Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2109
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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 Oct 22, 2019 11:48 pm

Earlier I posted a link to a French language forum, which naturally I cannot find at the moment. :oops:
Today bump this to give credit and thanks to Aloyse for posting a link to another French forum.
Aloyse wrote:Random link to a French forum
https://forum.hardware.fr/hfr/Discussions/liste_sujet-1.htm
Despite the name of the website, the non-hardware related threads are also very active. In the "Discussions" subforum, about 300 threads were updated today.
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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

PfifltriggPi
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby PfifltriggPi » Wed Oct 23, 2019 12:47 am

Ooo, an audio book of Don Quijote? Would you be so kind as to direct me towards it? Although me imagining myself capable of following such a book is probably as absurd as tilling at windmills.
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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 » Wed Oct 23, 2019 10:40 pm

Last night I wanted to post an entry to my log, but I posted it in error here:

Mork's misplaced log post
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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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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 Oct 23, 2019 10:48 pm

PfifltriggPi wrote:Ooo, an audio book of Don Quijote? Would you be so kind as to direct me towards it? Although me imagining myself capable of following such a book is probably as absurd as tilling at windmills.

Here is Part 1, Book 1:
You can follow the links to the rest of the novel along with it. The accent is peninsular, and if you have trouble following, the words appear on screen.
There are in fact several narrations of the novel on Youtube.
Cheers,
Mork
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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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MorkTheFiddle
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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 Nov 18, 2019 1:35 am

The other day I took an assessment beta test in French devised by a commercial vendor. Respecting the vendor's wishes, I won't say who or give references for now. The test's 20 questions covered grammar and listening comprehension. I scored over 86% :lol: on the listening part and around 30% :cry: on the grammar part. I was expecting opposite results, but maybe listening to hundreds of hours of French over the past year or so helped. Also, it has to be said that the test had only 20 questions, so how reliable or valid it could be is an open question. I think the alpha version of the test will be available in a few weeks, after the test maker can incorporate the results of the beta tests.

In another matter concerning French, sheer frustration. Reading Rick's endorsement of Engrenages the other day, I decided to put my head down and attack that series. One dead end led* to another until I finally cornered the series for pay on Amazon. So I plunked down US $5.47 for the first season, began watching the first episode, and got disappointed immediately. The dialogue is in French and there are English subtitles. I did not want the English subtitles and worse they can't be turned off. So, not acceptable. I have a query out to eBay about the first season for sale there.

* Originally I wrote "lead" instead of "led." I think I was influenced by the spelling of "dead" just before. There is actually a term for that kind of mistake in manuscript analysis, but unfortunately I can't remember what it is.

Spanish
A book that I have had around for a while is Campo cerrado, the first volume of El laborinto mágico, a series of books about the Spanish Civil War written by Max Aub. The rich vocabulary of the book set me back a bit right away, and what I knew was definitely under the 98% mark. To give you an example, here is the first page, thanks to a copier, with words I did not know underlined (the Spanish Civil War still arouses passions, but let's avoid a discussion about that :) ). Have a go yourself if you like:

De pronto se apagan las luces: las diez, la luna luce su presencia en las paredes jaharradas: el jalbegue se parte, mitad blanco, mitad gris. El silencio corre por las calles del poblado como un calofrío, de la cabeza a los pies, desde la plaza al Quintanar Alto, ya pegado al alcor. Primeros de septiembre y el aire frio bajando por el Ragudo; más arriba las estrellas de monte, tachas del viento.

La plaza, por ocho días ruedo verdadero, apuntaladas las fachadas limpias de derrengaduras con escaleras y tablones; el casino adargando su última luz tras las talanqueras; en el centro, la fuentecilla barroca con su canto de agua de cuatro caños recobrando su calaña de abrevadero; la plaza, acabadas de tocar las diez, ombligo del mundo. Mil quinientas almas y la Raya de Aragón. Hacia abajo, caídos hacia la mar, por Jérica y Segorbe, los pueblos de Valencia; cuesta arriba, por Sarrión, el áspero, desnudo camino de Teruel.

El reloj de la iglesia tiene la luna de cara; a todos les baraja el regustillo del miedo con el de la espera, un no se sabe qué otea por las espaldas; hay menos aire entre las. gentes. Las diez y cinco: un rumor levanta su cola, asoman por los postigos las cabezas de los valientes, ya corren y cazcalean frente
. . . .

I spent a lot of time looking up those unknown words because not just any old Spanish-English dictionary defines them. None of the free apps I downloaded to my iPod helped with all of them, even my large Oxford Spanish Dictionary failed a few of the words. Eventually I finished up online, though I can't remember what I used :oops:

French
Reading La Grande Guerre des Français: 1914-1918 by Jean-Baptiste Durocelle is going slowly, too, not because of vocabulary but because the book is so dense and covers political and economic aspects of the war in addition to the military side. I am on page 246 of 448.

Ancient Greek
Reading Book 8 of Herodotus' Histories is taking longer than I expected, but I am today up to Chapter 119 (of 144 total). A. M. Bowie's Green and Yellow commentary is indispensible.

Latin
I've been dabbling with Julia by Maud Reed, a pdf from the book published in 1941. Reed starts off with the life of the Roman girl Julia, but soon expands the subject matter to Roman myths and history (assuming there is a difference! :) ).

That will do it for today.
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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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coldrainwater
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby coldrainwater » Mon Nov 18, 2019 2:40 am

Thanks for the mention of Campo cerrado. I have not read much from that period and from the excerpt, it looks right up my alley. When I find a book with such pleasant vocabulary and need a one-stop-shop, I reach for es.thefreedictionary.com. It is succinct and saves many precious minutes.
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cjareck
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby cjareck » Mon Nov 18, 2019 8:38 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Reading La Grande Guerre des Français: 1914-1918 by Jean-Baptiste Durocelle is going slowly, too, not because of vocabulary but because the book is so dense and covers political and economic aspects of the war in addition to the military side. I am on page 246 of 448.

I've got a Polish translation of this book, but I've never read it. I only use fragments that I need for my academic work. If you are interested in the Great War from the French perspective, there are a lot of materials published on the web!
Do you know Gallica? French digital library:
https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/conte ... de=desktop
There are a lot of older books.
The best resource is, however, here:
https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/conte ... de=desktop
There you have - war diaries of various units (higher grade in print, as far as I remember, lower are manuscripts) and 107-volume-set of the official history of the war (here is the table of contents: https://www.memoiredeshommes.sga.defens ... gg_doc.pdf)
https://www.memoiredeshommes.sga.defens ... D_AFGG_ead
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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 » Wed Nov 20, 2019 12:36 am

In the past few days I finished the Latin intermediate Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles without much difficulty, and I read a substantial amount of the beginner's reader Julia by Maud Reed with no difficulties. I skimmed through the beginner's readers Cornelia by Mima Maxey and Colloquia Latina by Benjamin D'Ooge to see what challenges if any they presented. There was nothing that was not easy. Currently I am working through Puer Romanus by Reginald Bainbridge Appleton and William Henry Samuel Jones. Though also listed as a beginner's reader, it is proving to be a little bit more difficult than the other three beginner's readers. Part of it (12+minutes worth) LLORG member Elexi reads here . All of these readers are listed in the site in this thread Hiberna Caroli Raetice.

Another reading was the ninth Ode from Book 1 of Horace. Perseus' Scaife Viewer makes a helpful parallel presentation of Horace's poetry Horace in Scaife Viewer. The poem gave rise to a feeling that I just recently had from a poem of Hugo, "Mes deux filles," the third poem in the collection Les Contemplations. [The text of the (short) poem can be found, with a reading, Mes deux filles.] Good poetry evokes a different mood than prose. It can be like switching worlds, it engages a different part of ourselves. Horace's poem moves from a view of a snow-covered mountain in the distance to the giggle of a girl playing a child's game, and the steps the reader has to take from the beginning to the end do not follow Euclidean logic.

My library came through with Santiago Posteguillo's Africanus: El Hijo del Consul. I look forward to reading it. Los pasos de Ulloa are on my Kindle.
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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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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 » Fri Nov 22, 2019 11:22 pm

Okay, so this afternoon I took a shot at Easy French, inspired by this post. The first episode, à Paris, lasts 4:04 minutes. The host interviews several passersby about their likes and impressions of Paris. I followed Luca's procedure to some extent. First of all, I put on a blue shirt and worked hard to imitate his almost impeccable American accent. :) I listened to the video several times (counting yesterday), concentrating on the bits that I had trouble understanding, which were not as many as I feared. I also tried to mimic Luca's ambidextrous technique of pausing the video with my left hand and writing notes with my right. My keyboard did not cooperate, unfortunately, and tapping the space bar did not pause the video.
Anyways, to be serious, I wrote down 7 notes about expressions I did not hear well or just flat out did not understand. One of the latter was "il faut s'accrocher à Paris," meaning you have to hold on tight in Paris (because life moves so fast). There are almost 100 of these interviews. Easy French 2 was taped in Nice. This series hold some promise, but will Mork last the course?
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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

DaveAgain
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Nov 23, 2019 7:31 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:This series hold some promise, but will Mork last the course?
Il faut s'accrocher :-)
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