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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3937 of 3959 21 August 2015 at 11:01pm | IP Logged |
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I am still continuing the conversion project which should turn my old cassette tapes with classical music into waw-files, and with around 660 tapes of 1½ hour each that will take some time. One consequence of this is that I actually listen to 5-6 hours of music every evening. This was not planned, but because I actually like the music I couldn't resist the temptation, and I also have to regulate the amplitude and sometimes correct biases or frequency profiles of dubious recordings - not least with recordings of renaissance music, where there are many short pieces taken from different sources with very different amplitudes.
And what has this to do with my language learning? Well, I hardly ever listen to my TV or to voice recording on the internet any more, but my TV is continually running with programmes that either have pretty landscapes or animals OR programs with Danish subtitles - and luckily these are common here in Denmark. I have discovered one unexpected consequence of this,namely that I now can read short snappets from my scriptoria aloud, and that may actually be beneficial. The word "scriptorium" (in the sense I use it) was coined by ProfArguelles, and it roughly consists in copying text while reading it aloud. It is not quite what I have done hiterto because I have skipped the reading aloud. But with music in my ears instead of words it doesn't feel as though I competed with the TV voices. And why do it at all? Well, I copy texts by hand because it helps me to register all the details instead of just sliding over all the small grey unimportant words and ditto features. The Greek texts I have used recently have been taken from Greek tourist sites, and today I used a text that described Festos (Phaistos) on Crete - inclusive its history, its archeology and and the walk you'll do as I visitor to the site. I have visited it myself, but that was as far back as 1987. GR: Τα περισσότερα από τα μινωικά ανάκτορα βρίσκεταν στην ακτή, όπως Κνωσός και τα Μάλια - διάβασα ένα άρθρο για Μάλια πριν μια-δυο νύχτες. Αλλά χθες το βράδυ ήταν βράδυ της Φαιστού (όνομα θηλυκό!), που βρίσκεται σε ένα λόφο στη μέση της χώρας, κοντά σε άλλη θέση Αγία Τριάδα, η οποία είναι περισσότερο γνωστή για τα πολλά ευρήματα της γραπτή πίνακες στην γραφή γραμμική Α. Φαιστός δεν ανασκάφηκε από τον Evans, και ως εκ τούτου δεν υπάρχει εκεί ανακατασκευασμένες τοιχογραφίες, κίονες κ.λπ. ως στην Κνωσό, αλλά ο τόπος είναι ακόμα πολύ εντυπωσιακό θέαμα. Edited by Iversen on 28 August 2015 at 12:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3938 of 3959 23 August 2015 at 9:25pm | IP Logged |
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ENG: Yesterday I sailed around on the lakes near Silkeborg and visited most of the museums of that town and it aquarium. On the boat I had company of my mother and sister, but in the train from home to Ry, where the boat trip started, I did get through a chapter in my TY Old English. In the evening I participated in a meeting in my travel club and got a lift home, so that was all I managed to do studywise yesterday.
Today I have organized my photos from yesterday, but I have also found time to refresh some of the articles from the two issues of "Science et Vie" which I bought during my last journey to France and Belgium. I have made some comments about the one that has paranormal experiences as its theme at 'the other forum', but here I would like to say something about the theme of the other magazine, "the unknown Earth" (= "La Terre cette Inconnue"). FR: Les astronomes ont trouvé des planètes extraterrestres si vite ces dernières années qu'il est difficile de se tenir au cournat. Mais la plupart de ces planètes ont des conditions très peu attrayants - ils sont trop chauds, trop froids, trop grands ou petits (quoique les problèmes de détection font que les planètes trop grands sont surreprésentés dans les statistiques). En anglais on parle de la "Goldilocks zone" (zone habitable) où la vie telle que nous la connaissons seraient possibles. Très peu des planètes trouvées jusque maintenant se trouvent dans cette zone. Or les optimistes peuvent tojours se fier dans la soi-disant équation de Drake, qui présente un nombre de facteurs qui indiquent la probabilité de tel ou tel évènement ou étât. Leur produit peut être si minime qu'il soit, mais parce que le nombre des étoiles dans notre galaxe (pour ne parler du nombre correspondant dans l'univers entier) est astronomique le nombre de civilisations extraterrestres dans notre galaxie "avec lesquelles nous pourrions entrer en contact" serait considérable - surtout si on omet la partie de la definition que parle de contact avec nous (et peut-être aussi la partie sour l'intelligence). Les articles de Science et Vie pointent dans deux directions. D'une part il semble de plus en plus vraisemblable que la vie apparaisse si les conditions ne sont pas trop averses (et elles étaient très extrêmes au début ici!), d'autre part il semble que c'est une chaine d'évènements presque impossibles qui a changé notre Terre dans quelque chose suffisamment propice à l'apparition et la survie de la vie. On sait maintenant que la vie est apparue très tôt dans l'histoire de notre planète. On pense maintenant que le soleil naquit il y a 4,56 millards d'années et que la Terre l'a suivi seulements quelques millions d'années après. Il y a des indices que la vie était déjà ici il y a 2,7 milliard d'années, et probablement beaucoup plus tôt - mais les rochers si vieux sont très rares maintenant. Notre système solaire a des planètes de pierre près du soleil, et puis viennet les géants gazeuses. Assez peu des systèmes stellaires trouvés jusque maintenant ont cette distribution, et selon les simulations digitales laissent douter aussi aussi qu'elle est hors série. Et la Lune? On sait que les minéraux de notre compagnon sont à tel degré similaires à ceux de notre planète qu'il est presque sûr qu'elle a fait partie de la Terre. On pense maintenant que quelque chose de très grand a frappe la planète Terrelune dans juste l'angle correcte pour lancer la Lune dans l'espace - mais pas trop loin. Car sans la Lune nous n'aurions pas eu les marées et le jour aurait été très court. Et l'eau? On a discuté si l'eau de nos océans est venu avec des météorites ou non, mais sans eau il aurait été beaucoup plus difficile de s'imaginer un monde habitable. Le champ magnétique serait apparue il y a entre 4,5 et 3,5 milliards d'années. Il fallait d'abord un réservoir de fer liquide au centre, mais de plus ce noyau doit bouger. Sans mouvement, pas de champ magnétique - ni Mars ni Vénus n'ont un champ magnétique parce qu'elle n'ont pas ce noyau de fer qui bouge. Une fonction de ce champ est d'infléchir la radiation du soleil et de l'univers - sinon la vie sur la surface de la Terre auraient eu des conditions beaucoup plus difficiles. Et de plus: sans l'eau qui fonctionne comme lubrifiant il se peut que la tectonique qui constamment renouvelle la surface aurait été ou bien plus limitée ou plus saccadée (v. page 41). Vénus (qui est de la même taille que la Terre) n'a pas de processus tectonique, aucun champ magnétique et si elle a un noyaud de fer il semble que ce noyau est figé. Et ce n'est pas un lieu ou la vie pourrait survivre - même les extremophiles les plus extremes de notre planète n'auraient pu survivre les 600 degrée C de Vénus. Pourquoi cette différence? Je ne vais pas énumérer tout les événements presque impossibles ou toutes les interactions compliquées entre la vie et la Terre qui ont été nécessaires pour nous fournir d'une planète habitable, mais il faut refaire les calculations sur la probabilité à la base de ce que nous avons découvert récemment, et bien qu'il est toujours probable qu'il y aie de la vie et même vie intelligente quelque part dans l'univers, il me semble qu'il devient de plus en plus difficile croire qu'elle existe près de nous. On parle de vie dans les océans d'Europe (une des lunes de Jupiter), mais qu'on me le montre avant que je ne le croie... Edited by Iversen on 23 August 2015 at 11:06pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 3939 of 3959 24 August 2015 at 7:49pm | IP Logged |
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FRA: Merci pour cette raconte astronomique! J'ai pensé que Vénus n'a pas un champ
magnetigque parce que sa circulation d'axe est trop lente. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 29 August 2015 at 8:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3940 of 3959 27 August 2015 at 3:54pm | IP Logged |
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Ah oui, mais pourquoi est-ce que la rotation est si lente? Celle de Mercure est si lente que c'est toujours la même face qui tourne vers le soleil. Il y des mécanismes pour expliquer cela, mais personne ne sais pourquoi Vénus a cette rotation extremement lente, mais sans coordination avec son mouvement annuel.
La jour de la Terre a rallenti au fur et mesure que la Lune s'est éloignée (pour la même raison qu'une ballerina fait des pirouettes plus vites si elle mets ses bas près de son corps). Donc la terre a eu une rotation plus rapide dans son enfance. En principe l'objet qui l'a frappé et créé la Lune aurait pu lui conférer le moment angulaire nécessaire, mais la plupart des planètes ont un jour court et Mars une journée presque comme la nôtre. C'est Vénus qui est une exception. Edited by Iversen on 28 August 2015 at 12:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3941 of 3959 27 August 2015 at 11:49pm | IP Logged |
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My project with conversion of old music cassettes is moving steadily ahead with 3-4 tapes each evening - right now I'm midway through Debussy - and as expected the practical effect on my language studies has been devastating in the realm of listening, but not nearly as problematic when it comes to writing. I have done Greek wordlists for about an hour now - just with two columns (Danish and Greek) because my source is an old wordlist with partly excerpts from a dictionary, partly words plucked from texts, so I have been through it once, although that happened at least a month ago I still remember most of the words, and I think Greek is the next language in which I might pull off a monolingual trip. However there will probably not be time for a holiday the rest of the year. I'm going to retire at the end of this year, and by postponing any trip abroad I should be able to retire around mid December. At my job they predict that I'll be bored to death and come back begging for permission to continue working, but nah - I do think I'll survive the transition.
My series about my language related paintings at "A language learners’ forum" (new name!) has revived some fond old memories, and I still have all my old painting gear including white canvas. It is not totally excluded that I could find a place to a place to rub some paint off - but not in my flat, where I have to sleep. On the other hand I doubt that I'll take up composing again - at least not while I have my annoying neighbour because composing demands peace and silence. And speaking about music: because I mostly listen to classical music in the evenings due to my project, I mostly watch TV channels with subtitles - and that excludes my Balkan language channels and my Nordic channels insofar they show programs made by themselves. But I have just broken this temporary habit by watching Super Quark in Italian on Raiuno: IT: Ci sono due ragioni per conservare RaiUno sulla mia lista di programmi televisivi: Super Quark et Passaggio all Nordoeste. Il resto è una miseria, ma questi due programmi mostrano que ci sia una segmento onorevole di Italiani con conoscenze nelle scienze naturali, nella cultura, nella storia e nella geografia. Oggi abbiano explicato come gli scientiati tentano di fare una connessione tra le due teorie della relatività di Einstein e le teorie sulle quanti ed altri fenomeni alla scala infinitesimale. Alcune teorie introdurrono l'idea di distanze minime estremamente piccole, ma non di lunghezza zero. La teorie delle stringhe viva ancora nella sua forma 'semplice' con anelli di 11 dimentioni, ma anche in una forma piè recente con brane. Apparentemente ci è stata una grande conferenza recentemente, dove gli esperti hanno discusso le varie opzioni. Il programma ha anche mostrato esempie di mezzi di trasporti basati su cavi, dai famose tramvai di San Francisco alle seggiovie delle zone montuose di Italia ed altrove. Edited by Iversen on 29 August 2015 at 9:44am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3942 of 3959 29 August 2015 at 10:14am | IP Logged |
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I have just answered a plea for language competitions in another thread, and we can have different attitutes to competition in general, but the discussion made me think about one spin-off: how much effort does it take to prod back a rusty language into function. Not necessarily to a level where you can speak it fluently as you could once upon a time, but at least to the level where you can communicate about your interests . Spivak's "rule of seven" may be too strict, both because the figure as such and because it doesn't apply equally to active and passive skills, but its general tenor concurs with the message of Erard's book "Babel no more", namely that you may have been able to speak a lot of languages, but at home and at a random moment without any preparation you will probably discover that some of them have become slightly rusty. However the number may be higher if you live in a place where you are exposed to more languages on a daily basis.
I have participated in two polyglot gatherings in Berlin and two polyglot conferences in Budapest and Novi Sad, and in each of these I have at least said a sentence or two in 13-14 languages (mostly much more). But I have also been stuck in the middle of a conversation in Romanian because I had forgotten the word for "travel" - just I got stuck during a conversation in Dutch in Delft because I didn't remember the word for "breakfast". When you're stuck like that it looks like you can't speak the language, but actually the situation is different from the one where the whole language is weak. Supply the missing word, and you can be babbling happily away again until you run into another stumbling block. The better you know the language the better you will of course be to look ahead and avoid such events, but here we are essentially speaking about languages which you can speak, but not well enough to avoid the pitfalls and potholes. During the events mentioned above Esperanto turned out to be one of the most used languages (right after English and may even before German) - which it definitely isn't when I'm at home choosing what to read next. So it must have seemed to people around me that I didn't speak it at all. However in Lille, where I constantly heard the language around me I could read Esperanto from the outset, I understood spoken Esperanto after less than one hour, and after a few hours I switched to thinking all the time in Esperanto (with a few, but important peeks into the tiny German-Esperanto dictionary I bought for a couple of euros in Berlin in May) - and I could keep this stream-of-consciousness running even though I sometimes had to endure passing moments of aberrant speech from other participiants who couldn't resist the temptation to crocodile. So it is definitely possible to be potential fluent in a language at some intermediate level, but you may still need a minimal amount of exposure under favorable conditions to get it reactivated. With some languages you get that automatically, with others you don't. We are not speaking actual study here - maybe just an hour where you ONLY hear comprehensible speech, but without that hour you leave the impression of being totally incapable of speaking it. And that's irritating. I experienced this with Latin in Berlin 2014 and with Esperanto both in 2014 and in 2015. In both cases I did my utmost to reactivate those languages before the end of the event, and in both cases I chose to put pressure on myself by promising to do a five minute speech in the problem languages (probably with a abysmally bad result), but a polyglot conference isn't ideal for reactiving languages - too many distractions, too few dictionaries and few chances of experiencing a monolingual buzz. My preferred setup would be something like a voyage to a suitable place (because I like to travel, haha), but at home a suitable alternative could be something like a day with the listening-reading-method. At least it is essential that you are surrounded by the language, and that it you get as much push as pull exposure. Edited by Iversen on 29 August 2015 at 6:11pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3943 of 3959 30 August 2015 at 12:33pm | IP Logged |
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In my cassette transfer project I have reached John Dowland (1563-1626), and not only was he an excellent composer, but he also had a few peculiarities, such as a penchant for using the socalled "garpe genetive" in his titles - well, I acknowledge that this is the Norwegian name, but I don't know what it is called in English. Many works were attributed to some rich and famous person, and then Dowland gave them names such as "Sir Langdon his Pauin" (pavane), "Lord Souch his galliard" or "Mr Henry Noell his galliard". Other works got titles with an ordinary 's-genitive, like "Sir Giles Hobie's gaillard, "Mrs Vauxes gigge" or - quite puzzling - "Mrs White's Nothing". Other works got titles with an ordinary 's-genitive, like "Sir Giles Hobie's gaillard", "Mrs Vauxes gigge" or - quite puzzling - "Mrs White's Nothing". With other major composers from the time it seems that the garpe-thing was rarer, and even Dowland predominantly used it with gaillards and mostly with male VIPs - "The Right Honourable Lady Rich her Galliard" is an exception. It may reflect an influence from the naming practice for masques (small and humoristic theatrical pieces with music).
The complete list of Dowlands works can be consulted here, and it is also an opportunity for a bit of psychological profiling. The point is that his titles express an almost manical depressiveness, and people have speculated whether he really was as depressed as his titles suggest - how could anybody keep on writing music if he was blubbering constantly and dripping tears on the paper? And of course he added to his problems by being staunchly Catholic at a time where that could cost you your life. But if you really wanted to be miserable then this was an excellent ploy at the time. His most known work are the "Seven Lachrymae" (tears), but in my collection I also have small pieces with as "Semper Dowland semper dolens", "Melancholie galliard", "Forlorne Hope Fancy", "Fortune my Foe", "Complaint". And outside my collection you have song titles like "The Lamentation of a sinner", "Lasso vita mia, mi fa morire" or "Lend your eares to my sorrow good people", just to mention some of the happier ones. But one day he must have put the wrong leg out of bed in the morning because that day he composed a song named "My thoughts are wingd with hopes". Edited by Iversen on 30 August 2015 at 12:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3944 of 3959 01 September 2015 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
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The absurd visitor numbers for this thread are back to normal - i.e. back to absurd levels. Just before the last outage they said a few thousand visitors per day (over a couple of days), and during the outage the index obviously didn't move - but now it says 5761072 visits all in all - and in these days where we have problems with declining figures for new postings, posters and almost everything else, I doubt that we even have 10.000 daily visitors for the whole forum, let alone for this log thread.
24/8 12:06: 5.723.055 28/8 11:25: 5.734.228 (4 days incl at least 2 without connection) 31/8 10:08: 5.736.320 01/9 16:05: 5.760.725 !! 03/9 13:16: 5.763.252 Weird! I read some legends in Old English in my TY Old English today in the bus, including the one about the fall of a number of Angels. It claimed that these constituted a tenth or the tenth group of angels ("Ðæt tēoðe", translated as "the tenth host" in the notes), and this intrigued me just enough to check the matter out at home, and here I have found a page with all sort of weird information about these angels, including a name list. Further study has revealed that the text in my textbook comes from a collection of homilies written by abbot Ælfric of Eynsham (c. 955 – c. 1010), but he is not even mentioned at the page I mentioned before - even though he is older then the sources it does mention. Like Thomas Aquinas, who is accredited with being the first to identify the fallen angels with demons. However Ælfric comes pretty close with his statement that they changed shape and became hideous and ugly devils during their long fall downwards towards a warm place: "þa becom Godes grama ofer hí ealle, and hí ealle wurdon awende of þam fægeran híwe, þe hí on gesceapene wæron, to laðlicum deoflum". The remaining nine hosts of angels understood the lesson and "Þa sona þa nigon werod, þe ðær to lafe wæron, bugon to heora Scyppende mid ealre eaðmodnesse, and betæhton heora rǽd to his willan" (Then forthwith the nine hosts that were left bowed to their Creator with all humbleness, and resigned their purpose to his will"). It's a hard life to be an angel... Apart from that: I have studied texts and done wordlists in Greek and Russian, but I'll write about that over at the Language Learners' forum. Edited by Iversen on 02 September 2015 at 1:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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