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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4288 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 905 of 1317 19 January 2014 at 1:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think that a solution is to read a short grammar book with an overview of all tenses,
gender agreement, adjective classes, etc. in the first month. Learning grammar so slowly will almost completely delay fluid speech. I did not learn the passé composé/imparfait or pretérito/imperfecto, pretérito/imperfeito until the end of second year of any of those languages, which is basically like in English not learning the progressive tense until after two years of classes. Any of those essential grammars, such as Series/dp/0071498044/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1390092814&sr=8- 6&keywords=verbs+and+essentials+of+grammar">http://www.amazo n.co.uk/French-Verbs- Essentials-Grammar- Series/dp/0071498044/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1390092814&sr=8- 6&keywords=verbs+and+essentials+of+grammar should be read in the first month. I have this book Series/dp/0071498079/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1390092863&sr=8- 9&keywords=verbs+and+essentials+of+grammar">http://www.amazo n.co.uk/Portuguese-Verbs- Essentials-Grammar- Series/dp/0071498079/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1390092863&sr=8- 9&keywords=verbs+and+essentials+of+grammar which I read before doing anything further. It can be done without something big like pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center- 4&pf_rd_r=1VMS2SRAE5P2TBJJJ52T&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=168820048 2&pf_rd_i=507846">http://www .amazon.co.uk/gp/product/8467032812/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d3_i1 ? pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center- 4&pf_rd_r=1VMS2SRAE5P2TBJJJ52T&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=168820048 2&pf_rd_i=507846, although I enjoy reading books like these, and it would probably help the student anyway. Edited by 1e4e6 on 19 January 2014 at 2:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 906 of 1317 20 January 2014 at 3:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yay! I have such cool polyglots in my log. It's like a party at my place. :-)
This is, in fact, a very profound observation. Just like the body, the brain tries to adapt to whatever demands you put on it. If you do not actually try to use your language, you brain won't really see the point in rewriting itself.
It's possible, of course, to go straight from "no knowledge" to "unconscious automatic knowledge," without ever passing through "conscious knowledge." Kids rely heavily on unconscious learning, and adults can get away with a surprising amount of it, too.
Yeah, seriously, the French say "Faut que" about once a minute, on average. Which, oddly enough, means the French subjunctive is quite easy to learn. I have a monster post coming up in a few minutes. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 907 of 1317 20 January 2014 at 3:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You remember how I got my butt kicked by Peter Rabbit a month ago? It's time for rematch, and that bunny's going down.
Go grab yourself the Gardiner.ttf font on this page, and pull up your chair for the rematch. (This post is sponsored by my custom Markdown hieroglyph glossing extensions, now with HTLAL-compatible output. Please do click on stuff.) s-ḏd.t n(y) ptr sẖꜥt, pages 2 & 3: The rematch I’m going to take another shot at Richard Parkinson’s marvelous translation of Peter Rabbit, now that I have a real dictionary and a bit more knowledge of grammar as it applies to narratives.
For those of you who are learning MdC formatting, I produced the above image as follows:
Here’s my translation so far. 𓌉𓇳𓈖 | 𓂋𓆑 | 𓇾𓏤𓈇 | 𓆓𓂧𓈖 | 𓋴𓄡𓂝𓏏𓃹 | 𓇋𓄿𓏏𓀗𓁐 ḥḏ.n | r.f | tꜣ | ḏd.n | sẖꜥt | jꜣ.t bright-PRF | so | land | said-PRF | rabbit.M | old.woman-F So one morning, old woman Rabbit said, ḥḏ tꜥ is apparently an idiom meaning “it becomes day.” r.f theoretically means “as for it,” but in the second position in a sentence, it’s pretty much just a filler like “so” or the French “alors.” 𓇋𓀁 | 𓌻𓂋𓅱𓅂𓀀𓁐𓏥𓁐 | 𓂞𓁐 | 𓈝𓅓𓂻𓏏𓈖𓏥 j | mrw.tyw?=j | d?=j | šm=tn oh! | beloved-PL?=1FSG | give?=1FSG | go=2PL Oh my dears(?), I allow you to go(?) I found j in Allen’s excellent Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs, which has a wonderful list of common particles and interjections. mrw.tj is “beloved”, according to my dictionary, and tyw is presumably some sort of plural. The d=j means “I give”, but this verb has a whole bunch of stems, and I don’t know which to use in the transcription here. It almost looks like some kind of “permissive” auxiliary here. 𓂋 | 𓆷𓈇𓏥 | 𓂋 | 𓈐𓏏𓏤 | 𓏏𓈖 | 𓂋𓏤𓊪𓅱 | 𓇋𓅓𓂜 | 𓏏𓈖𓏥 r | šꜣ.w | r | wꜣ.t | tn | r-pw | jm | tn to | field-MPL | to | road-F | DEM.FSG | or | NEG | 2PL to the fields or to this road. Do not, For r-pw, see Allen’s book again. It’s always an excellent resource for these tricky little filler words and other “connective tissue” of the language: 
𓇓𓅱𓏏 | 𓈝𓅓𓂻 | 𓂋 | 𓈙𓏤 | 𓈖 | 𓅭𓏤𓎼𓂋𓎼𓍯𓂋𓀀 swt | sm | r | š | n(y) | sꜣ-grgor but | go | to | garden | of | son-Gregor however, go to McGregor's garden. I had trouble with swt, but I found in Allen’s giant list of particles. I love that list of particles. 𓁹𓈖𓏏𓏲 | 𓋴𓏏𓍔𓄿𓅱𓍬𓂻𓐎𓏥 | 𓂋 | 𓇋𓏏𓆑𓀀𓏏𓈖𓏥 jr.n=tw | sṯꜣ.w | r | jt=tn do-PRF=PASS | enter/extract?-STAT.3SG | to | father=2PL ??? to your father We’re looking for something like “Your father had an accident.” We have a lovely messy verb form here: A perfect passive auxiliary “do,” and a participle/stative of sṯꜣ, which means “to drag, to pull, to extract, to remove, to reduce, to introduce” and a few other things just for good measure. I dove deep on this one: I used Theasaurus Linguae Aegyptiae, and I even ran co-location searches against the entire corpus for jr and sṯꜣ. I couldn’t find anything even remotely related. Basically, I’m just going to take this one on faith. 𓇋𓅓 | 𓂋𓂞𓈖 | 𓇓𓅱 | 𓈞𓏏𓁐 | 𓅭𓏤𓎼𓂋𓎼𓍯𓂋𓀀 jm | rdj.n | sw | ḥm.t | sꜣ-grgor there | put-PRF | 3MSG | wife | son-Gregor there. McGregor's wife put him 𓅓 | 𓏏𓏐𓏒𓏥 | 𓋴𓂋𓆑𓊮 m | t | srf in | bread | warm in warm bread. So how did I do? Original: ‘Now my dears,’ said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, ‘you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.’ My translation: So one morning, old woman Rabbit said, Oh my dears(?), I allow you to go(?) to the fields or to this road. Do not, however, go to McGregor’s garden. ??? to your father there. McGregor’s wife put him in warm bread. Whoo-hoo! EDIT: Oh, wow. I just went back to the original text, and I can read the hieroglyphs. The page actually makes sense to me now. Edited by emk on 20 January 2014 at 3:59am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5205 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 908 of 1317 20 January 2014 at 11:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yeah, that's something I also don't get. In the system here, the subjunctive isn't even as much as mentioned during five years of high school French, including the ironically-named "Higher French" course. Someone in my class once asked "what's the subjunctive?" as they were curious after having seen it in their dictionary's verb tables, and they were told "oh, that's very advanced university-level stuff, don't worry about it". I don't see how something that is, to paraphrase emk, used at least once per minute should be considered "advanced", and indeed it's not very difficult to learn. On the other hand, some of the semi-obscure vocabulary they taught us about animals and kitchen utensils is pretty advanced in my book. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5406 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 909 of 1317 20 January 2014 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Great to see your Middle Egyptian going so well !
Just a couple of comments on random points : - rdi basically means "to give" but from this it has gained meanings like "cause, make sone do sthing, permit" when followed by a verb (especially a subjunctive sDm=f). Thus, di=i Sm=tn means litterally "I give that you go" > "I make you go"/"I allow you to go". - if it makes things easier you can understand ir.n=tw as a neutral third person singular, "one has made" (French "on"). In fact tw was originally a passive marker but later more or less became a full fleged pronoun. - stA.w can be found under sTA.w (Faulkner, p.255, "injury" ; Wb IV, p.355, "Mordversuch, Angriff"). Rather early on in the history of Egyptian, the dentals T / d / D of a lot of words began to change into t (Coptic doesn't have any d-sound outside of Greek loan-words for instance). This evolution is sometimes reflected in the writing system but the dictionaries usually stick to the etymological transliteration. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5406 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 910 of 1317 20 January 2014 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Just read the discussion above about using native materials early on and I can't say how much I agree with this idea.
As emk mentioned, there's a lot of sDm=f forms in Middle Egyptian which can be quite confusing in the begnning (at least it was for me when we studied them one after another in a few weeks time). But by reading Middle Egyptian texts you also realise that very few of them are regularly used and that you can "forget" about the others until you meet them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 911 of 1317 20 January 2014 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Ah, thank you! I guessed that something like that was going on, but I really appreciate the confirmation.
That's one of the really nice things about knowing a couple of languages: I now have a much bigger bag of analogies to try out when learning a new one.
Ah, thank you! I find it really hard to dig stuff out of TLA—it's an amazing dictionary, but it's hard for me to scan down a list of German compound nouns and notice a good fit. :-) Egyptology seems to be kind of fun that way: there are three important working languages (English, French and German), and about four major transliteration systems. I'm going to go ahead and release my Markdown/glossing scripts as a Ruby gem with a command-line converter. If anybody's interested in trying them out, please let me know. Edited by emk on 20 January 2014 at 4:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 912 of 1317 23 January 2014 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Progress with Peter Rabbit
While waiting for some software to compile very slowly, I read a bit more Peter Rabbit. This is going surprisingly well—with a dictionary, a set of conjugation tables and Google, I can often get over 80% of the text. The thing that really pleases me is that just occasionally, I can actually look at a short, easy page and just read many of the hieroglyphs directly. It feels as if Egyptian is just like any other language, and even though I've resorted to fairly intensive methods, it's sort of like jump-starting a car on a cold morning: It's a bit of annoying initial work to get things started, after which the engine will hopefully warm up and run normally. (Well, at least until I run into the problem of dialects and change over time.) Below, I've attached several bits that still baffle me, marked in red. Your input and corrections are welcome, as always. :-) Page numbers are now the actual page numbers in the book (there's a bit of front matter and quite a few picture pages). Page 7  |  |  |  |  |  |  | 
wn | pw | sẖꜥ.(w)t | nḏs.(w)t | 4 | jr.w | rn.w | sn be.PCLE | PCLE | rabbit-FPL | little-FPL | 4 | do-STAT.3PL | name.MPL | 3PL (There were?) four little rabbits ??? their names I don’t really understand wn pw, and there are no especially helpful examples in a corpus search. And what’s up with jr.w?  |  | 
m | flopsy | mopsy in.PCLE | Flopsy | Mopsy were Flopsy, Mopsy Page 15  |  | | 
ꜥḥꜥ.n | ṯꜣ(w)n???.n=s | sẖꜥ.t | jꜣ(w).t AUX.PAST | take=PRF?.3FSG | rabbit-F | old-F Then old woman rabbit took(?) The signs for nz are a convenient way of writing .n=s. However, that doesn’t explain why we have a double n after ṯꜣ(w).  |  | 
mnḏm | šw=s | šm.n=s basket | sunshade=3SG | left-PRF=3FSG a basket and her sunshade. The authors give this as šwyt, but it’s šw in Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae.  |  |  |  |  | 
ẖr | nh.wt | r | pr | rtḥ.tj | jn under | tree-FPL | to | house | baker | go.get (From?) under the trees to the baker's, she went to get The original reads “went through the wood.”  |  |  | |  | 
.n=s | t.w | pꜣ(w).t | m | wnš.y??? | 5 -PRF=3FSG | bread.PL | cake | in | raisin | 5 breads and five raisin-cake(s?). TLA says wnš is “raisin” (I think). I’m not sure what’s going on with the plurals here, or with the y in wnš.y. The original reads “a loaf of brown bread and five currant buns.” Edited by emk on 23 January 2014 at 1:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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