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

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Hobbema
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 Message 1969 of 3959
31 July 2010 at 11:29pm | IP Logged 
patuco wrote:
Hobbema wrote:
Wow. As a native English speaker I am amazed and amused that this discussion is taking place amongst Europeans.

Just noticed this and I'm not sure why you'd be amazed.


And I myself just noticed this or I would have responded sooner. Sorry, I did not mean to be patronizing.

I said I was amazed just because I am a native English speaking American living smack in the middle of the United States, where polyglots are unusual. And also because I have always prided myself on having a better command of the English language than most of the people I deal with on a day to day basis. And I love puns and I love plays on words and those kinds of subleties with language.

Since studying languages myself, I now have an appreciation for how much work and brain power it takes to learn a foreign language. So I have admiration for those who may not have English as their native language, but are able to appreciate why a term like "Naughties" would be clever. So that's why I said what I did.

Edited by Hobbema on 31 July 2010 at 11:31pm

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slucido
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 Message 1970 of 3959
01 August 2010 at 9:26am | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
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.


Iversen, this is the diglot weave.
Here you have two threads:

Use the diglot weave:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=9173&PN=32

Diglot Weave - Spanish English:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=10260&PN=4

Sometimes it's very useful.



Edited by slucido on 01 August 2010 at 9:26am

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Iversen
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 Message 1971 of 3959
01 August 2010 at 6:59pm | IP Logged 
Thanks to slucido, - I had forgotten all about those old threads, but the "diglot weawe" is clearly close to the thing I'm speaking about. I have now included the term and a link in my Guide to Learning Languages. However as a tool to learn single words (or short expression) you would only be doing one substitution and not a complete mix between to languages, but this is still within the definition.

I have somewhere written something about the use of a wellknown language as a help to build 'scaffolding' for a closely related language (for instance you could use Dutch as a tool to learn Afrikaans). However the aim here is different: the idea is to give you some sentence patterns so that you can start thinking, but these patterns must as fast as possible be replaced by genuine patterns taken from comprehensible texts and grammars in the new language.

Apart from that, I have spent the weekend with my family, and that has of course meant even more days without regular studies (I sometimes wonder how people who live fulltime together with other human beings can find time for language studies).

In the outbound train I managed to do most of the postponed repetition rounds for my Malayan wordlists, and on my way home I spent a couple of hours studying the different cases of lenition (aspiration) and eclipsis in Irish. In between I have mostly talked to my family and watched TV, though I did find time to read a few short texts in Russian about the Baltic languages - both the five extinct ones and the two that have survived: Lithuanian and Latvian.

DA (hyperliteral): Noget af den tid der normalt ville være gået med at se TV,
Some of the time that normally would be gone with (=would have been spent on) watching TV

gik dog i stedet med at se en DVD om en dansk marinebiologisk ekspedition, Galathea III.
went though instead with to see a DVD about a Danish marinebiological expedition, Galathea.

Det varede 80 minutter, og så ville vi lige se det 'ekstra materiale'.
That lasted 80 minutes, and then wanted we just see the 'extra material'.

Det viste sig blandt andet at omfatte en 80-minutters film from 1952 om en tidligere ekspedition, Galathea II,
That showed itself among others to comprise a 80 minutes film from 1952 about an earlier expedition, Galathea II,

så det meste af lørdag eftermiddag gik med at se reportagefilm på dansk.
so the most of Saturday afternoon went with to watch report film (=documentary) on (=in) Danish.

GER: Im deutschen Fernsehen habe ich wieder "Genial daneben" gesehen und dazu noch einige Reportagen deutscher Zoos, aber die wichtigste aller Sendungen dieses Wochenende konnte ich leider nicht zu Ende sehen, weil ich mit einem Autobus abreisen mußte. Es ging um die Mehrsprachigkeit in der Schweiz, und glücklicherweise geling es mir den Abschnitt über Rhätoromanisch zu sehen - obwohl ich meine Mutter und Schwester höflich bitten mußte ganze zehn Minuten ihren Maul zu halten - ich versuchte nämlich ernsthaft die Sprachproben zu verstehen, and daß war absolut nicht einfach. Die zwei haben vorgezogen, in den Garten zu gehen um dort weiterzuplaudern.

Es wurde in der Sendung unter anderem gezeigt, wie Sprecher von vier Rhätoromanische Dialekten (oder Sondersprachen) denselben Hochdeutschen Satz ausdrückten würden, und das klang verblüffend verschieden. Es wurde auch verraten, daß es nun endlich eine Einheitssprache gibt (wenigsten für die Schweizer), obwohl diese ist noch umstritten sei. Das habe ich nicht gewußt, aber ohne eine solche standardisierte Sprache wären die Aussichten für das Überleben des Rhätoromanischen noch düsterer. Eine Teilnehmerin war zuversichtlich, das es noch in 100 Jahren Sprecher davon gäbe.. OK, sehen wir... ich würde mein Geld nicht darauf setzen.

I did watch some German TV, although I only saw the first part of the most important of all the Programs from this weekend: a program on 3Sat about multilingual Switzerland. I had to get a buis in the middle of the program, but fortunately I did manage to see the section about Romantsch, which in Switzerland is spoken by a minority in Graubünden. However this language is more like a dialect bundle, and even within Graubünden there are at least four dialects, - at one point we heard how speakers of these four dialects would render a sentence in High German, and even I could clearly hear the differences. Of course I tried to understand what the participants said in this language, and I actually could understand some parts of it - though only because I asked my mother and sister not to babble for almost ten minutes, which must have been almost impossible for them - at least they went into the garden to let me hear the program. There were some representatives of an association for the promotion of Romantsch (a "Li(g)a" something) who in all sincerity claimed that the language will still exist in 100 years time. OK, let's see..


Edited by Iversen on 05 September 2010 at 10:42am

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Iversen
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 Message 1972 of 3959
01 August 2010 at 10:03pm | IP Logged 
For your information: a quote in the unified "Rumantsch Grischun" from the beginning of "Asterix ed ils Helvets" (1984):

Nus essan en l'onn 50 a.Cr. La Gallia è occupada dals Romans. Sulet ina culegna da Gals giagliards e cumbattivs resista anc andina als invasurs. E la vita nun è leva per las garnischuns romanas che vivan en ils champs da Pitinale, Aquarium, Susium e Pinetum.

I wunder whether it schtill con bè bught.
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Iversen
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 Message 1973 of 3959
03 August 2010 at 12:53pm | IP Logged 
I studied the whole evening yesterday without ever switching on my computer ... but that can't make my logfile grow until the implosion point of the universe, so here you are:

SP: En las últimas horas de la tarde vi un excelente programa en TVE del País Vasco, con visitas a ciudades costaleras, tanto grandes como pequeñas. Yo mismo he estado tan sólo en San Sebastián (que no ha dejado una impresión imprescindible en mi), pero he siempre tenido la intención de visitar por lo menos Bilbao, tal vez tambien Santander. Sin embargo, había clips de varios pequeños pueblos que también parecian seductoras. Desafortunadamente no tengo tiempo para aprender el idioma vasco en este momento, lo que puede dar lugar a un aplazamiento de mi visita. Es molesto como en las estaciones de TVE todo lo que vale la pena ver viene durante el día, mientras que no hay nada que series y películas repugnantes por toda la noche. Los planificadores de programación hay que pensar que el nivel de inteligencia general caiga vertiginosamente después de las horas 18 o 19.

RU: Я уже заявил моего обучения в книги русской истории (он с акцентированных символов). Я дошел до уничтожения монголами Рязани до моего отпуска, и в настоящее время продолжаю чтение с кампанией против самого Киеве, столице древней Руси. Все города защищается с героизмом, и потом монголы убивают все жители в них и сжигают городу.

GR: Μετά από αυτές τις ιστορίες τρόμου, ήταν μια ανακούφιση για να συνεχίσει με την ελληνική οδηγός μου στην Αθήνα, όπου το θέμα ήταν ο χρυσός αιώνας μετά τους πολέμους εναντίον των Περσών.

I saw a fine program on TVE about the Basque coastal towns, both big ones like Bilbao and Santander and small ones whose names I already have forgotten because I didn't write them down. I have of course thought about visiting at least Bilbao (even before they got that weird silvery item called the Guggenheim Museum). However I haven't got time to learn Basque, so that will have to wait. Btw. why are all the good programs on TVE placed during the day (where I'm at work) while the evening program is full of nauseating series and films? Apparently the responsible for the schedules think that the average intelligence among the viewers soar downwards after 6 or 7 pm.

I returned to my Russian history book (the one with the accent signs). Before my holiday I left it just after the complete and utter destruction of Rjazan by the Mongols, and now the Mongols have just burnt down the old Russian capital Kiev.

In my Greek guide to Athens I have reached the golden age after the Persian wars. What a relief after the Tatar-Mongolian horrors!


Edited by Iversen on 05 August 2010 at 12:26pm

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Hobbema
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 Message 1974 of 3959
03 August 2010 at 10:23pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
I studied the whole evening yesterday without ever switching on my computer ... but that can't make my logfile grow until the implosion point of the universe, so here you are:


Ah, I had hoped not to worry you with pseudo-scientific predictions which may or may not come to pass, but you yourself can see it perhaps might well be possible!

If we draw the analog from the HTLAL log popularity function to a singularity which can in part be modelled with an equation that has a zero in the denominator (sending some term to infinity), I can only assume an excess of 100%, while theoretically impossible, would result in the same. Mathematics is a lot of modelling, after all, so I submit that our conclusions based on empirical evidence are more reliable than, say, the predictions of Nostradamus, or Erik von Daniken, or Al Gore, and there are still plenty of people out there who believe those guys. I figure I’m at least as reliable as they are!

So anyway, following the analogy, when photons travel at the speed of light they lose energy when travelling out of a gravitational field, and to a stationary observer, they appear red – thus the term “gravitational redshift”. So near a singularity inside a black hole, if they’re behind the event horizon photons lose ALL their energy and become invisible. Since these posts are electronic in nature, one can only conclude as the log increases beyond 100% that your posts will become invisible, which will probably annoy you and those who have become accustomed to following your log.

And to make this relevant to learning languages, I say, "Quod erat demonstratum".

This may require immediate attention on the part of the moderators before the universe implodes and all life ends as we know it.

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Iversen
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 Message 1975 of 3959
04 August 2010 at 10:01am | IP Logged 
Actually there is a life for the notion of singularity outside astronomy (where it is used about the thing inside black holes and about the Big Bang). A man named I.J.Good allegedly invented it to describe the outcome of the accelerating technological development if the timelines are just prolonged from now. However by far the most wellknown and thought provoking description of the idea has been given by Ray Kurzweil in the book "The singularity is near", which even has got its own homepage.

The basic tenet of the book is at each comparable step in the evolution can be plotted in a timetable, and then the first steps take forever, while the developments now come faster and faster. However when you apply a logarithmical transformation then all the points end up on a straight line (p.17). Such a thing is called exponential growth. And unless "something happens" it will in principle end up in a singularity.

Among the steps are the arrival of life, eukaryotic cells (with nuclei), the Cambrian explosion (which has been discussed in this log), reptiles, primates, us, spoken language, early cities, agriculture, writing, printing, the industrial revolution, computers, personal computers and ... no, not HTLAL, but it should have been there, and so should machine translations and the internet as a whole.

There has been other periods with a rapid evolution. Yesterday I saw a program on National Geographical that argumented for a collision between the Earth and another planet sized object very soon after the formation of the Earth (something like 20 million years, which is a trifle in this context) - and then suddenly there was a Moon, then bang! life was there, bacteria, photosynthesis and... OK, after that a couple billion years passed without much development until the Edicaria life forms, which may have been a development spurred on by an almost total freeze-down of the planet, nicknamed 'snowball Earth'.

But right now the challenge is to keep track with the technological and subsequent cultural developments, and for us as language learners that means the internet and more precisely machine translations that may become really good when the systems start to incorporate knowledge stored on the internet (read Google Search + Google Translate = bang!!).

OK, will it happen? Exponential growth has a tendency to fade out (remember those billions on Earth where the bacteria just relaxed and built their stromatolithes without trying to speed up anything?). It is actually possible that our digital revolution stumple over some simple resource problems. Most rare earth mines are located in China, and they are called rare because they are rare. However our digital technology is dependent on semiconductors based on alloys with these elements. What will happen when the mines are emptied? Well, first China might want to keep the supply for itself, and after that... Hopefully we have invented alternatives before that. The supply of oil has been amply discussed, but it is far from the only thing to worry about. And without industrial production of computers the whole digital world will collapse, and civilization with it.

PS: three different interpretations of the singularity idea are defined here ... in English of course

Paranday wrote:
Kurzweil notes the obvious - that our brains are highly inefficient at learning. Think of the hours of language study required to attain a relatively modest goal. But the singularity folks foresee a melding of mind and machine, and at that time our brains will take off in ways unimaginable.
If that becomes real, what is the future of satisfaction? Will the monk-like pleasure of fitting new words into our brains, a few at a time, disappear?


Edited by Iversen on 14 September 2011 at 1:45am

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