Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

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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.
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat May 07, 2022 7:41 pm

French
Read a bit more of La tête sur les épaules by Henri Troyat, only 35 pages so far. Came across this construction in a conversation between the main character Etienne and his pal Palaiseau. The pal has said how much he likes Etienne. Etienne thinks, " Il m'aime plus que je ne l'aime. " This non-negative ne has been recently discussed here in the forum.

Spanish
Two short funny stories by Julio Cortázar, "Vietato introdurre biciclette" and "Maravillosas ocupaciones," from the collection Cuentos completos 1 (Caballo de fuego) on the Kindle. In the first of those stories the narrator passes a courtyard where is posted a sign saying No Bicycles and No Dogs. The narrator wonders whether cats or rabbits or turtles are allowed. In the second, the narrator cuts off the foot of a spider and mails it to a government ministry, just to see what would happen, I guess. These details no doubt funnier in the telling of the story than here, but Cortázar's whimsical sense of humor appeals to me.

Ancient Greek
Still in pursuit of spaced learning. My story using ten newly learned words is finished. Well, I have not yet quite finished. Still need to get all the little words right, then following Plato or better Thucydides scramble the word order enough to make it incomprehensible. The précis is that some horses are stolen from an island and the narrator buys one of them, which happens to be white and manageable.
I find I understand some of the words better in the round than by their parts. For example, I know that ἠνείκατο means "carried" when I see it, but spelling it out gives me trouble. However, it does turn out that this word appears once and only once in the corpus of The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae®, so . . .
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Herodotean
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby Herodotean » Sat May 07, 2022 9:15 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:For example, I know that ἠνείκατο means "carried" when I see it, but spelling it out gives me trouble. However, it does turn out that this word appears once and only once in the corpus of The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae®, so . . .


ἠνείκατο does occur only once in the TLG corpus, but forms in ἐνεικ- are quite common in Homer and Herodotus, who don't even use the standard Attic/Koine ἐνεγκ-.
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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 » Sun May 08, 2022 5:54 pm

Herodotean wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:For example, I know that ἠνείκατο means "carried" when I see it, but spelling it out gives me trouble. However, it does turn out that this word appears once and only once in the corpus of The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae®, so . . .


ἠνείκατο does occur only once in the TLG corpus, but forms in ἐνεικ- are quite common in Homer and Herodotus, who don't even use the standard Attic/Koine ἐνεγκ-.

You're right, of course. The lemma φέρω appears very, very frequently. I wrote a (pathetic) little story to help cement this form in my head, ἐνεγκ- being a form of φέρω that often trips me up. Using it has worked at least to the extent that whatever lingering doubts I had about it are gone.
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MorkTheFiddle
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue May 17, 2022 6:59 pm

Some catching up . . .
1. A few weeks ago loading LWT on my linux box was a success after maybe seven years of trying. The key difference seemed to be how the set-up handled a password for mySql. Formerly it used just a blank, now a real word. Not sure if that was it.
Using linux for LWT is important because Windows 11 looms, and 11 is going to require a couple of things I don't want to do. Not going to get into it, but it seems now is the time to rely much less on Windows.

2. I hoped to set up Pimsleur-type interface for Ancient Greek using Gradint. Rdearman and Xenops are clearly smarter than I am, cause Gradint is too fiddly for my patience to bear.
So as an alternative do something with WorkAudioBook? Nope. WorkAudioBook would not load. The newest downloaded verstion doesn't load either. Then I happened to note on line that WorkAudioBook is no longer free. How that would affect loading I have no idea, but the program is now dead in the water as far as I can see.
Maybe Audacity can be made to work. Maybe we'll see.
Besides Ancient Greek, I want to do something in French with Le grand cahier by Ágota Kristóf, an Audible recording. Uncomplicated syntax, a strong and clear voice that is easy to follow.
And something in Spanish. Something both simple and compelling like Le grand cahier. I'll do some digging in a storage disk and see what I can come up with.
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Le Baron
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 17, 2022 7:15 pm

What is LWT?
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby rdearman » Tue May 17, 2022 9:28 pm

Le Baron wrote:What is LWT?

Learning with texts. It is an open source software program that allows you to load in some text, and then highlight the words as you learn them. It will show you the definitions as you mouse over the words.
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Le Baron
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby Le Baron » Tue May 17, 2022 10:19 pm

rdearman wrote:
Le Baron wrote:What is LWT?

Learning with texts. It is an open source software program that allows you to load in some text, and then highlight the words as you learn them. It will show you the definitions as you mouse over the words.

Ahh. I was wondering why someone would be loading London Weekend Television into Linux. Unless they wanted to watch old editions of Play Your Cards Right (Card Sharks).

I think I have something like this and found it on this forum. I should check again.
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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 May 21, 2022 6:40 pm

Spanish
Major milestone. After several years of piecemeal reading, this morning I finished La Novela de Genji. There is no summing up such a long novel: ‎ 1664 pages in the Spanish paperback translation. Nor, obviously, remembering everything. In the final part, a young woman flees her home and seeks refuge in the mountains, where she is found and tended to by nuns in a nearby convent.
The translator, Xavier Roca-Ferrer, born in 1949 and living in Barcelona, also writes and translates into Catalan. Here is a brief sketch of the novel's author, Murasaki Shikibu, from this Amazon page. (Though this is not the translation I read).

About the Author
A pesar de que en su tiempo fue reconocido su enorme talento, muy poco es lo que se conoce de la vida de la escritora. Tal vez haya nacido en el 975, tal vez haya muerto en el año 1014. Ni siquiera se sabe su auténtico nombre. Se sabe que era hija de un erudito aunque poeta sin talento, apasionado por la literatura, que enseñó a su hija la lengua china y sus clásicos, pero también le transmitió el amor por la literatura de sus antepasados. Dicen que su padre lamentaba que aquella niña tan inteligente no hubiese nacido varón para continuar el prestigio literario de la familia. Sin embargo, llevó a su joven hija con él a través de un largo viaje por el Imperio. Se sabe que a los veintinueve años Murasaki vivía en la Corte como dama de compañía de la inteligente emperatriz Akiko. Entre el año 1008 y el año 1010 compone su diario, tal vez simultáneamente a la composición de La novela de Genji.
A translation of this follows at the end of the post.

This is not a stiff, formal account one might expect about court drama, but is told in a relaxed way. Of the time period, much more like Old Norse tales than the Beowulfs and Songs of Roland and cantares del mio Cid of European literature. Also unlike so much European literature of the time, no war, no battles, no fighting, no bloodshed. This is before even the time of the samurai. The most potent power is that of the perfume one of the young men in the book uses, detectable a hundred feet away. :)

Here is the translation that I made of the sketch:
Although in her time her enormous talent was recognized, very little is known of the life of the writer. Perhaps she was born in 975, perhaps she died in 1014. Even her real name is not known. It is known she was the daughter of a poet who was erudite but without talent, passionate about literature, and taught his daughter the Chinese* language and its classics, and he also transmitted a love for the literature of his antecedents. They say her father lamented the fact that such an intelligent girl had not been born a male to continue the literary prestige of the family. Nevertheless, he took his young daughter with him on a long trip through the empite. It is known that at 29, Murasaki lived in the Court as a lady-in-waiting of the intelligent empress Akiko. Between 1008, and 1010 she wrote here diary, perhaps at the same time as the composition of [i]La novela de Genji[/i]

* Presumably Mandarin.

French
The disappointing La Tête sur les épaules by Henri Troyat, a bildungsroman about a young man in post WW2 France. I posted a little review of it in A French Book Reading Resource.

Ancient Greek
Working with and coordinating vocabulary from the Dickinson College Commentaries Greek 500, the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae®, LWT, and Thucydides. Slow going, but managing to get some vocabulary from passive to active.
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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 » Sat May 28, 2022 5:51 pm

German !
Beethoven Violin Concerto

I list this under ‘German’ because during the first several minutes various speakers address the concert audience in German. I found myself understanding about 50% of their addresses, which was obviously not nearly enough to follow. Not going back to German.

Spanish
from Deutsche Welle, “Política exterior de Biden: ¿EE.UU. desafiando a Rusia y a China? | A fondo”

42:30
Political discussion about the foreign policy of President Joe Biden. Some enlightening and surprising insights from Burkhard Birke, periodista de Deutschlandradio, Ezequiel Bistoletti, profesor de la Universidad Alice Salomon y conductor del canal de YouTube "Demoliendo mitos de la política" y el escritor y periodista Amir Valle, plus presenter Jenny Pérez.

Dos Vidas 0104. Coming Out Party. The first and only episode previously watched was 0101, but neither 0102 nor 0103 was available, even though downloaded. Interesting use of white pancake episodes in both eras.

French
Sorted through the Kindle for something new to begin. The organization of Kindle leaves something to be desired, but I lighted on Les Thibault, Vol 2. I read Vol 1 a while back, and had started Vol 2, but I’ll begin Vol 2 from the beginning.

Ancient Greek
The question arose, how much does cultural context play in understanding another language? Would living in 5th century BC Athens make Thucydides easier to understand, just by a kind of osmosis? In modern languages, the content of reading and conversation is much the same in the countries whose languages we are apt to learn. Fashion, sports, politics, music and entertainment, war. So I’m reaching back to several beginner textbook, refreshing my memories of basic vocabulary and grammar. How do they mesh with difficult literature like Thucydides or Plato? What is the point of teaching what is taught and how it is taught?
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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 » Sun May 29, 2022 6:26 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Sorted through the Kindle for something new to begin. The organization of Kindle leaves something to be desired,
I have an old one of these, it lets you create folders so I have one for each language: French/German/English.
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