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

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Iversen
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 Message 2385 of 3959
01 May 2011 at 11:20pm | IP Logged 
Well, I survived a weekend dominated by a certain royal wedding without watching it. I spent it visiting my mother and sister, and I brought along a Neolatin wordlist which I have commented on earlier in this thread - but I thought that it was time to reread it. My mother actually asked me what I was reading, and instead of just answering that I was studying Latin I also gave her some examples, - including words for T-shirts ("camisulae"), shopping-carts ("chiromaxia"), French fries ("patatae frictae") and candy bars ("laterculi"). Sometimes the words are genuine antique words (the Romans certainly knew corks ("obturamenta"), ice cream ("glacies") and foul language ("turpiloquium") - the walls of Pompei are full of it. Other words were added by Medieval writers or the learned users of Latin up to the the 18. century. And finally a number of expressions are logical extensions of attested vocabulary (atombomb = "pyrobolus atomicus"). But in some cases there are words or expressions which for some reason shouldn't be accepted by the speakers of Neolatin, and for instance I criticize the word "consul" for modern mayors, even though as learned a man as the Dano-Norwegian writer Holberg who lived in the 18. century apparently has used the word with this meaning. This also applies to for instance "commentator" about inventors. And I can't see any reason to adopt the Greek word "hamaxostichus" for a train, when the list accepts "via ferea" and "via ferrate" about railways - there must be a more congruent solution. My "New College" dictionary proposes "tramen (ferriviarium)", which to my ears sounds better.

Apart from that, I watched a program Saturday about the last days of the Western Roman empire (roughly from the reign of Valentinian III (-455) to the removal of the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476. I won't go into details here i the English section - you can read them below in Latin, which is the proper language for this subject.


LAT: Hodie reversus sum post visitatione matris sororisque. Indicem D. Morgani verborum neolatinorum aduxi et relegi. Istam in foro iam discutabamur. Nunc mater me legentem vidit et rogavit quid legirem. Ego respondavi indicem latinam legere et exempla exposui:

microwawe oven = clibanus microcymaticus (de "kyma" - unda - in lingva graeca)
alarm clock: excitabulum
safety pin: acus tuta

Etiam "mayor" quam exemplum dedi, sed index hic dicet "consul, is m (Holberg, etc.), urbis praefectus (Ducrue 218), margister urbis...". Etiamsi L. Holberg doctissimus dano-norvegicus ac auctor praeclarus sit, verbum "consul" hic deceptivum est. In antiquitate romani duos consules habebant qui summi magistrati civitatis romarnorum erant - "mayor" modo rei oppidi gerit. Hodie "consul" persona est qui vicarius sociati externae est sine legatus essere. Neuter significatio magistris urbis congruat. Nihilominus matrem verba neolatina valde delectabat.

Etiam alteram rationem hic latine sermone scribere habeo, nemi emissio televisifica (in lingua teudica dicta) dies saturni vidi, quae terminem imperium romanum septentionalem exposuit. Infrequenter de temporibus istibus verba est. Unus Ricimer (suebus) tunc imperatores ut libet instituebat et tollebat. Poste necem Valentiniani III (qui Attila victa salvatorem civitatis romanis Aëtium interfecit) Avitus de visigotis (!) caesar nominatus est, et Ricimer dux exerciti fuit. Ille Avitum abrogavi, episcopus feci .. et interfeci. Post eum Majorian caesar factum est, sed ille homo habilis erat et sui potens. Quam rex visigoti eo bello intuli, Ricimer imperatorum prodidi et necavi. Caesar nominavit Libium Severum, sed Leo - caesar orientalis - offensus rei erat et post mortem obscurum Libii imperium septentionalis XVIII menses sine imperatore fuit, itaqua Ricimer candidatus Leonis Anthemis accepi et filiam ei uxorem duxi. Sed ille homo habilis erat et sui potens. Quid facere, Ricimere? Hehe, in medio proeliis contra vandales eum destituit dux exercitus Gundobad (burgundus et postea rex eorum), et Ricimer caesarem Anthemium post obsidione in Urbe interfeci. In perturbatione sequente Olybrius candidatus novus Leoni caesar factus est, homo mediocris, sed pius. Velociter de morbo mortus est, et Glycerius imperator factus est, homo mediocris. Ricimer tandem impetu sanguinis mortus est. Leo - caesar orientalis - tamen rei offensus erat et candidatum suum Julius Nepos in Italiam missi. Gundobad nunc rex burgundorum factus est et Glycerium destituit, quamobrem sine proelio Julii dedit et in exilio in Saloni (: Dubrovnik) iit ubi episcopus nominatus est. Julius accepi vires duos ex comitati Glycerii: Flavium Orestem et Odoakerem, unus Romanus (sed prius notarius Attilae!), alter Germanus. Julius Orestem cum exercitu contra visigotes missit qui ultima partem Galliae minantur sunt, sed Orestes videns quod potius imperatorem quam visigotes vincere potebat cum exercito ad Ravennam reversus est ubi residebat Julius, et ille etiam ad Salonam fugit ubi 480 necatus est. Orestes filium suum - nondum sui juris - caesarem nominabat. Sed errorem gravem commisit: militibus suis terram promiserat, tamen promissa sua negligebat, et quamobrem milites ad Odoakerem commutabant. Odoaker Orestem persequit et necavit, et filium suum - nomine Romulus Augustulus - non necavit, sed modo deposuit et aetatis suae XII anniis ad Castellum Lucullanum in Campania misit. Odoaker se modo rex nominavit et novum imperatorum non nominavit.

Imperium romanum septentrional ita ignibiliter terminatum est - sic transit gloria mundi. Imperium orientale e contrario ad annum domini MCDLIII absumpsit.

I rarely do crosswords ("crucigramma") myself, and with all my vocabulary study I don't think I would benefit from doing them. But I help my mother finding the Greek and Latin words in them, and sometimes also other problematic items. And for people who don't study languages they are probably a good way to keep your brain in shape. On the other hand I have sometimes done sudokus, and I feel they help me to train my concentration skills. Besides I have programmed an Excel spreadsheet that can solve them, just for fun.


Edited by Iversen on 07 May 2011 at 1:09am

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Iversen
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 Message 2386 of 3959
02 May 2011 at 1:04am | IP Logged 
Just after returning from my holiday in Poland and Germany I made a video in Polish. With something like one month of effective study time behind me I am of course still far from speaking or even understanding the language, and it is of course foolhardy to make a video and publish it on Youtube under those circumstances.

However my video elicited one message from a Polish speaker, who suggested that I use not only the speech synthethizer of Google translate to learn a better pronunciation, but also the synthethizer of a site I never had heard about before, namely https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/index.php. And I find this tool so valuable that I wanted to share it with the community of this forum, the sooner the better.

I have earlier used the synthethizer of abair.ie for Irish, and the Acapela-box shares with it the idea that you put the sentence which you want to hear into a box and select a voice and a language.

In contrast, Google translate lets you hear its own translation of a sentence in another language - which isn't nearly as flexible. All in all it is wonderful that these speech synthethizer are invading the internet - they will make it much easier to learn languages without having a human teacher. Of course you may still have to make adjustments later, and you also have to listen to yourself, which isn't covered by acapela - but just being able to select yourself which sentences you want to dissect is a big step ahead.

I don't have a written version of my Polish video, so instead I first took a random page on the internet and put one line into the box. But my feeling is that even this is too much. If you really need to concentrate on the raw sounds then 3-4 words is more than enough, - I have for instance listened to and repeated the passage "ze względu na pracę przy budowie trasy ekspresowej S8", but ultimately I cut it into pieces like " ze względu na pracę". Later I'll be listening for intonation, and then I will of course ned to listen to longer segments. I made however a couple of experiments with a Danish voice and found that intonation is the Achilles heal of this kind of application - for obvious reasons. So I have to get that from Polish intenet TV and radio, but not before I can understand more of the language.


Edited by Iversen on 02 May 2011 at 9:56am

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Iversen
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 Message 2387 of 3959
04 May 2011 at 6:55am | IP Logged 
I spent last evening reading/copying texts: first from a selection of trilingual printouts in Polish/Russian and Danish (made yesterday afternoon, and including one text about the end of Mr. Laden), then from a similar Greek-Danish selfmade anthology, where I concentrated on a text about the quadrature of the circle (o τετραγωνισμός του κύκλου), and finally something about the shopping center Raffles Place in Singapore. I fell asleep after less than one page extensive reading about the Greater Zimbabwe ruins, and when I woke up too early I switched on my computer and wrote this.
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Iversen
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 Message 2388 of 3959
05 May 2011 at 12:03am | IP Logged 
BA I: Saya menyalin beberapa halaman dari panduan saya ke Singapura akhir-akhir ini, tapi hari ini aku akhirnya membuat Glosari dari mereka dan aku mengisi kolom repetisi pada beberapa daftar yang lebih tua. Meskipun hak Polandia sekarang adalah bahasa yang saya gunakan sebagian besar waktu, proyek-proyek lain tidak terlupakan.

GR: Αντέγραψα και μελέτησε περίπου ενα άρθρο στα ελληνικά του Ευκλείδη - σαν τη χθεσινή τετραγωνίσει τον κύκλο προέρχεται αυτό έρχεται από την ελληνική Βικιπαίδεια.

RO: De asemenea, am produs astăzi mai multe transcrieri bilingve sau trilingve în limbile română, greacă, rusă şi poloneză/rusă. In limba romană am observat ceva de interesant. Am folosit ales Word "magazin" la căutarea mea în Google, iar paginile care au apărut au aparţinut mai ales magazinuri commerciale . Şi foarte puţini au avut caracterele speciale române - spre deosebire, de exemplu, de Wikipedia şi site-urile academice sau oficiale. Acest lucru sugerează că întreprinderile din România deja au renunţat de facto la ortografie oficială. Să cautesc pentru paginile în limba română, e aproape ca în căutarea de pagini în norvegiană: eu prefer aceea ortografie, care este în defensivă - cel puţin pe Internet. Dar ar trebui recunoscut faptul că în sursele scrise care le-am văzut în timpul călătoriilor mele la Romînia şi Moldova, ortografia cu caractere speciale ocupă o poziţie mai puternică.

I have made some more bi/trilingual printouts today, in Romanian, Greek, Russian and Polish/Russian with translation into Danish (or other language, for instance in one case Swedish just for variation's sake). I noticed one significant detail when I made the Romanian printouts. I used the word "magazin" in my Google search. In principle it was a mistake, because the normal word for magazines in Romanian is "jurnal" - but now I got a busload of commercial homepages instead. And I noticed that very few of these used the official orthography with diacritics - it appeared actually as if the Romanian companies already have given it up, preferring the simpler internet orthography without diacritics. In Wikipedia and academic or official homepages you can still find the official variant, but with the youngsters and the business world opting for the simplified writing its days may be numbered - although it still dominates in printed materials.

I have since Easter copied several pages from my Singaporean guidebooklet in Bahasa Indonesia, but got behind making wordlists. So this evening I made wordlists, and I filled out the repetition columns in an older list from before Easter. I think the optimal latency time is one day, and several weeks is too much. But it felt nice to do something serious about Bahasa again, - Polish takes most time right now, but older projects should also get some attention. After that I copied a page or so from the Greek Wikipedia about the geometrician Euclid from Alexandria.

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Iversen
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 Message 2389 of 3959
05 May 2011 at 12:15am | IP Logged 
I have just answered this question from another member:

"How do you budget your time while doing other things and learning languages? im wanting to learn 24 languages however doing one at a time so whats the best aproach to that? how do you manage progress? any tips other then immersion do you have to remember? how did/do you decide when you can learn another?"

My answer runs as follows:

"The general rule for taking up new languages ought to be that you should wait until you have brought previous languages at least up to the high intermediate level or (better) basic fluency, but I must admit that I haven't quite stuck to this rule the last couple of years.

My time planning is based on what I feel like doing and on the materials I have got in any given moment. Today is a fairly typical day: I have spent almost two hours on vocabulary in Bahasa Indonesia, and shorter time on intensive reading/copying of texts in Greek, Russian and Polish. Besides I have made some printouts in Russian, Polish, Greek and Romanian, I have watched TV in Danish, Swedish and English, and I'm going to read some Afrikaans just before I sleep. The missing languages will get their share of my time in the next couple of days.

So you see, within a week or so I get through all my languages, but most of the intensive study time will be reserved for my newest projects: Polish and Bahasa.

I hope that answers your questions"


Edited by Iversen on 06 May 2011 at 10:16am

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Iversen
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 Message 2390 of 3959
06 May 2011 at 10:41am | IP Logged 
AF: My slaaptyd lees tans is 'n versameling van tekste uit die Internet in Afrikaans. Dit activitie gaat stadig, want ek aan die slaap raak vinnig. Hierdie môre het ik oggend wakker geword baie vroeg en was in staat om al die pad te kry deur 'n artikel oor die Karoo-streek van Suid-Afrika. Dit is 'n groot, droë rotsagtige gebied wat bekend is vir die baie mooi fossiele wat daar is gevind.

GE: Meine nach-Hause-vom-Arbeit - Lektüre ist gegenwärtig "Science Illustrated" in der deutschen Version. Hier habe ich gestern unter anderem etwas gelesen über die Entdeckung von noch einen südafrikanischen Hominiden, Australopithecus sediba. Die Gelehrten streiten sich darüber, ob es sich hier über einen Vorvater von uns handele oder nicht, aber mir scheinen die Argumenten nicht für eine nährere Verbindung zwischen sediba und us zu sprechen. Übrigens haben die Verfasser in ihren grossen Zusammenfassung den Kenyapithecus vergessen, was merkwürdig ist, weil gerade diese nördlichere Spezies tatsächlich unter unsere Vorfahren zählen könnte.

My goodnight reading is right now a collection of internet texts in Afrikaans, but I tend to fall asleep soon. However this morning I woke up early and had time to read an article about the Karoo formation in Southafrica, an immense rocky area where a lot of interesting fossils have been found.

My bus-back-home-from-work reading is a copy of Science Illustrated in German. Here I read yesterday about a new Australopithecus species from Southafrica, called sediba. Apparently a number of distinguished scholars wildly disagree about the exact role of this smallbrained, longarmed species (which is represented by skeletons in excellent condition of a mother plus her son) - is it on the line leading to us or not? I personally can't see that it is closer to taking this role than the Australopithecines of Eastern Africa.

There is an overview sketch of the Hominid group (from Ororin onwards), and the funny thing is that the one missing species here is Kenyapithecus which actually had some relevant features, for instance a flat face.

In the evening I watched a program about the early history of mankind on the History Channel, and once again the theory came up that that the clicks on some Southafrican and at least one Eastern African language testify to the earliest history of human languages in general - and it was specifically claimed that the groups in Southern Africa (Khoisan and others) and the one splinter group in Eastern Africa hadn't been in contact for 100.000 years or so. Well, there is no proof of that - although the Bantu expansion seems to have gone in the other direction it took far less than 100.000 years. It is also not proven that the clicks belonged to the language of the oldest members of Homo sapiens. Actually the program gave one potential argument for a secondary development of this feature in a number of languages, namely that some hunter tribes used 'devocalized' sounds in order not to scare prey away - that could explain why click sounds evolved, but then it could also have happened after the Great migration of "Mitochondrial Eve" and her tribe to the rest of the world.

Or the oldest Homo sapientes could actually have spoken in clicks, - I dunno, and I don't want to commit myself yet.

Edited by Iversen on 10 May 2011 at 8:57pm

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Iversen
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 Message 2391 of 3959
07 May 2011 at 12:32am | IP Logged 
My fourth Latin video is in the box, but it is just a short little thing which didn't take much time to prepare.

Apart from that I have finished my German "Science Illustrated" and watched a 1½ hour long program by Stephen Hawking about the history of the universe. Quite interesting, but it ended with the usual rubbish about colonizing other solar systems many light years from here.

POR: Depois escuchei um vídeo a Youtube no Portugues onde um jornalista visitou um poliglota no campo brasileiro, que não havia mais estudiado nenhuma lengua numa escola, pero que falava espanhol, Italiano, francés, inglés, alemão, chino i outras lenguas. Achei o vídeo procurando por "poliglota", que dá resultados bem diferentes do que dá uma pesquisa sobre "polyglots" em inglês.


Edited by Iversen on 07 May 2011 at 11:24am

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Fasulye
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 Message 2392 of 3959
07 May 2011 at 7:47am | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
Apart from that I have finished my German "Science Illustrated" and watched a 1½ hour long program by Stephen Hawking about the history of the universe. Quite interesting, but it ended with the usual rubbish about colonizing other solar systems many solar years from here.


Solar years? They don't exist. You mean light years as a measure of distance, I suppose. I fully agree that there is there is no exo-solar system which could possibly be colonized by people form earth. The distances in space are far to large. I am astonished that the famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking comes up with such nonsense.

Fasulye


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