Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[Iversen]

I have once again been staying in my mother's house, and in relation to language studies the main new thing is that I have brought a number of small dictionaries along, and that I for reasons I won't elaborate on now have had lots of time to do wordlists and repetitions of wordlists in the evenings - I have been occupied outside the house during the day.

[Iversen]

And after I had written the short message above (just after my return to my flat) I did a bit of photo editing and registration, followed by language studies.

First I copied/studied the five bilingual excerpts in Bulgarian-and-something-else about the Silistra in Bulgaria which I mentioned earlier. Bulgarian is not too hard to read so I had a bit of fun choosing translation languages: Danish, Luxemburgisch, Català, Frysk and Bahasa Indonesia. After that I made a wordlist with around 100 Urainian words, but at that moment the files with music of Franz Schreker (almost 3 hours) and Schtschedrin (plus Hovhannisyan, 1½ hour) finished, and instead of firing up under Franz Schubert I chose to listen to some Youtube videos.

I first listened to a couple of videos by an Ukrainian lady who uses the artist's name "Think Before You Speak". She speaks very clearly and has no background nouise, but I could not follow her continuously - sometimes I understood a sentence, but mostly just some isolated words or a few words in sequence. - and the useless general 'gist' (here she spoke about the gatherings all the way back to Berlin, followed by Bratislava). However since I haven't listened systematically to Ukrainian that low level of understanding couldn't come as a surprise.

But then it occurred to me to try Ecolinguist's videos. OK, first I was lured into listening to a video where Danish, Swedish and Norwegian speakers tried to understand Faroese. I haven't studied Faroese myself, but with Danish and a smattering of Icelandic I could generally understand the Faroese man - and of course also the other three languages. But 'generally understanding' doesn't imply that you get everything right. For me the most surprising information was that "epli" in Faroese means potato, and you have to say "súrepli" to refer to an apple (it was mentioned that the French calls a potato "pomme de terre", and that spawned a separate discussion). It also surprised me slightly that everybody except the Dane used the word "okse" about a castrated bull ("stud" in Danish) - we do have the word "okse", but mostly about wild bovines or those you eat or use as draught animals (as in the painting below). I also tried to listen to another quiz, this time Norwegian vs Faroese vs Icelandic, but that video was spoken in English with just example sentences in Faroese, and I refuse to listen to such an abomination - I want everyone to speak his/her own language.

Kunst188.JPG

DA: På dansk har vi forresten et ordsprog, der siger "den der ager med stude kommer også med" - et levn fra dengang stude trak landbrugsredskaber og arbejdskærrer. Men nu har vi heldigvis traktorer...

Then after that I finally hit upon a video where an Ukrainian lady presented testwords to Polish, Russian and Slovak speakers, and since there now was a transcript at the top of the screen and an English translation as subtitle I could follow along, and even without looking at the translation I understood a fair portion of the discussion so all my hours studying the Slavic languages haven't totally in vain. And now it's time to go to bed, and I have to grab something new to read since I left the Occitan Assimil at my mother's place (I am roughly halfway through it).

Ukrainsk-Ecolinguist.jpg

[Iversen]

I have spent some time today making stereo versions of some of my paintings. This implies that ... no, let's take that in Esperanto:

EO: Mi faras du kopiojn, kaj en la maldekstran mi movas ĉion, kio devus esti proksime dekstren kaj ĉion, kiuj supozeble estus malproksime, iras maldekstren. Kaj tio ne ĉiam estas facila, ĉar foraj aferoj povas esti intermetitaj kun proksimaj, kaj mi eĉ uzis kelkajn Esscher-similajn neeblajn perspektivojn en kelkaj el mi pentraĵoj. Estas alia problemo: mi trejnis min rigardi stereofotojn: principe mi devus kovri la rezulton tiel ke la maldekstra okulo nur rigardu la maldekstran bildon kaj la dekstra okulo nur la dekstra bildon, sed ĝi verŝajne postulas iom da praktiko. Do vere estas tempoperdo - sed oni povus diri tion ankaŭ pri la plej granda parto de mi lingvolernado.

GER: Und währenddessen habe ich alle meine 855 Minuten Musik von Franz Schubert gelauscht.

kunst119_stereo.jpg

RU: Я заметил, что на этих видео относительно легко понять славянские языки, потому что на них говорят четко и без фонового шума. и есть транскрипции на соответствующих языках. Я начал с видео, где поляк и русский пытались понять болгарский - и не без проблем. В следующем видео Норберт из Польши и Женя из Украины решали задачи про виды животных, а а потом я дал себя отвлечь от славянских языков: послушал видео, где трое неолатинистов отвечали на задачи на румынском — и пошло лучше чем ожидалось. Но было еще одно видео, где трем франкофонам нужно было понять разговорную латынь, и я закончил ее, потому что говорили по-английски. Вот сейчас слушаю последнее видео, где Норберт говорит с Таней из России о профессиях - и тут я лучше понимаю русскую речь, чем польскую..

А по телевизору идет передача о Ивана Грозного на английском языке, но я выключил звук и вижу только датские субтитры.

Ecolinguist_Lingua Latina_Româneste.jpg

[Iversen]

First a personal note: this morning I received a call from the hospice where my mother has been since Monday last week with the message that she has died. It didn't come as a surprise - after all you only get admitted to a hospice if you are close to dying, and her health has deteriorated steadily for many years until it became impossible for her to stay at home, even with the help of home care and various gadgets. She was 95 years old and didn't want to continue the process, so in a sense her death shouldn't be seen as a tragedy, but as a final statement - she was sick and tired of living.

As this thread testifies I have been staying a lot of time at her house, especially the last year, and there will now be some formalities (which can last for several months), but the plan is that I move to the house and stay there permanently. I reckon that I to some extent can resume my travelling, but otherwise I'll be doing the same things as I'm doing now, including language studies. This includes reading a fullsize Portuguese book about the dark side of papacy, and I got halfway through it yesterday, but I'll comment on it when I have finished the book. And apart from that I have done the usual mixture of text studies, wordlists and TV watching, but nothing that deserves a special mention - under the circumstances..

[rdearman]

My condolences on your loss. While it is good that you don't see it as a tragedy and can celebrate her life, it is still a major loss and I hope you're managing well. Sorry to hear your sad news, no matter how old we are, it’s never easy to lose a parent. My thoughts are with you as you grieve.

[Teango]

So sorry to hear about your loss, Iversen. I can't imagine how you must be feeling right now, nor how hard it must have been over the last few years. My family are keeping you in our thoughts and will light a candle for your mom.

[tractor]

Kondolerer.

[luke]

As the son of an aging mother, your posts with respect to your being there for your mother have always been heartwarming.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear this! Take care, Iversen.

[Beli Tsar]

So sorry to hear this. As rdeardman said, even if it isn't a surprise per se, and even if you don't see it as a tragedy, it's hard losing someone you have known and loved for so long. Thinking of you.