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 24, 2021 7:19 pm

A preface. For the first time in more than a year I visited a couple of local bookstores looking for anything in French, Spanish and/or Ancient Greek. One thing in French is a biography of Albert Camus, all 1000 pages of it. The first chapter covered Camus' father, an Algerian vintner who died in the French army very early in World War 1. So far that is all I read. In Spanish, Su Único Hijo by Leopoldo Alas, aka Clarín, is the best. It followed Alas' masterpiece La Regenta, which I am still reading. The Ancient Greek writer Plutarch produced a great number of books, but scholarship provides very little in the way of commentaries or other reading aids, so I was pleased to find a Cambridge commentary on Life of Antony. I've read just a bit of the Life.

Now back to my regular scheduling.
Spanish
More reading/listening to the extraordinary work of Isabel Allende, La Casa de los Espíritus. 189 min.
Icing on the cake was unearthing a misplaced hard copy of this novel. I prefer the paper to Kindle, provided the book is not too big, and even convinced myself I understand the paper of the book better than the eInk of the Kindle. Is this even possible? Dunno.
Also 40 minutes of listening to the story of Sandra on Lupa. Sandra was a resident of Buenos Aires and happened to be an orangutang who got caught up in a legal dispute.

French
First off, Une Vie by Simone Veil, recommended by DaveAgain, came Thursday, and I finished the first chapter about her family. The narrative moves right along. Comparing her brisk style to Proust's made me laugh.
Central Park by Guillaume Musso is finished. This week 197+ minutes. IMHO, a rather lame procedural which I won't review and don't recommend (unless, like me, you're working on improving your undestanding of spoken French).
My next listening will be the audio of Un long dimanche de fiançailles. I've listened to it before, but several years ago, and now I'd like to try it without the written novel backing it up. Note that this is not the movie script, but rather a recording by several actors of the novel.
This week as well the mail brought me a movie called La Voleuse from 1966 starring Romy Schneider about a woman of middle years who kidnaps a child she once gave up for adoption. No subtitles on the disk, but available for English online. My plan is to watch the movie without the subs, then used the subs to help me figure out the dialog. I've seen about 30 minutes, and know I need a lot of help.

Ancient Greek
The aforesaid bits of Life of Antony by Plutarch.
Finished Animal Story, just a bit of it was left to read.
Just a few segments of W. H. D. Rouse's A Greek Boy in Athens. Very basic. One of the paragraphs was on numbers.
Three fables of Babrius.
Animal Story and Rouse provide enough for the goal of reading, not deciphering. Babrius' fables are not that easy in terms of vocabulary. Antony is going to require reading and then reading over again.
10 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 » Sat May 08, 2021 5:09 pm

4-24- through 6-8
Spanish
Isabel Allende, La Casa de las Espíritus, 365m. Finished. Well worth the read and listen.

French
Long dimanche de fiançailles 35:54
Quelqu’un m’attends quelque part (name of author forgotten) 33:10
Simone Viel, Une Vie, pages 11-218, 232 m 16 s (thanks to DaveAgain), but I have not listened to the beginning. Not quite finished.

Nota Bene blog
“Pourquoi il y a toujours des travaux sur les lignes de train ?”
Nota Bene Episode
34:35 minutes

"Pourquoi vouloir être ORIGINAUX ?"
The Golden Grounds episode.
blog The Golden Grounds 20:17 min
thanks to DaveAgain
Noted blogger's unexpected use of English: "figure out," for example

Ancient Greek
Short Readings or excerpts
“Swallow Song”
Plutarch Life of Antony 1-2
Thucydides 2.47-49 The plague at Athens
Aeschylus Agamemnon 1-39 The Guard
Polybius, History, Book 1.1-2
Rouse A Greek Boy at Home
Diodorus Siculus 12.41-42

I am gravitating to Diodorus Siculus and Rouse, and will add some Apollodorus, IMHO the easiest of "real" ancient Greek authors.
Rouse is the only one so far that I can read and not puzzle through.
13 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 » Sat May 15, 2021 6:39 pm

French
Les vies d'Albert Camus
44 min

Simon Veil: read and listened to Une Vie 68 m. Finished. Her interesting ideas and outlook and her almost matter-of-fact style made for easy listening.

Le japon maitre de l'Asie - Documentaire histoire guerre mondiale
55 min

Spanish
From Lupa: Otra Pais 32m, Mais Médicos Pt 1 32 m, El Coyote 18 m, Todos vuelven 12 m totaling 94 min

Panamá a bordo del ferrocarril | DW Documental, one of Deutsche Welle's interesting series on railroads worldwide.
. 42 min.

Segunda Guerra Mundial-Guerra en el Norte de África-Liberación de Italia - Bombardeo sobre Alemania.
Segunda Guerra Mundial-Guerra en el Norte de África-Liberación de Italia - Bombardeo sobre Alemania.. 52 min

Ancient Greek
Readings in W. H. D. Rouse A Greek Boy at Home
Created a vocabulary list for ANKI/Quizlet based on the Dickenson College Commentaries Core List of 500 words for Ancient Greek. I expanded the list to include separate entries for each principal part of verbs, for each gender of adjectives and for both nominative and genitive forms of nouns.

As examples:

ἀγγέλλω
ἀγγελῶ
ἤγγειλα
ἤγγελκα
ἤγγελμαι
ἠγγέλθην

(instead of
ἀγγέλλω, ἀγγελῶ, ἤγγειλα, ἤγγελκα, ἤγγελμαι, ἠγγέλθην)

and

ἀγαθός
ἀγαθή
ἀγαθόν

(not
ἀγαθός, ἀγαθή, ἀγαθόν)

The non-expanded listings seem too cumbersome for either ANKI or Quizlet and force you to remember, in the case of verbs, as many as six words at once, not one, and in the case of adjectives, three instead of one.

Even after all these years some basic vocabulary words confuse me.
11 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 » Sat May 29, 2021 12:38 am

May 15 - 28, 2021
5/15/2021 through 5/28/2021

Spanish
Porqué somos pobres en América Latina - 1:01:01
Lecture by J. Armando de la Torre
in Guatemala 28 Agosto 2009

La Batalla de Lepanto - 38:23 min
Australia: Un continente a la deriva - 33:27 min
Primera Guerra Mundial: Ultima Ofensiva Alemana 9/10 - 50 min
Primera Guerra Mundial Guerra Sin Fin - 50 min
Episode 10 of 10
LUPA: Mais Médicos Parts 1 and 2 - 61 min
Cuban doctor dispatched abroad first to Venequela and then Brazil then receives political asylum there

Total minutes listened: 292
Also reading Abel Sánchez: Una Historia de Pasión by Miguel de Unamuno, 32% to date.

French
Les vies d'Albert Camus - 38:12 (326)
Louis Aragon Portrait de lún des ecrivains les plus mysterieux du XXe 1 &2/2 - 75 min
"La joueur" by Dostoevsky Audiobook - 112 min so far
La Route des Grandes Alpes--Des racines et des ailes 32:13
La Gascogne: au coeur historique du Sud-Ouest from Les 100 lieux qu'il faut voir
La Gascogne: au coeur historique du Sud-Ouest from Les 100 lieux qu'il faut voir
33 minutes
Thanks to Carmody
L'Occupation sans relache Les artistes pendent la guerre
1:25:30
Thanks to Carmody

L'exode de juin 40
51:50
thanks to Carmody

Juin 1940, quand Paris bascule

38 min. Gave up because of interference of background German

Total French listening: 326 minutes

Reading: Albert Camus une vie by Olivier Todd. I read almost 100 pages of this long book, which is over 1120 pages, before giving up. Except for Sartre and de Beauvoir, nearly all the people in Camus's life are completely unknown to me, and except for L'Étranger, most of his work is likewise unknown or uninteresting to me. Todd does a decent biography, but never inspired passion. It did surprise me to learn that Camus went to college and that he majored in the history of philosophy, which is not a pleasant drive in the country.

Ancient Greek
Time spent looking for sample sentences for Unknown/Uncertain
Exported Nouns and genitives from Anc Greek 500 to Quizlet
Tracking down examples for Unknowns from these lists.
Biblescan examples of Same
Use of Quizlet, Cram, StudyStack to study said Unknowns
Search of famous quotations from Internet for examples of said Unknowns

The simplest procedure for this last was to find the word in my spreadsheet of all the words used in Perseus texts. This shows all the word forms clumped together except aorists and imperfects prefixed by epsilon. Sometimes an example is in the same entry.
Otherwise, then look up the term in the Scaife viewer, use one or more entries from the results with the traslation into English that Scaife references.

By the way, the evolution from reading texts until they are familiar to finding examples for Unknowns sort of went from familiar reading > words unknown or uncertain that should be known > search for use of words in famous Greek quotations (not nearly enough samples) > Scaife.
10 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

Ezra
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Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
In use: French, Spanish, Latin, Classical Hebrew
Studying: Classical Chinese, Italian, German, Japanese, Ancient Greek
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby Ezra » Sun May 30, 2021 9:52 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Reading: Albert Camus une vie by Olivier Todd. I read almost 100 pages of this long book, which is over 1120 pages, before giving up. Except for Sartre and de Beauvoir, nearly all the people in Camus's life are completely unknown to me, and except for L'Étranger, most of his work is likewise unknown or uninteresting to me. Todd does a decent biography, but never inspired passion. It did surprise me to learn that Camus went to college and that he majored in the history of philosophy, which is not a pleasant drive in the country.
I've actually could not finish his L'Étranger back when I was choosing my first book in French, because of his short-sentence, telegraph style. I took it exactly for this reason hoping for easy to parse sentences, but it turned out I could not really stand it in French either.
3 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 » Sun May 30, 2021 5:09 pm

Ezra wrote:I've actually could not finish his L'Étranger back when I was choosing my first book in French, because of his short-sentence, telegraph style. I took it exactly for this reason hoping for easy to parse sentences, but it turned out I could not really stand it in French either.
A college professor assigned reading an English translation of L'Étranger as part of a philosophy class in aesthetics, so not finishing it was not really an option (this is not to say that I read every assignment in college :) ). Much, much later I read the French version when I was a customer at LingQ along with listening to an audiobook of it. I don't remember the name of the narrator, but his voice was very dry and fit for me so perfectly Camus' matter-of-fact telling of such an absurd story. I've heard a bit of the novel in Camus's own voice, also dry but not nearly so effective. While searching unsuccessfully for the Camus reading just now, I found this short (4:45 minutes) review of Camus and his work. It's in French, with French subtitles, but beware, this review is more than a bit (intentionally) absurd itself.

L' ETRANGER D'ALBERT CAMUS - MISS BOOK


To sum up, I enjoyed L'Étranger, but still can not explain it nor think of reason one why anyone else should read it, even if in the past I might have recommended it on this forum.
8 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 » Sat Jun 05, 2021 6:32 pm

This past week:
Spanish Listening
La Fea más bella, Capitulo 1, 46 m (Thanks to Luke for bringing this up.)
LUPA Luna llena sobre Chiapas, 28:48 m
Los Misterios de la Edad de Piedra Parts 1 and 2 84 m
Total Spanish Listening: 2h 38 m
French Listening
"La Joueur" by Dostoevsky, 38 m
Youtube: Sur les traces de Klaus Barbie, 18 m
Le grand face à face: Pascal Lamy, Je ne crois pas à la déglobalisation, 10 min out of 30
Innerfrench: Pourquoi Napoléon fascine-t-il tellment les Français ?, 50 m (Thanks to AnthonyLauder for recommending this channel.)
Total French Listening: 2h 17 m
Ancient Greek:
Further study of DCC Basic Greek.
I go around in circles about "extensive" reading, but the best approach seems to be to stick to basic Greek stories.
My first reading choice is to return to A Greek Reader by R. A. A. Beresford and R. N. Douglas, n.d. (1903). The book has 32 brief stories on various familiar ancient Greek topics with a number of illustrations and a vocabulary at the back. There is no grammar nor even grammar notes.
It can be found at archive.org: https://archive.org/details/BERESFORDDO ... reekReader
It is suitable for intermediate and perhaps advanced beginners. I find it easy enough, but still a few words stump me.
9 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 » Sat Jun 12, 2021 4:09 pm

French
Audiobook, Dostoevsky, translation “La Joueur.” In English this is called "The Gambler," I believe. I don't know the Russian title.
40m
Innerfrench. “Pourquoi l’humour français s’export-t-il mal ? 41min
Les grandes batailles - Angleterre (1940) In this documentary, several interviews with some British veterans of the battle who speak French. 1:05:00

Total French Listening 2h26m

Spanish
Lupa, Los flequilludos, amusing sketch of a TV ratings war in Argentina,
34 min
and, as a follow-up
El día que los Beatles vinieron á la Argentina – documental completo

30m

Español con Juan (I think, but this isn't worth your time) Blog “No escuches español lento. Si no entiendes, haz este.”
17m
América: Los Primeros Hombres-Episodio 1-Documental
17:30m

Many thanks to Chung for a post of many short films: Shorts
I watched three good ones in Spanish with, as Chung warns, hard coded English subs.
1) "Vainilla" - Short film by Juan Beiro
Vainilla
9:54 min
2) Call center agent collects debts for the bank | Speechless - Short film by Miguel Parra
Speechless
10:39 min
3) Comedy about proposing marriage | "In the clouds" - by Marcelo Mitnik
In the clouds
20:06 About half the movie is in English

I began a fourth short, in French without subs, but I forget the name.

Finally, from Civilizaciones antiguas:
LOS INDIOS AMERICANOS
46 min
As several comments complained, for the purposes of this documentary “Americano” = only Canada and USA.

Total Spanish Listening 2h54m

Ancient Greek
Thanks to indeclinable's pointer to Reddit, I found three books to help my search for example usage for basic vocabulary.
    V. Fontoynont. Vocabulaire Grec, Editions Auguste Picard, 1949.
    Martha Cecilia Jaime González (Coordinadora). Manual de Adquisición de Vocabulario Griego Antiguo, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2019.
    Günther Zuntz. Greek A Course in Classical and Post-Classical Greek Grammar from Original Texts, 2 Vols. Ed Stanley E. Porter. Sheffield Academic Press, 1994.
Links to the Zuntz volumes in English are here via Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientGreek/c ... classical/

Jaime González's book contains some interesting ways for learning vocabulary, but I concentrated this week on Zuntz. His work shows a plethora of examples of usage, some of which are even interesting just to read. His book provides some of the "easy" reading that I have been looking for.
9 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 » Sat Jun 26, 2021 5:04 pm

French
Finished audiobook La joueur by Dostoevski
Le Monde: Histoire de Brexit Part 1, part 2, and part of part 3, 30min
La bataille de Midway, Yamamoto vs Nimitz (2000) 6/26. 44 min
Chercheuses d’étoiles : elles ont changé notre vision de l’Univers (intégrale). 51:49
Gran bien vous fasse: DESCARTES - Je pense donc je suis
,
26:18 min
Audio book: Théophile Gautier, Contes humoristiques
La cafetière 19:13 min.
Laquelle des deux - Histoire perplexe 5:00/17:45 min

Spanish

LA GRAN COLISION - 300 millones de años - Episodio 1 - Documental HD, 51:56 min

PLANETA HUMANO - 300 millones de años - Episodio 2 - Documental HD, 50 min
LA teoría del universo | Documental Universo 2021 – YouTube
, only 48:56 of 1:56:07

VIDEO DOCUMENTAL "LOS LIMITES DEL UNIVERSO" FULL HD, 34:30 out of 1:33:20
Two Radio Ambulante 2 stories:
El apagón [Venezuela], 19.3 min
En este pueblo no hay ladrones parts 1 and 2 [Colombia], 44 min

Ancient Greek
Though still working with the rereading technique discussed above, I flirted some with a testing technique explained by Kraut and Rdearman in this post*. For three days I chose 10-12 words giving me difficulty in Diodorus Siculus’ History. Each day I learned the words, ported them into Study Stack, a learning app a lot like Quizlet, only better. The next day I reviewed the words from the day before, then learned 10 more and uploaded them into StudyStack. Etc. A success for three days, but all in all impractical owing to the fact that, even though I know about 48,000 terms and expressions, what I don’t know amounts to a bit more than 108,000 terms and expressions. 108000/10 = too many days years. Not dwelling on that, I went back to rereading.
*In fairness, I should say that I do not think the testing Kraut and Rdearman talk about were intended for vocabulary items.
Which brings up the notion of “unseens.” Unseens are reading passages that students are assumed never to have seen before (less likely in these days of the internet) and that are used for testing. I am choosing Xenophon’s Cyropaedaea as my own “unseens,” and I plan to read through it using only a dictionary and a few notes. The notes come from Schuckburgh’s edition of the first book of the Cyropaedaea, and even in a short time so far helped me with meanings and usages not in dictionaries. The notes are not extensive. We’ll see how I do reading and rereading unseens. Taking my time to think about the meanings of words at first puzzling and the meaning of passages in toto will be part of the strategy.
9 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
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1747
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Location: NYC, NY
Languages: English (N)
French (B1)
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Re: Mork the Fiddle's 2019 Log

Postby Carmody » Sat Jun 26, 2021 5:57 pm

Many thanks for:
La bataille de Midway, Yamamoto vs Nimitz (2000) 6/26

4 x


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