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Élan Senior Member United States Joined 5443 days ago 165 posts - 211 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian
| Message 1961 of 3959 24 July 2010 at 4:03am | IP Logged |
Just a quick hello from an American currently living very near Kuala Lumpur. How are you finding Malay? I am only staying here for about 5 more weeks, but I come back in December and plan on staying for quite awhile. I thought it might be smart to study some Malay before I return and then try to use it as much as possible while living here. Right now I'm so focused on Farsi/Persian that I can't imagine taking any time away from it to study Malay.
Anyway, enough about me. :P I hope you're enjoying KL!
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 1962 of 3959 26 July 2010 at 6:50am | IP Logged |
I have written more about my impressions of Malayan (and Indonesian) in this thread, but generally I must say that you should try to learn it while you are here - it is probably your best chance to learn the fundamentals of an Asian language without spending a lietime on the project.
BA: Hari ini adalah hari terakhir saya di Kuala Lumpur, dan saya menghabiskan di pusat bandar. Minngu saya melawat Menara Petronas, di mana ada sesuatu yang disebut 'Petrosains': tempat dimana anda boleh belajar tentang sains (=science, hehe) dan pengeboran minyak. Tetapi anda boleh juga belajar bahasa, kerana semua teks adalah dwibahasa di Melayu dan Inggeris, dan ini adalah topik yang menarik minat saya, tidak membaca fiksyen. Saya telah mengira kata-kata saya pagi ini, tapi saya akan menulis tentang itu dalam Bahasa Inggeris.
This is my last day in Kuala Lumpur, and I will spend it walking around in the town center. Yesteday I visited the Petronas Towers, not so much to see the towers as to visite a place called 'Petrosains' ('Petro science' - notice the spelling of English loanwords!). It is a place where you can learn about science (and oil drilling, of course), but for me it was almost as interesting to be there for the bilingual texts, which touched exactly upon the scientific and technical themes which I prefer - and for which it has been surprisingly difficult to find suitable books.
This morning I made a provisional word count. I have been studying 'Mixed Bahasa' for something like three weeks now, and in my 'Oxford Dawn' dictionary I have worked my way through 88 out of 314 pages in the Malaysian-English section. I did 5 separate counts for these 88 pages (A-H) and 5 for the rest, and in the 'studied' section I had apparently learnt words corresponding to a vocabulary of around 1000 native words plus the same number of loanwords, mostly from English, but sometimes from other sources (such as 'gereja' from Portuguese 'igreja'). This is not enough to read fluently, but a good start. The estimated numbers 'globally' (A to Z) were respectively 1921 local words and no less than 2808 loanwords, - but this last number is spurious as two of my sample pages hit down precisely in places dominated by loanwords ("in-" and "on-/-op-"). My best guess right now is that my total passive vocabulary of words actually used in Malaysian and Indonesian is at least 2000 words (plus a lot that I would be able to guess); however relatively few of these words are active at this stage. And I have made very few attempts to speak to people around me or trying to understand what they say, so questions of pronunciation are so far not relevant. There is a time for everything, and so far I go for the written language here.
Edited by Iversen on 26 July 2010 at 4:41pm
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 1963 of 3959 27 July 2010 at 2:32pm | IP Logged |
Iterum domo sum.
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Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 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 1964 of 3959 27 July 2010 at 4:29pm | IP Logged |
Deinde salve domi!
Fasulye
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 1966 of 3959 29 July 2010 at 2:54pm | IP Logged |
LAT: "Lorem ipsum" lectum Parandaici demiratus sum quo veniat haec expressio. Apparuit quod Cicero in operi suo "De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" igitur scripsi: "Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit". In negotiatione impressiori usus est paragraphum nugarum utere ut aspicionem graphicam illustraret sine textum verum edare, et "lorem ipsum" illo proposito saepe usum est.
RUM: Am fost acum acasă câteva zile, dar am fost foarte ocupat in timpul meu liber, cu toate fotografiile şi rapoartele de călătorie şi hărţi et cetera, aşa ca pur si simplu n-am avut timp pentru a studia după ce-am stat pe tren acasă marţi dimineaţă (unde am petrecut câteva ore in compania listele mele de bahasa). Cu toate acestea, nu există de mult în munca mea - chiar acum eu sunt singur tot timpul. Este o lume ciudata in care trăim.
IT: Ho notato che con una lingua esotica, dove le parole appaiono pure come combinazioni di sillabe senza senso, può essere difficile trovare associazioni o gioci di parole. Ma ho trovato che posso inventare una frasi semplice in danese, ove una sola parola sta sostituta con la sua traduzione nella lingua straniera, - per esempio "Mafiaen har smidt hovedet af en kuda i min seng" ("la mafia ha gettato la testa di un Kuda nel mio letto", kuda = cavallo). E facile e rapido inventare tali esempii nella sua propria lingua, e l'uso di brevi frasi memorabili aiuta notevolmente nella memorizzazione delle parole straniere.
FR: J'ai encore quelques travaux à faire pour mon association de vouyageurs aujourd'hui, mais vers ce weekend j'espère pouvoir reprendre mes études sur l'échelle habituelle.
Paranday's reference to the expression "Lorem ipsum" reminded me of the use of long passages in pseudo-Latin in the printing business: when you have to illustrate a certain layout it is costumary not to use an actual text, but instead a sequence of words that look like a text without having a mening. One of the most famous of these texts is based on a text by Cicero, but he would be rotating in his grave if he had seen how it is used. One version of it runs as follows: "
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce quis lectus quis sem lacinia nonummy. Proin mollis lorem non dolor. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Nulla ultrices odio. Donec augue. Phasellus dui. Maecenas facilisis nisl vitae nibh.
(from the homepage of "Dansk center for mumletekst"). More about this subject in Wikipedia, here in sermone anglice and here in Latin.
I haven't had time to study languages since Tuesday morning, where I spent a couple of hours in the train from the airport to my hometown in the pleasant company of my Bahasan wordlists. My travel photos, travelogue and things I have to do for my travellers' club have taken all my time and will do so at least one evening more. On the contrary there is very little to do at my job, where everybody seems to be on holiday.
During my work with Malayan word lists I found it more difficult than usual to invent the associations etc. I use for memorization, and even the usual visual imagery becomes tedious if it the only method used. So I found out that it functions well to imbed each foreign word in a Danish sentence, where it takes the place of the parallel Danish word. Paradoxically this works better than trying to make up a Malyan expression because it is so much faster and easier - and it is easy to remember a phrase almost in one's native language for the few seconds where it is necessary. I don't remember having seen any reference to it anywhere, and I'm pretty sure that most teachers would frown at this deliberate use of a mixture of native and foreign language. But proof of the pudding is in eating it .. it works, so I have added a reference to it in my Guide to Language Learning, part IV.
Edited by Iversen on 14 September 2011 at 1:46am
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| Hobbema Senior Member United States Joined 5740 days ago 541 posts - 575 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, French, Dutch
| Message 1967 of 3959 30 July 2010 at 4:35am | IP Logged |
Sooo...now I'm wondering.
Now that Iversen's popularity rating is in the 90s...what will happen as it approaches 100%. Is that even possible? Is greater than 100% possible?
Or will this produce some type of strange singularity, a zero in some denominator causing some equation somewhere to explode into infinity, annihilating this forum and all life as we know it! I'm thinking that an infinite number of readers produces some type of black hole effect, warping the space time continuum and changing the very fabric of reality...
Sorry, I was going to exercise some self-control, but the math geek side of me took over and I stuck this goofy rant in your log anyways.
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 1968 of 3959 30 July 2010 at 10:24am | IP Logged |
It has remained around 88-89% for a very long time, so I doubt that it will get nearer to 100%. However it has already envountered one kind of natural limit insofar that I can't make a "printable version" of it anymore - so I keep a copy in MSword on my own PC. But who knows, maybe new threads start to be appended to old threads each time somebody has tried to make such a printable thing from my logfile because some index breaks down?
Edited by Iversen on 30 July 2010 at 10:30am
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