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Minus273’s "new year" log (#lal) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5769 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 1 of 11 05 July 2009 at 2:29am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm indulging [*] myself in creating this new log to cheer me up a bit. This corner of forum is full of encouraging models and soothing successes, so I may actually become more "sérieux" (render it negative, and you get an evaluation of character from my directeur d'études). Anyway, if I want to flirt, or to do LR, or to actually improve myself a bit - much better to start it now.
My French: I live in France. Even though I live in a circle of Chinese students and intellectuals and wannabes thereof, it should be the most important language for me, now. But my French, well, it plain sucks. My pronunciation is impeccable for stock phrases, but that doesn't count, for if I wish to express myself, my beautiful Parisian [ʁ] will get back to a voiceless [χ], and my intonation gets very strange. More importantly, I just run out of words, frequently getting awkward just trying to say anything. It wouldn't be bad if I uz-translation [**] a Perfectionnement Français or some audio course that I had already downloaded, editing out the gaps and start strolling in parks and SHADOW. I had done a little mock-LR before with a friend, with l'Étranger in French and Chinese, one of us holding one version. It wasn't bad, and I respect an awful lot la Belle Dame de LR. So I'm going to do LR with a litteratureaudio audio, A Christmas Carol, maybe, it's fun, and then l'Éducation sentimentale, read by a slow, old man with a [s] resembling that of the Castilians. Next year, I'm registering with a master program called Théories et pratiques du langage et des arts. Being of a science extraction, I'd totally read a bunch of French books on art/literary theory, more-than-theoretical linguistics, etc. (my mémoire would be on pure linguistics, though) English (and German...ish) No, I don't speak much English, though with a passable knowledge in its written form. I guess it won't take much time to speak it, if I happen to move to an English-speaking country. So that doesn't bother me much. Just bought from the used-book-store near my school, several Reclams English-German bilinguals. Two 19th century anthologies, and two Edgar Allen Poes. The early modern Chinese poets imitated chiefly the Wordsworthes and Shelleys and Byrons and Scotts, so they're household names in China, even though I hadn't read much of them. Now maybe it's time to start. Ancient Greek I study Greek with a Chinese friend here studying philosophy. My knowledge is always rusty, and I know what I can do - copying out paradigms, reading grammar books, and working with bilinguals, for the least part. [*] Dunno why, but after listening half-mindedly to one of Prof Arguelles' videos, the word "indulge" started to sound quite Ardaschirish. [**] Illegal? J'm'en fou. Edited by minus273 on 07 July 2009 at 9:42am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5769 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 2 of 11 05 July 2009 at 2:51am | IP Logged | ||
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To continue with the languages...
Japanese, classical and modern I have a friend of Japanese major, by whose influence I read a little Japanese. I can decipher anything in Modern Japanese, if I have the time to consult all those words in a dictionary. And by this, (and that I'm literate in Chinese) I have automatically the reading ability of Sinicized Classical Japanese (明治普通文, "Meiji Ordinary Style"), but for her grammatical model, the authentic Heian-era literary language, I can read one sentence in 2 minutes with the notes, and I'd die without them. So I'd like a lot to improve my reading abilities. For Modern Japanese, I'm going to LR 夏目漱石's Kokoro, with the Edwin McClellan translation. And for the Classical, I'd do a detailed translation-analysis for the first chapter of Genji, and LR the whole book. Inshallah. Other things to consider includes a drill on the pronunciation/recognition of Sino-Japanese words. For example, if I listen to the Yomiuri news podcast, or any respectable news sources, I have a hard time to recognize the Sino-Japanese words, usually completely identical with the modern Chinese word, differing only in pronunciation. I sometimes need to relisten for several times, waiting for the head to click an "Ah", "I understand 'power plant', so this must be 'wind power'." Chinese Dialects For next year, I would be working on Northern Min dialects and traditional Chinese phonology. The ancient grammarians hadn't come up with the idea of a phonetic script, so their description (and what we can get from them) on the ancient pronunciation is highly categorical. This dictates that a good phonologist should know the pronunciation of a character in several dialects, if just for a phonetic intuition for the abstract categories. The Protestants have the whole Bible in Cantonese, Taiwan Hakka and Taiwanese, and the gospels in Foochow. And there's a Buddhist audiobook in the first three dialects. That would be quite a bit of material for LR-ing. Hurray for the religious people. Sanskrit I'd like to begin with Sanskrit also, as knowing two ancient Indo-European languages will enable me to the vast sea of IE philological literature, and, besides, I pretty like India. Panini, the guy who wrote a whole grammar in quasi-BNF, is a god. I have bought a few weeks ago Teach Yourself Sanskrit, a book famed to be hard. Teach Yourself Ancient Greek was hard too, but in a pleasant way. So I'm pretty unstrucked by the low-stars in Amazon. This book focuses on the Sanskrit plays, so maybe I should buy myself a good copy of Kalidasa, but let that to the future, now it's enough to have this AND Gonda. Misc I flirt with Tibetan, in all her historical stages. Wish myself bon courage and continue flirting. Went to Prague in June, and bought a lot of books in Czech. Gotta read them, I should definitely start with LR-ing, the Jehovah's Witnesses Bible, before trusting myself to harder literature. Urdū poetry and I guess, the Persian also, is just pretty. Now and then, I would just go to Pritchett's, and enjoy an hour or so of Urdū. I bought a Rubaiyat of Rumi, and it should be on the way from States to down here. Edited by minus273 on 05 July 2009 at 3:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6682 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 3 of 11 05 July 2009 at 9:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Ça a l'air de devenir intéressant cela ! Il y a longtemps, longtemps j'ai acheté Genji, mais je n'ai jamais lu le livre, comme c'est le cas avec 50 % de mes livres :-) Quand tu fais du L. R., est-ce que tu suis la méthode exactement ? J'ai tellement voulu le faire avec le hongrois, mais j'ai des gros problèmes pour lire quelque chose que je ne comprends pas, d'essayer d'écouter quand la seule chose que je comprends ce sont les noms personnels, etc.. Voila pourquoi je lis le texte bilingue de Jane Eyre très lentement plutôt que de le survoler en faisant du L. R. D'ailleurs, tu ne t'endors pas quand tu le fais ? Si la réponse est non, tu as des conseils pour moi ? :D
Bon courage ! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5769 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 4 of 11 07 July 2009 at 8:56am | IP Logged | ||
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(More than welcome to correct my French and English!)
Hier je me battais encore, pour un meilleur état. Ça a marché et je pouvais en fait faire quelque chose. C'est très satisfaisant pour moi. Mais j'ai perdu la nuit en méditant dans quelles situation est justifiée la violence pour n'importe quelle injustice perçue, et encore quel degré de violence, etc. lié à des événements récents à Ürümchi. Alors, sur les langues, rien fait. Lavette. Yesterday I struggled with myself to bring everything in order, and during the night, I got excited on the Ürümchi incident and meditated the whole night on the question: for which situations is violence justified, to respond to perceived injustice? And no, it looks like a too complex question for my pea-sized brain, so maybe I should pick up some Political Theory for Dummies. Indeed, I have bought a French book on the history of political ideas long ago. I'm planning to throw this book out, (as I'd be moving) and I devised the righteous scheme to read a book before decluttering it. I'm definitely going to do something today, just found a printed old Progressive French Reader while tidying up.
<blush> Je n'ai pas fais du vrai L-R jusqu'au présent, comme on peut le lire... </blush> Mais: 1) Je n'ose pas faire du L-R sur une langue dont je ne connaît pas la structure. J'ai essayé de faire un peu de tchèque de cette façon-la. Ça marche, mais j'ai pas tellement d'impression que ça me plaisira... Pour le Genji même, je ferai de grammaire-traduction avant que je commence à LR. 2) Pour mes expériences limitées, je L-Re un bouquin sans le lire d'avance dans ma L1. Ça rend moins dormir, peut-être... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5998 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 5 of 11 07 July 2009 at 9:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey Minus,
Nice log, keep it up. Want to throw a #lal into the title so I remember to read it with regularity? Thom. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5769 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 6 of 11 13 September 2009 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Back to do my language logs after long time of oblivion.
During the weeks that passed, I managed to read the greater parts of Norwegian Woods in French, titled strangely La Ballade de l'impossible. I mean, living two years in France did bring me some wocky-pocky (no, this word doesn't exist) French ability. Nice. Further back in the summer, I forced my self a wee bit German with the Reclams bilinguals. Die Englische Literatur in Text und Darstellung. Even without the German, that was nice. As I was usually scared by the ornate English of that time, and missed out the great English writers from which the founders of the modern poetry of China took their inspiration. It's liberating to know that they do write in English, and that seltsam means strange. Anabasis in bilingual Loeb is a real feast, 'specially with the help of the old interlinears where the words are rearranged to the English word order. Such rearrangement sounds scary, but I promise not, at least in conjunction with the real text. You can read the original (with the English), and consult the interlinears for the meaning, which is a lot easier when the meaning is arranged in readable English. Today I was doing a little surfing on Salar, an Oghuz language (rather like Turkish and Turkmen) with a strong Chinese&Tibetan substrate in China. The only collection of texts I could find on the web (u[censored]tion) was Salarskije Teksty, written in the language of lǎomáozi ("hairy people", i.e. Caucasians = Russians). Hey! It wasn't even hard! There is the fabulous "Russian Dictionary Tree" to parse the lemmata to words, with full declension/conjugation tables for each word. If a word can't be found in RDT, www.rustran.com is usually equipped to crank out a translation. Really, Russian syntax, at least for its scientific/bureaucratic sort, looks rather easy. Verbs with datives work like french à, so usually intuitive, and the only hassle for dictionarying is to guess the case for the prepositions. Well, stop. Wanderlust is bad. Edited by minus273 on 13 September 2009 at 6:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5998 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 7 of 11 15 September 2009 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Good to see you updating again Minus, keep it up.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5769 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 8 of 11 20 September 2009 at 9:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Discovered the Bibliothèque interuniversitaire des langues orientales. What a gem. They have all the books ever published in the "Orient" (which includes even Czech republic and Poland!). So yesterday, I had a happy day working through the first paragraph of kaghazī hai pairahan - the Urdu autobiography of Ismat Chughtāī, a writer that I admire a lot. (pohaku can surely get the title here, it's from the first couplet of Diwān-e-Ghālib) The librarian couldn't find the Urdu version, so I asked for the Devanāgarī version instead. Hey, I'm going to learn Sanskrit some day. It's much tiring, though, to learn a quasi-new script with an unfamiliar language.
Then I went to Gibert-Joseph, and fished for two Assimils, l'Alsacien sans peine and le Suisse alémanique de proche. I didn't read the Swiss German preface carefully, and found out that they teach the Basel dialect after all. Insert some profanity here, two books for one language. I thought to teach myself a little Alsatian, then move on to bona fide Zürich or something. I promise, today I'd resume my old projects on French and Greek... For now, pohaku and trico are my role models... Edited by minus273 on 20 September 2009 at 9:43am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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