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Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4637 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian
| Message 9 of 408 15 March 2013 at 6:01pm | IP Logged |
Sure I did not hear it in Brussels, but I often went to visit towns and villages in Wallonia and I did not come in contact with it there either.
The figure is from this Wikipedia article, it refers to 1996 though, and the footnote is lacking, so I don't know where they have it from. By the way, it seems that the situation of Walloon is not that different from the case of Alsatian (I live in Alsace).
I understand there are various dialects of Walloon, but is there one written standard? Sorry about these basic questions, but I have a real interest in minority languages in Europe, and when I come accross people who actually know them, I get very curious.
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| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4272 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish
| Message 10 of 408 15 March 2013 at 6:41pm | IP Logged |
Ah, I see the Wikipedia article now. I don't know where this figure comes from. The
Walloon version of the same article is more specific. It says that, 1O years ago, 30-40
% of people in rural areas said they were able to speak the language. The proportion
would be 70-80 % of people over 60 but only ~10 % for people between 20-30. I
participated myself in some of the surveys referred to when I was studying linguistics.
Although I haven't been involved in such research recently, I would guess that the
figures are lower now.
Probably you haven't heard Walloon because most speakers tend to use the language
within their family, in the village pub, with friends and relatives, etc, but not in
public. On the other hand, last time I was in Alsace, I'm pretty sure I heard Alsatian
in the streets.
A written standard has been suggested 10-15 years ago. It is not widely accepted, but
it is used by a very active subgroup. Most of the Walloon Wikipedia is written in that
proposed standard form. You're welcome to ask questions, I'll answer to the extent I'm
able to do it :-)
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| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4272 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish
| Message 11 of 408 16 March 2013 at 7:08am | IP Logged |
ZH
1-hour Skype lesson in the early morning. This time the Skype connexion was very good.
My new teacher offered to ditch New Practical Chinese Reader, a most welcome move, and
we started reading and studying an interesting article about emperor 轩辕黄帝, which is
much more enjoyable, though more challenging.
Studied HSK4 (Skritter) and HSK5 vocab + list of 2300 basic characters (Anki). Also
studied (Pleco) 20-30 words underlined on the days before.
Having finished 名侦探柯南2 (Detective Conan), I decided I didn't want to start
vol. 3 right away, so I'll
try something more ambitious, i.e. a novella by 王小波 called 黄金时代 (The Golden
Age). I've already
attempted to read it, some time ago. While the first chapter was relatively easy, the
second one was hard, I got stuck and did not go further. Maybe this time I'll do
better. So I proceded to read chap. 1 again.
FI
Reviewed some vocab with "Learning with texts".
Luin kahta artikkelia: Kiinan uudesta presidentistä ja pakkasta suomessa.
Read one article about the new Chinese president and one about the weather in
Finland.
LA
Revised some vocab from Eutropis and fabellae. It occurs to me that I've read texts
about the pope's election in Chinese, Finnish, plus English and French, but not in
Latin, which feels somewhat abnormal. I should head towards EPHEMERIS and find
something.
ES: He leído un artículo sobre los caminos de Santiago, sobre los cuales, un día,
quisiera andar.
Edited by lorinth on 16 March 2013 at 7:12am
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| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4272 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish
| Message 12 of 408 18 March 2013 at 9:48am | IP Logged |
Paradoxically, weekends are the moment when I have less time for studying languages,
mainly because there's no comuting and, conversely, many things to do at home and with
the kids. So be it.
Yet, I usually manage to rake enough time scraps to do my Chinese SRS revisions, just
barely. So that was it, basically, for this weekend. I had no time for revising HSK4
with Skritter, though.
I managed to do some blind shadowing of Chinese Learn Online lesson 212 while walking
to the groceries shop.
And I read a bit more of 王小波's 黄金时代. I'm in chapter 2, which is rather tough. There
was a fragment where the main character meets two local boys. As the language is full
of profanities that my dictionaries blissfully ignore and proper names that are
notoriously hard to spot for students of Chinese, I could not do much better than to
guess what was happening. Luckily, I found a partial translation online which allowed
me to understand that fragment, and confirm that I had understood correctly another
difficult fragment further down the way.
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| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4272 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish
| Message 13 of 408 19 March 2013 at 10:24am | IP Logged |
ZH
Played catchup with my HSK4 Skritter queue. Studied HSK5 vocab + list of 2300 basic
characters (Anki). Also studied (Pleco) 20-30 words underlined on the days before.
Finished reading 王小波's 黄金时代 chapter 2. I can celebrate this small victory: I
managed to go further than last time I tried to read this novella.
My teacher sent me a 故事 about 东郭先生 and a big bad wolf. I read it and enjoyed it.
有猎人要杀一只狼。东郭先生那个傻人想帮狼 一个忙。当然他差不多被吃了。但是狼也不太 聪明因为一位老农骗了它 ,就杀
它。
We are supposed to discuss it tomorrow during my Skype class.
FI
Reviewed my vocab queue with Learning with texts. My medium term project for Finnish is
this: when I have, say, 10,000 words (in fact word forms, not lemmas) in LWT, I'll try
to read a reader. I think I have a simplified version of Treasure Island in a box in
the attic.
LA
Continued reading Oerberg's Roma Aeterna, chap. XLIV. This chapter is the most
challenging I've read in the whole Oerberg series (up to now...). It's a simplified
version of Livy book I, chapter 1. I'm in the section about the assassination attempt
against Tarquin.
ES
Como no podía dormirme, miré la única cadena de televisión española que pueda mirar a
casa. Se trataba de noticias sobre las diferentes regiones españolas, una trás otra.
También había malas noticias a propósito de la crisis bancaria en Chipre.
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| betelgeuzah Diglot Groupie Finland Joined 4399 days ago 51 posts - 82 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: Japanese, Italian
| Message 14 of 408 19 March 2013 at 11:46am | IP Logged |
Quote:
Luin kahta artikkelia: Kiinan uudesta presidentistä ja pakkasta suomessa. |
|
|
The first sentence has a nuance of "I read the articles but did not finish them" or "I read some parts of
the articles". I'm not sure if that's what you wanted to say. If you say "luin kaksi artikkelia" that has a
nuance of completion.
It should be "pakkasesta Suomessa". Pakkanen -> pakkasesta. I suspect it has something to do with the -
nen ending of the word.
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| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4272 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish
| Message 15 of 408 19 March 2013 at 12:46pm | IP Logged |
Thanks betelgeuzah! I had forgotten about this nuance. I thought all numerals had to
agree with the noun in all cases. Yet, I can "feel" what you mean. The partitive (kahta)
has often this nuance of non-completion or in-definition, if I'm not mistaken. And, yes,
you're right I mixed up the elative (pakkasesta) and the partitive (pakkasta).
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| lorinth Tetraglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 4272 days ago 443 posts - 581 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish, Latin Studies: Mandarin, Finnish
| Message 16 of 408 20 March 2013 at 9:17am | IP Logged |
ZH
Had a 1-hour Skype class during which we discussed the story of 东郭先生 (see
yesterday's entry). As I had read the text the day before, it was relatively easy to
read aloud, discuss, summarise the story, etc. The teacher also made me tell her 小红帽.
A very entertaining and lively lesson!
Studied my HSK4 Skritter queue. Studied HSK5 vocab + list of 2300 basic characters
(Anki). Also studied (Pleco) 20-30 words underlined on the days before.
Started 王小波's 黄金时代 chapter 3.
Shadowed (x-1) lesson 210 of Learn Chinese Online and did a scriptorium exercise with
lesson 203.
While preparing a dish for the evening meal, I opened Youtube and listened distractedly
to several episodes of 大头儿子小头爸爸. My son actually watched them and enjoyed them. He
might end up being fluent in Chinese much sooner than me.
FI
"Selkouutiset" verkkosivustosta löysin ja luin kaksi kiinnostavaa artikkelia
Kyproksessa talletusverosta ja asekauppasopimuksesta.
On the web page of Selkouutiset I found and read two interesting articles about the
tax on savings in Cyprus and about a treaty on the sales of weapons.
LA
In the Gesta Romanorum
(Wikipedia) I read a tale
called De sequenda ratione. It's a dialogue between a father and her daughter
who has vowed to commit suicide should her husband die before herself.
WA
Dj' a-st ataké a lére Vera, on roman da Lucyin Mahin. Nos estans el Crimêye, Oucrinne,
enute. Dji m' dimande douvént ç' ki li scrijheu s' a sintou oblidjî do scrire on longou
adrovaedje, come po dmander escuze po çou k' i s' aprestêye a scrire ou po prévni l'
léjheu k' i serè dandjureu maké. Est ç' ki l' novele serè si ewaerante ki çoula? Nos
vierans bén.
I've started to read Vera, a novel by Lucyin Mahin. We are in Crimea, Ukraine,
today. I wonder why the writer felt obliged to write a long introduction, as if he
wanted to apologize about what he's going to write or to warn the reader that s/he's
probably going to be shocked. Will the novel be that frightening? We'll see.
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