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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 3409 of 3959 23 October 2013 at 10:08am | IP Logged | ||
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DA: 80% forståelse er faktisk ganske godt, ikke mindst fordi jeg nogle gange bruger lidt gammeldags udtryk såsom "Fanden og hans pumpestok" (i forbindelse med en omtale af bureaukratiske tiltag såsom pladsreservation og hurtigtogstillæg). Udtrykkets oprindelse er omdiskuteret, men en af mulighederne er at det er en fordanskning af "pompis" (højtideligt optog på latin), som også har leveret "pomp og pragt" (vores version af "pomp and circumstance").
80 % understanding is actually quite good, given that I do use a couple of idiomatic expressions which may not be part of Fasulye's study materials. For instance I noticed that I have used the expression "Fanden og hans pumpestok" (the devil and his pump-stick), which may or may not have its roots in the latin word "pompis" (as in pomp and circumstance) - I use it to characterize bureaucratic like seatreservations and supplements which more and more spoiled the original free and red-tapeless train traveling across Europe after the golden 70s. Apart from that I spend last evening on three things: Harry Potter in Irish, a Catalan word count and an article from the Indonesian Wikipedia about the Arabic language (one of the items in a comprehensive Indonesian-Afrikaans printout, which I currently use as pleasure reading in the-bus-back-home-from-work). Edited by Iversen on 23 October 2013 at 10:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 3410 of 3959 23 October 2013 at 11:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Re: Pumpestok:
It's interesting that English has both "stock" and "staff" meaning roughly stick-like objects. My German evening class teacher last night was pointing out the relationship between German "Stab" and English "staff", and, e.g. that the armies of both countries used the term "staff officer", "general staff", etc, perhaps related to the practice of officers carrying sticks or staffs as symbols of authority. In the British army, these were sometimes called "swagger sticks". Edit2: Aha: if (DK) "pump" is related (via Latin) to English "pomp" (as in Pomp and Circumstance), then maybe a "pumpestok" was indeed a "swagger stick". (Edit3: corrected my spelling of "pumpestok"!) EDIT: "fanden" related to "fiend" perhaps? Edited by montmorency on 23 October 2013 at 1:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 3411 of 3959 23 October 2013 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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It wouldn't surprise me if Montmorency was right in all three guesses. The only thing I can add is that "pumpestok" isn't used in any other expression in Danish. The old waterpumps ("vandpumpe" or "vandpost") at the farms had a lever which was used to pump the water up, and that could logically be a "pumpestok", but I have had a hard time to find an official name for this lever (the best bet is "pumpestang", not "pumpestok"). However the word "pumpestok" may be a pump lever used by two men on a ship, according to the magazine Ingeniøren - the maritime vocabulary has always been somewhat different from the language used by us landlubbers:
"•Når det brænder, må alle mand til pumperne. Men pumper anvendtes også til at pumpe læns med, naturligvis ikke mindst i skibe, skriver vor læser i Højbjerg, der iler de unge ingeniører hos F.L. Smidth til hjælp (Fanden og hans pumpestok Bagsiden nr. 4) og skriver bl.a.: Pumpestokken var den træstok, der anbragtes som en vippe over pumpestemplet, således at to mand kunne pumpe stemplet op og ned. " The Danish Wikipedia hasn't got an article about "Fanden", but in the one about loanwords another hypothesis about his name is proposed: "Fanden er et oldfrisisk fremmedord i dansk (fandiand = den fristende)". However it is unclear to me why this should be more tempting than deriving the word from Old Norse "fjandi" for "fiend" (enemy). Edited by Iversen on 23 October 2013 at 1:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 3412 of 3959 23 October 2013 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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For some reason I returned to read my earlier post from today and something unrelated to pumps occurred to me: Yesterday I used for the first time the 'retranslation' method on my Irish Potter.
Until now I have done copying with grammatical and lexical lookups and in the beginning I added a hyperliteral translation. I.e. I listed new words in the right margen and in the main text I copied sentences from the text, first with the translation right beneath each sentence and later the orginal sentences followed by their translations. Still later I have been copying sentence by sentence without adding a translation ... and if somebody out there thinks that's a pure and simple waste of time copying text, then let me add that the purpose of this exercise is to force yourself to look carefully at each and every syllable in the text. If I just read it through I would skip all the things I was supposed to learn - and more so the more difficult I found the text. Writing the hyperliteral translation first and then reconstructing the original text from it sounds like a return to phase 1a, but it is not. Actually the feeling I get while writing the original sentence is that I'm using the language actively, and that's a big difference. The thing that kept me from doing it up to now is that I was too hesitant about the sentence constructions and morphological markers, but somehow a whole month without any Irish has been mysteriously beneficial. As I have written before it was Luca L. who lured me back to retranslation simply by using the word 'retranslation' in one of his videos. It then dawned upon me that I had originally made the error of letting too long time pass between making the translation and writing the reconstructed version. It must be done while you still vaguely remember the original text, but at a stage where the translation is necessary to remind you about it. With too long a time span it just becomes another boring translation exercise from your own language into the foreign one. Edited by Iversen on 24 October 2013 at 3:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4830 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 3413 of 3959 23 October 2013 at 5:12pm | IP Logged | ||
I was following you up to that point, but what do you think is the difference when you are doing it within this critical time? I mean, I get that you feel it is like (or actually) using the language actively, but what do you think accounts for the difference? Also: do you aim for a "right" answer? I mean do you give yourself 10/10 if the reconstructed phrase is identical to 1a, and knock a point off if it differs slightly, or do you consider it "correct" if it seems like valid TL, but expressed slightly differently? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 3414 of 3959 24 October 2013 at 2:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I do want to get the result 100% correct, but the important thing is not the test aspect - actually I may even have a peek in the original if that's the only way I can deal with a memory lapse. But usually that's not necessary if I have done my translation well and looked up the necessary words.
The difference between 1) copying a sentence and trying to understand it completely in the process and 2) making a hyperliteral translation (which also presupposes complete understanding) and using it to recall the original is precisely the recall process, where I have the same feeling as I have when I invent a sentence from scratch in a language which I know well. My Irish is still not at a stage where I freely can invent sentences at the xomplexity level of a Potter novel so using a 'skeleton' in the form of a hyperliteral translation is a way of circumventing my current limitations. If I postponed the retranslation by for instance a day I wouldn't get this feeling of already knowing a sentence well enough to say or write it - it would be a cumbersome step by step construction process from scratch like the one I use when I write in Irish. I have used this technique for some time with languages like Russian and Greek, where my passive understanding is considerably better, but where I also have some limitations in using the languages actively due to a lack of practice. And of course there is already a somewhat technical comment to this technique in my Guide to Learning Languages part II ("Retranslation as a variation on text copying" ). Every time I hit upon a technique that works better than expected it ends up there. Edited by Iversen on 25 October 2013 at 11:26am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 3415 of 3959 25 October 2013 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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SP: Hoy me desperté temprano y tomé la oportunidad de escuchar la programación matinal de TVE (en español) y RaiUno (en Italiano). Los Italianos parlarono principalmente de los refugiados de los paises norteafricanos - no saben que hacer con ellos se no pueden convencerlos a retornar - no quieren decir que realmente prefererían ver los barcos naufragar en silencio antes de llegar a Lampedusa. Y los españoles mostraron una manifestación de maestros en huelga porque tienen ahora que enseñar más por menos salario. El gobierno español habla de mejoras en el sistema educativo, y el ministro español de educación declaró que no podía ver sugerencias constructivas formuladas por la otra parte y que no iba a cambiar una coma en las reformas, pero si estaba dispuesto a hablar con los profesores. La pregunta es de qué cosa se podria hablar. Ambos Italianos y españoles condenan vehentemente la espionaje de los EE.UU. contra los líderes europeos. Y realmente fue una estupidez de la parte de NSA de hacerlo de manera que se lo podria descubrir y contra los politicos - no había habido ningun reacción de los lideres europeos se los EE.UU. habian solamente espionado contra las populaciones europeas. Una noticia española interesante: Ryanair ha perdido un proceso su varios cargos, incluído el requisito de que los pasajeros españoles sólo pueden hacer proceso contra la compañía en Irlanda y no en su país. Ryanair puede recurrir, pero el judicio ofrece algunas perspectivas interesantes desde un punto de vista internacional. Quizá Ryanair prefiere recurrir al tribunal de Strasburgo que ha pedida la liberación inmediata de terroristas vascos julgados según de la llamada "Doctrina Parot"?
Edited by Iversen on 25 October 2013 at 12:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 3416 of 3959 26 October 2013 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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NO: Eg besøkte biblioteka i dag og kvam heim med noko uventa: Dansk-Norsk Ordbog av Ivar Aasen, etter eit ufullført manuskript fra 1880-83. Ka ein stola seg på dette verk? Nokre ord ljodar rentav som dialekt, men eg veit ikkje kvar grensa går - sjølv ymse (nå 'ymsir'?) danske ord er gået av bruk nå, slikt som "Røgstue" (nå visst 'røgeri' til fisk), som tydes som "Rotstova, Ljorestova". Er "ljorestuva" enno i bruk på norsk? "Blår" finss nå på dansk kun i Pjerrot sin munn, men finns "stry" og "strytòs" maatru på modern norsk? Eg har aldrei set de ord, og enn ikkje Google har dem (med undantak av "Stry" = hamp). På dansk har Den store Danske ordbog denne definisjon: "blår, affaldsprodukt fra forarbejdning af hør og hamp, som bl.a. anvendes til sækkelærred. På Dyrehavsbakken spiser Pjerrot brændende blår, en tradition, der stammer fra markedspladsernes ildkunstnere. At stikke folk blår i øjnene betyder at holde dem for nar." Og sist, men ikkje minst, har Aasen berre formen "å" ("aa") for "på", medan Google nå berre har "på" (som preposition - men sjølvklart "å" ved infinitiv på nynorsk). Kva har sket?
I have been to the local library today, and there I found something totally unexpected, namely a Danish-New Norwegian dictionary compiled by Ivar Asen 1880-83, but not published in his lifetime. And I'm certainly going to study it, but at the same time I have a feeling that some of the words are from some specific dialect and/or obsolete. I have mostly watched Anglophone TV today, including a long program on Animal which came close to convincing me that mermaids exist, and that they descend from prehominids who went to sea and stayed there some 7 mio. years ago. OK, we shan't decide about this intriguing theory here, but I'll just mention that the subtitling service from my cable TV provider tries to counteract the monoglot tendency by presenting me with subtitles in Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, Finnish and other interesting languages. I don't quite know why they haven't corrected this long ago, but personally I don't mind having polyglot subtitles on my TV. PS: eg har just lagt Språkrådets ordbok på mine favoritter - den trur eg meir på. Edited by Iversen on 28 October 2013 at 12:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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