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Adventures in Cebuano, etc. (Goldlist)

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Iversen
Super Polyglot
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 Message 137 of 145
10 May 2014 at 9:22am | IP Logged 
I have been following your Cebuan project, but so far the language is not on my own agenda. However I visited Cebu town and Tagbilaran a few years ago, and I brought home an excellent little language guide called "Conversational English-Cebuano made easy". The good thing about it is that it doesn't try to make its examples as different as possible. For instance it gives these two examples:

Who gave you that?
Kinsa'y naghatag kanimo niana?
Kinsa'y naghatag sa imo niana?

Who sent this letter?
Kinsa'y nagpadala niining sulat?


If you take a normal guide then it is likely that the sentence examples wil be as different as possible, and then there is no way you can infer the sentence structures from the examples. Here I can immediately see that "Kinsa'y" must be 'who', and the following word must be a verb with some kind of prefix, possible a 'past tense' or perfective prefix of some kind. However later there is a poem for children with lines like "I shot, gipusil ko" "I got, gikuha ko" etc. which indicates that there is at least one other verbal prefix, gi, which can indicate past tense or perfective aspect or something like that ("ko" looks like a candidate for 'I'). I didn't get the problem about the choice of prefix solved, but already from these few lines I have learnt a lot about Cebuan.

There is an English - Cebuan word list in the book, but not one the other way, and it would have been better to have more examples and then leave the dictionary task for a real dictionary. But as a model for ways to write a language guide for learners this is not bad at all.

Edited by Iversen on 10 May 2014 at 9:27am

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ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
Joined 6997 days ago

683 posts - 757 votes 
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Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog

 
 Message 138 of 145
10 May 2014 at 12:09pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for dropping by :)

You're on the right track (I would expect no less :). nag is the active voice. Oddly
enough I think in those statements people are more likely to use ihatag or ipadala.
Don't quote me on that :p Especially in the first one. Anytime I have to use the word
"kanimo" or the like, I probably didn't do it right. I might actually have that book
around. Cream cover with red letters?

I've moved on to the next play in my book. "Rajah Hamabar", starring local hero
LapuLapu. And it's 40 years newer, but already uses words that are not in my online
dictionary (And there are special Tagalog translations at the bottom). Holy cow last
time I looked at this I got two pages in and just gave up. Now I just read through the
whole first act in one sitting. I only had to check the English translation once. There
was some construction that I didn't recognize. another 15 minutes and I've mopped up
the unclear vocab.

Edited by ElComadreja on 10 May 2014 at 12:10pm

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ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
Joined 6997 days ago

683 posts - 757 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog

 
 Message 139 of 145
12 May 2014 at 2:14pm | IP Logged 
Hmm yesterday I listen to the news and had a fan blowing on me. This put some noise on
top of what I was hearing. I let it go because I figured there's usually background
noise anyway and this would be practice for that. I ended up understanding next to
nothing and just making my brain burn uselessly. I think intentionally putting noise
into the audio at an intermediate stage is counterproductive. Yesterday was a bad day
for Cebuano I think I burned out early in the day with that exercise.

So I listened to it again today, and I feel like I've gotten a step closer to fluent
listening. Just listen to the sounds. (again I can't find a quantitative way to measure
this). After doing that I heard some people talking behind me and understood them, then
someone came in and floored me. They said something I didn't get, said it again slower,
and I was just completely lost. I think maybe I was expecting something routine and it
wasn't.

It's these kind of moments that sap the motivation right out of me.

Had a short conversation with someone used to speaking to me in English.

Anyway I picked up a newspaper also today. I underlined words that were unclear on the
first two inside pages. In the end there were 17 words I didn't think of the correct
meaning for after looking at the whole context. One I knew, but it was being used in a
different way. 2 I knew, but the word changed too much for me to recognize it. There
was one word that I was suspicious of being a typo (it was). Maybe I could start
measuring things in such a way. It doesn't apply directly to my listening goals though.
1 person has voted this message useful



ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
Joined 6997 days ago

683 posts - 757 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog

 
 Message 140 of 145
15 May 2014 at 2:48pm | IP Logged 
Well I had a short adventure today involving keys. I needed to copy some. Today I made
a conscious effort to reply "maayong hapon" when someone says hello to me. It's so easy
to find myself responding with the English greeting. I kept my speech in Cebuano, and
surprisingly I got some Cebuano in return. Sometimes I would get lost, and they would
say it in a different way and we continue. Also had some similar success in talking to
the person behind the desk at a gym, avoiding any memberships. I know I made errors :p

There was a store I was in where they said no they couldn't. (and they didn't use the
word copia or copy, but duplicate). But there was a place "atbang sa" store across from
them. I was a bit confused because I though "atbang sa" meant across from, and it's
like, I'm already here. (and I think it still means that in the right context). So I
figured I would just go in that direction and maybe it would become clear. hmmm,
looking around I didn't figure it out until I saw a key making kisok between the two
stores. oh! in front of.

newspaper today 20 words I didn't know (6 from one article), and 6 more that changed
too much on me.

Edited by ElComadreja on 15 May 2014 at 2:52pm

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ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
Joined 6997 days ago

683 posts - 757 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog

 
 Message 141 of 145
19 May 2014 at 4:28am | IP Logged 
Well, I tried to use that i- prefix the other day, and to my dismay I found it that
it's only a future tense (or command).

I went to a port to pick someone up, and there was a parking attendant that said I
should pay. I asked "pila ang parking?" "How much is the parking", and thus started my
plunge into the language for the day. I almost drowned :p

"How much is parking?"
"25"
"here it is :)" (yeay mission accomplished)
"what is your purpose here?"
(oh no, he's still speaking to me, what was that?)
"what is your purpose here?"
"I'm picking up a... uh"
"passenger?"
"yes" (dang it that was a Spanish word)
"munumunumy shuttle bus muh"
"??"
"They can take a shuttle bus"
(hmm how do I get across that they are not doing that?) "ok da"

it was at that point my Cebuano friends came back and they took over. In short the guy
tried to help because none of us knew where to go, but he didn't really know either :p

I feel I right now find myself more often trying to figure out what to say that what
someone said to me. Sometimes the other person (on the street) will give me a fill in
the blank, and I'll say the right word there. I really do feel a comprehension boost of
late :) I'm more often able to understand two other people talking to each other. Even
when I don't get something I can usually ask about the word I didn't get. I haven't
even done any "studying" for about 3 days. This makes me think of the recent bow wave
post.

Don't get me wrong, I still have moments of complete blanks.

Newspaper today:
Don't know 13
changed too much 5
didn't understand because word used in different way 2

There was one article where I felt totally lost, and after checking some words out, it
was because there was really only one word that I didn't know, and that was the whole
point of everything else. Wow what a wall.

Hmm I think if you read back I had a gap of listening to the news, and I had to build
it back up. For several days I just listen to 10-15 minutes and then listened to it
again after a break. It was just hard to concentrate longer than that. The last few
days I just listen strait through and somewhere around the 20 minute mark, things start
coming together. I'm not repeating. I'm not really using the "repeat machine" anymore,
at least consciously.

Edited by ElComadreja on 19 May 2014 at 5:53am

1 person has voted this message useful



ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
Joined 6997 days ago

683 posts - 757 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog

 
 Message 142 of 145
20 May 2014 at 8:59am | IP Logged 
The newspaper I've been reading is "Banat" (also online and in the Apple newsstand).
After doing several days of recording difficult words, I realized it's kind of steady at
this point, it's probably going to take a while seeing all these words before they start
coming up again. I did some math and I understand roughly 97% of the words right now. I
remember underlining less in the past, but that's because I was trying to best figure out
the major words blocking my understanding, and now I'm being more thorough.

There's another newspaper called "Super Balita" that someone brought in today, and I was
ready to rip through it for vocabulary's sake, but found that I knew all the words in
that particular one. Looks like it's written at a generally lower level.
1 person has voted this message useful



ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
Joined 6997 days ago

683 posts - 757 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog

 
 Message 143 of 145
21 May 2014 at 11:06am | IP Logged 
To tell the truth yesterday was just a bad day in general for thinking. Today I listened
to the news and something new happened. When I didn't understand something, it's because
it was said a little different from what I'm expecting, and I quickly figured out what
the word was supposed to be. I figured out some words by context. After about 15 minutes
of this and my comprehension went way down.
1 person has voted this message useful



ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
Joined 6997 days ago

683 posts - 757 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog

 
 Message 144 of 145
29 May 2014 at 6:04am | IP Logged 
continuing this log at http://polydog.org/index.php?threads/cebuano-and-the-quest-f or-b2.38/ though
probably
not writting much about Goldlist anymore.

Edited by ElComadreja on 29 May 2014 at 6:05am



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