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Tim’s Catalan Book (Team Caesar)

  Tags: Catalan | Book
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60 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 3 46 7 8 Next >>
anamsc2
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 Message 33 of 60
10 February 2015 at 7:29pm | IP Logged 
Sorry, don't know why this became a double post instead of an edit!

Edited by anamsc2 on 11 February 2015 at 7:48am

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Serpent
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 Message 34 of 60
10 February 2015 at 9:27pm | IP Logged 
Vermelho is the Portuguese for red btw :) roxo is purple. And it's related to the Catalan ros, which somehow appears to mean blond.
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Meddysong
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 Message 35 of 60
10 February 2015 at 10:01pm | IP Logged 
Thanks, anamsc2. It's what I would've thought of as an -av- use (ongoing in the past whilst other past actions start and finish). It'll take me a while to adjust to that but with a bit of practice I'll get there.

I don't know how I feel about this, Serpent. On the one hand, it means that the words aren't so easy to confuse between language ("Is it 'verde' in Spanish or Italian? Or is that Portuguese?") but on the other hand you lose the instant recognition. Hmm ...
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Serpent
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 Message 36 of 60
11 February 2015 at 12:17am | IP Logged 
Hmm but it should be obvious enough due to English vermillion? Producing is harder though :)
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anamsc2
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 Message 37 of 60
11 February 2015 at 7:50am | IP Logged 
Meddysong wrote:
Thanks, anamsc2. It's what I would've thought of as an -av- use (ongoing in the past whilst other past actions start and finish). It'll take me a while to adjust to that but with a bit of practice I'll get there.


If it were just ongoing in the past, it would be imperfect. However, since it continues to happen in the present, it's present perfect. It's the same as in American English (although I think we use present perfect a bit differently from other varieties, so that might not be helpful) -- For centuries, pilgrims have traveled to Jerusalem...
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Meddysong
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 Message 38 of 60
11 February 2015 at 9:55pm | IP Logged 
Yes, you're quite right. I didn't even think to translate it into English as something which is still ongoing to this day.

I'm off to Google vermillion now ...
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Meddysong
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 Message 39 of 60
17 February 2015 at 8:37am | IP Logged 
Valentine's Day has come and gone. That wouldn't normally mean much to me but it so happens that a) my anniversary present from Clare had arrived late and so she gave it to me over the weekend, and b) I needed to add something to my Amazon order for Clare in order to qualify for free delivery.

The happy result is that I received the item on the left from Clare and treated myself to the item on the right:



I read through the first two chapters of TY Catalan on Saturday. I'm quite impressed with myself because I learned the numbers quite easily, which is normally quite challenging for me because it's rote-learning. I hate ordinal numbers at the best of time but seem to have added first-tenth to my vocab without too much bother too.

I had tonnes of fun with the verb book too, as nerdy as that makes me sound. It was quite clear from the list at the back (which tells you which page's pattern the listed verbs correspond to) that the most popular form was number 17, so that's the first I tackled. This was cantar, which I suppose makes sense because I've seen that verb used in introductions in other languages too. The switch in tonal vowel from a to e in cantes is surprising to me, but I've absorbed it without a problem. I made a point of learning estar, esser (which I assumed would be ser and which does have an entry in the verb list though which points to esser), anar, fer, poter and a few others too.

I would've loved to do some more work on Sunday, too, but Clare and I made holiday plans instead. We're off to northern Italy and southern Switzerland in June. Should be tonnes of fun!

I found Asterix el Gal on YouTube, which I thought would be spectacularly useful, since I knew the story and so could concentrate on the sounds. I have a treadmill and TV in my garage, and I've recently set up a Raspberry Pi to act as a media server, and so I thought that this would make a good first outing for it.

I love Asterix as reading material but if I never saw the cartoon again I'd be thrilled. Goodness me. I suppose it was from 1967 so I shouldn't be surprised by the poor production values but I hated it and had to switch it off after 30 minutes then come back the following day for the following half hour. I found myself understanding some of the dialogue but this was maybe too ambitious; the characters spoke at native speed, of course, and had silly cartoon voices. Still, it served to give me some confirmation on how the language sounds.

On the theme of Asterix, I have another comic to read, courtesy of Clare:



I can't wait to get stuck into it but I'm going to be disciplined and save it for another time. It can be a treat for me once I get past the halfway mark in TY Catalan.

As for other languages ... well, I read a few more chapters of the French version of Dissolution. I wrote earlier that reading in French is effortless for me. I should've qualified that slightly; reading a book in which nothing seems to be happening isn't effortless in whatever language. It's strange, though, because I read this series in English years ago and loved it. I suppose it might be the case that back then I hadn't really ever read fiction, so what was revolutionary to me then has lost some of its shine now that I've read a lot more. I hope not, though, because I remember really loving the third in the series!

Edited by Meddysong on 17 February 2015 at 8:41am

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Meddysong
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 Message 40 of 60
21 February 2015 at 9:05pm | IP Logged 
I was going to attempt to write a couple of sentences in Catalan but I haven't formally learnt how to do past forms yet :)

But I'm happy to say that I'm halfway through the TY book, which means I'm allowed to start reading Astèrix al País dels Helvecis tomorrow. I've really enjoyed working through TY. It's just a bit unfortunate that the only verbal forms that I've encountered at this stage are in the present tense, so I'm limited in what I can express, although I could always cheat and use my conjugations book. Everything's been really good so far, though, and I thoroughly understand why the book is set out as it is.

Today is International Mother Language Day. Evidently mine doesn't need any publicity whatsoever, so I thought I'd comment on this video of native Esperanto-speakers, since I imagine most people would never have imagined them to exist. I know the people who produced the video plus four of the six people in it (the Brazilan siblings are a generation behind me and live too far away for our paths to have crossed), which gives me a small sense of pride. Anyway, it's sort of relevant to this thread because I've been reading the Catalan transcript, which is, of course, full of "em dic X", "sóc la X", "tinc x anys", "visc a X" and so on, all the basics.

Edited by Meddysong on 21 February 2015 at 9:07pm



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