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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4836 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 3545 of 3959 05 March 2014 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Finally, with the aid of an English copy, I've managed to find this. In the English version (pages 61-62 of my paperback edition): "There's not a single witch or wizard who wasn't in Slytherin". (said by Hagrid to Harry). "Does 'run wrach ne dewin a drodd i'r ochr dywyll na fu yn Slafennog". "there is not one witch or wizard (that) went to the dark side not been in Slytherin" (I think). (g)wrach = hag, witch dewin = magician, wizard tywyll (->dywyll - soft mutation) = dark ochr = side I can't identify "drodd" - it could be from "troi" to turn, which apparently has stems of either tro- or trodd- . However, since it should be in the past, it could be a short-form past tense (which I haven't officially learned yet). However, it is not the obvious one ("to go" = "mynd"), since that has an irregular preterite form that doesn't end -odd in the 3rd person. There is also another unknown, i.e. the way that the translator might be representing Hagrid's particular way of speaking. It's probably obvious to an experienced Welsh reader, just as it is in the English, but I have barely started reading Welsh yet. Actually, looking again, it's probably "turn", i.e. "turned to the dark side", with a soft mutation (t->d) added. ("troi"->"trodd"->"drodd") EDIT: The Welsh is from page 62 of the hardback edition "Harri Potter a Maen yr Atbronydd", Chapter 5 "Y Lôn Groes" (Which I think means "The Cross Street" (Diagon Alley). (Although "croeslin" can mean "diagonal". Also "Croes" can mean "transverse". I think it's probably quite a good translation of a rather bad pun in English :-) ). Edited by montmorency on 05 March 2014 at 4:50pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6711 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 3546 of 3959 06 March 2014 at 9:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well well, you found it. For me the interesting feature of the Irish sentence was that it exemplified a certain type of relative construction, and also the way the negation is introduced with a dependent verbal form in the relative clause. And as you can see Slytherin isn't translated.
My course through the Polish textbook is going slower than expected, not because I don't spend enough time with it, but because I look everything up and read all the notes and comments. I still don't do the drills, but I see forward to doing some listening exercises at a computer with headphones. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4836 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 3547 of 3959 06 March 2014 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
Can't tell you much about the grammar in the Welsh: although I've covered some sorts of relative clauses, I don't recognise any particular construction here; maybe it's peculiar to literary Welsh, or maybe it's because of Hagridisms. Depressingly tends to confirm what I'd already gathered, which is that knowing Welsh usually isn't much help with Irish, and vice-versa. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6711 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 3548 of 3959 10 March 2014 at 12:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm back home now after my trip to Dakar in Senegal and the Øresund region in Denmark/Sweden. I have a few other things to do tonight so I can't spent much time here, but I'll just mention that it became something of a polyglot exercise. I flew down to Senegal with TAP, and during a stopover in Lisboa airport I bought several magazines in Portuguese. I have read one which spent 20 pages on weird pizzas made by different placess in Lisboa, and another which I'll write more about later. Then I spent 5 days speaking French in Senegal, and I returned to Denmark with Brussels Airways, which gave be the occasion to read a newspaper in Flemish and to have a conversation in Dutch with the steward who gave me the newspaper. And then I landed in Denmark, where I spoke Danish, and continued to Sweden, where I have been exclusively speaking Swedish for two days.
Actually the first time I said anything there was on the Hevertgatan in Helsingborg (close to the Tropikarium): four Swedish ladies had left an sports facility in the neighbourhood and got totally lost and now they wanted help to get down to the town center. Later on I found a Swedish newspaper with an article about a youtube user called "Smoukahontas" who knows three languages, but has made short videos with sentences in some thirty languages - and one of these has had more than 6 million views, which probably is a record for language related videos. At least she is honest enough to admit that "The thing is, I'm not trying to speak any languages in this video. My point is only to bring out what the languages sound like to me -> Utter gibberish". And finally a Swedish reading extravaganza: in my last hotel, 'Grand Hotel' in Lund, I found two books in Swedish in my room: a 100 years jubilee celebration book about the hotel itself (around 240 pages) and a book about cookery and food in general, but with a Scanian angle (somewhat thinner, maybe 140 pages or so). And I read both in one evening. I'll write about these things in more detail the next couple of days - and in the relevant languages. Edited by Iversen on 10 March 2014 at 12:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6711 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 3549 of 3959 10 March 2014 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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POR: Prometi escrever sobre assuntos relacionados com a minha última viagem, e aqui segue algo sobre a revista "Super interessante" que eu comprei em triplicado durante uma escala em Lisboa. No número de Março 2014 há super interesantes artigos sobre temas como cientistas supercruéis, felicidade mensurável, carros elétricos e nuvens artificiais, mas o artigo sobro o qual eu vou escrever trata de la historia geologica da Terra. Se pode reconstruir os movimentos do continentes nos tempos passados, e verifica-se que às vezes se reunen em um solo grande supercontinente unificada. A última vez que isso aconteceu foi antes de 250 milhões de anos, no final do Permiano (onde a maioria da fauna e flora do planete desapareceu), e essa condição perdurou até no Triássico. Este supercontinente tem sido chamado Pangaia (em grego: toda a terra).
Mas também aconteceu várias vezes antes na história da Terra, e, embora seja difícil reconstruir a aparência do planeta nos muito velhos tempos, os geólogos são bastante seguros de que existava ainda um supercontinente pouco antes do Cambriano. Isso temem chamado Pannotio ("notio" em grego: início) 540 milhões de anos atrás. E provavelmente, ainda um superkontinente que os estudiosos temem apelidado Rodínia (de 'terra natal' no russo) aproximadamente 1100 milião de anos atrás. E talvez até mesmo um chamado Columbia e outro chamado Ur ainda mais cedo, mas isto se basa parcialmente em conjecturas. O período da "Bola de neve Terra" (Snowball Earth) 700 milhões anos atrás ocorreu logo após Rodínia quebrou - eu comentei sobre isso aqui em novembro e dezembro de 2013. E quando o terreno foi descongelado de novo aconteceu a exploção de fauna chamada Ediacara, à qual eu me referi em agosto de 2012. I bought three issues of the magazine "Super Interesting" in Portuguese in Lisboa on my way to Dakar in Senegal, and so far I have read one of them. It has actually some interesting articles over subjects ranging from plancton and invertebrates over electric cars to ways to mesure (and define) happiness neurogically. In the Portuguese rant above I focus on an article which not only tells about the oldest rocks and oldest traces of life on this planet, but also about the series of supercontinents which at various points in the history of the Earth have united just about all the landmasses on it. It last happened during the Triassic (after the Permian, which ended in the worst mass extinction episode since snowball Earth). This supercontinent has been called Pangea ('All Earth' in Greek), but it seems that there has been at least two and more likely three or seven similar episodes before that, and the big crunch will happen again and again in the future - though long after we have disappeared. I have earlier written in this thread about the Permian mass extinction, the Ediacaran fauna which blossomed after the Snowball Earth episode and various other themes, so if some commentators think that we are monomanic about languages here at HTLAL I hope I have done my part to dispell that impression. For me it is extremely relevant to known that the oldest known indicium for life on the Earth is an anormal proportion of C13 against C12 in rocks from around 3850 million years ago. And that the oldest known rocks are small zircon crystals from around 42-400 mio. years ago, which are found scattered in certain newer rock formations. Edited by Iversen on 12 March 2014 at 12:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6711 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 3550 of 3959 11 March 2014 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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DU: Zoals ik al schreef een paar dagen geleden, kwam ik terug van Senegal met Brussels Airlines door Brussels, en ik kreeg op de route naar Kopenhagen een vlaamse krant (genaamd iets zoiets als het laatste nieuws). En het belangrijkste verhaal erin was dat ze een paar gewelddadige mannen die waren gespecialiseerd in het beroven van dronken studenten in verschillende steden nu op heterdaad was geworden betrapt. In een van de steden (waarschijnlijk Mechelen) hadden ze bewakingscamera's opgezet, maar zo waren de criminelen gewoon weg naar Leuven om daar de drunken studenten te overvallen en bestelen.
DU: Jag skrev ju också att jag har varit i Sverige i några dagar och att jag hade läst både böcker och tidningar där. Boken om mitt hotell i Lund var mycket trevlig för det att den gav ett magnifik bild av både gäster och personal genom åren, med flera intervjuer. Og Lund har också sina drukna studentar ock lärare. Låt mig citera en anekdot från boken (p. 30): "På Eks tid hade Grand en mycket känd rockvaktmästare med ett minne som inte var av denne världen. En student forsökte en gång skoja med honom genom att påstå att den rock han fåt utleverat inte var hans. 'Må så vara', sa rockvaktmästaren. 'Men det var den rocken herrn hade på sig när herrn kom'." Den andra boken (om mat och matlagning med tiden) bestod av särskilta artiklar av olika författare, och jag läste inte minst med intresse den artikel som handlade om Systembolaget och 'motbokan', i vilkan skola noteras svenskarnas inköp av öl och sprit, flaska för flaska. Motboken finns inte längre, men Systemet består. Edited by Iversen on 11 March 2014 at 12:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6711 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 3551 of 3959 12 March 2014 at 2:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I live in a city with a university, and when students there are defending their theses* for the doctorate aka ph.D. this is sometimes announced in my daily newspaper. And then you clearly see the limits of your command of your native language! Sometimes Latin is more useful than English. And English is definitely more useful than Danish nowadays when it comes to academical publications, even at Danish universities.
* yes, I know that there are differences between theses and dissertations in the USA - but this is Denmark. Today there were three defence sessions on the list, one a defence of the thesis "Inter-Alpha-Inhibitor a proteoglycan in the Extracellular Matrix", the next "Nephrogenic systemic fibrosis: a search for patients, pathogenesis and treatment." and the last one "Orbital distortion and nondipole effects in strong field physics". Well, I don't mind that the titles are quoted as they are, but the explanations are in the same style, just with Danish as the base language instead of English. And then I wonder whether the communicative effect of sentences like the following ones really is worth the paper they are printed on, or whether a chance to give a glimpse into science has been missed. Reading this stuff is however similar to reading a text in a foreign language, so I do try to guess what people really try to say, using the techniques I usually use on texts written in obscure foreign languages. For instance one of the theses discusses the folding mechanisms of a membrane protein GlpG, which according to the summmary is a step leading to the formation of cytotoxic alpha synuclein oligomeres, and these are known to be a major cause of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. In this disease ropelike structures (amyloid fibrilles) are formed in places they shouldn't be.. OK, now I see that this might be important. The alpha synuclein fragments form a nuclear structure consisting of two kinds of oligomeres, one of which is an intermediary type which leads to the formation of fibrilles, while the other is more stable and consequently more resistant to changes in the outside world, and - most interestingly: this type doesn't form amyloid deposits (or in other words: it doesn't clog nerve cells up like the other type does). So far so good, and oligomeres are apparently more pernicious for the cell structure than other alpha synuclein types. And now my understanding grinds to a screeching halt: is this a reference to type 2 or both types or what? If, so why isn't the type that doesn't form amyloid deposits on nerves totally innocuous? And wasn't the purpose to discuss the difference in effect between these two, instead of suddenly introducing other types which supposedly are less harmful? And last, but not least: how many of the readers of the newspaper can understand even a centimeter of this stuff? At this point I would have written about my studies of Polish, but that'll have to wait. My brain is tired. Edited by Iversen on 12 March 2014 at 2:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4647 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 3552 of 3959 12 March 2014 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Great post about what I guess is a medical thesis. Actually, some years ago I helped my brother, who is a medical doctor, proofread his thesis, which he wrote in English, of course. A lot of the stuff was more or less like what you cite here, so my proofreading was limited to correcting the wrong use of prepositions or verb forms, or simple spelling mistake. I trust his tutor would correct any wrong use of medical terminology.
I guess there actually is a market for "medical English", or maybe just "medical language" in general, as it sometimes looks like a weird variety of a Greco-Latin language for the initiated. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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