Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Tue Jan 04, 2022 10:00 am

I have now tried out the wordlist concept on French expressions, and it functions surprisingly well. As expressions are of varying length, but almost always longer than single words, the first task was to decide on the layout, and as you can see from the scan below I had first hoped that there would be space to 2x3 columns on a folded A4 sheet (instead of my normal 3x3 setup), but nope - I have to fold the paper and then do a single triple column in the other direction - and in both layouts very long expressions will of course have to occupy two lines.

The book I cull is the "Dictionnaire des expressions Idiomatiques", and there the explanations are of course in French. And the structure of the book is roughly similar to that of a monolingual dictionary: you get some headwords in alphabetical order, and for each headword you get one or more examples with suitable circumlocutions. But in my list I deliberately translate (and mostly also reformulate) the explanations into Danish. Why? Well for a solid didactic reason:if I don't immediately remember a French expression it might pop up if I use a formulation in Danish as a trigger. The point is that if I don't remember an French idiomatic expression, there is little hope that I remember its less colourful explanation - but I may remember something similar in Danish.

And I learn something about French thinking in the process. The expressions are almost always logical once you see them (and get additional information if necessary as in the case of ""chanter Ramona" yesterday), but you could probably not have guessed them.And sometimes a headword is used in contrasting expressions. An example: "envoyer un emplâtre [plaster] à qualqu'un" means 'to hit somebody', while "mettre un emplâtre à quelque chose" means 'take care of, remedy', - i.e. violence vs. loving care! A third expression with the same word is "un emplâtre sur une jambe de bois [wooden leg]", which means 'a inefficient remedy' - well, I daresay.

Liste-d'expressions.jpg

OFR: Pour ce que li dictionnaire d'expressions estoit pres de mon chair dans ma chambre de jour ma lecture de nuict estoit hier la "Initiation à l'ancien français" par Sylvie Bazin-Tacchela (escrit en françois nouvel, portant sanz traduir les citations).

GER: Übrigens habe ich gestern auch ein bissel altmodisches Deutsch gelesen. Ich hörte Themen vom Komponisten Johann Christoph Pezel (oder Petzold), 1639-1694, als mir einfiel, daß etwas gar nicht stimmte. Er hat viele Turmsonaten für Blechbläser geschrieben, etwa vierzig, die jeden Tag um 10 Uhr von einem Turm in Leipzig gespielt werden sollte (gemeine Leute hatten damals keine Uhren), und ich konnte Nummer 9 in meinem Datei nicht finden. Ich habe dann zunächst Youtube konsultiert und festgestellt, daß 'mein' Nummer 10 tatsächlich Nummer 9 war, und daß mir die 'richtige' no. 10 fehlte. Gut, dann habe ich die ganze Sammlung bei 'Denkmäler Deutscher Tonkunst' in IMSLP gefunden, und darin fand ich als ein willkommenes Bonus das ursprüngliche Vorwort vom Herrn Pezel in unbearbeiteter Form und als Fraktur gedruckt. Und solch' eine Gelegenheit meiner Fähigkeiten im Lesen dieser Art von altem Zeug zu üben konnte ich mir natürlich nicht entgehen lassen.

Johann_Pezel_prolog.jpg
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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sat Jan 08, 2022 4:56 pm

I have mentioned earlier that my music collection is structured as a series of cassette tapes with a side a and a side b), generally with a side duration of between 40 and 50 minutes. Each file set is named after a major composer, and minor ones will be fitted in where there is space, but I try hard not to spread their works over more than one location. But some files combine several minor composers, and then of of the will deliver the name - like in the case of "Peraza" 1a+b. I only have 6 minuts of music by this Spanish composer, but the rest of the files are filled with some fierce anonymous faburdones (from a record I bought in the 70s) and music by once illustrious names like Pablo Bruna, Sebastian Durón, Andrés de Sola and José Ximènes - and then I gave the name to good ol' Peraza, whose tientos must have sounded like the trumpets of Jericho to the listeners of his time.

SP:
Organista y compositor español, hijo de un virtuoso de la chirimía toledano. Impresionado por un concurso en 1584 el cardenal Rodrigo de Castro de Seilla a tal punto que se le otorgó el puesto de organista de la catedral de Sevilla. Tenía la costumbre de prorrogar arbitrariamente su licencia, por lo que en 1590 fue despedido. Sin embargo, al año siguiente pudo regresar a su puesto, con suerte como una persona nueva y mejor.

Over the last 2-3 eyars I have spent a lot of time shuffling things around, but also adding new things and replacing items with bad sound, and therefore I have to revise my theme collection. Right now I'm in the process of revising the themes for tapes files from Ma_1a til Purcell_4b, and that takes time because I first have to listen to missing or dubious items and jot down their themes unless I can copy them from the collection at IMSLP, then make a revised copy in black ink of altered items, then scan those copies and finally integrate the result into my existing system.

Organ_of_Covarrubias_Spain_(Wikimedia).jpg

And of course this takes time from my language studies. Sometimes I look something up, like a composer biography, or I read an interesting text in an ancient edition or some other background stuff, but it doesn't take hours to do that, and most of my languages don't get any study time right now. But I can watch TV, and for instance I listened to (and to some extent watched) several hours of programs with historical and geographical themes at 3SAT earlier today. This channel combines programs from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but unfortunately almost entirely spoken in bland Standard Hochdeutsch. The bonus is that I can listen when I copy notes, but the price is that I can't look up to read subtitles on the screen while I'm writing. That's the opposite situation of what I can do while listening for themes to jot down.

The one thing that still continues as usual is my goodnight reading. Yesterday I got through the substantives, articles, adjectives and pronouns in Ancient French, and today I expect to do the verbs. It's not really new stuff - I learnt the fundamentals of Ancient French during a university course in the 70s - but nice to get a brush-up.

FR:
Le livre "Initiation à l'ancien français" ne fût certainement mie concipé por les néophytes ès éstudes del vieulx françois. Les citations ne sont pas traduites, et il y a une foule de mots que j'aurais normalement cherchés dans mon dictionaire Foulet, mais le dictionaire est loin de mon lit, donc je dois accepter certains lacunes dans ma compréhension. Sur le coté positif il faut dire que le livre est assez bien structuré. Par example il y a de petits tableaux pour les articles et substantifs dans les deux nombres et 2 cas et 2½ genres .. un moment 2½ genres? Ah oui, il y a avait un neutre pour certains pronoms. Et il y avait deux cas: nominatif et 'le reste' (l'oblique). Normalement c'est ce dernier qui a survécu, mais parfois on trouve des restes de la vieille morphologie où les mots masculins avait un -s comme terminaison dans le nominatif.

C'est aussi pour des raisons historiques qu'il y a dans le centre de Bruxelles une "Grand'place" et pas une "Grande Place" - 'grand' était l'un des rares adjectives en Ancien Français qui gardait la même forme dans le masculin et le feminin, et le mot était typiquement épélé "granz" (pour grants), mais la partie sibiliante n'a pas survécu, seul la lettre 'd'. L'oblique pouvait aussi fonctionner comme un génitif sans plus - par example dans le titre original du roman "Le Morte le Roi Artu", plus tard changé par "Le Morte Darthur" ou "Le Morte d'Arthur" à la forme courante de nos jours: - "La Mort d'Arthur". L'auteur fut messire Mallory qui vivait au XV siècle, ou il était encore coutume d'écrire en Français en Angleterre. Pour la fonction de génitive on pouvait utiliser un substantif oblique sans plus (pour des personnes) ou l'une des prépositions à ou de, et comme on le sait, c'est le troisième choix 'de' qui a gagné le champs.

Comme on le voit, il peut être bien divertissant de lire un grammaire du Vieux Français si on a l'attitude favorable à ce genre de livres (et quelques connaissances préalables).

F0445a01_Grand'Place.jpg
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon Jan 10, 2022 1:25 pm

Yesterday I could at last spend a day on languages. I watched some TV with sound (including a program on TV5 about French regions and a series of German historical programs on 3SAT after midnight), but I didn't switch on my computer so the rest was oldfashioned armchair studies. Right now I have a German program about Thailand running on my TV.

I started out with the Greek Wikipedia article about the Mediterranian, and when I had copied/studied it I proceeded to do the corresponding wordlist. I have mentioned this some time ago: the best possible time to do it is right after you have worked on the text that delivered the words, and it should definitely be done while you still remember it - any later and you could just as well use a dictionary.

After that I happened to run into my one an d only text collection in Ukraninian. I don't study this language yet, but I was curious as to whether I could understand it based on my mediocre knowledge of other Slavic languages, and it turned out to be reasonably easy - also because I found a good dictionary in a bookstore i Lviv (Львів) during my one and only visit there. The most, well not irritating, but let's say troublesome feature of Ukrainian is the letter 'i' (ї with trema) because I tend to write 'и', but if I chose to continue studying it then it would become a habit to write 'i' in the right places. The problem is that I don't have a grammar, and of course also that I already have half a dozen languages on my workbench and ought to stop flirting with additional projects. :roll: The text in question dealt with the Burgess-shale (Берджес-Шейл in Ukrainian), and I have already commented on the beginning of it, but this time I got through the lot.

anomalocaris.jpg

Onwards to another language which I haven't studied, but has ties to a known one: Bosnian. Again an article about Tuzla, but not the one I have commented on recently. I have it because I was looking for Serbian articles in Cyrillic, but chanced upon some things from Republika Srpska - and then I added some articles in Bosnian, as usual written in Latinitsa. I have good dictionaries and grammars for Serbian and for Croatian and the old 'Serbocroat' and a couple of small guides to Slovenian, but Bosnian and the dialects along the coast have somehow fallen down a black hole. Luckily most words can be found in a Croatian or (Latinitsa) Serbian dictionary, and with a bilingual printout GoogleT can fill out the holes. As for Tuzla it seems to have been inhabited all the way back to the stone age, and now it is a somewhat laid-back minor town where you can spend several days without seeing any disturbing tourists hordes.

And logic would now have urged me on to Makedonian, Slovenian or Czech, but I didn't have any bilingual printouts ready - so I ... no, before Bulgarian I found a collection in Indonesian. Last time I used it I commented on a text about Albania (and afterwards on an Albanian article about Indonesia), but back then I had only studied one page. This time I finished the article, so I should be thinking about getting something new stuff to study.

And then Bulgarian, where I studied the the first half or so af a Wikipedia article about Basilios II Bulgaroktonos (the 'Bulgarian-killer'). The Bulgarians entered Europe around 600 and established their own khanat in 618. In the beginning they came under domination by another tribe, the Avars, and they therefore chose to get on speaking terms with the Byzantinians. But soon they became stronger and became a major power on the Balkan Peninsula in the 10. century. Under Simeon the Great they even threatened to conquer mighty Byzans, but then Basilios II managed to defeat them in 1014 - and that's where he got his nickname. However the Bulgarians reestablished their kingdom in 1185 and stayed independent until the Ottomans arrived in 1396 - and the Ottomans ruled Bulgaria until 1878, where a treaty gave them some liberty, and the country became fully independent in 1908 with the help of Russia. But it seems that the Bulgarians haven't forgotten their golden age - they seem to think that (Northern) Macedonia ought to be part of Greater Bulgaria, and they claim that Macedonian resembles Bulgarian enough just to be seen as a dialect. I cannot judge on that topic since I haven't studied Macedonian yet, but the Macedonians don't have an easy time with those neighbours.

And then Russian. I discovered that I aleady had been through all my bilingual study texts, but luckily I have during travels bought several magazines in Russian, including something called "Neue Zeiten" (February 2012) which apparently had Russian speakers in Germany as target readers. I copied/studied a not too enticing interview with someone called Виктор Топаллев about emigration, Israel and the future of Russian learning, and lo and behold, I found that it isn't a serious problem anymore not to have a translation as long as I can use a dictionary to help me over the worst potholes in the road.

Finally I read the chapter about verbs in my Old French introduction.

And 3SAT still tells about Thailand on my TV. They have left Bangkok and reached Chiang Rai which I haven't visited - so you get my own impression of the country as a whole below.

Kunst197.JPG
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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon Jan 10, 2022 5:14 pm

I just went through my PMs and found one I should have answered long ago. Since the topic might be interesting to others I'll post the question here anonymously and add my answer. Sorry about the delay...

NN wrote:Hi Iversen!

I read your guide about using three column word lists. I've been using them the last few weeks and I've learned about 800 words so far using the technique. I am looking for ways to use the lists more efficiently. I believe I've read posts where you mention you've learned 100 words per hour using the word lists and I've been mainly able to hit about 60 words per hour consistently. My questions are aimed towards figuring out how I can improve in speed.

What part of the "process" is covered when you say you learn 100 words per hour? Do you have the words already in a one column list and the hour is spent only going through sets of 5 - 7 to memorize them by writing the additional two columns? Or do you set all that up in the hour you mention? In my case, I write down all three columns during the learning period. I also don't have the list of words I'm going to learn prepared, therefore I'm also sorting through a list to find words to learn during my vocabulary hour. I'm wondering if that initial set up is part of what's missing from my process.

Do you learn words in batches after you encountered them earlier in a day or week or do you learn them right after you encounter them? I've done both. I find it takes less time if I do them immediately after I encounter them, but that means my batches are quite small and thus I don't get the economy of scale of going through, say, 50 words at a time. What's your experience?

I read and put into practice some tips you had such as putting extra effort into thinking about the word, meaning, and spelling as I write a word in order to learn it since I know I'm going to be learning it soon anyway. Taking the extra focus to think about the word as I go does help once I get to doing the word lists technique later. Do you have any other tips or methods along those lines that have made your process more efficient?

I also saw this thread on HTLAL Super-fast vocabulary learning techniques in which you mention that you were going through a Russian dictionary to frontload your vocabulary learning. Did you find this was a useful thing to do? Would you do it again? What were the upsides and downsides?


The 100 words were those that I got through with the three columns in a language which I know fairly well, and where I took the words directly from a dictionary. The time includes writing all three columns and thinking about their content. With weaker languages it takes longer to memorize the words, among other things because you have fewer in-language associations to draw on, but also because you may have seen the words before in an old acqaintance, but just forgotten all about it - not so if you have started a new language recently. So 100 words is the absolute maximum, maybe half of that is realistic with a mediocre language and even less with a really weak one (like Ukrainian below).

In the beginning my words primarily come from study texts (typically bilingual printouts), and the reason is primarily that I get a LOT of new words at that stage, but also that you are more dependent on context when you have a limited background vocabulary - cfr. the remarks about learning speed above. Ideally you should do wordlists based on texts right after you have studied the text and jotted words down from it, but at least while you still remember it. If you wait too long you could just as well use a dictionary or another study text. And you can boost a short list with items from a text with related words from dictionary. For instance you mention Russian: when I include Slavic verbs in a wordlist I quote both the imperfective and the imperfective verb, and with substantives I like to include the corresponding adjectival forms. But then it is of course not possible to do 100 words in an hour.

As for memorization tips: I don't use prelearned memory palaces and things like that. But associations are important - not necessarily covering the whole word, the beginning may be sufficient. And then I sometimes use my 'inner eye' to visualize a word in its written form (printed or in handwriting). With dictionaries you also get the position in the alphabet for free - it is totally OK to use that as a cue. Finally the choice of words is important: fewer words if they are long and/or look foreign, more words if some of them belong to the same word family. If you have to skip a word then have a peek, but don't write anything yet - include it in the next group of 5-7 words.

My biggest problem with Russian is not vocabulary, but lack of opportunities to hear and speak it. Some people have found ways to solve that problem, maybe through the internet, but I don't like to communicate orally through a telephone with no video, and I don't think my old PC can support videolinks - and if it could I wouldn't know whom to speak to (I haven't tried, though). I'm definitely not going to pay for a teacher, and even less to participate in an evening course for beginners.

Wordlist-Ukrainian.jpg
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:29 am

Back to my log thread. Writing here - or just reading stuff - has become like tossing a coin: sometimes you are allowed in, sometimes the gateway is bad or the resources is temporarily unavailable, whatever. I hope things soon will return to normal, but we have seen with corona how long things can last.

Yesterday evening I went early to bed in the hope to wake up early. HA - the only result was that I had lots of time to read before the god of sleep Morpheus bothered to announce himself. So first I finished the Ancient French introduction (which looks more like an overview and repetition course for people who already know the language). The most surprising thing was that some texts now were followed by translations, as if the author had repented about being so demanding in the first two thirds of the book. After that a monolingual text collection in Catalan about sights in Girona and Barcelona, taken from their respective homepages. And then I read an old Russian text set, which I already have worked my way through once so that I could understand it without a dictionary. It told about the extinction event between the Triassic and the Jurassic where half the animal species of the planets vanished - and nobody really knows why. It told about about placodonts, labyrinthodonts and the cruotarsian, i.e. sundry paleontologic topics which I already have commented on here so no need to repeat.

So let's instead go to the Catalan department where I definitely didn't need a dictionary. Actually I did miss out on a few words, plus some that could be guessed in the context, like for instance "carall en dents" = tartar or calculus ("tandsten" = 'dental stone' in Danish), and now I wonder how those names in English came up. In Danish 'tartar' means raw scraped meat and is eaten by gourmets who should know better ("tartare" in English). Well, there is always a tribe in Asia called tartars, but the dental term apparently has been nicked from Greek, τάρταρον, whereas "calculus" came from Latin - but I find confusing that 'calculus' also means the noble art of calculating. The reason that "carall en dents" popped up in a text about museums in Girona is that the tools of dentists have turned out to be indispensable tools for removing unwanted material from archeological as well as from paleontological specimina, and ... OK, where were we? Oh yes, Catalunya!

CAT
: La col·lecció the textos conté primer un anunci dels museus de Girona, després un text sobre el museu arqueològic de Girona amb alguns mètodes moderns de restauració d'artefactes, després una excursió a l'aquari de Barcelona, i al final una descripció de la seva catedral. Jo vaig visitar tots aquells llocs en els bons vells temps dins de la corona, però els textos són dels sombres dies de la màscareta. L'Aquàrium de Barcelona - dit "Planeta àqua" - està situat al costat del port vell, no gaire lluny del zoo, i és una excel·lent institució de diverses plantes amb una exposició al primer pis - i pingüins de Humboldt. Pel que fa a la catedral en el Barri Gòtic de la ciutat, s'ha trobat una col·lecció de 13 oques al claustre, i se suposava que 13 era l'edat de la santa a la seva mort, per la qual cosa es veu això per tant com una al·lusió a ella. Aviat es va construir una església (un bisbe es testimoniat des del 343, la catedral mateixa del 599), però els àrabs va destrossar la primera església. Aleshores, l'any 1058 es va construir una nova catedral romànica, mentre que l'any 1298 es va iniciar la construcció de l'actual catedral gòtica -i va passar fins a finals del segle XIX abans de fer-ne la façana. I en realitat va ser un particular, en Manuel Girona d'Agrafel, qui ho va pagar. I des d'aleshores, s'ha dedicat temps a netejar i reparar l'edifici...

F0314a04 - sardana davant de la catedral 1978.jpg
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sun Jan 16, 2022 2:40 pm

I came here to add to my log, and then I spent the time doing a learner type test and commenting on it instead. So let me just mention briefly that I have been on a family visit where I did a Greek wordlist and watched TV. I have also watched TV since I returned (like for instance Språksjov on NRK from Norway, which I do understand when I listen but always watch with subtitles because they mostly are in Nynorsk, which is my preferred orthographical system for Norwegian - Bokmål is like reading badly spelt Danish. The most confusing word in Norwegian is "me", which seems to mean "we".

Actually I often watch TV with subtitles and no sound because I listen to music - and if there is background music in a TV program it is always superfluous and mostly disgusting. So I haven't listened to much Italian or Spanish here in 2022 - and in the case of Italian: my preferred programs on RaiUno are/were SuperQuark and Passagio al Nordovest, but I haven't run into them yet here in 2022. Spanish TVE has got a program series about Spaniards abroad which would be OK if it weren't for the disgusting background music - so I watch it with subtitles in Spanish.

Kunst146.JPG

Apart from that: I have read a lot of texts onscreen. For instance yesterday I was caught up in a series of Anglophone Wikipedia articles about rulers in China during the Tang dynasty because I followed a link to the mighty Empress Wu. What a life! I also ... no, let's take that in Swedish:

Kunst074a.JPG

SW:Jag läste något om gotiska språket och såg en referens till Dalmål (Dalecarlian), som är en väldigt gammaldags avkomma efter fornnordiska - förmodligen inte ens en variant av svenska språket, men en bevarad kvarleva i avgrunden mellan västnordiskan och östnordiskan. Från den svenska Wikipedian var det ett link til swedia.ling.gu.se, där man kan höra olika dialekter av detta språk med tillhörande transkripter. Och jag måste tyvärr erkänna att jag behövde texterna för överhuvudtaget att förstå vad dessa fornnordiska dalarborna sa. Det är oklart om Dalmålet har fått officiell status som minoritetsspråk i Sverige, men det måste troligen ske snart om det ska lyckas innan det dör ut.

Sverige har ett annat hotat nordisk relikspråk, nämligen gutnisk, vars position i språkträdet de lärda äro oensa om. Det kan vara en ättling till fornnordiska (som svenska språket), men vissa ser det som frånsplittrat ännu tidigare. Jag läste en gång den enda bevarade sagan i Oldgutnisk, Gutasagan, som är den sista delen av Gutalagen från 1220 - den äldsta av de två bevarade handskrifterna är dock från mitten av 1300-talet, men det är också mycket länge sedan.. Det skola vara intressant att höra om våra infödda svenskar här på Llorg har problem med att förstå dalmål respektive (gammalt) gutnisk, men det skola inte förvåna mig.
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:02 am

I spent most of Tuesday visiting museums in my town - most of them have reopened today after a corona hiatus, though some couldn't do it with the extremely short notice provided by the government. And I spent the evening collecting themes - and during this process I ran into problems with the two brothers Giuseppe and Giovanni Sammartini. And I daresay, everyone who has ever dealt with these two Italian baroque composers must have felt rather confused. The problem is that their works have been thoroughly mixed because they only were marked by family names - and to make things worse: not just Sammartini (the most used form nowadays), but also "San Martini"or sundry other name forms. According to Wikipedia the firstborne Giuseppe was christened "Giuseppe Francesco Gaspare Melchiorre Baldassare Sammartini" (also Gioseffo, S Martini, St Martini, San Martini, San Martino, Martini, Martino...), while his brother had to live with just "Giovanni Battista Sammartini" (alternative forms: Giovanni Battista San Martini / San Martino / St. Martini, Giovanni Battista Martini, Giovanni Battista Martino, Giambattista Sammartini, Bapta St. Martini according to IMSLP).

And to boot I discovered that I had overwritten the file "Sammartini GB 1a" with "Sammartini G 1b". And how did I discover that? Well, I knew that both the first two pieces on the true ".. GB 1a"-file should have been in G major, but I heard F major and d minor, and then I knew that I had a problem ("Houston we have a problem"). In the end I had to reconstruct the whole file from old sources, and that took a couple of hours.

However MONDAY ... well, Monday I did study some Russian from the old issue of the magazine "Neue Zeiten" which I have mentioned earlier - and as I mentioned back then it is entirely in Russian in spite of the title. Luckily my level in passive written Russian is much higher now than it was in 2012 when I bought it. And then I did one thing more: I visited the main library here for the first time in 2022. But as I had expected there wasn't any Language Café - or rather, on the backside of some screens they had left some old posters, and while I was sitting and reading some stuff in the area I saw a lady find these remnants from the good old days, and she asked a librarian why there wasn't any café. I also heard that he said that it wouldn't be restarted before (maybe) April, and then he removed the posters. OK, the lady started to walk away, but I shanghajed her. She was an Iranian and spoke fluent Farsi and Turkish plus some English and some Danish. And her reason for coming was that she wanted to train her Danish, which she thought was very bad - but it wasn't. I would say somewhere in the B-range, and we could understand each other with just a few problems. The topics were (among other things) painting and language learning, and the conversation lasted an hour. But now that I know that there won't be any other language café for several months it is not very likely that I'll return to the library as regularly as I did last year.

And now I have to find something to read before I go to sleep - I have finished all the things on my night-chair (not nighttable), including the introduction to Ancient French. And I think I have found a suitable candidate: the guide to Burgers Zoo outside Arnhem in the Netherlands. My Dutch needs some maintenance, and this book is just the right size for reading in bed. I can probably do it in an hour or so

DU: In totaal heb ik 13 Nederlandse dierentuinen bezocht, hiervan zeven op mijn laatste reis waar ik de nachten in Amsterdam en in Eindhoven heb doorgebracht. Wat de Burgers betreft: ik heb deze dierentuin meerdere keren bezocht en het is bijzonder om grotendeels binnen te zijn. Er zijn secties met verschillende biotopen van woestijn tot zee in enorme hallen ondergebracht, die verbonden zijn zodat men niet naar buiten moet om tussen de hallen te lopen - maar buiten ook nog een traditionele dierentuin (en een openluchtmuseum als naaste buur). Ik ben echter nog nooit in het stadscentrum van Arnhem geweest, dat na de Tweede Wereldoorlog van de grond af opnieuw moest worden opgebouwd.

Zoals gezegd heb ik tijdens mijn laatste bezoek daar enige nachten in Eindhoven doorgebracht. Deze stad werd vooral bekend als de thuisbasis van de Philips-groep, die niet meer zo sterk is als voorheen - maar er is natuurlijk een Philipsmuseum. Er is ook een openluchtmuseum en een kunstmuseum en een bibliotheek (weliswaar kleiner dan verwacht) , maar om dierentuinen te bezoeken moet je van de stad uit - en in de omgeving vond ik vier dierentuinen die ik nog nooit eerder had bezocht. Er zijn maar nog steeds zoölogische institutionen in de Nederlanden die ik niet heb bezoekt, en als al deze pandemie voorbij word, ga ik daar natuurlijk weer terug om de gaten op te vullen.

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:19 pm

I only managed to read a few pages of Dutch the two preceding nights, but instead I used the Burgers book during a train trip to a neighbour town called Randers. Just before Christmas our government shut down all zoos and museums for one month, but against expectation they were allowed to reopen this past week. I say "against expectation" because the choice of restrictions at cultural institutions has been a sore point in the fight plan against covid. If you look at it from a logical perspective there is no greater risk from walking around in a zoo than there is from walking around in the streets, and the indoor areas can't be more dangerous than doing shopping - especially when you take into consideration that you need to a an active corona passport or a recent test to enter a zoo or museum, you have to wear a mask and there are measures to prevent people from getting close to each other like one-way routes and stop for guided tours. So against expection I have to acknowledge that our government has behaved sensibly this time - and I'm not wont to mince my words when I have to comment on the actions of our politicians.

But there is more to this: the omicron variant has exploded here in Denmark, but the numbers of severe hospitalization cases is going down. Why? Well, because those hardstricken people mostly were 'ancient' unvaccinated delta victims, and now they either get well (more or less) or they die. The hospitalization figures are creeping slowly upwards, yes - but with the majority of the population boosted and and better treatments they don't stay there for long. The point is that omicron is much more contagious than the delta variant, but it generally stays in the upper respiratory tracts - at least in people with the limited immunity provided by the old vaccines or recent infections. So it seems that our government this time has chosen to let the pandemy run its course with just minimal interference (such as medical masks indoors and keeping the nightlife closed) in the hope that enough people get a mild infection with the ensuing immunity against omicron, which may be more efficient than begging the few hardcore antivacs'ers to get the shots with old vaccines.

By the way, in Randers I visited two museums and a library, but also the indoor zoo named "Randers Regnskov" (Rainforest), and here i noticed that I couldn't see any of the small half and whole monkeys that usually roam the three cupolas, and I suspect they have been moved into safe custody because of the risk that the visitors pass on the infection to the critters. Cats (including big cats) are also in the risk zone, but even before covid they didn't let their jaguars run freely around among the vistors.

F6039b01_lemurs_Randers_Rainforest.jpg

OK, nuff about covid.

DU: Ik heb het midden van de gids van Burgers' Zoo bereikt (en let op de plaats van de apostrof: de plaats is vernoemd naar meneer Burgers, niet naar de inwoners van Arnhem). Ik heb eigenlijk geen moeite om de tekst te begrijpen. De paar woorden die ik niet van tevoren wist, was het mogelijk om te raden - zoals bij de vermelding van de lama die het materiaal voor zijn speekselklonters in zijn pens opraapt (ik kende het woord "pens" niet). Maar er zijn ontzettend veel woorden die slechts een deel van mijn passieve vocabulaire zijn. Sommige dierennamen zijn nogal onverwacht: "jan van gent" is is de vogel die op Deens "sule" wordt genoemd, in het Duits "Tölpel" en in het Engels "gannet" (lief kind heeft vele namen, zo's we in het Deens zeggen). Het leeft ook in de Noord-Atlantische Oceaan, dus het was zeker niet een zeevaarder naamens Jan uit de stad Gent die de eerste vond aan de andere kant van de wereld - dus wan waar ter wereld komt dan zo'n naam?

RO: Am găsit timp și să studiez un text în limba română. A făcut parte dintr-o colecție de culegeri de texte despre 'pizza' pe care o-am produs la anul trecut, dar acest text nu era despre pizza, așa că, evident, l-am lăsat așa – până acum. Nu-i amintesc originea, dar sunt câteva lucruri în el care mă deranjează. Vezi de exemplu acest citat: "Rețetele de gătit medievale ne sunt cunoscute nouă datorită scrierilor le Mesnagier și le Viandier de Taillevent." De ce stă cuvântul suspect "nouă" în mijlocul tuturor? De asemenea saltul nemediat de a "le Mesnagier" (rețineți ortografia franceză veche!) mă uimește pe mine – m-aș fi așteptat la „lui” în fața fiecăruia dintre cei doi vechi scriitori gastronomici. Citatul folosește "și", dar mai jos în text se folosește "si" - este normal să scrieți greșit :roll: textele românești pe internet, dar atunci ai tendința de a alege fie "și" fie "si" în mod consecvent, nu a comuta între ele.

în plus acest pasaj a fost incurcat: "Era vremea în care carnea de balenă se consuma curent in Franța, dar necesita, ce e drept o fierbere indelungată." Ce face "ce e drept" în acest pasaj? S-ar putea ca întregul text să fi trecut prin Google Translate? Poate că existe o parte adverbială în textul original (necunoscut din ce limbă), iar GT a înlocuit-o apoi cu o expresie a cărei sintaxă internă nu funcționează deloc în acest context. Nu este vorba chiar despre gătit medieval, dar mai jos se spune că "Sub Ludovic al XV-lea se îndepartează felurile indigeste, sosurile violente, amestecurile nearmonici." Sosuri violente??

Deși am o suspiciune, dar cu toate acestea am studiat textul cu grija - mi-a spus câteva lucruri despre mâncarea medievală pe care nu le știam dinainte. Și traducerea în daneză (care era cu adevărat de prisos) a fost amuzantă pe alocuri: "(..) la ospețele de Catarina de Medici sun prezente lebedele si turturele, (...)" devine (DK) "(der er) stadig ved festerne fra Caterina de Medici tilstedeværende svaner og turtelduer, (...)"

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby luke » Fri Jan 21, 2022 1:39 pm

Iversen wrote:
Madlavning.JPG

That is a delightful image. Is it one of your creations? And is it "too much garlic in the soup", or "just the right amount of garlic in the soup"? :)
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Fri Jan 21, 2022 2:04 pm

I was employed at a the office of an evening school for something like 9 months in the mid 80s, and while I was there the boss asked me to provide small black-and-white vignettes for their program, and this one was used to illustrate a course in exotic cooking. All the vignettes and all the paintings in this thread are made by my humble self, and all items named F-something are my own photos. I am a staunch defender of the do-it-yourself strategy when it comes to art.

By the way we have a curious case of utter sheer idiocy :roll: in the art world here in Denmark right now. A museum lend more than 500.000 DKK in cash (almost 100.000 €) :shock: to an 'artist' (or whatever you choose to call him), and ... he just ran off with the money and claimed it was part of the so-called artwork, hahaha :lol: . Now the museum people are suing him for theft :evil: , but some 'art experts' expect the price of the empty frames to soar into the millions :o because of all the publicity caused by this calamity. Which just goes to show that those museum people :roll: were idiots to even make the deal with that person in the first place, but also that such idiocy is fomented by a cesspool of misguided ideology in certain circles :mrgreen: in the socalled 'art' world (or whatever you choose to call it). I'm happy that I never chose to become a professional artist... I wouldn't have had the nerve to steal half a million crowns and then claim that this was part of an artwork ;)

PS: methinks a wee bit too much garlic - or was it habanero chili ?
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