Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon Jun 27, 2022 4:46 pm

Lawyer&Mom wrote:Temple of Mnemosyne?
Love it! Simple and unpretentious! :D
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Aug 06, 2022 4:56 pm

Ancient Greek
Until today, nothing accomplished since last post. This morning I read the first six chapters (they're short) of Book 6 of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. Geoffrey Steadman’s newest treats this book in his usual helpful manner.
I was curious to see whether that consolidation effect after a few weeks layoff familiar to me in French would occur. It did. Words once just on the cusp of my memory now came to me with clarity, cured, like concrete. Not all of them, of course.
The first six chapters are background of the settling of Sicily and the animosities that had built up.
Also I watched the first part of four of In Search of the Trojan War by Michael Wood, in English. This part details the work and discoveries of businessman-turned-archeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the Turkish Troad in the 19th century. A bit overdramatic for my taste, but a fair assessment I guess of Schliemann’s work and importance.

Spanish
Was able to read a bit of Isabel Allende’s El Amante Japones, now having finished 58% of the book in Kindle. Allende paints a deep and broad picture of her protagonists. The vocabulary can be challenging, but the prose style is not awfully complicated.

French
Read only a bit of Umberto Eco’s Le nom de la rose, reaching page 31, Premier jour, Tierce. Inspired to this by posts of Coldrainwater.\ The style so at least seems to owe a lot to Borges with its intricate pseudo-scholarly apparatus of references.
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue Aug 16, 2022 10:29 pm

Spanish
Read to Kindle location 2140 (62%) of La amante japonés by Isabel Allende.
Read Homo Plus, a Spanish translation of the science fiction novel Man Plus by Frederik Pohl, one of the old masters. The novel, still timely but not without a flaw or two, details the biophysical alteration of an astronaut to be able to survive the climate of Mars without a space suit. Pohl focuses more on changes in psychology and society than on fancy hardware and adds interesting tidbits like the fact that Mars has a greater land surface than Earth (because oceans).
This was read in 3 sittings, 207 pages in total, more evidence of the validity of Ilya Frank's thinking. (/rant spared).

French
French got short shrift since last post: rien du tout.

Ancient Greek
Chapters 7-11 of The Peloponnesian War.
Intend to head over to Herodotus for awhile. Not sure whether to start from the beginning or to pick an interesting section and go with that.
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby Herodotean » Tue Aug 16, 2022 11:22 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Ancient Greek
Chapters 7-11 of The Peloponnesian War.
Intend to head over to Herodotus for awhile. Not sure whether to start from the beginning or to pick an interesting section and go with that.

I don't know how familiar you are with Herodotus already, but Book 1 is well worth reading in full even if you skip around after that. The introduction sets up the east/west, barbarian/Greek contrast that shapes the work to its end, and the story of Croesus, Solon, and Cyrus broaches themes that reverberate throughout (Cyrus, for example, returns in the last paragraph of the final book).
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Aug 17, 2022 6:34 pm

Herodotean wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:I don't know how familiar you are with Herodotus already, but Book 1 is well worth reading in full even if you skip around after that. The introduction sets up the east/west, barbarian/Greek contrast that shapes the work to its end, and the story of Croesus, Solon, and Cyrus broaches themes that reverberate throughout (Cyrus, for example, returns in the last paragraph of the final book).
Your assessment is correct about Book 1, and I have already read it. In fact, IIRC, I've read the whole of Herodotus. He is my favorite Ancient Greek writer, and he is one of my favorite writers of all. For me, part of the definition of a favorite is one I want (not have) to read over and over. His attention to telling details, his flair for dramatic story telling, his limning of unforgettable characters.
One thing I want to do is make use of the thorough-going "checklist" that member CB of Textkit provides for understanding a Greek text What if all I want is Aristotle? Hardly expert in Herodotus or Ancient Greek, yet I have read enough of Herodotus so that I will not be stumped by every word.
I'm debating with myself whether to copy CBs post at Textkit and repost it here.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Aug 20, 2022 6:25 pm

Spanish
I only read a few more pages of La amante japonés by Isabel Allende. We learn of Irina's ritualistic practice of setting up a little altar wherever she finds herself in her journeys (location 2140). The expression 'estuviera donde estuviese' pleases me.

French
Again rien du tout.

Ancient Greek
I read little or no Greek since my last post. Instead I worked with some of the materials CB mentioned in his recommendations. I even wrote notes, to my own surprise.
Beginning with Greek Word Order by K. J. Dover. His beginning works with the little words that can never begin a sentence or clause. Dover calls these postpositives. A couple dozen of them exist, for example ἄρα or μέν. Then he works with prepositives, words that must appear at the beginning of a sentence/clause: ἀλλά, for example, or καί. Little things but necessary to touch on for word order.

Also I read a bit of The Greek Prepositions, Studied from their Original Meanings as Designations of Space, by F. A. Adams. TBH, I read some of this a few years ago but am not convinced it's of much help. Trying to construe παρά from the first sentence of Book 9 of Herodotus
"Μαρδόνιος δέ, ὥς οἱ ἀπονοστήσας Ἀλέξανδρος τὰ παρὰ Ἀθηναίων ἐσήμηνε,"
and noting that Adams marks the use with the genitive has a base meaning of 'from beside,' I don't quite get it, tho the meaning is clear and approximates more simple 'from.'
Another of the recommended books I poked my nose into was A New Short Guide to the Accentuation of Ancient Greek by Philomen Probert. All these years I've mostly ignored accents, and still wonder if learning them is worth the time, but here goes. Lots of exercises (with answers) appear in the book. The first is a list of 38 words that require the 'student' to decide the length of the vowels and the weight of the syllables. Getting 23 of the 38 correct will not get me to the head of the class, but it was as they say a good learning experience.

A couple more of the recommendations remain. I already know that from a previous short foray into Introduction to Greek Prose Composition by A. Sidgwick it will be a challenging book.

Perhaps before next post I suppose I should read a bit of Greek, not to mention French as well.
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Aug 20, 2022 7:30 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Perhaps before next post I suppose I should read a bit of Greek, not to mention French as well.
I heard "the retreat of the 10,000" mentioned the other day, I was intrigued enough to look for a French translation, perhaps that might interest you?

I'm trapped in an Elizabeth von Arnim reading spree! :-)
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Aug 21, 2022 5:38 pm

DaveAgain wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:Perhaps before next post I suppose I should read a bit of Greek, not to mention French as well.
I heard "the retreat of the 10,000" mentioned the other day, I was intrigued enough to look for a French translation, perhaps that might interest you?

I'm trapped in an Elizabeth von Arnim reading spree! :-)

Yes, I found and downloaded that translation. Dating apparently from the 17th century. Without Anki, how in the world did those folks learn another language? :D :D
It's nice to be 'trapped' by an congenial author, so I envy you.
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Aug 28, 2022 12:11 am

Another week slogging towards Bethlehem.
Spanish
In El amante japones, the romance between Seth and Irina heats up--for one of them anyway.
Frederik Pohl's The Coming of the Quantum Cats (La Llegada de los gatos cuanticos) is hitting me with much less force than Homo Plus. Fiction based on the idea of parallel universes seems too contrived. I didn't care for it even when Star Trek tried it (Mirror, Mirror, yawn!).

The texts for Pohl's work come from http://espaebook.com/, which itself links to other sources offering well over 100,000 books, though the mods probably should check out the legality of them. I took a look, and many of the books seemed likely to be out of copyright, but I can't be sure.

French
Whatever French I read was minimal and forgotten. :(

Ancient Greek
For whatever reason, probably not enough memory, my little laptop can't cope with mysql nor with Rick's docker application, so tracking, using and learning vocabulary the way I have done has been a drag. Luckily I have a downloaded file that includes almost everything I did in LWT through June this year, also luckily this computer's linux text editor can read the file once unzipped, and today I could pare away the non-greek parts to get, I hope, something usable. This took up most of today because at its best the laptop, which I must say is a splendid performer in spite of its puniness, could beat neither the hare nor the tortoise.
I hope to explore more fully and more thoroughly my idea about writing stories with my learning vocabulary and to work more extensively with the extracurricular writings CB has endorsed.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Sep 10, 2022 6:10 pm

Spanish
Grammar Exercises: Spanish (Hugo in Three Months) (Isabel Cisneros), first 8 exercises.
El amante japonés by Isabel Allende, 77% finished. Topical incident about abortion, and Alma gets married.
There is also an incident about the family chauffeur, who gets drunk at a wedding and blubbers a song in his native Irish.
So many interesting events happen in this novel.


French
La Marquise des ombres by Catherine Hermary-Vieille
Retelling of the true story of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, infamous 17th-century murderer by poison of her father and two brothers. Other versions of her story exist, including La Marquise de Branvilliers, a well-told micawber tale by Alexandre Dumas père. There is a pedophilic incident in the real story that Dumas ignores but that Hermary-Vieille to an extent includes.

Also grammar exercises:
Hugo French in Three Months, Your Essential Guide to Understanding and Speaking French (Ronald Overy, Jacqueline Lecanuet), to level 3, including audio from online.
Grammaire progressive du français.
Niveau intermédiaire avec 600 exercices (Odile Thiévenaz), first 5 exercises (checked with the key).
Expressions using “pas de” throw me off and am looking for more exercises to help me out.

Ancient Greek
Herodotus Book 9. Made some cloze exercises of roughly 10 unknown words per exercise. By hand at first, then for more efficiency using ANKI to generate the cloze sentences. I’m barely 2 pages along. This is a variant of intensive reading.

Following along CB’s “syllabus” of grammar works mentioned in previous posts out to be nothing more than an intensive, usuful and necessary review.
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Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson


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