Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

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MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2114
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 Mar 13, 2019 1:14 am

This afternoon I saw episodes 7, 8 and 9 of Frenc-dubbed Eureka, with comprehension 65%, 55% and 60%. After millenia of language learning, I wish there were a more accurate way to measure listening comprehension.
2 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: 2114
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 » Thu Mar 14, 2019 12:08 am

This afternoon I watched the last four episodes of Season 2 of Eureka. Comprehension went like this: 40%, 50%, 50%, and for the last episode, the first half about 95% and the second half about 75%.
I enjoyed Eureka for the most part, for the most part a fine series, but I'm not sad to say farewell, not sad to miss the other seasons. One of the characters seemed interesting enough and complicated enough to want to know more about, but the rest of the cast were beginning to bore me. Also, the series [spoiler alert] had one too many end-of-world scenarios. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer became the monster of the week show, Eureka became how will the universe be saved this week? But this along with Babylon 5 (but not most of season 1) are my favorite SF series, and Deep Space 9 if it could be edited to about half its length.

I can't explain the big surge in comprehension for the last show. Does it have something to do with being relaxed?
2 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: 2114
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 » Thu Mar 14, 2019 11:51 pm

This afternoon I watched the first two episodes of the first year of True Detective. Never having seen the show before in any language, I looked forward to it. Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson play detectives looking for the person or persons responisble for a murder. The setting is the American state of Louisiana, the home of New Orleans. The tone of the series is film noir, and the actors, director and the scenery play their film-noir parts well. Because the series and the voice actors were new to me, my comprehension of the first episode was poor, about 20%, and of the second only a bit better, maybe 30-35%. Only the lack of anything really new in the story or the presentation of the story made it possible for me to understant just about everything that was going on. The acting is top notch, the only sex scene was gratuitous (though I appreciated the irony of the handcuffs) but mercifully short, the alcohol comsumption enormous. I should make it clear that sex scenes don't trouble me. Run-of-the-mill sex scenes seem a waste, however.
By coincidence, the second season arrived today, bundled with four sets of DVDs of the French-Dubbed The Killing, the Danish thriller of a few seasons back. The total running time seems to be roughly 36 hours. Watching all of it plus 2 seasons of True Detective should give me enough hours to find out if this experiement and this method of extensive listening is going to do it for me.
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: 2114
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 Mar 16, 2019 12:54 am

Mulling it over all day, I decided to kick the first season of True Detective to the curb. I didn't follow the French very well at all, and the story as I understood it doesn't really grab me. I will give the second season a shot. The plot and the characters and so the actors all differ from the first season. The only names I recognize are Colin Farrell and Vince Vaughn, but I've never seen the two of them in anything. Farrell, who is Irish, I always get confused with Ewan McGregor, who is Scottish. Go figure. The brief plot summary on the back of the coffret does not give me a lot of hope. A mutilated corpse is found, etc., etc.

Listening to all this French made me think I need to be reading more as well. I was going to hop on line and spend all the money from my piggy bank on French books. Something perhaps whispered into my ear, because I took a look at my Kindle and checked out what I had on it. Turned out there are more than 170 books I've got in the cloud not downloaded. A kid in a candy store, now I've got to pick out one or two of them and get cracking.

Still re-working my way through the JACT Reading Greek text--page 204 out of 256 total--I find myself impressed by what the association did with culling together bits from a variety of original sources and fusing them into a more or less logical and coherent story. All the while leading to more and more complicated syntactical structures, just like the real thing.

Jacinto Rey's crime novel La Noche de las Medusas is still on my reading table, too. I'm at page 96 of 310 pages. Nothing deep like Rayuela, not as intricate in plot as say, The Shadow of the Wind, but lots of fun anyway.
4 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: 2114
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 Mar 17, 2019 12:04 am

This afternoon I watched the second episode of the second season of True Detective. The sets were frequently filmed in darkness, sometimes total darkness, the action and acting were at times surrealistic, and the dialogue was extremely hard to understand. Corruption in high places, ho hum. I'm going to move on. Part of my problem with True Detective may be that the story is completely unknown to me. I have seen The Killing, dubbed into English, so at least I will know what is going on, so The Killing it will be.

The adaptation I am currently reading in Reading Greek concerns a true and unnerving court case in ancient Athens. Crimes in Athens had to be prosecuted by the victim or relatives, and as proscecutors the victim had to assemble the witnesses and make his own case to the jurors. There were no judges, and if the prosecutor won the case, he had to collect the fine himself. The except focuses on the problems created by the last of those requirements.

The treasure trove of French writing that I found on my Kindle is now down to a novel by Sand, of which I read only a paragraph or two, and the essays of Montaigne translated into modern French. I have already at some time or other read a substantial number of the essays, but I want to finish them all. But first I am reading the preface by Marie de Gournay, who edited and published the last posthumous edition of the Essays in 1595(?).
4 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: 2114
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 Mar 18, 2019 12:03 am

Since my last post I have watched the first three episodes of The Killing, the original Danish TV series (not the later American series derived from it) whose original title was Forbrydelsen, first appearing in Denmark in 2007. The leads are Sofie Grabol and her signature sweater as the detective in charge, Lars Mikkelsen, Bjarne Henriksen and Ann Eleanora Jorgensen. Right up front I warn you that there will be spoilers. Rewatching a good series brings out even more details and an even greater appreciation of it. Just on a basic plot level, I realized that when the intial scene ends and the story resumes in the present, the very first character one sees on the screen is the killer. And as I watch how the editing juxtaposes the mother and the father of the victim, the lead detective and her oafish male partner, and the male political candidate and his female campaign manager/publicist (not quite sure what to call her), I realize that as well as a murder mystery this is a chronicle of the war between men and women.
Anyway, of the actual dialogue I am understanding about 45%. My previous viewing of the series keeps me on track of what is going on. The voice actors enunciate well enough, but speak fast, so that, I believe, is the source of my difficulty.

On Saturday Christopher Carey's edition of Apollodoros Against Neaira, by Demosthenes, arrived: Greek text, English translation and notes. I bought it on the recommendation of the editors of the JACT Reading Greek.
2 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: 2114
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 Mar 18, 2019 10:41 pm

Today I watched three more episodes of The Killing: 4, 5, and 6. 45% comprehension of the first two, maybe 50% of the third. A lesser mystery arose, one I had forgot about, and I can't remember how it turned out, so my interest perks up because of that. Not that my interest is flagging. The police are stymied and are grasping at straws. Of course, I have the luxury of knowing the guilty and knowing how far off the police are. I do remember the suspense of a new suspect almost every day.
Today I also finished the episode from Herodotus about Adrastos in JACT Greek Reading.
2 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: 2114
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 Mar 22, 2019 12:41 am

Since Monday I have seen nine more episodes of The Killing. My listening comprehension runs 50-55%. This is of course so subjective. In one of the episodes today, I understood about 50%, and of the other 50%, half seemed partly audible and partly submerged in an opaque liquid. As if I were hearing the top of it, but not the bottom.
Today in Ancient Greek I reviewed a few patterns with aorist augments, specifically the change of οι to ῳ and αι to ῃ. Still not recognizing the change very well when I see it in reading.
This was a byproduct of reading a bit of Thucydides in the JACT The Intellectual Revolution. The editors claim that "When students have completed the reading in anyauthor, they should be well prepared to read widely in him." (Pg viii, The Intellectual Revolution, 2005). That seems a rather broad claim for the three authors, one of whom, Thucydides, is quite challenging, the second of whom is a dramatist and Greek drama can be challenging, too, and the third of whom, Plato, is wide-ranging and sometimes convoluted in thought.
Today's mail brought Nicholas Denyer's edition of Plato's Protagoras, one of the last 'major' dialogues I have not yet read (as well as the last nine books of The Republic :oops: ).
I read some of the introductory matter of Apollodorus against Neaira, by Demosthenes. Neaira is a former slave who gets caught up in a political wrangle centering on her citizenship status. Though in reality it has nothing to do with that.
2 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: 2114
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 Mar 24, 2019 2:19 am

I have watched the last five episodes of The Killing. My comprehension was still 50% for all five except episode 18, where it was probably 65%. I can not explain the uptick. Counting all the movies I have watched, I have finished 39.9 hours.
I will move on to the second season, with some regret, because I know it was not nearly as good as the first season. On the other hand, the first season was so intense, I could use a rest. As for the investigator Sarah Lund, some lyrics from an old tune could serve as her theme song:
you may be right, I may be crazy, but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for.
(Billy Joel, "You May Be Right," if anybody wonders. ;) )
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: 2114
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
x 4824

Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Mon Mar 25, 2019 1:09 am

Today watched the last episode of season 1 of The Killing again, with French subtitles on, to clear up a couple of points.
Reluctant really to start season 2 because of bad memories about it. After much thought about alternatives, I decided to watch the first episode just to see. My misgivings were unfounded.
Perhaps because I was just relaxed, I understood about 95% the first half of the first episode and 80% of the second half. I understood about 75 % of the second episode.
Quite rare, I did nothing with Ancient Greek or Spanish today.
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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