Scots could be seen as an attempt to diversidy my study of English ("Sassenach"). Fasulye: she also gets a lot of English input, but rarely speaks it. Her Skype partners focus on other languages. 6 July 2010 (p. 242) Fasulye: Why is English called "Sassenach" in Scots? ENG: it is a loan from Scottish Gaelic, where it is the normal term for English - obviously from '(Anglo)saxon' (-ach is an adjectival ending). Fasulye (GER): female black rhino born in Krefeld zoo, and it has got its own Youtube channel 7 July 2010 (p. 242) GER: something about the background for the names of the African rhinos. "White" in this context is supposed to come from Afrikaans, where is should mean "wide" - but the current term for white rhinos in Afrikaans is "witrenoster", not "wydrenoster". There is only only 'black' rhino in Denmark, "Thabo" in Ree park. Fasulye: In Dutch a rhino is called "neushoorn", not "renoster". What's the name in Danish? DA: the Danish terms for the African rhinos - and the one in Ree Park has recently arrived from ... Krefeld! Link to a video. 8 July 2010 (p. 243) Meramarina: congratulations as I have just broken the barrier of 1000 votes ENG: something about some words in Bahasa Indonesian and about the way they transgress the traditional wordclass boundaries. Furthermore I have moved and revised a posting about expressions in my Guide to Learning Languages. RU: Something about the destruktion of the Ryuzan Rus by the Mongol hordes. Fasulye (DU): The German "Arbeitsbureau" (?) once had a course for people who wanted to work in Scandinavia, and this comprised a one-month language crash course. Fasulye is somewhat sceptical about such courses. Hobbema: is also sceptical about the value of such courses, - one month is not much if you want to function well in another language community. (me) DU: One month is not much, especially outside the area where the target language is spoken and with adult learners who aren't used to learning languages. So presumably it is largely based on learning fixed expressions. Fasulye: the offer was published 3 years ago, and it was meant for people who wanted to work in Norway 9 July 2010 (p. 244) RU: last evening I read the original chronicle that described the fall of Rjazan, the capital of the Ryuzan Rus. 13 July 2010 (p. 244) BA: I'm now in Changi Airport (Singapore), on my way to Brunei. ENG: Some details about my stay in Singapore. Newyorkeric (from Singapore): Did I do the Canopy walk? 13 July 2010 (p. 244) BA: Message from Brunei, whee I have found a "warnet" ('wide area network', i.e. a cypercafé). I have visited a museum with gifts to the sultan, plus two others. The postfix "-nya" means both "his" and "her" (and 'the'). 17 July 2010 (p. 244) Hobbema: Interesting holiday. Good luck my studies of "Bahasa Inggris", i.e. English ENG: I have just found out that the name in Brunei (and presumably Malaysia) is "Bahasa Inggeris". I have bought a few books i Bahasa Melayu, but it is more dificult than expected to find non fiction. Besides I found this passage on a forum for people who study Japanese: " Oh, I thought Iversen was someone famous who had written a book or something, I had no idea it was some guy on a forum." 18 July 2010 (p. 244) Patuco: I could call my book "Just Some Musings from a Guy on a Forum" ENG (from Kuchin, Serawak, Malysia): ... or "Just musings from some guy on a forum who hadn't even written a book (yet) - so he felt compelled to do it in order to appease some guy on a forum for learners of Japanese" BA: I can see that my Lonely Planet guide to Bahasa Indonesian and my newly bought Oxford dictionary for Bahasa Malaysia - English often disagree. It has one irritation quirk: sometimes you are referred to another word without any mention there or anywhere whether this is a true synonym or not (mostly it isn't). ENG: There are clearly some real differences between the two bahasas, but I can't know whether this is the whole story. Besides my dictionary has a weird structure: in the Bahasa -> English part there is an explanation in English for every word after the translation, an inversely on in Bahasa at every word in the ENG->BA section. Besides it lists words after their roots in the Bahasa section, so that you will have to strip new words of the prefixes to find them in the dictionary. But it seems to be a good dictionary, and the emphasis on word roots is logical for a language (or tewo) like Bahasa. I have visited the Cultural Village and the Semenggoh orang feeding area. A nose monkey is called a 'Dutchman' in Bahasa. 19 July 2010 (p. 245) Fasulye: questions about the languages "Malay" and "Indonesian": 1. Do both languages belong to the same language family? To which family? 2. Are they similar in pronouciation or grammar? 3. Are they mutually intellegible? ChrisopherB: 1. Same family, Austronesian. 2. Very similar, with differences in both grammar and vocabulary. 3. Yes, they are mutually intelligible. .. plus a reference to a Wikipedia page about differences between them Fasulye: "Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen (LOI)" offers a correspondence course for Indonesian 20 July 2010 (p. 245) ENG: There are hundreds of millions of people who speak these two languages, but often as a lingua franca in addition to a local language. My studies of Bahasa run smoothly, partly because of the weather (rain, even though it is in the middle of the dry season). I now mostly do word lists based on my dictionary, which is for the Malaysian kind of bahasa. Strangely enough I don't find it too difficult to memorize these words. CA: The same ting in Catalan (without diacritics) Newyorkeric: Am I planning to continue studying these languages when I return home? He has some thoughts about learning them himself. ENG: It would be stupid not the finish the job, now that I have gone so far in learning some kind of (mixed) Bahasa. However I can't concentrate on them as I could during my holiday. Btw. there is a person in the cybercafé who speaks Finnish, probably on Skype Fasulye: knows that Finnish has some structural similarities with Turkish, but has never heard Finnish. Finds that the results of her "TAC midterm evaluation" aren't satisfying, and she will take some consequences out of this (--> withdrawal from the forum). 24 July 2010 (p. 245) ENG (from Kuala Lumpur): I have no plans about cutting down on my time in the forum, - my temporary silence was due to a stay in the jungle at Gunung Mulu. Here I read something on a poster about the language of the Penan tribe. Apparently they had words for everything in the forest, but no word for 'forest' (or for 'thankyou'). Besides they have 6 levels of "we", against two in Bahasa ('we' including/excluding 'you') and one in the Western languages. It belongs to the Austronesian group just like 'normal' Bahasa. Elan: hello from an American currently living very near Kuala Lumpur. Has been thinking about learning some Bahasa, but is p.t. very focused on Farsi. 26 July 2010 (p. 244) In Elans place I would learn Bahasa while I was there. BA: I have visited a place called 'Petrosains' ('Sains' is the local way of writing 'science'), which is a technical/scientifical exhibition put up by an oil company. One good thing about the place was that all texts were bilingual in Bahasa and English, - exactly the kind of texts that I have had so much trouble finding in Bahasa (because everybody apparently read about these things in English, even in school). ENG: I have made a word count, even though I only have done wordlists for A-H. It can be a problem separating known from guessed loanwords, but even by the most conservative standards I would estimate my passive vocabulary of Bahasa Melayu to over 2000 words. But I have not really spent time on trying to understand spoken Bahasa. 27 July 2010 (p. 245) LAT: I'm back home Fasulye (LAT): Welcome home Paranday: "Lorem ipsum." 28 July 2010 (p. 246) LAT: The expression "Lorem ipsum" is taken from one of the nonsense texts used by printing house to judge graphical layouts without being distracted by the meaning of the text. However ultimately it is based upon a text by Cicero. RUM: Since my return I have spent most of my time on my photos and my travelogue, so there has not been much time for language studies. IT: I have noticed that one way of remembering a totally strange word (i.e. one for which you haven't any obvious associations) is to put it in a sentence in your native language instead of a word there. FR: I still have to do some chores for my travel club, but the situation should be better towards the weekend 30 July 2010 (p. 246) Hobbema: what will happen as the popularity of my log continue to rise from its current 90% ? Will the universe implode? ENG: It has stayed on 88-89 % for a long time, so I doubt that it will rise drastically now 31 July 2010 (p. 246) Hobbema: commenting on Patuco's reaction to Hobbema's amazement and amusement caused by the pun 'the naughties' (see primo July) Edited by Iversen on 05 September 2010 at 10:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 22 of 42 05 September 2010 at 2:05pm | IP Logged |
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Summary for August 2010
1 August 2010 (p. 247) Slucido (ENG): The idea of embedding foreign words into a sentence in your native language is called '"the diglot wawe" ENG: I had forgotten the old threads about the 'diglot wawe'. It is close to the thing I described 31 July, except that the memorization technique I refer to only is used for one word (or word combination) at a time.The wawe also ressembles something I have described as 'scaffolding' in a related language. ENG: During the weekend I have done repetition rounds for some Malayan wordlists and read about lenition and eclipsis in Irish, and I have read some texts in Russian about the Baltic languages. DA: With my family I also watched a DVD about the Galathea III naval expedition, but the DVD actually also contained a film from 1952 about the preceding Galathea II. GER: Besides I watched German TV, including a program about the language situation in Switzerland, with morsels of spoken Romantsch. RUMANTSCH GRISCHUN: a quote from "Asterix ed ils Helvets" (1984) 3 August 2010 (p. 247) ENG: no message the day before, - "that can't make my logfile grow until the implosion point of the universe..." (reference to Hobbema's message from July 30) SP: A TV program in Spanish about the Basque country (at least the Spanish part of it). Lament about the good programs in TVE during the day when I'm at work and the rubbish they send ind the evenings. RU: I have been studying the section of my Russian history book that describes the fall and destruction of Ryazan during the Mongol invasion. GR: after the Russian horror story I read in my Greek guide to Athens about the golden age of the city 3 August 2010 (p. 247) Hobbema: "... one can only conclude as the log increases beyond 100% that your posts will become invisible, which will probably annoy you and those who have become accustomed to following your log." 4 August 2010 (p. 247) ENG: Something about the notion of singularity (inspired by the 'dark hole' theory of Hobbema partaining to this thread), but as a theory about the accelerating technological development (ref. Kurzweil). Also a reference to the vast differences in the speed of the development of life on this planet: apparently life life evolved surprisingly fast after the Earth was formed, and then followed a long period with little development. Paranday [ENG]: "The singularity folks foresee a melding of mind and machine, and at that time our brains will take off in ways unimaginable. If that becomes real, what is the future of satisfaction? Will the monk-like pleasure of fitting new words into our brains, a few at a time, disappear? " Whipback [ENG]: some questions about my wordlist method, including the time lapse before repetition ENG: Clarification about the columns: 3 + 2. Suggested timelapse: 24 hours, but this can be varied without big consequences. Reference to my Guide to Learning Languages. 5 August 2010 (p. 248) IR: My first message in Irish (and yes, it took a long time to construct it). 7 August 2010 (p. 248) ENG: no message the day before, but did study Russian history, the time of Pericles in Greek, Irish and Malaysian wordlists and finally one page or so of the Odyssey in Icelandic (then I fell asleep). 8 August 2010 (p. 248) RU: One misunderstanding cleared - Alexander Nevskij didn't beat the Mongols, but an invasion from Germans in the Baltic area. I also found out that холдинг (=Kolding) means for 'deed, feat' - I have lived in a town with that name! Whipback (ENG): Asks whether I have written something about studying several languages at the same time. Paranday (ENG): Finds that falling asleep while reading the Odyssey in Icelandic is glorious. Asks whether I have ever detailed the content of my personal labrary. ENG: Answer to Whipback's question: it is OK to study several languages at the same time, but start no.2 when you have secured your foothold in no. 1, plus a reference to my Guide to Learning Languages. A photo from 2009 as partial answer to Paranday's question. 9 August 2010 (p. 249) Fasulye (ENG) .. has to throw old books away when she buys new ones. ENG: I occasionally throw books away, but mostly travel guides which become misleading with time. I tend to keep old dictionaries because they are more compact then the new editions. I have for sentimental even kept some Latin dictionaries printed with Gothic types. FR: I have also kept some old scientific magazines because I couldn't get new editions on paper. However there are good uptodate homepages for several magazines, including the French "Ciel et Espace" ('heaven and space'), where I have read about the space probe Rosetta which spends the time photographing asteroids while it is waiting for the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Fasulye (FR): Has also read about Rosetta on the internet 10 August 2010 (p. 249) GER: Good to see that Fasulye still reads my log even though she tries to cut down on the time she spend on the internet IC: I woke up early (4 am) so I ahd the chacne to take a big stride forward with the Odyssey in Icelandic. Now he's running around in disguise in Ithaca, and I'm waiting for the scene where he kills all the suitors of his vife. GR: The idea of an arrow hanging in the air reminded me of a paradox stated my Zenon (who didn't understand the notion of differential calculus and integration). But the Greek Wikipedia didn't mention this paradox. FR: The French Wikipedia did, because Paul Valéry made a reference to it in his wellknown poem "Cimétiere marin" ('Churchyard at the sea'). 11 August 2010 (p. 250) SP: I have watched the news at TVE in Spanish and in Italian at RaiUNo, but also other programs, including a program in Spanish about the archeology of Ibiza. CAT: Among my old magazines I found "El Correu de la UNESCO" from 1084, with articles about science and science fiction. In 1984 the internet was hardly invented, and I had just bought my Commondore 64 one year earlier. 12 August 2010 (p. 250) Hobbema: 1984 was indeed long ago. He graduated that year and remembers the Commodore 64 with its clunky ASCII graphics and non-visual graphic interface. 13 August 2010 (p. 250) ENG (2:05am): I have actually found out how to make videos, using equipment at my job (which we have got for internal communication, but hardly ever use). But I have no plans about putting things on Youtube. Besides I have studied Bahasa. My text about Gunung Mulu (in Serawak, Malaysia) seems to be written in Indonesian Bahasa, - I have found more words in my Indonesian dictionary than in the Malaysian on.. ENG (11:04pm): I have made some recordings and some scans for my first video (about wordlists) 16 August 2010 (p. 250) ESP: I spent the weekend visiting the peninsula Djursland right outside Århus with my family. In Ree Park I did not see the black rhino Thabon from Krefeld because the poor little critter doesn't trust the other animals on the savannah. Maybe next time... RU: We stayed in an almost empty and very quiet hotel in Femmøller, so I could spend two whole evenings doing Russian wordlists, reading my Russian grammar (by H.C. Sørensen) and thinking about differing semantic fields for words that are given as translations of each other. For instance it is very stupid to learn translations of expression where you use the correct prepositions of your own language, if your target language insists on using one that normally has a different meaning. In a hyperliteral translation you should always use that preposition in your own language that best makes you remember the foreign expression. ENG: In the magazine from my trade union 'Magisterforeningen' there was an article about some Danes who are studying the methods used by Google Translate. They have the idea that not all statistically unlikely translations should be excluded at the beginning of a sentence because they might turn out as the best ones at the end of it. I don't see how this can be implemented. The best addition to the methods of Google would in my opinion to establish a list of 'function words' that must be taken care of - a kind of checklist if will. Then we might avoid translations where the negation or important pronouns have disappeared. Fasulye (DA): Krefeld has got a new black rhino called Kibibi SP: I have watched two program on Danish TV with a total duration of one hour about the Camino de Santiago, the old pilgrim route across Northern Spain. Many interviews were in Spanish, though. GER: "Kibibi" means 'grandma' in Swahili 19 August 2010 (p. 251) ENG: The day before I stayed at my job until 20.30 do 'the secret video', and even though it was my second attempt I was still not happy about the result - too verbose with a duration that had only gone down from 18 to 16 minutes. But I have made better pictures (now using screendumps from Word), and I have learnt the hard way to make short sequences and then connect them afterwards. I have also made a Google search to find the Wiki where I wrote about wordlists, but then I also found a blog, where an adaptation of the method is described for people who study Japanese.. RU: Did tons of Russian wordlists based on passages from my Russian history book. NO: I have finished Homer and chosen "Mors og fars historie" (Mom's and Pop's history) of Edvard Hoem as my new goodnight book (from Homer to Hoem, hehe). It looks like some kind of biography, but it could also be a bunch of lies like other literature. It is less extremly New Norwegian than I had hoped for .. and not very interesting, which is a good thing for a goodnight book. Fasulye: Will participate in a tour through the Krefeld Zoo in the beginning of September GER: Let's hope the weather will be fine and that Grandma will come out. ENG: I have now done the third version of my Wordlist video, and now it is down from 18 to 16 to 11 minutes. But I'm speaking like a machine gun, and I look like an overworked accountant. The words I use for my demonstration are taken from one single sentence in an internet text about Gunung Mulu. 20 August 2010 (p. 251) Fasulye [ENG]: There is a limit of 10 minutes at Youtube. She therefore uses an alarm clock. Otherwise they would be too short, - she has never made a video which was too long nor has she made one which she had to record twice. 21 August 2010 (p. 251) Paul Lambeth [ENG]: You can split video clips with Windows Movie Maker. You don't HAVE to use the direct upload method to put up your Youtube videos. Unlike Fasulye he normally has to do a couple of retakes, and he has discovered that it is better to do them standing up. Looking forward to see mine. Paranday: "Me too. On tenterhooks." (editor's comment: I had to look that expression up!) 22 August 2010 (p. 252) Paranday: Suggests that I put down the video somewhere from where it can be downloaded 24 August 2010 (p. 252) ENG: Disregarding the machingun version at 11', I couldn't divide the video into two because it would cut through the demonstration part. So I recorded version 3a and 3b instead (6'30" and 9'40") and uploaded them to a place from where they can be downloaded, at least until I make up my mind about big ugly Youtube. SW: I have watched a naturefilm about things you can discover with with a high speed camara, - originally made by BBC, but completely dubbed in Swedish. ENG: I have read something about the terms at Yourtube, - it seems that the length of videoclips now can be 15 minutes. And yiou can limit the access so that you need an exact link to watch the clips. RO: Luckily I can work from home using my computer (though I rarely do so). Today was an exception, and therefore I could listen to video clips in Romanian from www.Antena3.ro while working. Of course I couldn't concentrate, but then I just repeated each clip. Josht: has seen video clips that were longer than 10 minutes, including one made by HTLAL member Splog. 24 August 2010 (p. 252) IT: I have been to a lunch downtown as part of my job. It struck me that my collegues sometimes ask me for turistical information (travelling is another major interest of mine) , but almost never about linguistical information - though recently I was asked to settle a dispute about a Danish sentence. ESP: After the lunch it was too late to return to my office, so I stayed downtown, where I actually bought a webcam. Even if I don't use it for instructional videos it can be used for oral training. 24 August 2010 (p. 252) ENG: Warning about my limited skills in Bahasa Malaysian (or Indonesian for that matter) BA. MA.: I spent the evening gluing photos from Southeast Asia into my album, - but I also have them on my computer POR: While doing this I watched the Travel channel, first a program about Cape Verde, then about Portugal. The first I tried out my Portuguese in practice was at Cabo Verde, then I went monolingual in Moçambique and Portugal. In the program they spelled São Antão as Santo Antao etc. for some strange reason. BA. MA.: When I had finished gluing almost 300 photos into an album I did some intensive study of a passage from my Gunung Mulu text and icnluding them in a wordlist. 27 August 2010 (p. 252) Hobbema (POR): He also studies the differences between different kinds of Portuguese (mostl in pronunciations and idiomatics) , and travels can be a good motivation. POR: There are also grammatical differences, such as the use of split futures and conditionals or the more frequent use of 'infinitivo pessoal', the inflected infinitive. FR: The best summary of the differences is found in an old grammar in French by Paul Teyssier. LAT: I have been to a Medieval Festval in Horsens, which lies South of Århus. There were thousands of visitors, many dressed in something that should be in Medievel, but actually is Renaissance style (actually I can't really complain when I come in my modern clothes). There is also 'Århus Festuge', but I prefer the old music. GER: Many of the musicans and guest come from outisde Denmark: Germans, Englishmen, Italians and Czech musicians and guest from heaven knows how many places. Including our own immigrants I have heard at least a dozen languages in the streets of Horsens today. IT: The flag throwers were of course Italian - "Gruppo Storico Sbandietratori Il Cassero". LAT: There was actually a church service in Latin, but I didn't participate 29 August 2010 (p. 253) ENG: I went downtown to see a technology exhibition today. It should be part of 'Århus Festuge', but it was closed - so I could get back to my studies fast. I did some repetition of Malayan wordlists, and then I came to think about possible themes for future videos. On phase in my wordlist method is the memorization phase, which I dealt with rather perfunctorily in the Wordlist video - but now I have sketched out a framework for discussing that theme. Which lead to the idea that it might be worth studying one single word root and its derivations in Russian. I chose 'пис', which mainly occurs in words that have something to do with writing, because it has a particularly rich family of derivations. SP: While doing this I also watched TVE, including one part of a trilogy about Spanish birds - the one about birds from the open countryside - Spain has got a lot of dry steppe. It was pretty clear that I don't know enough bird names in Spanish, so I'm going to read a field guide I once bought in Chile. SW: After that I saw a fine music-free program from Swedish TV1 about roedeer. I have always wondered why most TV programs are spoiled by bad, load and totally superfluous music, - maybe because the generation of TV people who populate the TV stations today were born with a walkman and earphones, and now they die if the noise stops? 30 August 2010 (p. 253) POR: I have been watching internet TV from Brazil, not really for the content (which I cannot predict and therefore not select according to my interests) but just to hear the language. Amongst other things I hit upon a program from CPCE about some aspects of the cultural education in the country. At wwitv.com there are 89 Brasilian TV stations! RU: I have made my derivation table for 'пис': one full page in handwriting just with the forms and laconic translations, and most of the backside of the paper filled with comments (link provided for download). It would be nice to have a Russian dictionary based on roots ('Roots of the Russian language' is worthless) - my Bahasa Melayu dictionary is the nearest thing to a root based dictionary I have seen so far. Edited by Iversen on 06 September 2010 at 4:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 23 of 42 01 October 2010 at 6:58pm | IP Logged |
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Summary for September 2010
1 september 2010 (p.253) POR: I have neglected Portuguese in August, - do now I have watched quite a lot of Brazilian internet-TV RU: I have made a list over the derivations of the roos "- рis-" (something about writing). I miss a dictionary based on the roots of Russian (there is a book which pretends to do that, but it is simply too amateurish made). 3 september 2010 (p.253) SP: My current bus-back-from-work-book is a field guide to the birds of the Iguazu-area DA (hyperliteral): something from a newspaper about teaching Danish to immigrants etc. through a video game Fasulye (DA): understands 85% of my Danish sentences without looking at the translations DA: I'll try to find a receipe for "rødgrød med fløde" for Fasulye's culinary thread Fasulye (DA): Her grandparentrs from Schleswig-Holstein often ate rödgröd 5 september 2010 (p.253) NO: I have been looking at a film that follows the famous and very pretty Bergensbane from Bergen to Oslo (6 hours) - though unfortunately interspersed with a lot of ugly songs. A pure version can be had through a legal torrent, but I'm sceptical about that technology. While doing this I wrote my summary for August. Josht: Asks why I'm suspicious of the torrent technology. Paraday has a BitTorrent client built into his browser and finds it innocuous Fasulye (ESP): Has visited Krefeld Zoo on a guided tour and met their newborn rhino Kibibi with its mother Nane. ENG: Maybe I'm just oevrcautious, like the rhino Thabo, formerly at Krefeld, now at Ree Park in Denmark where it stays in the stable because there are strange animals running around outside the door. I have read the ebook compiled Syzygycc about polyglots 6 september 2010 (p.254) Fasulye (ENG): There is nothing in her guideboog to Denmark about Ree Park (formerly Ebeltoft Safari Park), but she has found its homepage on the net. And she finds Thabo's attitude understandable, considering its isolation from other animals at Krefeld Zoo. 7 september 2010 (p.254) SP: Not much to write about this time. I have watched a Guia Turistica at TVE (Spanish TV) - it seems that they have quite a lot of good geography programs around 6 p.m. Later I listened to polyglot videos on Youtube. Besides I have been decodeing and scanning a fat bunch of postcards from members of my travel club all the evening. 8 september 2010 (p.254) ENG: I have spent an evening doing two videos about language learning (using the equipment at my workplace) 9 september 2010 (p.254) El Forestero: "Do you want any corrections in your Spanish paragraphs?" 10 september 2010 (p.255) ENG: If my errors har recurring then it is valuable to be told about them. But as a general rule I'm not very interested in getting long lists of errors. SP: I have watched a program in Spanish about the University and the two cathedrals of Salamanca ENG: I have also worked on my Bahasa, and I have revised my latest two videos. El Forastero: I have a tendency to use words from other languages in my Spanish ENG: I plead guilty 11 september 2010 (p.255) ENG: My language studies are suffering because of the time I spend on my (English language) videos. In one case I suddenly remembered that I had used the exression "the old black school". In Danish the parallel expression refers to the old academical school, but in America it would have a somewhat different meaning. In next video there is supposed to be something about 'green sheets' (with morphology tables), and here is one with the morphology of Icelandic nouns, adjectives and articles on one page. LAT: Afterwars I'm contemplating making a video in Latin. 12 september 2010 (p.255) Paranday: Nobody has made videos without retouching, and they give out Oscars for best editing Fasulye: protest - she doesn't reouch. She makes one reenactment first without the camera, and then the whole thing in one fell swoop ENG: This afternoon I made not one, but two videos about grammar - morphology including the green sheets filled up the total time allotment for the planned video. I have now made an account at Youtube - but I had to make it as "NJLIversen" because my HTLAL (and real) name was occupied. I have also found time to do a few wordlists in Irish. GER: I have watched a program on German TV about the Danish-Norwegian sea hero Tordenskjold ("Thundershield"). 13 september 2010 (p.255) Fasulye: She also had to call herself Fasulye2009 ENG: Addresses of my first series of videos: Wordlists: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G PsXzMkESjY (Decoding: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKPH1jdZefY ) Decoding version 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFfwy02SECM Copying text: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ8tdj-l46c Bilingual texts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec8xqlSsd6g Idiomatics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U69ALst3cE Morphology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9qW6jN_uOg Syntax: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hByFE0TOy24 Josht: There is a technical flaw in the one about Decoding 14 september 2010 (p.256) ENG: It happened during the recording phase. I have made another video, but it turned out quite differently from the first one, so I have left both visibnkle - thought the first one with a warning about the problem. Bt.w. I have been watching a very convincing 9-language video by an American girl Katrudy. To Fasulye: even my own family says I speak too fast - it is not just on these videos. Fasulye: Likes my videos, but I speak too fast. Big difference in methods confirmed. 15 september 2010 (p.256) Fasulye (ESP): Has now become somewhat accostumed to my speed of talking. She had never thought of using Google Translate to produce bilingual texts, but now she has tried it out. Just a problem that Google Translate so far doesn't offer Latin ESP: I'm happy that Fasulye has learned to live with my talking speed - it would be difficuelt to change a lifelong habit. LAT: I also find it irritating that Google can't translate from Latin 17 september 2010 (p.256) ENG: I made two videos the day before and one the 17. (Latin, English, Danish) and compiled them. Besides I have recorded one in Low German (Platt). Josht: If somebody had told him one year ago that I would be making lots of videos for Youtube then he would have laughed long and hard. "Cheers to the change of heart, however!" Fasulye (GER): Is somewhat envious of my technical possibilities. If I get an idee I just make that video, where she has to wait for a long time. GER: I have bought a webcam to around 100 € - that's all the money I have put into this venture. But it takes a lot of time LAT: It was a good feeling to make that video in Latin - I have never spoken Latin before Fasulye (ENG): Interesting to know. The recordings are good with my new webcam. She also has a webcam, but it only shows her head in bad quality. Her camera also makes videos, but with a soundquality that isn't acceptable . Fasulye (LAT): My Latin recording is good and fluent. 19 september 2010 (p.257) Magister (FR): Doesn't quite understand why I don't want corections from native speakers 20 september 2010 (p.257) FR: I don't say no to all corrections, but I prefer those that refer to recurrent errors. In principle all errors should be corrected, but then I would lose the sense of momentum which is one to objectives of writing texts in other languages (or making videos for that matter). PL: Now I have also made a video in Low German (Platt). Fasulye (DU): I speak fluent Low German in the video, though she hasn't heard many people speaking that dialect (earlier: language), but it wasn't difficult to follow. Fasulye (FR): there was a problem with the French video, but it has apparently been solved. FR: I don't know why the French video had a problem, - good that it functions now. IT: I have made a video in Italian. I made several changes, but overlooked that I had referred to one of the few valuable program on Raiuno as "Viaggio all'Ovest". It should of course be "Passaggio all'Ovest" (the Northwest Passage- an excellent general scientific/geographical program). 21 september 2010 (p.258) LAT: I have found a wordlist for NeoLatin at facweb.furman.edu 22 september 2010 (p.258) CAT: I have now also made a video in Catalan and one in Castillian ("Spanish"). As a preparation for the first one I watched a couple of hours in Catalan from a VHS-tape I made while I still had a Catalan cable TV Channel. And as usual there are some really gross errors in my videos, but it will be too difficult to correct them. ENG: I do see a problem, namely that Im rapidly getting through my list of 'speakable' languages is. And my multiconfused log has just passed 500.000 hits. Fasulye (ENG): Congrats with the 500.000 views. She understand my Catalan quite well. and is looking forwards to my videos in Dutch(!), Romanian, Portuguese and Swedish. ENG: Maybe it is easy to understand my Catalan because I'm NOT a native speaker. SP: No videos today, because I had to do some chores for my travel club (I'm its webmaster). While doing does things I watched among other things a program in Spanish about people living near one of the Spanish borders - including a group of Spanish doctors who owrked in Portugal, but continued to speak Spanish to the patients. 23 september 2010 (p.258) Fasulye: Accepts the theory that my Catalan is easy to understand because I'm not a notive speaker - in contrast my Danish video is fairly difficult to understand for her. So she has to listen to more Danish to fill the gap. CAT: a link to the the homepage of Catalan TV station TV3, ENG: ... and to Latin broadcasts from the Vatican and Finnish YLE. Also a page 'Voce Alta' with podcasts, and there are other pages around with spoken Latin. But mostly readings, not 'free' text. 24 september 2010 (p.258) Fasulye (SP): Apologizes for writing in Castillian and not Catalan. Finds that even with native speakers Catalan isn't too difficult to understand - easier than Portuguese (including my Portuguese video). POR: My Portuguese video isn't really representative of any of the main forms of Portuguese, neither the Brazilian nor the European variant. It was made after midnight and I think that I look somewhat tired. FR: And while planning my next video I'm watching a language oriented quiz on TV5. ROM: Now my Romanian video is also in the box, and I'm going to take a couple days off. 25 september 2010 (p.258) Valkyr (ROM): Has found it interesting to hear Romanian spoken by a foreigner. My vocabulary is well developed, but my pronunciation could be better - although it must be difficult with a language I have few chances to hear or speak. Sorry for the lack of diacritics. Hobbema (POR): He liked the stories from my travels - including the reference to Heitor Villa-Lobos - in the Portuguese video. The language was OK, but actually clearly made in the European version of Portuguese. 27 september 2010 (p.258) ROM: Thanks to Valkyr the positive words, I use the virtual keyboard of Lexilogos to make diacritics. POR: Thanks to Hobbema for the positive words. I may indeed be closer to European Portuguese, but it is not anywhere near the pronunciation of a native Portuguese. DA: I spent the weekend on Sjælland (Zeeland in Denmark) BA I(?): .. and I spent one evening and the return trip in the train on studies in a language guide for Bahasa Indonesia (actually I have two, and this one is totally without those superluous pronunciations directives). IC: I visited one bird parkand one (private) zoo, one palace and one palace ruin, but also the ruins of a fortification called Trelleborg, which was made during the Viking age under king Harald Bluetooth , but abandoned soon after under his son Svend Forkbeard, who made a rebellion against his father. I venture the guess that the population was sick and tired of all the old king's building projects and his new strange religion (christianity). ENG: I have just written a comment in Tichiidon's Georgian log thread, and this reminded me of a postcard in Georgian I once concocted and sent to an acquaintance of mine. It never arrived, but luckily he had kept my notes. 28 september 2010 (p.258) IC: The Icelandic video is in the box. It includes references to the Old Norse poem Völuspá, which I have mentioned earlier in my log thread. Fasulye: Understands a little bit of my Ramnian, but nothing of my celandic. She wants me to show my dictionaries for a little longer when I present them. Tixhiidon: Can understand some parts of my mock-up Georgian postcard. Asks for details about Andropov's Ears. ENG: A translation of the text of the postcard, plus the information that "Andropov's Ears" is a building in Tbilisi with several big arches side by side 29 september 2010 (p.259) Fasulye: Has learnt some Ancient Greek in school, but didn't understand my video in Modern Greek (Dhimotiki). But my presentation of my dictionaries has improved. The background is for some reason less sharp than in the preceding videos. GR: My Greek video is out now, but it gave me some problems before it was ready. Actually I scrapped the whole first section and made a new one, but with just as many stupid errors and slips of tongue as the first version. 30 september 2010 (p.259) ENG: Now the video in Esperanto is also ready for vieing, and it went much more smoothly. I have checked the homepage of the upcoming Esperanto World Congress, and apparently it costs 200 € for an outsider to participate (and only marginally less for a member of one of the Esperanto clubs) - I'm in shock! Fasulye (ESP): Maybe it is possible to pay less if one doesn't participate in the whole event. 1 October 2010 (p.259) DU: Now there is also a Dutch video... Edited by Iversen on 01 October 2010 at 6:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6700 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 24 of 42 15 November 2010 at 1:55pm | IP Logged |
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Summary for October 2010
1 October 2010 (p.260) DU: My Dutch video has been uploaded. BA I: I have studied Bahasa Indonesia using a brochure from Singapore which I have got in both a Bahasa and an English version. DA: And I watched Danish TV about chemistry and physics while writing ENG: After 16 videos I'm running out of languages, - I'll wait with the Russian and Afrikaans ones until I can trust my pronunciation, and Norvegian and Scots also need some training LAT/ENG: Horats: sapere aude .... Fasulye (ESP): Meeting her Esperanto group in Düsseldorf 2 October 2010 (p.261) Fasulye (DU): Doubts that I have ever spoken Dutch before. In my video I consistently pronounce ij and uy wrongly. DU: No, this is the first time. However the two sounds are not difficult to produce, - I have just not taken care to separate them clearly. 3 October 2010 (p.261) Fasulye (DU): ui = "öi", ij = "äi" . These are not German sounds either. DU: I know from written Dutch where the two diphtongs are used, so it shouldn't be a big deal to fix the problem. Btw. this reminds me about my last visit to South Africa, where I did some serious work to learn to pronounce the town name "Nelspruit" correctly. Dutch internet TV galore: http://www.uitzendinggemist.n DU (evening): I have been listening to genuine Dutch in three programs about Dutch zoos, and I noted down how different persons pronounced their diphtongs. I was somewhat surprised to find that there are very big differences from one persons to the next: som use the pronunciations specified by Fasulye, but at last one person pronounced 'ui' and 'ij' almost the same way. Also different pronounciations of the 'eu' in "leuk" ('fun') Fasulye (DU): It should be easy to pronounce because it is like ø in Danish, ö in German. DU: Yes, as I wrote the sounds are not difficult to produce PLATT: found a Youtube video in Low German with Ina Müller (a clip from one of her books) Fasulye (DU): Has never heard Ina Müller speak Low German (she always speak High German on TV), but prefers her singing 5 October 2010 (p.262) RU: After some time I have turned to my Russian history book again. Actually A. Nevsky just beat some Germans, not the Mongols. Ivan Kalita made Moscow the most important RUssian town (but still under the Mongol yoke) ENG: Besides I studied my Bahasa Indonesian guide-booklets to Singapura and I went through the words in the first lessons of my TY Irish (but my Irish studies are really suffering due to all this Youtubery) 6 October 2010 (p.262) ENG: Repetition of Irish words - about 300 from TY Irish (in an old blue edition). Tried different memorization techniques, including looking at a specific painting on my wall for each word (a modified Memory Palace method). LAT: Found a treasure trove on Youtube of reports from colloquia and other videos in pure spoken Latin. The main person in these videos is an American professor. 6 October 2010 (p.262) ER: Have listened to a section of Deutsche Welle's homepage with short examples of different German dialekts. 'Ostfriesisch' hear actually turned out to be ordinary Low Germany. And being a German homepage it skipped the Swiss (and Austrian) dialects. AF: Read some Afrikaans travelogues. Tried in vain to find some reliable Afrikaans TV. 7 October 2010 (p.262) Magister (ENG): The name of the 'Latin' professor is Terence Tunberg. Magister attended a workshop given by him and his colleague Milena Minkova. 8 October 2010 (p.262) ENG: I was very impressed by the Latin of both professor Tunberg and Milena Minkova. Most spoken Latin on the internet is read aloud. They both use the classical pronunciation with /w/ for all cases of v or u, whereas I stick to /v/ and have given up the strict separation of long and short vowels. 10 October 2010 (p.262) ENG: I spent the weekend doing repairwork on my mother's house In the train back home I studied my TY Irish, but then I suddenly got an idea for a video partly in Old French. GR: I have listened to a Greek internet podcast from the TV station "Ellada" about the Inuit of Greenland. 12 October 2010 (p.262) OFR: I have made a video about and (to some extent) in Old French. And as I write in the commentary: "I probable make a number of gross mistakes while doing so. But who cares? Presumably no irate paladin will enter my humble flat on his gallant stead on behalf of this stone dead language." 13 October 2010 (p.263) ENG: Now I have also made a video about Old Occitan (Provencal). During the preparations I found a number of dictionaries at Lexilogos. But they have some holes. For instance the word for a lark ("lauseta", "alouette" in French) was missing from the first one I tried. But where did the initial "a-" in the French word come from? Lingoleng (ENG): from Latin "alauda", which may have come from the old Gaul word ENG: I should have looked the Latin word for 'lark' up ... or just checked my field guides. 14 October 2010 (p.263) IT: I have been reading some short articles at the Italian popular science site 'Kosmofysis', including one by a Taiwanese professor who proposes that total interchangeability between space and time would mean that the univers just had alternating phases of expansion and contraction - no Big Bang. An alternative is the extension of string theory known as the brane theory. Zamie (ENG): Anyway, just when he thought that he had some logical thought on the question, he read about the blue brain project. After reading about their findings, he really didn't know what to think anymore. ENG: The goal of the Blue-brain project seems to be to free you from having any thoughts, - some kind of supermachine will do the thinking for you. Hobbema: THinks that the universe could be pulsating even without total interchangeability between space and time. L#arns languages also to get a new perspective on event and topics. Fasulye (IT): Knows the site 'Kosmofysis'. Has been to a lecture where Hubble's theory about the expansion of the univers was explained. 16 October 2010 (p.264) ENG/DA/IC: Have had some fun with the Google translation of some Icelandic texts about medieval French kings. The best one was "samkvæmt frönskum lögum" --> " (i) henhold til lovgivningen i pommes frites." ---> "according to the laws in french fries" (the lat one was my literal translation from the Danish version) 20 October 2010 (p.264) GR: Woke up this morning after a dream partly in Greek. Studied my guide til Athens and made a wordlist. FR: Made a count of my French vocabulary: around 28.000 words, using a dictionary with around 45.000 headwords. ENG: Told about my latest trip to the Balkans at a meeting in my travel club. Picture: a translation bureau in Drobeta-Turnu Severin in Romania. IT: Listened to several sets of (difficult) variations on the melody "Carnival di Venise", which is called "Mein Hut der hat drei Ecken" in German ("My hat has three corners", - but nothing to do with de Falla, who wrote some kind of opera with this name. 22 October 2010 (p.264) SP: I have spent time on Bahasa and Russian this evening, but mostly on Spanish TV, including a program about "Spaniards around the world" (this time in Athens). GR: I visited Athens in 2007, but at that time I had not started to study Greek in earnest. During my last visit to Greece in 2009 I was ready to try to speak the language the fourth day, but on the fifth day I had to continue to Albania. ENG (from a hotel in Sønderborg in Sønderjylland in Denmark): Will be studying Russian this evening. 24 October 2010 (p.264) "SYNNEJYSK": Have returned from Southern Jutland. Something about "Synneborre Slot" in "Synneborre" in "Synnejylland" (Sønderborg slot in Sønderborg) in the local vernacular. DA: Translation into standard Danish DU: A member of my travel club informed me about changes in the former Dutch colonies of the Westindies, so I studied the subject using Dutch sources on the internet. IC: Listened to one hour of Icelandic radio, - available for much more time than Icelandic TV 25 October 2010 (p.264) Fasulye (DA): Her Danish teacher speaks a bit of 'sönderjysk' (Southern Jutish) 27 October 2010 (p.264) ENG: I have had a lot of things to do at my job + a visit to Southern Jutland = less time to study. 28 October 2010 (p.265) BA I: I have spent more than an hour on close scrutiny, copying and translating of just one page from my touristbrochure from Singapore. Actually I thought Singapore spoke Malaysian Bahasa, but the brochure uses several words that only occur in my Indonesian dictionary (against just one which only occurs in the Malaysian one). Something about the notion of intensive reading. RU: Read also a couple of pages from my Russian history book. In this passage Ivan III sadly forces Novgorod to give up its old semi-democratic governmental system. 31 October 2010 (p.265) BA I: I have visited my mother this weekend, and I brought an Indonesian language guide and a dictionary, and I made a wordlist with around 200 words. In the beginning I intended to concentrate on Malaysian Bahasa, but due to my sources I'm drifting towards Indonesian without being able to draw a clear demarcation line between the two variants. Edited by Iversen on 15 November 2010 at 2:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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