Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[vonPeterhof]

I have also always wondered why the Russians render Latin 'h' as Cyrillic 'г', for instance in a certain town named 'Копенгаген' ('х' instead of the first 'г' would be closer)

While this convention of rendering [h] as "г" is generally agreed to have come about around the time of the reign of Peter the Great, I think the rationale behind it is still a bit of a mystery. Two explanations seem to be popular, and for all we know they might not be mutually exclusive. One is that back in Peter's times the fricative pronunciations of "г" ([ɣ] or [ɦ], depending on the dialect) were if not mainstream, then at least a lot more widespread and normalized than they are now. There is even a popular idea that the fricative pronunciation of *g was once a feature of all East Slavic (if not Slavic in general) dialects and that the modern standard Russian pronunciation is an innovation, but I don't think that's the mainstream view. Either way, even if the Moscow koine Peter grew up with had a plosive "г", the fricative pronunciation would have also been widespread due to both immigration from the south and the west and the influence of the traditional pronunciation of Church Slavonic, which retained certain features of an older Kievan pronunciation. The other explanation is that the Western European language that Peter and his closest followers were exposed to the most was neither German nor French, but Dutch, whose fricative "g" and voiced "h" might have contributed to some confusion between those two letters.

Either way, while this convention isn't followed as strictly or consistently nowadays when creating new transcriptions, it's proven surprisingly resilient even after the plosive pronunciation of "г" became the unquestioned norm. I've even seen Likud posters targeted at Russian-speaking Israelis spelling Netanyahu's name as "Нетаньягу" (a spelling that the media in Russia itself pretty much never use).

[Montmorency]

Thanks for the Slovak update, and the book reference Iversen (though I doubt I will be able to read it any year soon... ). Speaking of Ivan Kupka, someone in another log mentioned a lecture he'd given at one of the Polyglot gatherings on approaches to learning languages by reading. I found it on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFr6rphb7z4
Ivan Kupka: Way of the Peaceful Bookworm [EN] - PG 2017

I thought it was very good. (But maybe you saw it / heard it in person).

[Iversen]

RU: Спасибо всегда знающему фон Петергоф. Действительно кажется вероятным, что выбор 'g' для перевода латинского алфавита 'h' основан на фрикативном произношении звука g - но тогда должна быть возможность найти источники, подтверждающие, что это произношение существовало - и почему Питер первый решил использовать его в реформе орфографии. Кстати, а как пишут в российских СМИ премьер-министр Израиля?

GR: Στα ελληνικά, το αρχαίο σκληρό 'γ', όπως γνωρίζετε, μαλακώνεται σε έναν εν λόγω γκουταρικό ήχο. Αλλά δεν έχω ακούσει ποτέ ότι η αντίθετη εξέλιξη έγινε στη ρωσική γλώσσα.

IT: A proposito, stamattina sono stato qui davanti al mio computer ascoltando musica per violino e talvolta orchestra di Giuseppe Paganini con Salvatore Accardo che tutto semplicemente ha registrato tutto. Paganini guadagnava da vivere (e vivere bene) esibendosi in concerti di fronte a un pubblico attonito, e si dice che fosse così riservato con le sue opere che alle orchestre venivano prima date le note appena prima dei concerti, e poi le raccoglieva non appena gli applausi si erano spenti. E ha sempre praticato in privato. Ma un subdolo tedesco di nome Ernst decise di affittare una stanza accanto alla stanza di Paganini, e poi ha notato ad orecchio alcuni dei lavori solisti di Paganini ascoltando attraverso il muro. Ciò nonostante, come compositore Paganini visse (metaforicamente) un piano più in alto del signor Ernst.

EN: and while I was listening to Paganini and working on my computer I also watched TV (without sound, but with subtitles) from Chester Zoo in England, and today they focused on a newborn Malayan tapir. According to the omniscient Wikipedia this species (Tapirus indicus) is also called the Asian tapir, Asiatic tapir, Oriental tapir, Indian tapir or piebald tapir, with 'piebald' suggesting a multicoloured animal - but no, it is purely black and white (as seen on the foto below). In Danish it is usually called "skaberaktapir", with "skaberak" meaning a cover, often a sheep hide, put on a horse insted of a saddle. Actually I doubt that the majority of my compatriots have bothered to look that up, but they also have the animal in the Copenhagen zoo so some of them may have seen the animal in vivo and wondered about the name. Most zoos however show one out of the three LatinAmerican species, which all are uniformly brown.

I mentioned that I was working on my PC. Actually I have been making new text collections from Wikipedia, mostly about milk and derived products thereof (i.e. NOT the thing vegetarians eat instead of cheese). I didn't bother to include a translation with my three pages about cheese in Dutch, but I added a Swedish translation of my Bulgarian articles about buttermilk and yoghurt. And then I also read the Swedish articles about buttermilk and something they call 'filmjölk', and here I learnt that buttermilk has vanished from the Swedish supermarkets - but it is still sold in Denmark, and I like it. On the other hand, you can't buy filmjölk in Denmark.

Kærnemælk.jpg

And of course I also made a text collection about tapirs, including the local species, in Indonesian. Actually it should have been in Bahasa Melayu, but it is its Indonesian counterpart I have studied. And here I added translations into German and Dutch and Esperanto, because my Indonesian skills are not top notch yet. As for the picture ...

BA I: Foto tersebut dari kunjungan pertama saya ke Kuala Lumpur pada tahun 1990, dimana saya tentunya juga mengunjungi kebun binatang nasional di sebelah utara pusat kota. Saya tidak dapat menahan diri untuk tidak memotret seorang penjaga kebun binatang berjalan dengan tapir, sementara rekan-rekannya membersihkan tempat tinggalnya. Tetapi kesenangan sebenarnya datang ketika mereka mencoba memasukkannya kembali ke kandangnya - mereka harus memikatnya dengan wortel dan mendorongnya dengan lembut dari belakang agar berhasil. Mungkin mereka seharusnya menggaruk perutnya saya - tapir sangat senang jika perutnya dibelai dengan lembut.

F0614a04_Skaberaktapir_KualaLumpurZooNegara.jpg

[vonPeterhof]

Кстати, а как пишут в российских СМИ премьер-министр Израиля?

Биньямин Нетаньяху. Да, я немного ошибся в предыдущем коментарии - в израильских русскоязычных СМИ чаще пишут не "Нетаньягу", а "Нетаниягу".

[Iversen]

Today I have made some new texts for extensive use, for instance during transport or as good night reading. They are taken from the Wikipedias in three Italian dialects plus Sardic, which actually isn't more foreign-looking than dialects such as Sicilian, Neapolitan and Lombard. Furthermore they are monolingual, partly because Google translate can' translate them, but also because they actually are reasonably comprehensible. There af course words I don't know, but as these texts is for casual reading it doesn't matter - and I'm only training my passive skills.

IT: Un esempio di qualcosa che mi stupisce: nel testo napolitano si dice:

Napule, 'a terza cità d'Italia ppe ggente, è 'o cchiù gruosso ammazzuccato urbano d’’o paese (doppo chillo 'e Milano) ed è settema 'int’’a crassifeca d’’e aree urbane cchiù pupulose d'Europa.

Quelli dei lettori che sono italiani nativi o capiscono l'italiano abbastanza bene non avranno problemi a decodificare questo passaggio - ma cosa significa mai "chillo"? Dal contesto, dovrebbe alludere alla città di Roma, ma non ho mai visto la parola nei testi italiani e neanché la Wikipedia napoletana stessa offre una traduzione. Come previsto, ci sono alcune modifiche fonetiche - come "cchiù" per "più" - ma ci si abitua rapidamente a queste differenze. Ho copiato gli articoli su Napoli stessa, Ercolano, Pompei e Sorrento, e riempiono circa tre pagine.

Ovviamente c'è anche un articolo su Napoli nella raccolta siciliana, e in essa troverete una poesia napoletana con traduzione siciliana:

Chist'è 'o paese d' 'o sole,
chist'è 'o paese d' 'o mare,
chist'è 'o paese addó tutt' 'e pparole,
so' doce o so' amare,
so' sempe parole d'ammore!
- Libero Bovio, D'Annibale, "'O paese d' 'o sole" -

Traduzzioni n sicilianu:

Chist'è lu paisi dû suli,
chist'è lu paisi dû mari,
chist'è lu paisi unni tutti li palori,
sunnu duci o sunnu amari,
sunnu sempri paroli d'amuri!

Sembra che l'ortografia napoletano apprezza le doppie consonanti, mentre i siciliani tendono a usare 'u' quà dove l'italiano standard ha 'o' - ma a questo ti ci abitui anche velocemente. Ho stampato articoli su Siracusa (chiamata Sarausa - meno facile da capire!), Palermo (Palermu) e Tràpani. Ho visitato l'isola di Sicilia parecchie volte, e l'ultima volta ho passato le notte nella città di Trápani, la cui attrazione principale è la città vicina di Erice. Ma anche la posizione in riva al mare è spettacolare e ricorda un po 'Siracusa.

La versione sarda è in realtà altrettanto facile da interpretare: si notano gli articoli definiti con 's' invece di 'l', ma per il resto credo bisogna essere linguista per capire perché il sardo è considerato una lingua e il siciliano solo un dialetto. E anche questa versione ha una traduzione della stessa poesia su Napoli (sebbene usante la parola corrispondente di 'loco' per 'paese', forse per ottenere un effetto eufonico):

Cust'est su logu 'e su sole,
cust'est su logu 'e su mare,
cust'est su logu inue sas peraulas,
sian durches o amaras,
sun sempre peraulas de amore!

EN: Some of the versions of Wikipedia are quite limited content-wise, and therefore it wouldn't make sense to copy the articles about Napoli in Ligurian or Venetian or Lombard (Lumbaart) or Piemonteis or Emigliàn-e-rumagnôl - but in the last one I did notice something that surprised me slightly, namely that it uses the letter "å", which I thought was reserved for the Nordic languages..

Nâpol l'é 'na zitè d'la Canpâgna ed 984.242 abitànt, chèplôgh d'la regiån e dl'omònima pruvénzia.

F4410b01_Trapani.jpg

SP: También, como resultado del proceso de edición en curso de mi colección de música, sacrifiqué algo de tiempo a la música española más antigua para órgano o vihuela. Empecé esta vez preguntándome por qué yo tenía dos versiones de la Recercada V de Diego Ortiz, y no eran iguales. Tuve que investigar la razón con la ayuda de dos archivos de colección con listos de contenido en Youtube y de las listas de musica en el sitio web IMSLP. Resultó que el señor Ortiz publicó un montón de desorden llamado "Tratado de glosas" con obras mayormente llamadas 'recercades'. Algunas se construyeron sobre melodías populares, por lo que podría haber una quinta recercada sobre más de una melodía. Y para el número 5 había un detalle extra: había una recercada 9 con una 'parte 5', y eso explicaba una de las dos versiones 'V' de mi propia colección.

EN: The problem is partly that in the 16th century the composers only rarely put opus numbers on their works. They typically published a few but very extensive collections or some of their works appeared in collections with more than one composer - such as the famous Fitzwilliams Virginal Book that contains the bulk of preserved English harpsichord music. And each such collection is organized according to its own private system, which isn't likely to be seen again anywhere else. In the baroque period composers at least had the decency to publish sets of 12 works of the same kind, numbered as no. 1 to 12.

Furthermore the musicologists have found stacks of dusty loose sheet music in old libraries, and sometimes the composer references, numbering and naming in such sources is at odds with what you find in other sources. To boot more recent editors (i.e. editors from the last 3-400 years or so) have made collections consisting of selected pieces where they apply their own homebrewed numbering - and if a certain work is included in more than one collection then the number (and probably even name) is likely to not be the same. And the result is modern anthology-like recordings (on vinyl, CD or file) rarely have precise identifications of the pieces - especially in older vinyl recordings the index might just tell at a certain work was a gailliard or recercada or set of variations or whatever, but not which one if there are more than one possibility or which source it was taken from. Solving such conflicts and putting as much order as possible in the numbering systems used in at least my own collection is one of the tasks that have kept me from studying languages intensively the last month or so (plus replacing dysphonic items etc., which is a never-ending process) ... but I'm nearing the end of this phase.

In the meantime I read extensively, which includes reading my own log thread, where I now have reached page 120. But I have written enough for one day - you'll get an update on those other activities tomorrow or Monday.

Diego_Ortiz (IMSLP).jpg

[Iversen]

I have just written a fairly long and research intensive rant in the thread about the progress in Google Translate so I'll be slightly more concise here than I had intended a few hours ago. So let me for a start mention that my goodnight reading at around 4:00 this morning was the latest issue of the magazine Esperanto.

EO: Kaj kiel kutime, la plej granda parto de la enhavo konsistis el minutoj de diversaj kongresoj, kiuj tamen nun ĝenerale fariĝis tute aŭ parte virtualaj (necesas en ĉi tiuj koronaj tempoj, kiam internaciaj vojaĝoj fariĝis maloportunaj). Tamen estis ankaŭ artikolo pri tutmonda arboplantajo kaj unu pri la ricevantoj de la Nobel-premio pri fiziko, kun duono al la unua viro, kiu solvis la ekvaciojn de Einstein por rotaciantaj nigraj truoj (Roger Penroso) kaj la alia duono al la du sciencistoj, kiuj trovis la nigran truon en la mezo de nia propra galaksio. Normale mi skribus pli pri ĉi tio, sed ne - hodiaŭ ne.

Estis ankaŭ alia artikolo pri la koronviruso, kiu por unu fojo montris mondmapon de la plej altaj procentoj de pozitivaj trovoj inter testitaj gehomoj, kaj ĉi tio estas sufiĉe interesa. Ju pli alta estas la procento (kun testado ankaŭ de personoj sen simptomoj), des pli disvastiĝis la infekto. En Danio, ĉi tiu procento hieraŭ estis 1,8%, kio diversajn 'spertulojn' forpelis maltrankvilajn truojn kun minacoj de Kristnasko en infero. Sed en la mondo estas tutaj landoj, kie la procento jam superas 20%.

ElcentajojDePozitivajRezultoj (Esperanto).jpg

EN: I have now read on until page 125 in this log thread, and it starts out at page 120 with my sole attempt to study Japanese. I had borrowed a dictionary from the library, and it was actually interesting to see how the weird Chinese signs took care of sorting out the word families which had been mixed up by homophonic elements in the pronunciation (or rather, since it was a dictionary, the spelling).

JY: Å ien sie længer fremm minns jæ hurn de friwilli i frilansmusæet Hjerl Hee gik runnt å snakket jysk te gæstern - og nowen a kjøwenhawnern forsto ikk en dyt. Da jæ wå på di kanter igjæn fornylle (på musæet i Skiw) snakket jæ mæ fler a de ansat om å få installeert en dims dæ ku snakk dialekt nærum de besøwn trykket å æ knap, og så sa de at de sku ha to knapper for hwe ded at på de kanter had de to slaws Sallingmål, å nown wil be møj suur hwissom te at man glæmm den ien a dæm. Mæn hæjsens tøws de wist te a det wør en guer idé...

EN: OK, that might be slightly harder than ordinary boring Standard Danish (and Google Translate can't help you), so for once you'll get a translation into normal Danish:

DA: På én side længere fremme (= på den næste side) mindedes jeg hvordan de frivillige i frilandsmuseet Hjerl Hede gik rundt og snakkede jysk til gæsterne - og nogle af københavnerne forstod ikke en dyt. Da jeg var på de kanter igen fornylig (på museet i Skive) snakkede jeg med flere af de ansatte om at få installeret en dims der kunne snakke dialekt når de besøgende trykkede på knappen, og så sagde de at de skulle have to knapper fordi ('ved det at') på de kanter havde de to slags Salling-mål [lokal dialekt], og nogle ville blive meget sure hvis at man glemte det ene af dem. Men ellers syntes de vist at det var en god idé...

F5939a02_Hjerl hede.jpg

EN: Apart from that at the time I was finishing my second major music collection revision campaign and instead I started to complete my collection of themes - but in between I also found it necessary to spend time revising my photo collection (too many pictures in need of editing), and I also transformed some more of them into stereo photos. But at the same time I was studying the verbal systems on, among others, the Greek and the Bulgarian languages. The Modern Greek system is much simpler than the Bulgarian one, and I had to study several sources that each treated the Bulgarians in each its own way before I had material enough to compile my own green sheet.

And on top of that I was also doing multiple-language wordlists at the time Which in simple terms means that I made short wordlists for all in all 30 languages, including some I didn't even study (and still don't study) like Finnish and Ukrainian. I still have them lying around, ready for a session more, but I haven't had the time for that kind of monstrous endeavour recently. And I don't really understand that I had it back then ...

[Iversen]

I have visited my mother this week, and I spent more time on gardening and decorating her sitting-room with around 250 Christmas hearts than I did on language studies (apart from TV watching in Norwegian, Swedish, German and English - plus one program in English with interviews in unadulterated Italian).

Speaking about TV programs, - my cable provider has decided to kill all my Balkan channels plus a few more which I just selected to fill out my quote of 36 free-choice programs on top of a fixed package. So now I have chosen to switch to a smaller package since there simply aren't 36 decent programs left which I in a pinch might be tempted to watch. I still have my Spanish, Italian, Nordic and German programs (with one exception), but heaven knows how long they will survive in a situation where 'flow TV' is dumbing down big time.

SER: До тада сам имао програме из Црне Горе, Хрватске и Пољске, а од последњег масакра моји српски и албански канали такође су заклани у тишини. Поред тога, изабрао сам тајландски и кинески канал да попуне кадар, али ретко сам их виђао - збогом њима а уз то је убијен и немачки канал Вокс (који нема везе са шпанском политичком странком са истим именом). Стога сам сада прешао на оквир од само 20 додатних програма, па је чак било тешко одабрати двадесет вредних програма.

AF: Ek het egter my tydskrif "Weg" in Afrikaans gebring tydens die besoek, maar ek het dit al genoem. En ek het dit eintlik nie reggekry om dit te lees nie ...

EN: So with so little to report I would like to mention that I had one dream in a foreign language, namely Icelandic. Actually I was able to jot down a few keywords from three distinct dream sequences from one morning so that was a catch above average, and that's the reason I decided to write those notes - otherwise I might have forgotten all about them. One dream was (as I mentioned) partly in Icelandic, but in the last one I had to fill out a form in Danish with name, address .. and then it suggested that I write the name of my doctor - ahem ... why that? And since I didn't like that idea I destroyed the form and walked out. As for the Icelandic dream ...

IC: Ég var í ferðamannaupplýsingunum í Reykjavík þar sem mikið af ferðamönnum sat við tölvur og fletti upp hlutunum. Þó var ein tölva tiltæk og ég bað starfsmann að fá lána hana. Þetta endurspeglar raunverulegan minning: þegar ég heimsótti Ísland fyrst var íslenskan mín í lágmarki, en ég talaði í raun hreina íslensku þegar ég leigði tölvu í klukkutíma.

F5721b01-F3834a05.jpg

[Iversen]

GER: Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704) war ein deutscher Komponist und Violinist, und dazu noch eine sehr experimentierfreudige Seele, die sich Dinge erlaubt hat, die im seiner Zeit fast unmöglich scheinen. Zum Beispiel gibt's in seiner Batalia ein 'quodlibet' wo eine Menge verschiedene Melodien gleichzeitich gespielt werden ganz ohne Rücksicht auf einander. Es gibt auf Youtube mehrere Einspielungen, aber hier ist eine mit Noten für diejenige unter euch, die so was lesen können. Um ein ähnliches Chaos zu hören muß man zu zum Beispiel die Holiday Sinfonie von Charles Ives oder zu den orientalischen Markt in Carl Nielsens Aladdin-Suite - beide mehrere hunderte Jahre jünger als des Biebern seine Kampfszene. Es fehlt nur noch echte Kanonen wie bei Tschaikovsky in der 1812 Ouvertüre.

Herr Biber hat sich auch in einem anderen Bereich ausgezeichnet: die Scordatura. Dieses italienisches Wort bedeutet, daß die Spieler ihren zarten Saiteninstrumente anders als gewöhnlich stimmen müssen. So was wurde auch von anderen damaligen Komponisten gefordert, jedoch nicht im gleichen Maße wie von dem verrückten Biber. Wenn jemand die Saiten anders stimmen, können andere Akkorde über mehrere Saiten gespielt werden als bei der üblichen Stimmung. In den 15 Rosenkranz-Sonaten plus einer Passacaglia ('Mystery Sonatas' auf Englisch), die das Leben und den Tod von Jesus beschreiben, wird die übliche Stimmung (g d a e) nur in der erste Sonate und in der abschließenden Passacaglia verwendet. Und ratet, wer sich großartig derüber gefreut haben? die Saitenmacher!

Biber_Scordatura.jpg

Jetzt spiele ich nicht mehr Geige (obwohl ich zwei davon habe), aber ich habe letzte Nacht in den Biberschen Daten herumgeschnüffelt, weil ich mich über einige Werktitel in meiner Sammlung gewundert habe, insbesondere über die von einige alten Aufnahmen mit Concentus Musicus Wien und Harnoncourt (alias Johann Nikolaus Graf de la Fontaine und d'Harnoncourt-Unverzagt). Mit der Hilfe der Werkverzeichnis im IMSLP und einige Komplett-Einspielungen mit Inhaltsverzeichnis im Youtube habe ich ich diese Werke jetzt näher mit Quelle und ID markiert. Es is nicht so, daß die Sonaten oder Partiten von Biber von Nummer eins bis unendlich nummeriert sind - neh, die Nummer bezügen sich immer auf einem spezifischen Sammelwerk.

Also, um dies näher zu beschreiben, bemerken wir zuerst, daß das absolute Hauptwerk von Herrn Biber, die 15 Rosenkranzsonaten, Violinsonaten mit Basso Continuo sind (dh. Cembalo oder Orgel und ein Baßinstrument, das ein Viol oder Cello oder Archlaute oder Fagott sein konnte oder was auch immer die Spieler in der Tieflage besaßen). Die sind mit Nummer und Passions-Etape gekenntzeichnet, und es ist dazu noch eine Passacaglia für Solovioline zugefügt. Darüber hinaus gibt es eine Sammlung von 'Repräsentativen' Sonaten für Solovioline from 1669 und eine andere mit acht Sonaten für Violine solo von 1681, beide für Violine und Basso Continuo (so der arme 'Solo'violinist oder -Violinistin war also nicht ganz allein(e) im Raum, aber hatte Gesellschaft von einer ganzen Knechtschaft von Continuo-Spielern).

Darüber hinaus gibt es mehrere Sammlungen von Werken für mehr als ein Instrument plus Continuo, derunter ettliche Sammlungen von 'Balletten' (also Tänze), aber auch zum Beispiel die Sammlungen Mensa Sonora ('klingende Tafel') und Harmonia artificioso-ariosa. Die Stücke drinne sind in Partiten organiziert, die als resp. Pars und Partia bezeichnet werden - aber was auch der gute Biber geschrieben hat: insbesondere alte Einspielungen haben sich nicht immer an den präzisen Werktitel gehalten, aber von Sonaten gesprochen - oder Einzelsätze herausgeholt und ganz ohne Quelleangaben eingespielt. Die Gewohnheiten der Musiker und Herausgeber haben sich glücklicherweise auf diesem Punkt etwas verbessert.

'Echte' Sonaten findet man dagegen in Werken wie Fidicinium Sacro-profanum für 3-4 Streicher und Basso continuo (i.e. geistliche und profane Geigenmusik) und Sonatae tam aris quam aulis servientes (Sonaten um sowohl Altäre wie Residenzen zu dienen), und es gibt dazu noch einige 'freistehende' Sonaten wie die des Sancti Polycarpi und die mit den Bauern, die zur Kirche gehen - oder die Nachtwächter-Serenade, in der, mitten in einem wunderschönen pizzicato-Satz plötzlich ein düsterer Nachtwächter hereinplatzt um seinen Kellertiefen Lied zu singen.

SanctPolycarp_OrthodoxWiki.jpg

[Iversen]

Today was special in the sense that I avoided to switch on my computer, and instead I watched TV and studied languages from the depth of my comfy chair. The TV thing was dominated by Danish speech because our government had announced that it would be announcing new restrictions today. The problem is that our corona numbers have been rising like mad for some time, and now the museums and libraries and restaurants in most of the country will be closed until January 3 and school children will be taught online and it rains - we have hardly seen the sun since the end of November, and now people gather in groups of up to ten persons in private homes, where they really can infect each other - much more than they could have done in a zoo or museum or library. At least the shops stay open, and so far we can move around in the country (wearing a facemask) - but travelling abroad is not encouraged.

After I had heard today's stream of bad news I decided to stay put in my chair and do some studying - I have focused more on my music lately than on languages so it was about time to finally have a closer look at some of the printouts I have mentioned here.

Like for instance the article about buttermilk in Bulgarian I mentioned recently (printed with a Swedish translation and followed by another article in Swedish about filmjölk, which is a similar fluid absorbed by the Swedes instead of true kärnmjölk).

SW: Kärnmjölk är ett biprodukt ved produktionen av smör, och nu undrar jag vad svenska mjölkbönder gör av det när folk inte dricker det längre. Grannarnes 'filmjölk' produceras genom försurning av skummjölk. ock i själva verket görs modern dansk kärnmjölk nu också på det sättet (även om "gammaldags" äkta kärnmjölk fortfarande säljs til till envisa nostalgiker), så förmodligen häller bönderna den äkta kärnmjölken på kalvar och grisar och sånt - men vi danskare har behållit namnet kärnmjölk.

BU: Българите правят подобен продукт, наречен мътеница, като оставят млякото да ферментира и това се правеше навремето в отделни ферми. Но българската статия признава, че този процес вече не е на мода - купувате кефир в супермаркета. И сега се чудя откъде българите са взимали масло навремето, без мътеница също да се произвежда.

EN: I have also studied the text about Asian tapirs (the black and white ones) in Bahasa Indonesia which I mentioned a few pages ago.

BA IN: Bagian informasi yang paling tidak terduga dalam artikel ini adalah bahwa beberapa orang Amerika telah mencoba membiakkan tapir kecil yang dapat dimiliki orang di rumah sebagai hewan peliharaan daripada harimau dan anjing dan babi miniatur dan tikus dan sebagainya yang mereka miliki sekarang. Tapir bukannya tidak berbahaya, tapi suka untuk digelitik di perut. Ngomong, badak-badak juga suka untuk digelitik.

EN: And as usual, when I write 'studied' I mean that I copied a limited amount of text by hand while trying to understand the whole thing with as few peeps in the translation as possible - albeit supplemented by peeps into a dictionary when I don't even trust the translation. And the result is a series of previously unknown words (which now have become known ones), which are destined to end up on a three column wordlist ... so yesterday I put those words on wordlists without delay while I still was solidly planted in my armchair - I might in principle succomb to the temption of switching on my PC with all that music tomorrow and never return to my study articles and their offspring, and then I might forget all my new words .... I simply couldn't risk that. With 'extrra' words directly from dictionaries the total score reached some 100 words in Indonesian and 200 in Bulgarian on those wordlists.

Kunst110-pars.jpg

[Montmorency]

Iversen,

From what you and a few other people have said, transcribing seems to be a valuable thing, but I must admit it's not something I've done much of, if at all, and certainly not recently, so I was thinking maybe I should give it a go.

1 Is there any difference, so far as you know, between the kind of transcription you mentioned in your last paragraph, and Professor Arguelles Scriptorium? (To remind myself exactly what that entailed, I googled this up:

https://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wiki/Scriptorium
)


2. Do you ever translate, as you transcribe? I mean, instead of writing down what you are reading, do you ever translate it as you go along, and write that down instead?


3. Do you ever transcribe from audio? (I mean of course from a recording....something you can stop or slow down, not from a live broadcast (unless of course you are a fast writer, but I guess that fast writing would negate most of the value of this sort of exercise).

Many thanks.