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Total Annihilation - Charlmartell | ||
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| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6242 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes  Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 17 of 71 19 May 2008 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Monday, May 19th 'Don Quijote de la Mancha' by Cervantes
I'm afraid, no Cervantes this past week. I was far too busy trying to get "The Libray" by Apollodoros into a correct parallel ancient Greek/English version. I finally finished it today, it took another 2 hours of juggling lines. Done at last, now I can get down to reading. Unless something else crops up of course. Life! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6242 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 18 of 71 21 May 2008 at 5:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think my idea of having differents days for referring to different pursuits was a mistake. I've got to set about recording work/progress in a different way.
I've spent a lot of time on languages these past 2 weeks, but a big proportion of it was used for preparing parallel texts (ancient Greek, Hungarian) and learning Italian and Japanese kanji. To the exclusion of Cervantes and Anna Karenina. The parallel French-Hungarian Camus "L'Etranger" was actually a very good exercise and showed me that my passive knowledge of Hungarian is still quite good, better than I thought. I spent about 8 hours making the parallel version but during that time re-read the French text (which I'd read when in secondary school and had totally forgotten) and huge chunks of Hungarian. I'm looking forward to actually L.-R.ing it next. I'd like to get those words I recognise in writing into my active vocabulary and for that I need the audio. As someone has said, the book is definitely easy intermediate, i.e. uses high frequency language that is eminently usable in everyday life. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6242 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 20 of 71 21 May 2008 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks, I've downloaded it. Great! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6242 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 21 of 71 21 May 2008 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wednesday, May 21th
Japanese kanji: one hour! This is rubbishy time management. I've got to get that kanji.koohi site SRS better organised. In fact, I must get that whole kanji learning lark re-thought because I'm just wasting too much time. Reading all those little stories is all very nice, unfortunately nothing really sticks. The main problem is: I know so many of those kanji, passively, with meanings that differ from Heisig's and therefore fail them in active mode. So the failed kanjis just keep piling up. And if I pass myself on kanjis I recognize (but can't write or don't know Heisig's keyword for) then I don't learn anything either, except I'll have the same problem again later on when it's time to revise and I'll again get a whole pile of kanjis I know without really knowing. It's a catch22 situation. I think I'll have to learn his primitives and radicals and then use those to dissect any new kanjis I come across in easy readers (text-books) and ..... Italian. Lesson 35 in both Assimil books (the old and the new) is a review of grammar points touched upon in the last 6 lessons. Not particularly interesting. So shadowed a few of the preceding ones. I think my pronunciation is not too bad, considering, but there's always room for improvement. For once I agree with Prof. Arguelles on Assimil, the very old Italian Assimil is more interesting and richer as far as vocabulary is concerned. The only thing is, some of it sounds a little out-dated. And I like the prices of things, 6 lire for a "cestino di viaggio" including bread, ham, wine, an orange .....". Times change. As for the rest, I'm doing some more Hungarian parallel texts, so that will again take up quite a bit of my time and a few other pursuits will be put on hold for now. 'Alice in Wonderland' Hungarian-English for the next few days. I've got the audio for that, so that should do my Hungarian at least a lot of good. Poor Don Quijote, poor Anna Karenina and poor Apollodoros! Their turn will come. Edited by charlmartell on 21 May 2008 at 2:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6242 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 22 of 71 23 May 2008 at 9:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thursday, May 22nd (posted Friday, plumb forgot, only found when writing up on today Friday)
Italian: Old Assimil lesson 36 all about a taxi ride to a cheap hotel. What wasn't cheap was the ride from the airport to the hotel! Next up the hotel itself, lesson 37. Japanese: No kanji, I preferred to give them a rest and let them simmer a bit. No other Japanese either as I've been very busy elsewhere. Ancient Greek: I did do some Apollodoros 'The Library' reading, up to page 7 (inclusive, out of a total of 176) but half of that was yesterday after posting my update. It's quite interesting, even if a little like a Who's Who telephone directory in places. What people who have no knowledge of Greek mythology make of it I don't know. One could of course look all them gods up on Perseus or Wikipedia, but that would be a mammoth task. Find (or remember) the most important ones and connect any of the others who have actually done something special to the known ones and it becomes very interesting indeed. Intrigues, nice little touches like how those naughty gods, Zeus mainly, managed to seduce goddesses and virgins and father yet more children, revenge, some of it very bloody indeed. Those primitive gods were something else indeed. Spanish: 'El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha', I'm afraid it's curtains for the first book. I'll give the second one a try, it's supposed to be less picaresque. I have listened to 10 chapters in all, thought if I read the text instead of listening to it that might speed things up. But that was even worse. I'd forgotten how much I hate 'picaresque', I didn't care all that much for the Lazarillo de Tormes either when I read him in times gone by for an exam. I quite liked the Prólogo to Don Quijote but after that the book became less and less appealing.To motivate me somewhat I looked the book up on Wikipedia. I suppose I'd learnt all of that information before, for exams on Spanish literature when we had to learn all about authors, not read their books. Unless of course we felt like it. Now the information about the book makes it sound great, which I'm sure it is, it just so happens that it's not my cup of tea. I am going to give the rest of book 1 a miss but am going to try book 2. Tomorrow or the next day. I also spent most of my time at the computer trying to figure out why most of the parallel texts I've got on my computer made by others didn't align properly till I doctored them somewhat. And I tried to understand other people's idea about parallel texts. I found those explanations rather confusing and unsatisfactory. When it is so simple really. At least to achieve for ourselves, on our own computer. I'll try some more today because when I've got a bone I'm like a dog, won't give up till it's chewed. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6242 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 23 of 71 23 May 2008 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Friday, May 23rd
Italian. Lessons 37 and 38 Old Assimil. About getting a room in that cheapish albergo (10 lire a night, that's not cheapish, that's dead cheap!). The room didn't seem to have much going for it, except for the knob of a bell to summon, I don't know what, helpt fighting cockroaches I suppose (one of the words used in the exercise, the other one being flea). And the view from the window was spectacular, an inner court-yard surrounded by tall buildings. Worth travelling all the way to Pisa for. Fun though, especially the very old-fashioned cartoon pictures. Ancient Greek. Apollodoros, 45 minutes (I set the timer), pages 8 to 11 (inclusive). Some very interesting information about how Pluto, with the connivence of Zeus (that Zeus!), kidnapped Persephone, and how her mother Demeter reacted. And what happened next. I knew the extra story of how Demeter took a job as nurse of a male child whom every night she put into the fire-place under the burning embers so as to make him immortal. But Homer didn't really explain what happened to the child when the nurse's well-meant action was discovered, Apollodoros does! And there was a nice little fight between the gods and the Giants whom Mother Earth gave birth to with the specific purpose of avenging her other children, the Titans, thrust into Hades by Zeus and Co. And what happened to him who snitched on Earth. They were awesome those gods! Juicy ancient Greek. Japanese. In spite of what I said, I couldn't resist going back to kanji.koohii.com and Heisig (30 minutes). And revised Assimil lesson 48, a lesson I'd always had problems with: "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone" (Paul Verlaine). About a normally very down-to-earth, realistic frozen goods salesma who, when in his cups, becomes very romantic. My Japanese has obviously got much better since I'd last looked at that lesson because I have no problems with it any more, except for writing some of the kanjis of course. Those kanjis! That lesson was a little like Simonov's poem "Wait for me": жди меня и я вернусь, только очень жди, жди когда наводят грусть, жëлтые дожды... Just before giving up on Russian because I found it impossible to learn I came across this poem in the back of my book (with tranlation provided of course, otherwise I wouldn't have understood a thing) and it made me go back to Russian time and again. Till I finally understood it all. All I've go to do now is read Anna Karenina. I'll start in earnest, tomorrow. Time willing. Hungarian. Some more parallel text work, 'Animal Farm' by George Orwell. Definitely more difficult than L'Etranger by Camus. I don't know how long I worked on that, there were several interruptions and I lost track of time. Interesting to see how it feels in Hungarian, for some reason I find Orwell and Hungary don't really go well together. The only book I ever read in Hungarian was a translation of C.S. Lewis: 'Az oroszlán, a boszorkány és a különös ruhásszekrény' (The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe) and I thought it worked well, Camus' Közöny (L'Etranger) also works well, but I'm not so sure about Orwell's book. We'll see. By the way, when I said: "I read" I mean I got the gist of the story but the vocabulary was way over my head. Had I understood most of the words I wouldn't bother to try and improve now. No Cervantes, no Anna Karenina today, no time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6242 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 24 of 71 24 May 2008 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Saturday, May 24th
Japanese. 45 minutes of Heisig. Nothing else. Ancient Greek: 2 pages only, the story of Prometheus (the one nailed to Mount Caucasus till freed by Heracles) and of Deucalion (son of Prometheus). The first I knew, the second I only knew in bits. Less gory stories today. A relief after yesterday's nighmarish stuff. Cervantes: Libro segundo: Prólogo al lector, dedicatória al duque de Lemos, Primer capítulo. So far, so good, even if the prologue got me a little lost. I think my concentration went a wee bit walk-about and I will have to reread it. Italian: Assimil, new version lessons 36, 37 and 38. Driving around the center to go and find a present for a friend doesn't sound like great fun. I didn't think much of the first lessons of this new Assimil Italian but I was wrong, again. It's very useful contemporary speech (despite talking still about lire instead of euros) and the audio has picked up speed. The exercises are just a re-hash of some sentences from the main text itself, whereas in the old version they introduce a lot of new material. I'll continue doing both simultaneously, time permitting. Some day yes, some no. The next few lessons in the old version are all short jokes, lots of them. A change from the dialogues in the new version. I'm really enjoying this. Maybe because it is so easy? Hungarian: Assimil 43 and 44, all about a jealous man whose sweetheart won't tell him where she'd been. Sounds intriguing, but we're not told where he's been either. He does end up happily stroking her hand, so all's well that ends well. Russian: L.-R. Anna Karenina, Book One, Chapter 1-3. I have a feeling I'm not very good at this listening-reading yet, when I read the English I tend to forget to listen, and when I listen I forget to read. I hope the learning curve isn't going to be too steep. I do know the contents of those chapters now, but I couldn't say I'd advanced my Russian at all. Maybe tomorrow? Edited by charlmartell on 24 May 2008 at 12:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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