Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[Iversen]

And now we have reached the next but last part of this series, North America - and in practical terms that means the USA because I have checked the chronological list of Canadian composers on Wikipedia, and I only found one single name which I have represented in my personal connection, namely the film composer Howard Shore who wrote the music for the The Lord of the Rings and subsequently the Hobbit trilogy. I'll return to him later on.

In some respects the history of US music resembles that of South America: first a period where the high society listened to European music, written in Europe but occasionally supplemented by European music written by immigrated European composers. The African inspiration in US music is of course represented by jazz, which also have influenced composers from the establishment. And then the States got a second and third wawe of immigrants from Europe in the 20. century, first with Russian fleeing from the revolution and then from jewish musicians fleeing the nazis. And you could at a recent wawe from Russian and Eastern Europe, who left home after the fall of communism there.

One difference between US music and the musical world of South America is that Hollywood provided relevant job opportunites for a number of composers, and even though Latin America also has a local film production it has not nearly reached the level of output churned out from the LA hotspot. However the main difference I experience in writing this chapter is that I can pick and choose between scores of composers, whom I know from my own listening, where the number of Latin American composers I know well might be down to some twenty or so for the whole region (not counting composers of tango music and things like that whom I only know by name and from one piece).

So let's get started - and this time the relevant language is of course English.

The first name on the chronological list in Wikipedia is a certain Charles Theodore Pachelbel (baptized Carl Theodorus, also spelled Karl Theodor, 1690-1750). He was the son of the much more famous German composer Johann Pachelbel, but even Youtube has him only represented by one single work, a Magnificat, and that's definitely not my kind of music.

Then later there is a certain Alexander Reinagle (1756-1809), and I know him from (among other things) a fine set of variations on the Scottish tune Lee Rig and another set on another Scottish tune here, but mostly because I used a set of etudes by him when I learned to play the cello many years ago.

Symphonic music entered the educated circles in New England in the 18. century, and there actually is an article about this period in the indefatible and omniscient Wikipedia. It taught me that there was a something called 'the First New England School', with names like Billings, Belcher, Read, Holden, Morgan, Law, Swan, Kimball, Ingalls and Wyeth - and the sad reality is that I didn't know one single of these, the chief reason being that they spent a lot of time writing vocal music, but in principle I ought to have heard some of their chamber music - but no, I'm blank. The first symphony orchestra in the states seems to be the NY Philharmonic (from 1842), and the first American composer who symphonic music is claimed to be Anthony Philip Heinrich (1781-1861), who was involved in founding it. But actually he was born in present-day Czechia and only ended up in Pennsylvania in 1810 because he lost his fortune during the napoleonic wars. And he only started to compose in the 1830s. To my shame I have to acknowledge that I didn't even know about him before reading the article in Wikipedia, but know I have heard his " Manitou Mysteries, or the Voice of the Great Spirit: Gran sinfonia misteriosa-indiana." and to be frank, I'm impressed that he wrote it, but not terrible impressed by its quality, notwithstanding the curious allusion to native Indian spirit voices.

There was however also a "Second New England School" that included people like John Knowles Paine, Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, Arthur Foote, and Horatio Parker, collectively known as 'the Boston six'. And here I'm on somewhat more familiar ground - I have heard works of all these composers, and their music sounds more 'professional', but still mainly based on European music. You may notice the name Amy Beach: she was an intrepid female composer with works as a long "Gaelic Symphony" and a "Scottish Legend" for piano, but her four years in Europe (1910-1914) were actually spent in Germany, not Scotland.

The pupils of the Boston six are also a quite interesting bunch, not least the first of them, Charles Ives (1874-1954), who was a pupil of Horatio Parker. His first symphony is a splendid work, though totally written within the romantic tradition - some have even included him in Second New England School, but that can only be where he started, because with each new work he became more experimental. He worked with strange scales, polytonality and polyrythmic pattern at whatever else occurred to him, but one special feature was to have several orchestras playing at the same time - with absolutely no consideration of each other (as for instance in his fourth and last "Holiday" symphony). But he was also the owner of a succesfull insurance company, and after some heart attacks he cut down on composition - and in 1926 he wrote has last work, a small umimportant song. Apart from revisions of some earlier works he didn't write a tone for the last 28 years of his life, and people have wondered why (like in the case of Sibelius and Ravel and me and - to some extent - Rossini). But it is hard to see which kind of music he could have written after 1926 - it is as if he had reached the end of his thether prematurely. My own favorite among his compositions - apart from the first symphony - is his hilarious variations on "America" for organ.

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Among other pupils of "Boston Six" composers you find prominent names like Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, and Roger Sessions. Piston is mostly known for his ballet "The Incredible FLutist" and Hanson for his symphonies (especially no. 5 with its opening for horns), and ... speaking of symphonists, it might also be wroth mentioning Roy Harris, who to a large extent was selftaught as a composer, but he did follow courses with the Englishman Bliss, who was seen as rather conservative, but on the other he was also influenced by Arthur Farwell, who was a leading expert on native American music. And among his own pupils you find people like William Schuman and Florence Price. The final composer I would like to mention at this point is Samual Barber (1910-1981), who almost exclusively is known for his Adagio for strings - a delightful slow movement, but actually just one movement from from his string quartet op. 11 from 1936. If you like it then you might like the rest too..

And then we hark back in time. The USA was not just New England, not even in the 19. century, and on the small concert places around the continent we could run into a character like Louis Moreau Gottschalk, also known as "the great gallopping Gottschalk". Where he played, you had to catch the attention of you audience fast, and he did so with a certain degree of showyness and virtuoserie, but also with an undeniable musical flair that even included influences from the Caribic - which rarely was felt in music from the New England schools. His longest works seems to be "A Night in The Tropics' Symphony", while shorter pieces for piano alone count small gems like Bamboula, a chanson nègre named Le Bananier, the etude Manchego, the caprice O ma charmante, épargnez-moi! and the Souvenir de Porto Rico (with the Marche des Gibaros) - but also some Souvenirs d'Andalousie. So why so many French names? Well, Gottschalk was born in New Orleans with an Ashkenazi Jewish businessman from London as his father and French Creole mother. To boot he had six brothers and sisters,five of whom were half-siblings by his father's biracial mistress - quite a household, if I may say so! And nothing like the kind of background the aforementioned composers had. But he had to leave USA because of a scandal with a female student in 1865, and after that he mainly toured around in Latin America.

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The Latin plus cowboy influences are also preeminent in the music from the more classically educated (and less colourful) Aaron Copland, who produced works like Rodeo and Billy the Kid and El Salón Mexico - but also a "New England Country Side af The City" and "Appalachian Spring".

The prediliction for American themes is common to a lot of US composers from the late 19. century and onwards - let me just en passant name Ferde Grofé with his "Grand Canyon suite" and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor with several works that refer to Hiawatha (NOT a Disney invention! and - he actually named his one and only son after this Indian figure) - but as Wikipedia puts it, "The popular Hiawatha's Wedding Feast sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but Coleridge-Taylor had sold the music outright for the sum of 15 guineas". So poor mr. Taylor died in poverty.

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Grofé was born in New York, baptized Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé and educated in Leipzig, Germany, but after his return to the states he somehow became the pianist in Paul Whiteman's orchestra and actually it was Grofé who made the arrangement of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" that made it famous. Jazz is of course an important element in American music, and it influenced a number of other composers apart from Gershwin (from Stravinsky to L.Bernstein), but since I don't collect jazz music myself and don't know enough about it I'll continue in all quietness to a composer who by any standards wasn't known for quietness, namely the famous John Philip Sousa (1854-1932). He was born in Washington DC, and his father was an Spaniard with Portuguese roots (which explains the 'ou' in his name). He stated out playing in theatres, but then became the leader of "The President's Own" band under five presidents (from Rutherford B. Hayes to Benjamin Harrison) until 1892, and after that he toured with The Sousa Band until 1831. You need a lot of marches for all that walking around, and Sousa provided lots of it. He also invented a new, more conspicous kind of tuba, called the sousaphone, which was easier to carry around in the streets for hours on end (cfr the photo below).

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And after that I'll mention a certain Carl Ruggles, who in spite of his extraordinary long life (from 1876 to 1971) only managed to write something like 18 works, out of which the longest 'Sun-treader' lasts a quarter of an hour or so - and it sounds like a tool chest thrown into a concrete mixer. Not my cup of tea...

OBS: I had originally planned only to write one article about US music, but this is a convenient point to have a siesta. I'll add a separate article about Hollywood-style and other kinds of film music later today.

[Iversen]

As a mentioned a number of composers fled Europe for different reasons, and some of them ended up in Hollywood where they earned some money by writing music for films. Actually I have never been interested in dusty old mainstream black-and-white films with forgotten actors (apart from those with people like Buster Keaton, Chaplin, Marx brothers and co.) Therefore I first heard the music of this group of composer through a series of LPs with something called National Philharmonic Orchestra under Charles Gerhardt, but I was immediately caught by this kind of music. It started out being written in a squarely romantic European style, but later bits of cowboy music and other unexpected elements were added to provide more colour, and in some films the score is clearly jazzy or rocky or - believe it of not - infused by elements from classical avantgarde music (or whatever you choose to call it). And of course film music isn't just an American phenomenon, but for the sake of space I'll restrict this rant to music for American films PLUS 'spaghetti westerns'.

The composers that came from Europe brought along a lush late romantic style that came to characterize the scores from the socalled 'golden age' of Hollywood, and at least one of them was already a prominent composer before leaving Europe., namely Erich Wolfgang Korngold. He was a prodigy who already made headlines with a ballet called "Der Schneemann" (the snowman) at the age of 11, and later on he wrote an opera called "Die Tote Stadt" (the dear city) and violin concert which has been revived by enthousiastic modern violinists. But in 1934 he went to America, and from then on he mainly wrote music for films, including swashbuckling blockbusters like Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood. At first glance it could seem like a capitulation, but it may also have been a smart move because the ruling European musical establishment came to be dominated by avantguardist and anti-romantic current, and a fundamentally romantic composer like Korngold would be in serious jeopardy there.

One of the most productive among the composers from Europe, Max(imilian Raoul) Steiner, was born In Austria from Jewish parents - which explains why he ended up in the States. His music is generally less profound than that of Korngold, but wellwritten - and copious. His collegue Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin was born in Ukraine in a Jewish family that fled first to Germany after the Russian revolution and then onwards to USA in 1929 (just in time to escape the nazi takeover). And here he specialized in scores for wild west films, including the Big Sky and High Noon - and he won four oscars for his scores.

However some composers from this period actually were born in the States, like Jerome Moross and Bernard Herrmann (baptized Max Herman), both born in New York, and Alfred Newman, born i New Haven, Connecticut. I don't know where Moross got his navn from, but both Herrman and Newman had Russian roots. Herrman is best known for his collaboration with Hitchcock (for instance to Psycho), but among his scores I would like to draw the attention to the relatively unknown score to "Beneath the 12 mile reef" (directed by R.Webb) because of its use of the otherwise totally stonedead wind instrument serpent (a relative of the cornett, see picture below). Another gem is the Death hunt of "On Dangerous ground". As for Newman he received nine (!) oscars plus a lot of nominations for his music, which includes the fanfare used at the start all 20 Century Fox' movies. But his absolute masterwork is the title theme from the western The Bravados. It is a march, and for me it counts as maybe the most exhilarating march tune ever written.

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So western films were by definition made in USA and had music by composers living there, right? Ahem, not always. There is such a thing as 'spaghetti westerns', which generally had American actors, but instructors and composers from Europa, typically Italy - whence the slightly ironic name (also 'paella westerns' for those made in Spain). The breakthrough came in 1964 with "A Fistful of Dollars", followed by "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", all directed by Sergio Leone and with music by Ennio Morricone and Clint Eastwood as lead character. Morricone was taught the trumpet by his father and was accepted at the conservatory in Rome at the age of 12, but during the eighties he became involved in film music, first as an arranger and orchestrator, but eventually as a composer in his own right - and from then on he wrote scores for something like 400 films. If you want to hear something moderately omninous then by all means go for the theme for "the Good the Bad and the Ugly". If you want something sweet and vaguely Chinese then go for the music to the TV series "Marco Polo". But if you seriously want to be scared out of your wits then go for the suite from "Navaho Joe".

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As I mentioned at the start of this section there is film music in all genres, from pop and rock over experimental scores to music written as a prolongation of the romantic tradition with large symphonic orchestras and all that stuff. And the undisputed master here is John Towner Williams (born 1932). He got a classical musical education, interrupted by military service in the U.S. Air Force Band, but then drifted towards film music, partly through collaboration with Henry Mancini (the guy with the Pink Panther theme and Moonriver). And then he wrote music for a number of disaster films and that kind of things, which lead to a collaboration with first Steven Spielberg ("Jaws", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and later on "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial"), later George Lucas (the Starwars cycle). In between he also found time to score "Superman" and the Indiana Jones series, and to boot he wrote the music for the first three Harry Potter films. It may be just my personal opinion, but if you should nominate the most influental and most succesful contempory composer then you can forget about all the insignificant representatives of the avantgardist movement from the fifties and sixties - that music may still receive performances and accolades from some anachronistic critics, but basically it has been relegated to an absolutely periferal role by the combined forces of rhythmic music (rock, pop) and film music based on the romantic tradition that goes back to the refugees from Europe that invaded Hollywood from around 1930 and up.

It is however worth remembering that there still are other film composers in the world than mr. Williams. I have already mentioned Howard Shore, who wrote the music for The Ring and Hobbit trilogies, and I also mentioned the composer for the Django series, the Argentinian Bacalov, and now that the Harry Potter films have been mentioned it would be logical to add that the scores for the last four films in the series have been provided by people like Patrick Doyle, Nicholas Hooper and Alexandre Desplat - but based on the direction given to the series by Williams (and reusing some of his Wagnerian lead themes). And speaking about series and oscars: John Barry Prendergast got five oscars and he wrote music for 11 James Bond films, but his lasting legacy rests with the seethingly sweet melodies from "Out of Africa" and "Dancing with Wolwes" (with the John Dunbar-theme).

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And now I have finally reached the end of this epic tale about the history of Western Music as told in the relevant languages.

HURRAY!!!!!!!

[jeff_lindqvist]

Wow, yet another informative post - this time including a serpent as well as some Quenya. This I like.

[Iversen]

Since I finished the series about history of Western music I have relaxed - i.e. I have watched television and a few videos in other languages than Danish and English, but I have not studied any texts intensively, nor made wordlists. However today I have planned to visit the library and after that I'll do the third round of 'super-wordlists', i.e. the collection of wordlists where I get through all the languages I know and a few more. I think this will be a good background for getting back into my normal language rotation pattern (which - being spiralshaped - definitely can be designated as a groove). As for texts I have a fair number of bilingual printouts from 2019 which haven't been used yet so that's where I'll restart that kind of activity.

But of course I also read stuff and watch TV/videos extensively, and I have done so even while I wrote about music. For instance I have put the latest issue of Esperanto on my 'night chair' (my substitute for a proper night table), and I have been reading about brains in German yesterday and watched television about Roma+Urbino+Rafael in Italian, about cleaning up dirty rivers in Spanish and listened to an interview on Montenegrin TV with the (North) Macedonian minister for emigration. My ability to distinguish the South Slavic languages is still somewhat limited, but I did notice that the man said -(a)t at the end of some words, and that's what I would expect of someone speaking a language that is closely related to Bulgarian. It is in itself interesting that he apparently spoke his own language on Montenegrin TV (if that's what he did), but something similar has happened with Italians being interviewed on Spanish TV or Swedes being interviewed on Danish TV - except that there normally would be subtitles in this last case.

GER: Ich begann meine deutschsprachige (und teilweise französischsprachige) Lektüre über das Gehirn mit einigen Artikeln über Gehirn und Sprachen, sah aber dann einen Artikel, der bestätigte, daß die Leute beim Umgang mit Musik klüger wurden - genauso wie sie beim Erlernen von Fremdsprachen klüger werden und später vielleich nicht Alzheimer entwickeln. Und von dort ging ich weiter zu einigen Artikeln über das absolute Gehör in Deutsch und Französisch - ein Thema, woüber ich zuvor auf Dänisch und Englisch schon ganz viel gelesen habe. Dieses Thema ist wichtig, weil es behauptet wird, daß das absolute Gehör wie die muttersprachliche Aussprache nur bei Kinder entwickelt werden kann (obwohl es auch Blitz-Kurse gibt, die behaupten, Menschen diese Fähigkeit später als Erwachsene vermitteln zu können). Warum sind gerade diese zwei Fähigkeiten mit der Kindheit besonders eng verbunden?

Es is schon bekannt, daß Asiaten, die Tonale Sprachen sprechen, eine deutlich höhere Frequenz von Menschen mit absolutem Gehör haben. In Europa und Amerika wird rutinemässig behauptet, daß nur einer von 10.000 diese Fähigkeit besitzt, aber dies ist wahrscheinlich zu wenig - das Problem ist, daß nur Menschen, die Tonskalen kennen und Klavier spielen, von den üblichen Testmethoden 'gefangen' werden. Aber daß Menschen mit Tonsprachen eine markant höhere Frequenz haben, klingt eigentlich ganz logisch.

Ich habe jedoch auch gestern zum ersten Mal die Behauptung gesehen, daß sich die Mechanismen von Westlern und Asiaten unterscheiden (Zitat): "Im Juni 2009 fand Elisabeth Theusch einen Zusammenhang zwischen absolutem Gehör und Genen auf Chromosom 8 bei Europäern, beziehungsweise Chromosom 7 bei Asiaten." Je unerwarteter und weitreichender eine Behauptung ist, desto besser sollte sie begründet werden, und ich hätte sehr gerne mehr Forschung gesehen, die diese kontraintuitive Behauptung stütze, bevor ich sie für bewiesen halte.

Ein anderer Artikel behauptet, daß die Fähigkeit mit anderen Unterschieden im Gehirn zusammenhängt: Es zeigte sich, daß "Bei den Musikern mit nur relativem Gehör und den musikalischen Laien fiel die Reaktion des Gehirns sehr ähnlich aus: Bei beiden Probandengruppen leuchteten jeweils ähnliche Teile des primären Hörzentrums, sowie zwei angrenzender Areale der auditorischen Großhirnrinde auf. Anders bei den Musikern mit dem absoluten Gehör: Bei ihnen reagierte ein deutlich größerer Hirnbereich auf die Tonfolgen. „Anatomisch gesehen waren sowohl die primäre Hörrinde als auch der rostrale Bereich des auditiven Cortex bei den Musikern mit absolutem Gehör signifikant größer“, berichten McKetton und ihre Kollegen."

Und dann frage ich mich natürlich, ob die Aneignung der Aussprache der Müttersprache bei Kinder gleichermaße auf Ressourcen in der rechten Hemisphäre zurückgreift, d.h. auf Gebiete außerhalb der klassischen Sprachzentren in der linken Hemisphäre. So was könnte im Prinzip erklären, warum das Singen auch bei Erwachsene angeblich eine beinahe muttersprachlichen Aussprache erlauben sollte (wie unter anderem von A. Lauder erwähnt) .... was jedoch mich perzönlich unter keinen Umständen zum Quietschen anregen könnte. Eine müttersprachlich-änliche Aussprache kann auch zu teuer gekauft werden...

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[Iversen]

It may seem simple to restart one's old study routines and get back into contact with one's old target laaguages after a period where you have spent your time on output (in a nonlinguistic sphere) rather than input - or more precisely: systematic input using your usual standard methods. So yesterday I started the third round of my multilingual wordlist marathon, where I make wordlists in some 30 languages or so - including some which I don't even study.

I got through English, Scots, Dutch and Afrikaans yesterday (each with around 60 words), and I should therefore do the repetition of these four wordlists today -and then proceed to the Germanic languages (i.e. High and Low German, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish). After that I'll do the Romance languages (plus Latin) Irish, Modern Greek, Albanian, five or six Slavic languages, Esperanto and Indonesian ... and oh yes, also Finnish, which is a language I so far haven't had time to study, but it is great fun to look at words in it. Of course the while project is a product of megalomanic raving lunacy, but such a multilingual round will force me to open my dictionaries in a number of languages I otherwise might have been tempted to forget.

And sometimes I get surprises while perousing the dictionaries. For instance I didn't know beforehand that "gathering" also can mean "a. the formation of pus in a boil , b. the pus so formed".

Monday I went to the language café at the library and got a good conversation in Spanish and some time in English, and when I returned today I met one from the café and spoke in full-speed English with no concessions for more than two hours with that person. One problem with the language café is that a large part of those who come do so because they need to train their English - and then you may have to slow down and avoid rare words and expressions in order to accommodate them. Therefore I appreciate those opportunities even more where I just can speak at full speed with someone about topics ranging from the treatment of whiplash and Greek words in doctor's "Latin" over the "æ"-word in Western Jutish dialects to definite articles in Farsi.

And yesterday I listened to a couple of long TV programs from France and Italy about the corona virus. At least they had the decency not to add the usual ugly background pop music to those programs. I have just switched on my TV, and it was still tuned in to Rai Uno - and Rai Uno was still telling about the severe corona situation in Northern Italy.

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[Iversen]

(...) I should therefore do the repetition of these four wordlists today -and then proceed to the Germanic languages (i.e. High and Low German, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish). After that I'll do the Romance languages (plus Latin) Irish, Modern Greek, Albanian, five or six Slavic languages, Esperanto and Indonesian ... and oh yes, also Finnish, which is a language I so far haven't had time to study, but it is great fun to look at words in it.

Well, that's not exactly what happened. I have not made any repetitions of the first four lists yet, but yesterday (Thursday) I added wordlists for Low and High German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedisch, Latin, Ancient and Modern French, Portuguese, Spanish and Catalan, and today I have done those for Italian, Romanian, Albanian, Modern Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovak and Czech, and maybe I'll do a couple more before I call it a day. And at this point I can just as well just do the rest (in Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Finnish, Esperanto, Irish and Indonesian) before I do any repetition rounds - maybe tomorrow.

For each language - and there are 30 languages in the series - I do two triple columns, each with around 30 words, so when I have finished it will all in all be roughly something like 1800 words in four days. And then the logical question is of course whether I don't get terribly bored - but no, with just sixty some words per language I actually feel a hunger to include more words in each language every time I have to switch to the next one. There are always a few words more which I really would like to add to the list, but there just isn't place on the paper to do so - and that's exactly how it should be. If you allow an activity to become irritating and boring then it loses its effect.

And when I have finished the series and done the repetitions then I'll start again studying/copying short passages from bilingual printouts as I have done up to December last year. And maybe do some longer wordlist in selected languages.

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[Iversen]

Friday I made the last wordlists as planned, and then I did the repetitions of the first ten lists (i.e. the Germanic languages plus Latin). Yesterday I first went downtown to buy comestibles (man sha'nt live by words alone) and then I did the remaining twenty repetitions - and that basically took the rest of the day, with a couple of pauses for eating and napping and sudokuing and finding something to watch on TV.

I have already mentioned that switching to a new language prevents boredom even when you continue to do the same kind of activity. But in fact it seems to me that I actually remember better after maybe a quarter of an hour of so with a certain activity - and this effect seems to carry over from one language to the next. Eventually you will of course wear out, but only after several times where you remember more than you did the first couple of minuts. At least that's my experience, but others may of course have other experiences - especially if they loath the very thought of doing wordlists, let along doing repetitions thereof.

I have added an illustration below to show a few practical aspects of the wordlist-repetition activity. As you can see below I have a notestand (and a strong lamp) beside my comfy chair, and there I have used clothes-pegs to make two 'docking areas' for my coloured pencils. Coloured pencils are essential for any activity where you write in two languages, and with wordlists and repetitions where you switch again and again it is practical to have as easy access as possible to those pencils. You can also see the original wordlist (in this case in Portuguese), where the last two triple columns are the newly added ones.

You can also see a lot of other paper on the note stand - that's bilingual texts with paper for copying. And behind the notestand you see some of my dictionaries, but I have also a small collection to the left of me - that's where I have placed most of my micro Langenscheidts and some other smallish dictionaries so that I can look things up without getting on my feet to fetch them from the shelves. When I do wordlists (or wordcounts) based on dictionaries I place one relevant dictionary on the notestand and use pegs to hinder it from closing automatically (if necessary). However if I work on bilingual texts I can't do that so there the dictionary is on the small table to my left and the texts (on sheets or magazines or as two adjacent books) are put on the notestand. And yes, I have thought about adding a second notestand, but Rome wasn't built in one day, and neither was my humble abode.

The sheet where I write the repetitions is not visible for the simple reason that I'm sitting with it on a tray placed on top of a pillow. And right in front of me I've got my TV set - but more about that later. In an ideal world my computer would be accessible from the comfy chair commando post, but it isn't - I have to stand up and walk to the other side of my writing-desk to get to it (and actually it hasn't been switched on at all since Friday). There I have got a non-comfy ordinary chair, which is better when you actually need to do some real work on your 'puter. But I can still see my TV screen from there. As you may guess my home isn't planned as a social institution - its layout has been honed over the years to allow me to study more efficiently, and there are few if any concessions to casual visitors.

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I mentioned my TV set. When I do wordlists or repetition rounds I may actually listen to the sound it emits (through headphones), and I have watched a number of interesting programmes - even though it takes some effort to locate them between all the rotten boring junk. For instance ...

IT: ho guardato le notizie in italiano durante diversi giorni in seguito per poter seguire gli sviluppi nel paese in Europa più duramente colpito dalla Corona. Una delle ultime cose che ho visto laggiù è stata la quarantena del leader di uno dei partiti del governo, ma si aspetta di poter lavorare da casa tramite il suo computer. Gli italiani hanno anche chiuso tutte le loro scuole e college e alcune aree del nord Italia sono state messe in quarantena con blocchi stradali e tutto il resto. A casa in Danimarca, finora ci sono stati solo casi in cui l'infezione è stata rilevata durante i viaggi all'estero, ma proprio il Italia settentrionale è stato una fonte affidabile di vira.

Ed è esattamente per questo che è stato un poco strano vedere una trasmissione ieri da alcune isole italiane dove la gente hanno dato baci e abbracci come di solito - ma la trasmissione è stata probabilmente prodotta prima che l'epidemia colpisse il paese. Personalmente, io rifiuto totalmente di baciare, e darei la mano solo se l'alternativa fosse abbracciare qualcuno, ma altre persone sembrano dipendere dal contatto fisico come da una droga, e il duro compito è ora di farle comportarsi responsabilmente.

Parlando di Italia, ho anche guardato Linea Verde e Passaggio al Ovest, e quest'ultimo in particolare è tra le poche gemme in una palude di vomito.

GER: Gestern habe ich auch ein deutsches Quiz über alles menschliches zwischen einem männlichen und einem weiblichen Team gesehen. Aber dann fragten sie nach einem persönlichen Namen, der sich in ein Verb verwandelt hat, und es stellte sich heraus, dass dies "Kondo" war. Kondo?? Dies ist der Name eines ekelhaften japanischen Dämons, der die Sachen der Leute wegwirft, während sie triumphierend durch ihren zerstörten Häuser tanzt und mögligst böse aussieht. Deshalb habe ich den Kanal gewechselt, um nicht noch mehr wütend zu werden. Heftige Wut würde meine Fähigkeit zum Auswendiglernen von Vokabeln negativ beeinflussen.

GR: Το τελευταίο πρόγραμμα που θα ήθελα να αναφερθώ μεταδόθηκε στη σουηδική τηλεόραση, αλλά αφορούσε κάποια χνάριατα και αποσπάσματα ενός προϊστορικού πίθηκου από την Ελλάδα - και αυτός ο τύπος έχει ονομαστεί Graecopithecus freybergi. Οι χιμπαντζήδες έχουν δόντια Προγόμφιοι ('premolars') που έχουν διάσπαρτες ρίζες, ενώ τα αντίστοιχα δόντια στους ανθρώπους έχουν μόνο μία ρίζα. Το βρήκαν δόντι (που βρίσκεται σε ένα μουσείο στη Βουλγαρία) έχει ρίζες που πρόκειται να ενωθούν. Επιπλέον, βρέθηκαν εκεί ίχνη που δείχνουν πόδια με μικρά και συνολικά δάκτυλα, δεν πόδια για αναρρίχηση. Το πρόβλημα είναι ότι αυτά τα πράγματα χρονολογούνται σε μια περίοδο επτά εκατομμυρίων ετών πριν, δηλαδή, πριν οτι οι αυστραλοπιθηκίνες προέρχονται στην Αφρική. Και τότε η κόλαση σπάει, γιατί αυτό θα σήμαινε ότι η παλαιότερη εξέλιξη του ανθρώπου έγινε στην Ευρώπη και όχι στην Αφρική - και αυτό δεν είναι πολιτικά σωστό.

Graecopithecus.jpg

[Sparverius]

When you're making wordlists for so many languages, what's your approach for sourcing the words/can you expand a little on your methods? I've read your Guide so I feel like I have a decent idea of how you review, but I'm curious how you squeeze the most out of such an all-encompassing method from both languages you're very familiar with (English) and others where the most useful words for you to learn are likely much more commonplace and (perhaps) less marinated in cultural context and specificity.

[Iversen]

Sourcing... well, that's a notion I primarily would use about wordlists based on intensively studied texts, and there the source is of course the original text. But let me run through some notions about the repetition process.

When I do the repetition(s) on a wordlist based on a dictionary I normally use two columns. In some cases I copy blocks of of 5-7 target language words to the repetition sheet, and then the task logically is to write the corresponding translations (or other translations that are just as good as the original ones). But normally I copy blocks of translations instead, and then the second column on the repetition is of course supposed to contain the exact same words in the target language as the original wordlist, and that's of course harder.

In principle I should avoid looking at the original target language words, but as I see it the purpose of the exercise isn't to test my memory (as Anki would have done), but to be able to recall the words at the precise moment where it comes to writing them down. What happens before is less important, and if I need to refresh my memory for a certain word then I'll of course do so - it's all part of learning that particular word.

As some kind of justification for this procedure I have long ago done some statistics on my recall, and it generally hovers between 70 and 80 % recall one day later (lower in weak languages, higher in fairly wellknown ones), so for most words it isn't even necessary to take that extra peek. And to boot I have some help from the order of the words: when I use a dictionary most of the target language words will stand in alphabetical order, and the few exceptions will be caused by expressions or represent words which I for some reason want to include (for instance because the word I see in the dictionary is a socalled false friend, and then I add a word to fill out the void). I do however run through all the target letter words in each block before proceeding to the next block because I have noticed that this helps me to focus on them instead of the translations. It's a little thing, but small things do count.

As for the base languages of the dictionaries most of those I have used are based on Danish or English or German, but I have also a fair number in in French. The base language obviously has to be one I know well because I otherwise would have to look a lot of translations up along the way, but in my collection I also have a few dictionaries with other base languages - like a Bulgarian-Italian one and and one with the combination Latin-Serbian (because it was the only one I could find with Cyrillic letters during my last visit down there). In some cases I don't use the any of the translations quoted in a dictionary because they are ambiguous in its base language, and then I can often find a more suggestive alternative in another language.

For wordlists that are based on specific texts the source is of course the text itself, and while it is possible to use the same two-column format for repetitions as I do with dictionary-based lists I more and more tend to favour reading the original text again with the expectation that I now know each and every word in it.

And finally: why choose certain words and skip others? Well, I tend to skip those that are too obvious unless they have some unexpected collateral meanings or unexpected derivations. Sometimes I have problems with a certain word because its meaning isn't totally clear, and sometimes for no obvious reason at all. And then I skip those words - the first category because they would have to be learnt in context, maybe by collecting examples from the internet if they aren't common enough. And the second category because it is more efficient to reap the lowhanging fruits first and leave the troublemakers for later. But I don't skip words just because they are weird and rare and far down on any frequency list. I think it is a problem if your mindset is NOT to learn certain words. It must be better to have the general attitude that any word that catches your eye is worth learning.

As for the cultural (or scientific) background I get it from the texts and speeches I work with - not from doing wordlists. But that doesn't mean that you can't learn something about the mindset of a people by looking at the words in their language.

[Sparverius]

I misread some of what you wrote to a magnificent extent, thanks for the clarification!

I'm curious-- have you tried your three-column method with any logographic languages? For example, with Mandarin Chinese I played around with a few configurations before settling on Anki on my phone because it keeps everything in one spot and lets me get as close as possible to having a workable three-sided flash card. I want to test out your workflow on German, but the issue with Chinese is that writing and pronunciation are not reliably connected-- both have to be learned separately (though they do correspond more and more the broader one's base of knowledge). I'd love to have a good pen and paper method that worked with characters and romanization, but I've yet to see anything remotely functional.

What's your approach to "leech" cards that you consistently have trouble memorizing? If they're a part of a larger block you study, is there a point at which you cull all the words you feel like you know and make a new list made up of those, or do you spend a little time with each word to get to know it better?

I think a further advantage to your approach in working with real paper dictionaries is that they have limited space and as such only will display at most a couple of definitions per meaning/word. Since I only want one Chinese word per card, but want to have a good idea of the specific meaning, I'll often add multiple German words that give a good picture of what that word represents, but never the other way around. Since I use online dictionaries, I tend to spend a fair amount of time poking around and worrying about picking just those words that best represent the Chinese word. Using a printed dictionary would remove that option.

My Mandarin/German deck is a little at odds with the approach that you should have the definition in a language you're quite familiar with-- there are definitely a fair number of cards where I'm actually learning the given word in both languages. This is more done out of efficiency than efficacy, as I'm sure I can drum up the time and motivation to finish one day's group of review, but two is less reliable in my experience (especially when the time it takes to learn and recall a word in German is a fraction of the corresponding time for a Chinese word).

Since I have a German/English dictionary in my bookcase, I think I'll have a go at your approach. I'm also frustrated with the sort of reductionism prevalent in many language-learning circles-- while you might not use a word that caught your fancy in a book you were reading nearly as often as some other, it's a lot more enjoyable to have things you relate with (even if it's just by looking around and writing down all the things you don't know how to say in a target language, or reading them in some material, or even looking them up in a dictionary) than to just learn the most frequently used words, or a set compiled by other people that you have no personal connection to. Beyond a beginner level, of course. My decks tend to be littered with names of specific birds, or in the case of Mandarin four-character idiomatic expressions, or incredibly specific words. It's a big part of the fun for me.