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Iversen’s Multiconfused Log (see p.1!) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5850 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 1505 of 3959 19 November 2009 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | ||
Dat is nog normaal, want dat moet ik ook betalen voor een Engels astronomietijdschrift of voor "Business Spotlight". Het is niet goedkoop, maar ik ben het gewend dat ik zoveel moet uitgeven, als ik zo'n tijdschrift graag wil kopen en lezen. Ik vraag maar voor de zekerheid, want "Sky & Teleskope" kost hier 13,50 EUR en dat is mij dan werkelijk te duur!!! "Illusteret Videnskab" is ook een zeer boeiend tijdschrift, heb ik de indruk. Ik moet nog meer kleine woorden en grammaticastructuren leren, maar het zal niet zoveel maanden duren, totdat ik zoiets vloeiend kan lezen. Dat geeft mij heel veel motivatie voor mijn talenstudie! Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 19 November 2009 at 12:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 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 1506 of 3959 20 November 2009 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
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It: Questa è una notte straordinaria - io ho letto un poco di letteratura! Una uccellina ha in un'altro luogo cinguettato di un libro intitolato qualcosa come 'Il centro non può tenere' (The centre can't hold). Non ho ancora letto questo libro, ma mi ricordo che queste parole sono state usate in un libro di William Butler Yeats, che ho letto negli anni settanta come parte dei miei studi di letteratura. Ma lo stile mi ha fatto pensare di Giovanni Milton, che ha scritto una poesia massiccia biblica circa la rivolta di Lucifero, Paradise Lost. Ho letto alcune pagine di questa opera, ma non l'ho trovato così monumentale and "sconvolgente" quanto avevo sperato;
ENG: Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of EDEN, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav'nly Muse, ... Is this the beginning of one of the fundamental works of English literature? Sigh... DA Vreden, Gudinde! besyng, som greb Peleiden Achilleus Rædsomt, og Qvaler i tusinde Tal Achaierne voldte. Heel mangfoldige Heltes behjertede Sjele den skikked Ned til Hades's Hjem, og for Hunde til Rov som for alskens Fugle den gav deres Liig, — fuldbragt blev Zeus's Beslutning — Alt fra den Stund, Uenighed først og Splid havde reist sig Mellem den Ædling Achilles og Mændenes Drot Agamemnon. These lines introduce the Danish translation of The Iliad (in the old translation of Chr.Wilster) - not for beginners in Danish, but the kind of monumental language that I had expected from Milton. Sigh, - no wonder that it took him 10 books to reduce Satan to a dust eating snake with that punctilious and peripatetic kind o' style. The same lines in Perseus look like this - minus the asterisks (we have discussed the barrage of diacritics and accents before - the heritage from byzantine scholars who in vain tried to block the development of the Greek language): μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προί̈αψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή, ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεί̈δης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. Unfortunately I haven't learnt Old Greek yet, and even with a translation I can only get the general gist of the meaning. It: Perció ho continuato il cammino nel mezzo (e un poco più) della mia vita verso la Commedia di Dante, la quale posso almeno più o meno leggere sennò comprendere. E questa volta sento infine il pugno di ferro di un poeta che osa essere e monumentale e semplice: 1.1 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita 1.2 mi ritrovai per una selva oscura 1.3 ché la diritta via era smarrita. 1.4 Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura 1.5 esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte 1.6 che nel pensier rinova la paura! È un po'divertente che solo la prima riga richiede sei righe di commentario, che culmina con la constatazione che la poesia sia scritta da Dante quando aveva 35 anni di vita, vale a dire, nell'anno santo di 1300 DC ... alla vigilia del Venerdì Santo. Così ci manca solamente di sapere che ora era e che cosa aveva mangiato a cena il poeta. Dante non si riesce a mantenere il ritmo nelle pagine seguenti, e mi ricordo dalla mia prima lettura del lavoro che il Purgatorio, e in particolare il Cielo, erano un po pallidi in confronto all'Inferno. Ma Dante ha almeno tentato di scrivere un'opera monumentale, e per questo mi piace il libro ... benché non tanto da farmi leggere ancora una volta la Commedia completa - "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate'" ... questo si legge nel terzo libro. Edited by Iversen on 20 November 2009 at 10:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5850 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 1507 of 3959 20 November 2009 at 10:07am | IP Logged | ||
Correction: It's Ancient Greek, Iversen. Unfortunately, I have learned Ancient Greek at school without ever having any use for it. In such a case you forget the language again, this is what happened to me. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 20 November 2009 at 10:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 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 1508 of 3959 21 November 2009 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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OK, Ancient Greek, then. But there is more behind this than you might think. I have made Google test for several languages, combined with either "old" or "ancient":
English: old - 6.770.000, ancient - 157.000 Nordic/norse: old - 34.600/984.000, ancient: 11.500/34.600 French: old - 2.320.000, ancient - 53.900 Russian: old - 693.000, 54.600 Greek: old - 498.000, ancient - 4.090.000 Chinese: old - 820.000, ancient - 2.800.000 The numbers do not exclusively refer to the languages, but the results are quite clear. ONLY Greek is normally used with "ancient", and my guess is that it might reflect the name of the subject in schools and the name of the departments at universities, but what then about Chinese? Maybe 'ancient' conveys the sense of venerable, exotic and very difficult, while 'old' are used with less exotic languages. Even French falss in this category, even though the ususal expression in French is "ancien français". In this moment I'm scanning photos. All my own photos and postcards have been scanned or stored in electronic form and registrered in a database coupled to my travelogues and diaries and maps. When I introduced this system from 1998 onwards I also scanned my mothers photos up to 2002, but since then I have only kept my own collection up to date. But recently she go a notebook and I copied the whole collection to it, so now nemesis has caught up with me: I have promised also to update her photos. A couple of weeks ago I scanned and registrered around 700 photos, and this weekend I hope to get through 800 more. However it is difficult to stay concentrated when you have to feed a flatbed scanner at least once every minute, and my other activities have therefor been limited to things that doesn't demand full concentration nor the exclusive use of my computer screen, such as TV watching, listening to music and reading a French book with idiomatic expressions - the most fragmented kind of book I could find apart from dictionaries. However I will just mention a TV program in English. Thursday I watched a program called "future superhumans". Among other things it told about the following things: a gadget that can make transform subvocal speech audible, a drug that make brain signals stronger (which should boost memory and thinking speed), a contact lens that can function as a computer screen, drugs called 'ampaquines' (?) that can make you strong and slim and healthy like a sparsely fed mouse, special cells (stem cells?) that can be added to a living brain where they will grow and produce synapses plus nanodrugs that basically can block the mechanism that is responsible for the ageing process. Just about the only thing they didn't mention was a pill that on the spot gave you competence in Classical Chinese or Warlpiri or whatever, but it almost doesn't matter - give us a better memory, more brain cells, a longer life (and no Alzheimer) plus contact lenses with direct contact to Google, then we may not even need such a pill. Edited by Iversen on 21 November 2009 at 4:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5524 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 1509 of 3959 21 November 2009 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Old Greek is not the same as Ancient Greek, and Ancient Greek is mostly, at least up until recently, referred to as just Greek. Which is of course why the present form is often referred to as Modern Greek, while modern English is only English.
In fact, in many cases, you should instead contrast Ancient X with Classical X. Old X is usually something different, or not even an accepted term. Ancient in Ancient Greek doesn't just mean "very old", it really has to do with (Classical) Antiquity. Note that the A is capitalised when speaking about Greek, but that 'ancient' is just a normal adjective when referring to for example China or Chinese. Edited by Gusutafu on 21 November 2009 at 5:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 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 1510 of 3959 21 November 2009 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree on most of what you write here, - and as you see I use the expression 'Classical Chinese' near the end of my message. But as a quick and dirty summary it seems to be the case that Greek and Chinese are in the 'ancient' group and other languages are squarely in the 'old' group. 'Classical' is not just an indication of age, but invokes a (lost) golden age. So 'Classical' Latin and 'Classical' Greek are both old and ancient, but not all old and ancient phases of languages are also classical: if I have understood things right Classical Greek refers to Attic Greek from a period of just a couple of hundred years, roughly between Hesiod and the Hellenistic writers. But excluding for instance Homeric Greek or dialectic forms like Cypriot Greek from the same period - and certainly excluding both the Greek on the Linear B tablets and Koine.
I am aware that some persons automatically have assumed that 'Greek' referred to Ancient or even Classical Greek. With the risk of provoking one more row about the rights of both native speakers and language learners to take an independent stance in questions of language, I would say the this usage is obsolete. It reflects the priorities of some old schools scholars who saw the Classical antiquity as the apogee of human civilisation, and who didn't really care a bit about the people who still speak Greek in a somewhat different form. These people are dying out, and instead we have a lot of people who have to deal with Greece now - for instance in the EU. For me 'Greek' is first and foremost Modern Greek (Dhimotiki) simply because it is the only form I have studied, but some day I may learn Classical Greek too, and then things will become complicated. Edited by Iversen on 21 November 2009 at 9:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 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 1511 of 3959 23 November 2009 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I have been busy with other projects (my mother's photographs!) the whole weekend, so I haven't had time to add to this log. But I just saw that it has passed the 200.000 hits mark since yesterday (200456 hits in this moment). Considering that I started it November 29 2008, i.e. less than one year ago, this is stupendous and way above my expectations.
Thank you to all readers out there, but especially thank you to those members who by commenting here have contributed to making it big and confused and hyperactive. And a special thanks to our Administrator for creating the forum (and for accepting this pile of chaos in a corner of his garden). Edited by Iversen on 23 November 2009 at 11:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5850 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 1512 of 3959 23 November 2009 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | ||
My congratulations for writing such an interesting multilingual log which is so popular that it has reached more than 200,000 views! I will keep contributing here writing in my foreign languages and German. This week I will restart observing the job market and writing job applications. It is an advantage that most of them are allowed to be done by e-mail, which goes much quicker, as I have all my professional certificates in a pdf-file. I will deal with applications on Monday/Tuesday every week, so that I don't have to bother too much about this during the rest of the week. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 23 November 2009 at 8:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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