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Iversen’s Multiconfused Log (see p.1!)

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tricoteuse
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 Message 1065 of 3959
04 July 2009 at 3:47pm | IP Logged 
Mon professeur de géographie-histoire utilisait toujours l'expression « revenons à nos moutons » et je l'ai trouvée bien amusante la première fois, quand je ne savais pas encore que c'était une expression idiomatique, car il l'a utilisée à propos des communistes et de Staline :-)

Malheureusement, je ne suis pas très adepte quand il s'agit de l'usage d'expressions idiomatiques. C'est peut-être un résultat d'être suédoise ; j'ai l'impression que nous n'utilisons pas beaucoup d'expressions en suédois aujourd'hui. Et même si je comprends beaucoup d'expressions, je pense que je les utilise très très rarement.

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Iversen
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 Message 1066 of 3959
04 July 2009 at 5:08pm | IP Logged 
I have been watching a series called "Weird Connections" on Discovery Science almost since I got up. In each part there are five experiments, each showing one weird and unlikely experiment that in combination with the others give some bright ideas for the future. I'm not not going to repeat much of what I have seen today (among other things because it has all been in English), but I would mention one extraordinary episode.

Take a chimpanse named Sherman and a candy dispenser which functions on the principle that it slowly, but steadily drops one candy after the other into a bowl. You can take the whole lot at any moment, but then it's over - the machine stops. Sherman chimp took the bowl very quickly the first time, and it had problems not instinctively to grab the bowl the next time. But then the experimenters gave it a toy and a magazine with a lot of pictures, and now Sherman deliberately sat down and 'read' the magazine page by page in order not to be tempted to grab the candy, - and this time it could tame its greed until all 36 candies had fallen down into the bow. Smart ape.

The status right now concerning ape communication is that all the big apes in fact can learn to communicate through symbol systems (and common sign language also seems to be a possibility), but they can't move their lips and tongue as precisely as we can; besides their Adam's apple isn't positioned in the same practical location as ours, and therefore they cannot pronounce human languages. Besides their sense of grammar is absolutely rudimentary. Nevertheless they can communicate through symbols on a computer screen, and in principle it should be possible for a chimp to 'read' symbols in a magazine. And Sherman certainly knew how to handle that magazine, - no patient in a doctor's waiting room do it better.

Right now they speak about a machine that looks for nonverbal facial signs that the test subjects are lying, and doing that 1000 times faster than human experts. But most people don't even notice these micro expressions because they are too busy listening to the incessant stream of lies.


Edited by Iversen on 05 July 2009 at 10:13am

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Fasulye
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 Message 1067 of 3959
04 July 2009 at 8:42pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:

Take a chimpanse named Sherman and a candy dispenser which functions on the principle that it slowly, but steadily drops one candy after the other into a bowl. You can take the whole lot at any moment, but then it's over - the machine stops. Sherman chimp took the bowl very quickly the first time, and it had problems not instinctively to grap the bowl the next time. But then the experimenters gave it a toy and a magazine with a lot a pictures, and now Sherman deliberately sat down and 'read' the magazine page by page in order not to be tempted to grab the candy, - and this time it could tame its greed until all 36 candies had fallen down into the bow. Smart ape.

The status right now concerning ape communication is that all the big apes in fact can learn to communicate through symbol systems (and common sign language also seems to be a possibility), but they can't move their lips and tongue as precisely as we can; besides their Adam's apple isn't position in the same practical position, and therefore they cannot pronounce human languages. Besides their sense of grammar is absolutely rudimentary. Nevertheless they can communicate through symbols on a computer screen, and in principle it should be possible for a chimp to 'read' symbols in a magazine. And Sherman certainly knew how to handle that magazine, - no patient in a doctor's waiting room do it better.


EN: Nice dosis of behavioural science relating to primates' language abilites and intelligence. :-)

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 04 July 2009 at 8:43pm

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 Message 1068 of 3959
05 July 2009 at 7:05am | IP Logged 
Immersion in de mooie natuur

NL: Vandaag zal ik weer een wandeldag hebben in de in de Nederlandse grensstad Venlo. Ik vind dat schitterend, lekker sportief, leuk van de mooie natuur genieten en daarbij Nederlands spreken. Deelname kost alleen 2 EUR, dus dat kan iedereen wel betalen. Als mijn Limburgse wandelvriendin niet kan, dan spreek ik gewoon een onbekende persoon aan "Zullen we samen wandelen?", zo kom ik makkelijk in contact met nieuwe mensen en dan kunnen we urenlang Nederlands spreken. Soms vind ik ook niemand, dan doe ik de hele wandeling alleen, dat kan ook. Dat is eigenlijk mijn manier: Met een hobby bezig zijn en daarbij een vreemde taal gebruiken. 7 keer per jaar wordt zo'n wandeling aangeboden en als het geen regendag is, dan doe ik zeker mee.

Jammer dat ik voor mijn andere talen zo'n mogelijkheid niet heb.

Fasulye

Wandelbericht:

Het is hier snikheet en daardoor geen goed wandelweer geweest. Daarom waren bijna alle wandelaars heel vroeg vertrokken, maar ik kan dat niet, omdat ik een bus- en treinreis van 1,5 uur heb. Zodoende had ik vandaag geen gesprekspartner Nederlands en heb 7 km alleen gewandeld. Ik heb dan wel 6 uur lang mijn gedachtens in het Nederlands omgeschakeld en had me voor na de wandeling nog Nederlandse astronomie-artikelen meegenomen om te lezen. Zo ben ik toch nog wel aan een grote dosis Nederlandse taal gekomen.

De website van de televisiezender van Venlo zal ik me met belangstelling bekijken. Ik woon 25 km van Venlo vandaan, maar alle Nederlandse DVB-T zendmasten zijn naar het oosten afgeschermd. Maar nu kijk ik sowieso naar kabeltelevisie - inclusief de zender "Nederland 2".

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 05 July 2009 at 3:04pm

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Iversen
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 Message 1069 of 3959
05 July 2009 at 10:10am | IP Logged 
Venlo heeft ook een eigen TV station: http://www.omroepvenlo.nl/

't is interessant dat de woord "omroep" word gebruikt, dat komt overeen met de Norse "kringkasting" en Engels "broadcast".

Goed lopen- en praten-tour aan Fasulye
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Iversen
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 Message 1070 of 3959
05 July 2009 at 1:07pm | IP Logged 
I have spent the morning ("hapon") studying Tagalog/Pilipino, - or rather despairing over the tools I have at my disposal. As I have mentioned earlier I have made some bilingual Bible excerpts using Lexilogos (with the combination English - Tagalog), and when I read through these I feel that that I generally can follow the structure of the sentences, I just lack a lot of words and a better sense of the use of certain very common 'small pesky grammar words'. So the logical thing is to look up the unknown words to check the mean, true? But then I discover that only a fraction of even words that I understand from the bilingual text are found in any of my three small dictionaries, - and that's after having tried tricks like inserting different verbal affixes, removing -ng and so forth.

Sometimes I have taken the English (or Italian) translation and through that found the word I was trying to find looking it up in the usual manner, but I tend to think that most of the words actually are lacking, not just difficult to find. And if I do find the words then the indications may be contradictory. For instance "batiin" is translated as a noun ('a compliment') in one dictionary and as a verb ('to congratulate') in another. I'm generally not bothered by fuzzy word order borders, this is after all also a common phenomenon in English, but then my dictionaries should mention both interpretations. I have also tried to put my Bible quotes into the translator of Google, but it generally gives up on translating half of the words.

So I have tried to find something easier to read. I have even peeked into some course ware, and here I have for instance found the utterly simple greeting "magadong hapon po" ('good morning sir'). The word "po" is a marker of respect (translated loosely into 'sir'), "hapon" ('morning', for once a word easily found in my dictionaries), - but then "magadong"; first you remove -ng, which is a polyfunctional parasite clinging to other words, but "magado" is absent from my dictionaries. In one "magandá" is translated as 'hello', which clearly has something to do with the matter, in another "magandá" is translated as the adjective "beautiful". In this case there is luckily a hint in the original source that "magadang – magada" means 'very beautiful'. But "magada" is not to be found in any of my dictionaries. And it is like that with just about any sentence I try - I feel it like I'm studying a language with dictionaries from a totally different language, and - let me tell you - this is normally not a good idea.

Right now I have settled for Wikipedia articles in Filipino/Tagalog, and in the absence of a regular translation I use Google's webpage translation utility. For instance "Ang mamag o tarsier [Ingles] ay isang bertebrado sa klaseng mamalya" is translated as "The mamag or tarsier [English] is a bertebrado the kind mamalya.". OK, I could probably understand that even without Google: "The 'mamag' (Tarsier in English) is a vertebrate of the class Mamalia" ("isa" is the number one, "ng" is a generalised connector strewn all over the place, "ang" is a focalizer and "ay" is a copula verb which in addition allows for the word order S V). Let's take one more: "Isa ito sa pinakamaliit na mamalyang hayop na nagpapasuso sa mga anak" (Google: 'One is the smallest mammal mamalyang the children'). "Isa" is still the number one, "ito" is a demonstrative, "mga" a pluralizer and "sa" one more of these small multifunctional things that abound in Tagalog/Filipino. The word "nagpapasuso" isn't found in any of my dictionaries, and Google can't translate it. Actually "..papa.." is reduplication, and the prefix "nag-" looks like "mag-" in the infinitive, so in the dictionary I would have expected to find something like "magpauso", but it just isn't there. However in the context it must mean "suckle" so my own tentative translation of this sentence would be "This one (is) the smallest among mammalian animals (that) suckle its children".

If I can work my way through just a few hundred pages like this then I may gradually develope an instinct for survival in the wilderness, and then I may eventually start think about this as a language that in principle can be used for communication. But right now it is more like solving jigsaw puzzles where half the cuts are missing.


Edited by Iversen on 05 July 2009 at 3:38pm

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Jar-ptitsa
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 Message 1071 of 3959
05 July 2009 at 3:17pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:


* the little guys with the enormous bulging eyes which I saw in the Philippines in January.





what a sweet animal !!!!! Is he nocturnal, therefore the eyes are so enormous?

Today I played the piano about one hour. If you would like I will make a recording, but it's a problem to put it in a place where you can listen it because it's not allowed I have an account on youtube. what piece would you prefer, for example xaleo, waltz, sonata. I attempt some Mozart sonatas, but those are too difficult. Probably I will put the link on my LOG.

My laptop make a quite screech noise, or maybe it's a machine I'm not sure.

Fasulye I hope you have a nice day in Venlo.

Yesterday I saw the butterfly about 5 times, and some bats. Of course I saw some other birds, cats, horses and cows as well.
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 Message 1072 of 3959
05 July 2009 at 3:19pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
Venlo heeft ook een eigen TV station: http://www.omroepvenlo.nl/

't is interessant dat de woord "omroep" word gebruikt, dat komt overeen met de Norse "kringkasting" en Engels "broadcast".

Goed lopen- en praten-tour aan Fasulye


Via deze website van Omroep Venlo kun je TV-programma's bekijken die inhoudelijk over de stad Venlo en Limburg gaan. Dat zegt mij heel veel, omdat in die stad al heel veel wandelingen, museumsbezoeken en winkelen (Nederlandse boeken, DVD's, muziek CD's) heb gedaan, dus dat is waardevol voor mij, dat ik zo rechtstreeks informatie kan krijgen.

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 05 July 2009 at 3:22pm



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