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Breton: eight weeks to self-confidence | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3900 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 9 of 14 26 March 2015 at 9:24pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you both! I'm happy to inspire some Breton interest. :)
Today I'm translating a short poem by Anjela Duval: Koumoul (Clouds) Original: Iskis e tibouk ar c’houmoul Eus an tu all d’an dosenn : Heñvel ouzh floupadoù gloan ! Moarvat ’oad o touzañ deñved Du-hont e Porzh-Plûned. Pa eo deut an arnev. Hag an avel-dro en deus savet Kuchennadoù en Oabl ! N’eo ket gwenn-gwenn o gloan… Met ar glav en gwalc’ho tuchant. English: Strangely the clouds arise From the other side of the hill: Resemble a lick of wool! Surely someone was shearing sheep over by them in Porzh-Pluned. When the storm came. And a whirlwind lifted Tufts in the sky! Their wool is not white-white… But the rain will wash it shortly. Edited by eyðimörk on 26 March 2015 at 9:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3900 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 10 of 14 29 March 2015 at 8:14pm | IP Logged |
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I noticed this week that there have been a lot of Breton e-book releases lately. Given that what I really miss when studying Breton is the ability to read at my computer, and thereby benefit from electronic dictionaries and easy copying into Anki, that should make me incredibly excited. Alas... 
— Hey! Did you hear? The collected works of R.E. Howards have been published in Breton... — OMG! Really?! — ... by Emgleo Breiz. ...they're obviously all published by Emgleo Breiz. They're the oldest Breton publishing house, and the only one with a decent online presence. The downside is that they use an orthography called ar skolveurieg, designed to make it easier for francophones to figure out Breton pronunciation and promoted as an non-collabo alternative after WWII for those who felt that ar peurunvan was tainted (to make a long story short, ar peurunvan is the most popular orthography, but it was developed in 1941 and several of the people who worked on it collaborated with the Germans who promised Bretons all kinds of freedoms the French refused to consider even for a long long time after the war). VOCABULARY I caught up with my Breton Anki decks, assembled from Assimil Le Breton and various books and articles.  I added 70 body, health, clothing, family and house words from Alc'hwez ar brezhoneg eeun. A handful of them were words I already knew passively, but want to practise further. Next week: tools and materials, and their related verbs and adjectives. I already feel a little bit better about where this is going. Yes, I have a lot of new words to learn. Yes, I learn new words quite slowly in Breton. But it still feels doable. GRAMMAR I read the entire chapter on mutations in La grammaire bretonne pour tous, because that's one thing I never trust myself with (Wikipedia article for the curious). I always end up checking, double-checking, and triple-checking my mutations, and even then the moment I click on "submit" I feel like this guy is peeking over my shoulder: 
(Mutation error) Reading the whole chapter in one go kind of made my head spin, though, so I'm going to have to put together some new exercises and see if I can't hammer some mutations confidence into my head with brute force. TRANSLATIONS I obviously translated one song and one poem. NATIVE MEDIA I read Iwerzhoneg is-yezh er parlamant Europa ?, 575 words about Liadh Nì Riada's speech in Irish in the European Parliament. Not the easiest article I've ever read, to say the least. I listened to this recording about the next village over (5 minutes), without reading the transcript... mostly because, while I love Brezhoneg Digor for their recordings of very authentic old country Breton, i.e. exactly what I want to emulate, the orthography is really painful for me to read. I'm not sure if it's an etrerannyezhel (another orthography I haven't mentioned yet), or a home-made orthography that somewhat resembles an etrerannyezhel. Making up your own orthography isn't exactly unheard of, especially amongst people who dislike the standardisation of Breton or are annoyed because the standardised spelling isn't a perfect phonetic representation of their native dialect. I also listened to Ar chaseour erevent (5 minutes), a children's book about a bear's dream of becoming a dragon hunter, Hunvre Gwenvred (4 minutes), a children's radio drama about a princess who wants a pet but the whole family has allergies, and an episode of Kronik feminist (4 minutes), a radio show about feminist history, art, and politics. I feel less confident than ever about my listening comprehension, which I have always felt was my strong suit in the past. Something to work on in the weeks to come. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3900 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 11 of 14 02 April 2015 at 6:58pm | IP Logged |
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Some random writing, since I just remembered what day it is:
Ar Yaou-Gamblit 'zo hiziv. Lavarout a reer e Bro-C'hall ez aent ar kleier da Roma, e Bro-Sveden e lavarer e vez an deiz pa aent ar sorserezed d'ar c'hrec'h glas avat. Nijal a raint war ur skubell, ur barr pe ul loen. Int a ya aze evit ar sabad sorserez gant an diaoul. Ar vugale en em wiskont 'vel sorserezed o nijal d'ar c'hrec'h glas an deiz-mañ hag ar re vras a ro madigoù dezho. Hanter gristen eur en Hanternoz yen. It's Maundy Thursday today. They say in France that the church bells go to Rome, however in Sweden they say that this is usually the day when the witches go to the blue hill. They fly on a broom, a branch or an animal. They go there for the witches' sabbath with the devil. On this day the children dress like witches flying to the blue hill and the grown-ups give them candy. We're bad Christians (literally: half Christians) in the cold north (literally: half-night, the word for south is mid-day). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3900 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 12 of 14 05 April 2015 at 2:05pm | IP Logged |
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Let me start off by saying: Pask laouenn deoc'h! I'm not Christian myself, but my Breton alter-ego, Bleuenn Guivarc'h, is a recovering Catholic and quite traditional... she even says things like "bennozh Doue" (God bless) and "ar baradoz a fin ho puhez" ([may you find] Paradise at the end of your life), which are things I would never say. I kid, I kid. Kind of. Sometimes it feels like everyone who speaks Breton knows each other. This obviously isn't true, as there are far too many speakers for that, and I have long told myself it's more a case those who are openly regionalists huddling together online. While this may well be true, today brought a very strange coincidence. I was just about to listen to a recording of the local dialect, when I was struck by the name listed for the speaker. He had the same surname as my neighbour, on the other side of the cow pasture, and, of course, the neighbour's elderly father with whom I've chatted at length many times. I don't know how common this name is elsewhere, but in my tiny village there is only one family with this name. So, I turn on the recording and the first thing the speaker says is that his parents come from my village. In other words, I'm listening to the brother or cousin of an acquaintance. The only acquaintance I've ever spoken a few words of Breton with face-to-face to boot (though we've almost exclusively spoken French). VOCABULARY I have kept up with Anki, but I haven't added any new cards, as I wanted to let last week's cards mature a bit first. I added a few cards from Harry Potter ha Maen ar Furien, but not so much for the vocabulary as to practise prepositions and turns of phrase.  This card, for example, doesn't have a single new word, but I've never used this verb conjugated before. I've got another card with this verb, from Assmil Le Breton (Gouzout a rit peseurt taol fall 'zo c'hoarvezet gant Alan?), but there it's used as a participle and takes a preposition. So, I made a new card. PRONUNCIATION I downloaded a (1) fairly clearly enunciated story with (2) a female speaker (3) from a neighbouring village. Those were my three requirements, and I'm glad I found one to match. I imported the file into Audacity, picked three fairly straight forward sentences, extracted those and transcribed them. The purpose is to listen, repeat, and finally record myself speaking over the native speaker until I get the rhythm and pronunciation down. I've done this with Assimil Le Breton before (I got the idea from the Language Lab exercises when I studied Scots Gaelic at the University of Aberdeen in what seems like another life). I haven't actually had time to work with it, though. NATIVE MEDIA I read: The Imitation Game, a 265 word review of The Imitation Game. Katalanegourion e parlamant Europa, a 700 word news article about Catalonian-speakers in the European parliament and the state of Catalonian in Spain The first two chapters of Harry Potter ha Maen ar Furien. I am re-reading the book and it's very encouraging, since there are quite few unknown words per page (I'd say around 97-98% comprehension), despite the fact that I put zero effort into learning the words and aiming only to "get the gist" through parallel reading the first time around. It is, nevertheless, a book I'm re-reading so high comprehension is to be expected. I listened to: A two minute story about dancing gavotte in the next village over from me. A five minute story about games and toys "back in the day", also from the next village over. A thirteen minute story about the local gavotte variants recorded by someone who lives the next village over in the other direction, and appears to be a brother or cousin of the only person I've ever spoken Breton with face-to-face. I watched: An episode of Foeterien, subtitled in French... otherwise I would've been pretty lost, I think. For those unfamiliar with this pretty amusing television show, it's sort of like The Amazing Race, except much much nicer with fewer teams and noone getting disqualified, and everything centres around Brittany and Breton culture... although I think the current season they're in the British Cornwall (Kernev-Veur in Breton), as opposed to the Breton Cornwall (Kernev in Breton) which is where I live. I haven't caught up to the most recent episodes yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3900 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 13 of 14 13 April 2015 at 4:19pm | IP Logged |
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Ma Doue! This week has been ridiculous. I'm staying in bed today, resting, because my chest has tightened up from all the stress and my muscles ache from lack of proper pauses. The week started well enough. I listened to an hour of Un tamm tro ba 'r jardin, while gardening. This show always makes me happy, because my understanding is always 80-90%. They speak a pretty clear 'media Breton', tend to say all plant names in French at least once, and given the topic (gardening) the shows are all pretty repetitive. I listened to an hour of Sevenadurioù while cleaning. I find this show particularly difficult for some reason, but this episode about Breton foods was all right. Lastly, I listened to an hour of Dir ha Tan, my favourite Breton radio show. It hardly counts, though, because it's mostly heavy metal. I've kept up with my Anki cards, but I haven't had the time to add any new ones. I'll try to keep up with my Breton this week, despite in-laws visiting. There are other issues at hand, though. My urgent need to get my Breton confidence back has been somewhat displaced by my sudden need to be able to do my job in French. I had this lovely plan I was working on, that would get me ready to approach potential clients in six months. Then life happened, and now I have a meeting scheduled with a potential client, and suddenly my French has to be good enough for someone to want to pay me to express myself. My quirky foreign-isms may provide some colour, but grammatical errors sure don't! Edited by eyðimörk on 13 April 2015 at 4:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 3900 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 14 of 14 19 April 2015 at 2:07pm | IP Logged |
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Breton has had to take a back seat to my in-laws visiting and our 12 hours socialising days. When I did have some time to myself, i.e. when I was stuck in bed with food poisoning, I opted for the more low-effort language activity of watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Italian, and right now it's taking a temporary back seat to French because I have an important meeting early next week and speaking Swedish all day every day for a week, not having time for my French books and media, makes me feel like I've forgotten how to have a conversation in French. I don't have much time to get fully back into the French head space, so something has to give... if only for a few days. VOCABULARY I've kept up with my Anki work. I also added 70 new words relating to farm and carpentry tools, farmland, farming, plant parts and farm animals. These are probably some of the most relevant words I've learnt to date, given that these are the things I see and experience when I'm out and about meeting people. Alc'hwez ar brezhoneg eeun was missing some important words, though, perhaps due to its age, such as rapeseed and tractor, so in the week to come I think I'll add some words of my own. NATIVE MEDIA I read: Daoulagad ar Werc’hez, Malo Bouëssel du Bourg (2014) — a 122 word book review. Brezel an dour, Yann-Fañch Jacq (2014) — a 158 word book review. A chapter of Harry Potter ha Maen ar Furien. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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