Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2109
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Apr 27, 2019 1:36 am

Updates. I finished Jacinto Rey's La Noche de las Medusas (so-so) and began Ya nadie llora por mí, a detective novel by Sergio Ramírez of Nicaragua (so far, 5 pages in, quite good, much richer in texture than Rey's novel).
In Ancient Greek I finished this morning Chapter 15 of Book II of Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War. I use plenty of help with this. See my previous post in this thread about what I am using.
In French, today I finally accumulated 100 hours of listening to French-dubbed TV programs: since March 6 of this year, Eureka (2 seasons), True Detective (one episode each from two seasons), the Danish The Killing (1 season) and That 70s Show (5 seasons + 7 episodes from season6). That experiment is now done. Hurray. Three hours a day of "television" had grown tedious. On the good side, I noticed a substantial improvement in my comprehension and by the end of the last series, provided I gave my full yet relaxed attention, I understood just about every thing the characters said. Just how much that will help with "real" French TV and movies remains to be seen.
4 x
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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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2109
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Apr 28, 2019 8:01 pm

In the topic You Know You're a Language Nerd When . . .,
PfifltriggPi wrote:... You do your own translation from a source only available in Latin, for a paper written in English, comparing Doctor Zhivago and Francesco Petrarch.

A couple of years ago I was re-reading Doctor Zhivago in a French translation after having read an English translation years ago, and which I very much liked. Before I began reading the French translation a twinge of guilt hit me for not reading it in the original again !. I stopped the re-read when it came time for the love affair with Laura to begin. I did not like the movie, and I am not sure I understood the book. I am left wondering what the thesis of PfifltriggPi's paper about Petrarch and the novel was.
2 x
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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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2109
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun May 05, 2019 11:40 pm

I have started Book 2 of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and finished through chapter 49 (24 of 60 pages). Also I finished section 5 of Plutarch's Pericles.
Trying to pair Anki and Quizlet to sub for Memrise is proving difficult. The problem is coordinating them so the same words come up at the same time in both.

In Spanish, I watched a documentary called Documental Quinquis .
Unrest of youth in Madrid in the 70s.
Also, I came across this interesting usage of the tricky Spanish verb caber in La novela de Genji:
--¿Cabe mejor modelo para una muchacha que una emperatriz?

That is from location 12520 on my Kindle. The translator is Xavier Roca-Ferrer, I think. Here is the
cover. A. Bryson Gerrard has an entry about caber in his Cassell's Colloquial Spanish, revised, New York, Collier, 1980.

In French, I still am rummaging through a lot of possible resources, though I think I have narrowed it down to a few audiobooks and a TV series or two.
3 x
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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Carmody
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Location: NYC, NY
Languages: English (N)
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby Carmody » Mon May 06, 2019 1:12 am

I certainly admire you reading Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in the original. I love it and am only able to read it in English.
Congratulations.
1 x

DaveAgain
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Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby DaveAgain » Mon May 06, 2019 6:23 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:In French, I still am rummaging through a lot of possible resources, though I think I have narrowed it down to a few audiobooks and a TV series or two.
There was a radio programme on France Culture the other day that made me think of you and your classical studies, Les inconnus de l'Histoire - Flavius Arrien.
1 x

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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2109
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon May 06, 2019 12:45 pm

Carmody wrote:I certainly admire you reading Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in the original. I love it and am only able to read it in English.
Congratulations.

Thank you. Our high school senior English teacher challenged us to read as much as we could in the library and keep a log. Of the authors I read, Thucydides and Montaigne stood out the most, and reading them in translation planted a seed for my later pursuit of Ancient Greek and French. Though the more proximate causes were Herodotus and Malraux.
1 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

User avatar
MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2109
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon May 06, 2019 12:48 pm

DaveAgain wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:In French, I still am rummaging through a lot of possible resources, though I think I have narrowed it down to a few audiobooks and a TV series or two.
There was a radio programme on France Culture the other day that made me think of you and your classical studies, Les inconnus de l'Histoire - Flavius Arrien.

Thank you for the references. :) I look forward to listening.
1 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

User avatar
MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2109
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed May 08, 2019 11:35 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
DaveAgain wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:In French, I still am rummaging through a lot of possible resources, though I think I have narrowed it down to a few audiobooks and a TV series or two.
There was a radio programme on France Culture the other day that made me think of you and your classical studies, Les inconnus de l'Histoire - Flavius Arrien.

Thank you for the references. :) I look forward to listening.

I have listened to the first two transmissions of "Les inconnus de l'histoire" about Flavius Arrien. The first gives a general overview of the cultural and social milieu of Arrian. The second probes into the work and Alexander. I have yet to listen to the third.

In another matter, Carmody and I have puzzled over why Octave Mirbeau, an excellent writer of a hundred or more years ago, was completely unknown to us. I may have another such unknown, or nearly unknown, Pierre Loti. I had heard of him, but I have never read him. One of his novels is Le roman d'un enfant, said to have been very influential for Marcel Proust. The good folks at litteratureaudio provide a number of audiobooks of Loti, including Le roman d'un enfant. But what intrigues me about Loti is that he was an officer in the French navy during the later 19th and earlier 20th centuries. As a seaman, he could draw on the same kinds of experiences as Conrad and Melville. Should he be included in their company? We'll see.
3 x
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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Carmody
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby Carmody » Thu May 09, 2019 12:10 am

Pierre Lot is a name I keep running across but about whom I know nothing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Loti
2 x

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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2109
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue May 21, 2019 1:00 am

I finished Book 2 of The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides today. Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War Book II was indispensible. Parts of Book 2 are easy peasy, but other parts are as hard as Ancient Greek gets, prose anyway. I aim to understand how everything works, using help if I need it, but sometimes I can't, expecially the speeches.

I picked up Roy Lewis's On Reading French Verse (Clarendon Press, 1982) again today. Going through it the third time, thinking there should be a similar guide to the poetry of Ancient Greek. There is plenty of help for scanning epics like Homer's in dactylic hexameters, but little about how to appreciate the poetry and its rhythms and sounds.

I am ready to move on to extensive listening to French. Several members here have made a number of suggestions. In addition, I bought an audiobook of Le temps retrouvé from Éditions Thélème this week, and I hope to start extensive listening with it. I'll take a stab at just listening, but I will fall back if I must to reading along with the book. The readers are Michael Lonsdale, Denis Podalydès and André Dussollier. I don't know yet which version of the text they use for reading. I have the Gallimard paperback of 1927, which is read for for the litteratureaudio audiobook. It's 210 (uncut! when I bought it) pages. At the moment I can't put my hands on the Pleiade version. There are 54 parts to the audio, each say 15 minutes, so roughly 30+ hours. We'll see how it goes.
6 x
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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