Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Fri Feb 10, 2023 9:58 pm

As you can see from this log I spent some time on French grammar the day before yesterday - and I also watched a program called 'Kebec' (with that spelling from either TF2 or TV5 - I don't remember), but it was all in splendid Québecqois. Yesterday I was staying at my residental lair all day long - I just didn't switch on my computer(s), and in spite of that I did get through some serious studying. Or should I say: because of that? I even watched a program about the Inlandsbanan in Sweden, even though the presenter persisted in talking about daLARRRna (with stress on the second syllable) - it should of course be "DAlarna" (with stress on the first syllable). And today I have been away from from home, visiting a recycling facility plus three museums and one pizzeria and about 60 kms of road, but now I'm back to report on my activities yesterday.

I have them listed on a little red slip of paper, but it's not complete - I also watched TV with sound. The intensive studies started out with an Ukrainian text about biodiversity, then I grabbed my Harry Potter One in Irish and in English and placed them on each its own notestand. This is an improvement on my earlier study methods because it was exceedingly difficult to place both books on one notestand and fixate them with pegs. But Irish is difficult in itself. I didn't touch it for quite some time, and that means that I would be in real trouble even with a dictionary if I didn't also have a translation within reach. So I also decided to read Assimil's language guide (in French) as my standard goodnight reading for some time (leaving the Portuguese history dangling in the air just at the point where they have grabbed the Algarve).

After that I did the same thing with Potter Two in Latin and English, but here I hardly needed to consult the translation. Of course there are some words and word combinations that were new to me, but in the context they were fairly obvious. And Harry has now had a full day to spy on Malfoy and his sneaky father in mister Borgins shop where I left them dangling in the air because I had filled out one half page on my paper.

After that I returned to my printouts, where I went through an article in Greek about .. no not the Akkadians, but their far less famous predessors the Oumpaïntinoi (named after the place whee their remains were first found, a hill called Al-Umpaint (or Tell al-'Ubaid). And after that the beginning of an article about a string of ancient Semitic languages, starting out with Ugaritic (or Northern Kana'anean). And even though it isn't mentioned in the text this rings a bell: Ugarit was one of the citystates that was utterly devastated by the Seapeople - a group of seaborne marauders that effectively put an end to the bronze age (Ramses III succeeded in keeping them away from Egypt). Their language is fairly well known (albeit not by me) because a library containing a bewildering lot of cuneiform tablets was found in its ruins. I stopped studying this article before it reached ancient Hebrew.

After that I studied an article about the Illyrians from the Albanian Wikipedia - and since Albanian also is one of the languages I have neglected for some time it was practical to have the translation. I ran into a number of words that weren't found in any of the two dictionaries I have got, but which nevertheless were found in the translation - and that's of course irritating. There are two theories about this tribe - either that they had been there for a very long time, or that they were relatively late invaders, maybe as sidekicks to the 'Doric' or 'Dorian' invasion which supposedly should have killed off the original Greek dialects (except maybe the Arcadian of central Peloponissos) around the same time where the Sea People destroyed Ugarit - but no archeologic proof of this has ever been found.

From Albanian to Serbian where I first studied an article about the National Museum in Sarajevo (which I have visited in 2003) - but it was written in Latinitsa (and not even in Serbian, but rather in Bosnian) so to get something that beyond dispute was Serbian I also went through a page or so of a somewhat longer article about Medieval royalty in the Serbian kingdom (called "Raska" by its neighbours, including those in Bosnia). I'll do the rest soon, but after that I may use the fact that I own Potter and the Zakon Feniksa in Serbian to do the same thing as I have done for Irish and Latin - it would be a way of supplementing my Serbian with words and expressions from a less academic source, and if I just open it on a random spot I don't even have to care about the plot (which as far as I remember is a fairly bloody and complicated affair). By a weird coincidence one of the German TV stations happened to show the film (dubbed, of course) and I saw the episode where a professor with a funny eye is discovered at the botton of a multiple chest with an impressive locking mechanism. But I switched away from that channel when I had seen that fragment - it's not my kind of thing, and definitely not when dubbed in German.

And that was the last intensive study session of the day. I finished off with the part of the Assimil Irish guide that told about the pronunciation and spelling - and luckily I knew a few things about that beforehand, because otherwise it would have been me who were left dangling in the air.

F2439b02 _Glagolitic inscription, Sarajevo.jpg
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sat Feb 11, 2023 9:17 am

It's just a few hours since I wrote the last message here, but I woke up at 6 o'clock this morning and decided to get something done.

I have mentioned several times here that my old computer is showing signs of weaknesses such asfreezing or restarting without warning. On the other hand it can also work for hours on end as in the good old days. I also see that the screen sometimes go black and then returns with a message saying that the screen driver stopped working, but was restarted - so maybe it would be enough to attach another screen that uses some diferent software, but it could also be the graphics card - and I'm not going to put a new card into such an antique machine (hardware has never been my strong side, and I lost my connection to specialist collegues in that field when I retired several years ago).

I have now identified two 'dangerous' situations which are the most likely to cause problems. One is when the dinosaur booted up, and therefore I have stopped switching it off unless there will be a very long pause - and some nights I have just let it sleep instead of switching it off. OK, I have to pay for some electricity then, but that's not a major issue. The other situation has been when homepages do things it doesn't like. Llorg is safe, but it turns out that Youtube is one major source of disturbances - and that has an effect on my study habits. Especially '(show) more' is an almost certain showstopper, so if you use it I just take a screendump and then immediately go back to 'less'. And then I have found out that it helps to minimize the window, but then I only have the sound and that's not an ideal situation. In practice I have given up using Youtube on the old computer.

So this morning I instead switched on my new computer and let it connect to the internet, and then I watched Youtube videos galore. I got through a number of Slavic videos from Ecolinguist, which had the advantage of showing transcriptions and sometimes also translations on the screen when somebody talks. I think this is the ideal way to get accostumed to the spoken versions of the languages, the point being that by and large I can read and understand the transcriptions, but I have almost no listening training in those languages (at least not since the start of corona), and definitely not with a transcription and a translation running at the same time.

The funny thing is when I follow the transcriptions I can't also follow the translations, but I nevertheless am on the brink of understanding the speech - at least I can hear all the words and their separations. You may remember my recommendation of 'bloodhound listening' where you don't deliberately try to understand the meaning, but concentrate on hearing each and every word and ending clearly - and then the word meanings will pop up automatically. And with enough known words you can understand the whole meaning. That's where it seems I am with several Slavic languages, and if I just could get 5-6 hours with speech in each one plus a complete transcription and a reasonably loyal translation, then I would get my epiphanies.

The videos I chose this time were first Bulgarian versus Russian and Polish. And there were some problems of understanding between the three participants - partly caused by false friends ("falszywy przyjacia" in Polish), but by and large things functioned. After that I went for a number of videos with just two languages because it then was easier to keep the languages apart. First Ukrainian versus Polish, which went rather smoothly, then Russian versus Polish where the Russian speaker seemed to be into deep water, followed by a video with one Russian and three Polish speakers, which also functioned somewhat - but a few times I understood words they didn't.

After that a conversation featuring Russian and Polish, but neither transcriptions nor translations so I dropped it after a few minutes - and then I jumped over into the Germanic camp and listened to a video with a North Frisian man versus two speakers of German plus one Anglophone (who in an earlier video had tried to make people understand Anglosaxon phrases - but with too much English in between for comfort). And that did not really go well - lots of problems! I could more or less understand the transcription at the top of the window, but I guess it's the first time I have ever heard Northern Frisian (whose speakers are as rare as the Javanese rhino).

And then I finished the morning session with a video (from "Easy languages" or something like that) where a professor in Frisian from the university of Groningen was interviewed in Dutch, and I had no problems understanding that - quite interesting, in fact. In between there were short interviews with people in the streets, but most of them could only understand the local kind of Frisian (in Groningen it must be 'stadfries'), not speak it. One young lady was however a native speaker, but even she had to deal with purely Dutch speaking friends. Judging from this video, the future for the Western variants of Frysk doesn't seem to be in jeopardy right now, but they are on a downwards slope - and even the majority of the young Frieslanders seem to take the demise of Frisian as just another fact of life. And personally I have not planned to learn to speak any kind of Frisian, but it is nice to be able to read Frisian.

FR: Et vers la nuit hier j'ai lu la partie grammaticale de mon Assimil pour l'Irlandais, mais je ne suis pas tout à fait content. Quand j'ai essayé de comprendre le système du point zéro il ya quelques années j'ai utilisé ce livret (plus quelques autres sources avec plus d'informations), mais maintenant que j'ai fait mes propres feuilles vertes j'ai peu de positif à dire à propos de la disposition assimilienne sur la grammaire. Or Assimil a toujours l'avantage de ses traductions hyperliterales, et je vais probablement pouvoir lire le reste du livre avec moins de jérémiades de ma part.

DU: Ik ben overigens maar één keer in Groningen (en Leeuwarden) geweest - op een reis waar ik anders rondreisde om dierentuinen te bezoeken. Geen van beide steden heeft een dierentuin, maar Groningen heeft een maritiem museum en Leuwarden heeft een scheve toren. En ik kan helaas me niet herinneren 't Fries te hebben gehoord, maar er waren boten met Friese namen. Mijn hotelkamer stond op het zuiden in Zwolle. Het viel me op dat de keelklanken in het Nederlands het duidelijkst hoorbaar zijn in de richting naar het noorden, terwijl de taal zachter en zachter wordt richting het zuiden (in het Vlaamse gebied). Ik vind de diepe keelklank zeer grappig.

P7304b02 _groeten uit Groningen.jpg
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby DaveAgain » Sat Feb 11, 2023 10:06 am

Iversen wrote:The other situation has been when homepages do things it doesn't like. Llorg is safe, but it turns out that Youtube is one major source of disturbances - and that has an effect on my study habits. Especially '(show) more' is an almost certain showstopper, so if you use it I just take a screendump and then immediately go back to 'less'. And then I have found out that it helps to minimize the window, but then I only have the sound and that's not an ideal situation. In practice I have given up using Youtube on the old computer.
Have you tried updating the web browser?
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sat Feb 11, 2023 10:46 am

There is an age old Explorer and a somewhat newer Firefox which I updated when I first began to have problems using certain sites, typically those with date fields in formulas - so I also updated Java, but it didn't help. Later on I got problems with security checking that meant that I had to accept that certain sites ran without a certificate, and I have even tried to ask hotlines about those problems. Then I installed Chrome, which could run some of the sites that refused to run on Firefox, but quite generally it didn't solve my problems (including those at start-up) - and the Chrome now seems to be even more prone to breakdowns than my Firefox so I hardly ever use it.

And then I bought a new laptop, and I can run things on it that wouldn't run at all on the old computer - like the new security software known as MinId ('my ID') which I need to access my NetBank (internet banking) and other essential services. The problem is that it hasn't got all the old software like MS Office and PhotoImpact (from Ulead) and Audacity and several others, like Freemake Converter, Irfanview etc. etc., but I have now at least installed Libra Office and Gimp on it so that I won't be totally lost the day my ol' faithful simply refuses to budge - however the quite complicated macos in Excel which I used to update my photo collection will definitely not work in Libra. I'm slightly wary about installing Audacity even though it's the program I use when I listen to my music files because there are some quirks about it that worry me - like for instance that I have to switch on my headphones after I have opened Audacity, else I don't hear aught. I interpret this as a sign that the old Audacity in some way has become entangled with the sound card in the old machine. Apart from this quirk I have not had problems with Audacity, but I don't know how a new version will interact with the sound card in another machine. So you see - if my old machine just would stop freezing or restarting or whatever I would have a situation where the jobs were distributed on my two main computers so that everything was covered. :P But life without the trusty old one would become more difficult.

By the way, its predecessor died because of some error on its motherboard, and then I had to spend months on end trying to get a new and empty contraption to take over - and some DOS-based programs simply refused to run even in a Dos-box.

I have also inherited my mother's antique Lenovo which only has been on the internet once: when I bought it as a present to her it was still necessary to register the Windows with a call to Microsoft - I have used it to show her our photos and postcards from travels and local places, but she totally refused to let her computer be connected to the big evil and complicated internet. So it is top trimmed to show my photo collection (programmed as an intranet system in html using notepad) using the inbuilt Explorer and nothing else, and that's the reason I haven't updated the Explorer on my own machine - I wanted them to be in sync. But now Explorer has become deprecated, and the Edge on my new computer AND Firefox aren't as good as the old Explorer to show the files in my photo system. I could maybe somehow reprogram it, but that would be a herculean task. Therefore now I'm living a precarious existence where none of my computers really can fulfill all the things I expect from them. Sometimes progress (especially in combination with sheer ripe old age) causes as many new problems as it solves.

The painting below was made at a time (early 90s I think) where I had become the responsible for a small TokenRing network based on OS2 and computers from IBM, and I had to let some steam out. Today that time feels as just after the Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago...

Kunst192a.JPG
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Feb 15, 2023 4:21 pm

Since my last post in this thread I have visited a few museums and a recycling facility, I have done some gardening for my sister and I have been on a short shopping trip to Germany - but I have also studied quite a bit.

Monday I did text studies in the following languages:

Serbian - something about medieval kings of Serbia (before the Ottomans occupied the area)
Bulgarian - something about, no, not the Copper age - I have now reached the Bulgarian bronze age
(Modern) Greek: something about Ancient Hebrew
Ukrainian. something about the museum of Natural History in Lviv
Slovak: something about the openair museum in Martín
Polish: more about the Silurian period -
Russian: ... no, not a text. I did a wordlist with around 200 words, and after that I kept the balance by doing one in Ukrainian too.

And after that I have added one more column to my project with wordlsts in 30 languages. I finished the first 6 languages the same evening (EN,SCO,AF,DU,L-GE,H-GE), and then I did the rest yesterday - i.e. IC, NO, SW, LAT, O-FR, FR, POR, CAST, CAT, IT, RO, GR, AL, BU, SER, SLK, CZ,POL,UK, RU, IR, INDO, EO ... and if you wonder why there only are 29 languages here the reason is that I had included Finnish in round one (several years ago), but decided to drop it.

And today I got an offer to take the trip to a series of supermarkets just South of the border. Some things are indeed cheaper down there ... but not all things are cheaper, and some of those that definitely are cheaper aren't interesting for me - like beer. But then I bought banana juice and chocolate and several kinds of yoghurt instead.

So today I have done absolutely nothing relevant.

F5816b01 - Martin, hourses from Turiec.jpg
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Thu Feb 16, 2023 6:40 pm

Today I have only studied two languages: Polish and Serbian (though I have also watched TV with sound: two programs in German about Vienna on 3sat).

For Polish I used the text about Gondwana which I have mentioned earlier. At least twice in the history of the Earth we have had a situation with two supercontinents, a smaller one to the North called Laurasia, and a big chunk to the South called Gondwana. Such a situation arose at the onset of the Cambrian (around 550 mio years ago), but later (370 mio years ago) Gondwana and Laurasia collided and formed the supersupercontinent Pangaea. When that split up at the end of the Jurassic (around 200-180 mio years ago) Gondwanaland and Laurasia (and Baltica) appeared, but then Gondwanaland was successively split up into South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, Zealandia, Arabia and India, and people stopped using the word.

The postcard below shows the Gondwana Rainforest Sanctuary in Brisbane which I visited in 1994. It sadly closed in 1998 - but the word 'Gondwana' is still used in the name of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, which comprise no less than 366,500 hectares near Brisbane, and there is also a rainforest walk at the original site in the town.

P3914b04_Gondwana.jpg

LAT: Pictura infra combinatio est tabularum ex Museo Geologico hafniensi, quod hoc tempore parte clausum est quia pars novi super-musei historiae naturali iam iam erit. Hafnia (København) Museum Zoologicum pro tempore habet exter centro urbi prope universitam, et in Horto Botanico Museum Geologicum Museumque Botanicum (quod tamen semper clausum erat). Sed super-museum nunc construendum est ubi tota ista combinatura sint -et nescio an tabulae historiae Terrae in novo museo exhibindae sint.

F5128b0x_plate tectonics - Geology museum, Copenhagen.jpg

As for Serbian I used the Wikipedia text about king Radoslav, who was so Graecophile that he became quite unpopular in his home country. Among other grievances he also supported the Roman-Catholic archbishop of Ohrid so much that the Orthodox archbishop Sava (his uncle) temporarily found it prudent to leave Serbia. When one of the king's allies, a certain Theodore Komnenos Doukas of Epirus, lost an important battle and was caught by the Bulgarian tsar Jovan (= Ivan Asen II), king Radoslav had to defect to far-away Dubrovnik with his wife Ana, a daughter of Theodore, and his younger brother Vladislav was put on the Serbian throne, and he married a daughter of the Bulgarian tsar (what a family - worse than the Kardashians). When Radoslav was dumb enough to return to Serbia, archbishop Sava took care to lock him up in a monastery under the name of Jovan (= Ivan haha), and he remained there until he died peacefully. The text however claims that Sava didn't support the accession of bro Vladislav, which given the situation doesn't sound logical - he had a lot to thank him for. And then Sava designated his own successor and traveled to Jerusalem, but against all odds managed to get back to Bulgarian capital at (Veliko) Tarnovo, where he finally died, sick and tired (this last tale was not part of my Serbian study text - I found it in Wikipedia).

Stefan-Radoslav (Wikipedia).jpg

SER: Немам више текстова о давно преминулим српским краљевима. Дакле, следеће што ћу проучавати на српском биће случајна страница из Хари Потера Закона Феникса. Размишљам да урадим исто са руским, потому что у меня Гари Потер и Принц-Полукров - и если я использую только несколько страниц, мне не нужно изучать остальные случайности.
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sun Feb 19, 2023 5:05 am

Thursday we had a bit of rough weather here (storm Otto) so I stayed indoors the whole day and night - and that is of course conducive to studying. I made some word lists, and I studied articles in two languages: Greek and Ukrainian. The Greek text was a continuation of the very long article about ancient languages from the Near East, this time about Hebrew, whose oldest known texts seem to be preserved as fragments in the Old Testament. Its classical period came in the period with kings which ended with the Babylonian captivity, and then pretty much the rest of the old Testament was written during a time where it had become secondary to Aramaic - a language mostly used by the Jewish clergy, but not spoken in the streets. Modern Hebrew seems to be halfway a constructed languaged based on Hebrew rather than a resurrection of the old Ivrit.

The article doesn't end there, but I'm through the main part of it, and I have already printed its successor, a collection of geological texts starting with Wikipedia articles about the Hadean and the Ordivicium. The Hadean is of course named after the Greek god of the underworld, while the Ordovicum - I had almost said "as usual" - is named after the Roman name for a Welsh tribe.

The Ukrainian text told about the Pterosaurs, i.e. flying identified objects from the Mesozoicum. But I didn't manage to finish it Thursday - I did so yesterday, Friday. The meteorologists had promised us a nice day in the aftermath of Otto so I decided to visit some places at the other side of Jutland. But unbeknownst to me an area with rain had moved Northwards so it basically rained almost till noon. So I first visited a couple of museums, the first one a rather new thing about refugees, but also with a section about the time just after the 2. world war where there was a refugee camp at the site for 45.000 German refugees.And after that the Tirpitz museum, which includes the remains of a nazi bunker in concrete, but a new exhibitions building - also in concrete - supplements it. And luckily there was a temporary exhibition about the mammoth and its ice age friends. The funny thing is that I have seen the animal models earlier at least in two other places, maybe three - but each time of course in a new setup. After that the rain stopped and I visited two zoological gardens.

And in the evening I finished the Ukrainian article about the Pterosaurs.

My goodnight text is now again the Portuguese history book ("Historia Concisa de Portugal"). I woke up far too early this morning (or night) and got through a nice chunk of it, comprising the Portuguese golden age of seafaring. And I found some interesting informations there:

POR: Durante a maior parte do período medieval, o país esteve ocupado expulsando os Mauros (e estabelecendo um reino português com Afonso Henriques como seu primeiro rei), mas quando os suas exércitos chegaram ao Algarve, o país teve que inventar outras coisas para fazer. De 1385 a 1387 (não muito depois da Peste Negra) houve uma espécie de revolução temporária em que a burguesia de Lisboa lutou contra a nobreza. Nessa época, um exército castelhano com nobres portugueses invadiu o país, mas foi repelido. O ridículo dessa situação é que os reis e a nobreza retornada (!) conseguiram aos poucos limitar a influência burguesa, ao mesmo tempo em que os reis ganhavam cada vez mais poder. E os judeus foram convertidos à força em 1434 e depois perseguidos pela Inquisição, A população rural tornou-se cada vez mais faminta - ao mesmo tempo em que os grãos precisavam ser importados. Em suma, as coisas correram mal no país.

Nesta situação, os reis lançaram algumas campanhas contra o Norte de África, onde, entre outras coisas, tomaram Ceuta (que é hoje um enclave espanhol). E começaram a visitar as ilhas atlânticas, começando pelas Canárias (hoje espanholas). Mas a Madeira e os Açores ainda são portugueses, e em Cabo Verde fala-se português (e crioulo). E foram os portugueses para descobrir a rota marítima do sul da África para a Ásia.

Uma figura chave nisso foi o Infante Henrique o Navegador, 1394-1460, o quinto filho de Dom João I e Dona Filipa (os reis portugueses se chamavam 'Dom'). E o livro dizia-me algo desconhecido e novo sobre este senhor, nomeadamente que era também o dirigente da Ordem de Cristo. O que é? Quando os Templários foram esmagados no resto da Europa (excepto na Noruega e Escócia) por iniciativa de Filipe o Belo de Francia, o rei português Dinis fundou uma nova ordem de monges (com a permissão do Papa), chamada " Ordem dos Cavaleiros de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo" ou "Ordem da Milícia de Nosso Senhor Jesus Cristo" e os Templários locais inscreveram-se nesta nova ordem sem que alguém foi queimado. A sua sede começou por ser um forte perto de Faró na costa de Algarve, mas depois mudou-se para Tomar, antiga residência dos Templários. E recendo as monedas dos templarios, o novo ordem de Cristo ficou riquisimo, dinheiro que seu novo grão-mestre Henrique poderia gastar libremente nos seus projetos marítimos.

Mas os portugueses tinham um problema: os seus vizinhos espanhóis! Em Alcáçovas (no Alentejo), foi estabelecido em 1480 um acordo que fornecia uma linha divisória norte-sul no Atlântico, mas foi substituída em 1494 pelo Tratado de Tordesilhas, negociado entre João II de Portugal e os reis católicos de Espanha sob a liderança do Papa Alexandre VI. Wikipédia diz que "O Tratado estabelecia a divisão das áreas de influência dos países ibéricos, cabendo a Portugal as terras "descobertas e por descobrir" situadas antes da linha imaginária que demarcava 370 léguas (1 770 km) a oeste das ilhas de Cabo Verde, e a Castela as terras que ficassem além dessa linha".

Quando um certo genovês chamado Cristoforo Colombo, devido a informações insuficientes, teve a ideia maluca de que se poderia chegar à Ásia navegando para o oeste, apresentou o plano primeiro em Lisboa, mas foi recusado. Então ele perguntou a Isabela e Ferrán em Espanha sobre a mesma coisa e obteve 'sim' - e depois disso ele encontrou as Antilhas (ainda acreditando que havia encontrado a Asia), e os espanhois tomaram gradualmente a major parte de Latinamerica conforme o previsto do Tratado de Tordesilhas. No caminho para casa, o Colombo visitou Lisboa e zombou dos portugueses por sua decisão negativa - mas talvez os portugueses já soubessem que o Brasil estava do lado deles da fronteira de Tordesilhas...

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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon Feb 20, 2023 7:52 pm

I have just had a visitor here (it doesn't happen every day), and we somehow ended up speaking about languages. I mentioned Finnish and its fairly regular way of making wordcombinations, and from there via Ancient Gutnish (from the Swedish island Gotland) and Norwegian dialects on NRK we ended up talking about the bewildering number of dialects of Swiss German - probably one per valley - and whether Swiss Germany might end up in the same situation as Irish, which has almost as many dialects as speakers now (three or four). And one question then arose: do all those Swiss dialects have as many unpredictable idiomatic expressions as Irish, and are those expressions different from valley to valley? How can the Swiss then communicate? There is one thing that both Swiss German and Irish share, namely that if your countrymen don't understand you then there is an alternative, namely English resp. High German. But every time Irish is mentioned it is feared that it will die out. I have not seen the same worries expressed in regards to Swiss German, but maybe that's because they prefer keeping it as a secret ...

We also discussed why Germany has got so many names. OK, "Germany" goes back to the name of the tribal area on the other side if the Rhine river in Latin, Germania, but where did the Romans then pick up that name from? As far as I can see nobody really knows, but Tacitus claims that it was fairly new in 78 AC. And who else use the word? Well, it's the same word in Greek (Γερμανία), and from there it has apparently spread to the rest of the Balkan peninsula: Albanian (Gjermany) and Bulgarian (Германия) and Serbian (Германија) and Romanian (Germania) - and also Russian (Германия). The same root occurs in the Celtic languages - in Irish as "An Ghearmáin".

But from Croatia and up to Poland it's another word root that dominates: Croatian (Njemačka), Slovenian (Nemčija), Ukrainian (Німеччина) and Polish (Niemcy) - and Hungarian has Németorszag. Well, the Polish Wikipedia serves up a rather funny etymology: "Etnonim „Niemiec” pochodzi od psł. *němьcь („niezdolny do mówienia”, „mamroczący”, „mówiący niezrozumiale”) z psł. *němъ („niemy”) - i.e. those who mumble or can't speak. In Finnish the name is "Saksa" which comes from the area in North Germany called Sachsen (probably because the few Germans who came to Finland were Hanseatic merchants). It certainly didn't come through Sweden or Denmark where the country is called "Tyskland". Speaking of Saxon - it is fairly wellknown that the tribes who conquered Britain according to the venerable Bede were Angels, Saxons and Jutes, but maybe less well known that the ancestor of modern Low German is called Old Saxon.

Speaking about "Tyskland": The High Germans write it as "Deutschland" and the Plattschnackers (Low Germans) as "Düütschland" ("Duitsland" in the Netherlands), which obviously has the same wordroot as the adjective English "Dutch" about people from the Low Countries (Nederland) and their language. The reason behind this counfusion is that the word originally didn't refer to a specific tribe, but to a word for 'tribe' or 'people' in general: "*þeudō" in ProtoGermanic (reconstructed), "diutisc" in Old High German and preserved in Icelandic as "þjóð". It had already been imported into Middle English (as "Duche") centuries before Germany was defined as a nation, and then the Brits singlehandedly restricted it to refer to the Netherlands (maybe because they were closer than Germany and there was a trade war going on) -ah dunno. The Middle Brits also used the word "Almain" about the Germans, but that died out. By the way, there is also a dance called almaine ('allemande' in French, but something like 'tiutsche Tantz' in Middle High German).

The Romans (including those in translated versions of Asterix) apparently used the word "teudisce" for the language of the Germans, though not for the area. The word was then used in several forms across an area that included present day Germany AND the Low countries, but only as a name for the area now known as Germany from the 15. century - and at that time it was still a loose collocation of small countries under a holy Roman emperor who also had to rule parts of Italy. Maybe that's why the Italians use the adjective "tedesco" - but the country is called "Germania".

And the name "Allemagne" in French and its cognates in Portuguese, Castilian and Catalan obviously refers to the Roman name "Alemannia" for the area inhabited by the Alamani, which was one tribe within the Swebian 'super-tribe' (whence the navn "Schwaben" for a state within modern Germany). It may be a coincidence, but in several Germanic languages the name can be construed as meaning "all men". As you may know there isn't a Swiss German Wikipedia - you have to go for the Allemannic one. The English Wikipedia gives one curious information, namely a certain Walafrid Strabo in the ninth century claimed that the Swiss were called Allemanni by outsiders, but "Suebi" by themselves. But why do the French and Portuguese and Castilians and Catalans then persist in using the word about modern Germany? Well, the Allemanni lived around the river Main, but later went through Switzerland to wreak havoc in Northern Italy. Even though they were defeated there it might explain their relationship with the Swiss, but for a modest subtribe from the German Midwest that was first beaten by the Romans and eventually routed by the Franks it was quite an honour to give their name to the whole country in several somewhat important languages.

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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Tue Feb 21, 2023 11:53 pm

Since my post about the many names for Germany I have among other things studied some excerpts from Harry Potter in translation with the original versions in the background, but then I was led astray by the thread about learning verb endings, and I think that I may in that thread almost have come close to promising that I would write something about green sheets here. And therefore I have had to postpone the Potterianolical comments .

I would like first to explain why my Greek sheet for regular verbs looks as it does. There is one atypical thing about it, namely that I have quoted two specific verbs - normally there isn't enough space for anything byt the endings, but I think it might make the following explanations more comprehensible. Ability to read the Greek letters is not essential, but definitely handy here.

Point one: in the active there are two roots, and then there is one more in the passive. I don't even remember what the first root in the active is called - it's just the 'normal' one, and the other is the aorist. For the verb κλείνω/κλείσω ("I close" - the Greeks have dropped the infinitive) the roots differ in one letter, namely ν versus σ, and there are other verbs with that combination. For the verb κρατώ/κρατήσω (to hold - notice the accent on the final ώ) you see that there is whole syllable more in the aorist, but else the endings in the 'present' are the same. Did I say 'present? Well, actually the grammars never use that for the aorist κλείσω, the reason being that it almost always is used with a conjunction να or θα, which respectively gives a replacement for the lost infinitive and something like a subjunctive. I have seen the word 'dependent' for it, but in the table it has the position a present would have had.

Below the 'presents' you see the past tenses - respectively with an imperfective-like and a 'perfective-like' flavour. Here you notice some slightly different endings, but again the same all over the active. But on top of that the accent is moved one step to the left, and if there hadn't been enough syllables the Greeks would have added an initial vowel έ where they could put the accent (and the accent is always marked in words of more than one syllable in Modern Greek). The only place in the active where this rule doesn't work is the cell with κρατούσα - but instead there is now an supplementary syllable (-ούσ-) where the accent can be placed.

In the imperfective passive you may notice that the endings are 'inspired' by the forms of the irregular verb είμαι ('I am'): κλείνομαι (<είμαι), κλείνεσαι (<είσαι) etc. in the present, κλεινόμονα (ήμονα) etc. in the past tense. However in the passive aorist there is not only new roots, but also endings which resemble those from the active - though in the version with a stressed final vowel. And then there will of course be some inserted syllables. The passive aorists ('dependent' or past) are definitely the most bothersome part of this otherwise relatively simple system, with the forms of the active aorist coming right after - but in most cases the aorist roots can be guessed when you know the simple 'imperfective' root.

There are also some imperatives and a couple of participles, one of which is used to form a compound perfect (as in English and several other languages) - but they can't be seen clearly in the scan below. And you can see some forms written in red (-αγα etc.), but these are just alternative forms which you should be able to recognize, but you don't have to use them.

The example illustrates a few simple rules: the first being that the whole thing can be shown on one halfpage, the second that the layout reflects how I personally want to see it. In the thread I referred to above I mention that visually minded persons don't have to think in grammatical terms if they just can recall their personal setup. For instance I know that the first column is imperfective and that the second and fourth cells from the top are past forms - then I actually don't need to know what the official name is. And finally: I write on green sheets because there then isn't any risk that I throw the sheet away by mistake.

And as I wrote in that other thread: you may pick up some informations while you make a green sheet, but its primary purpose is NOT to be memorized from top left to bottom right - it's better to use it for a quick check or confirmation when you read or write something. And those things that couldn't find a place in this table (like the rules of thumb for making aorist stems or the inflections of irregular verbs) may be found on another sheet, but else you have to look for them in a grammar or dictionary. Or leave them for later...

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Iversen
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Feb 22, 2023 12:47 am

And a short one more, this time about the combinations of articles, adjectives and substantives in Icelandic.

First I want to mention that grammars use the words 'weak' and 'strong' about both substantives and adjectives - but they don't mean the same thing in those two situation. A substantive on -ur (masculine) will be strong, and then it uses one set of endings. Another substantive may end in -i and then it uses completely different endings. So for substantives being strong or weak is an inhrent characteristic, and the two kinds have to have their own separate columns.

It's different with adjectives: here weak and strong depend on the surroundings. In Icelandic you can have prepositioned articles (which actually are forms of the demonstrative pronoun "hinn") and postclitic ones, which essentially are "hinn" without the h and attached to the end of the substantive AFTER its own ending. So in that case you will actually have a double ending. The main reason to use a strong adjectival ending is that there isn't a prepositioned article - and the endings then resemble those of the strong substantives (first 3 columns - ur, -■ , -t). If there is a prepositioned article then you use a weak adejctival ending (the columns with -i, -a,-a) - notice that in the singular these look like the endings for weak substantives, but in the plural you just use -u.

Icelandic-noun-syntagms.jpg

If you know German you also know that there is no postclitic article, but no less than three different sets of adjectival endings - one to use when there is an indefinite article first, another when it's a definite article and the last one if there isn't an article (but there could be words like "viel" or "etwas"). The system is simpler than the one in Icelandic (except that Icelandic doesn't use indefinite articles), but the idea is the same: the less important the thing before the adjective the more likely it is to adopt substantival-like endings.

German-nominal-syntagm.jpg

And finally something quite different, namely a list that shows which cases you use after the principal prepositions in Serbian (alpha version :D ).

The simple rule in all Slavic languages that have a case system for their nouns (Bulgarian hasn't) is that you use the genitive unless you are certain that it is something different. Some prepositions take more than one case, but then with different meanings. There are however some differences between the choice of prepositions in different languages, and also in their behaviour if two languages share a certain preposition. The table below illustrates the situation in Serbian. OBS: "kun" in Danish means 'only' and "og" means 'and':

Serbian-prepositions.jpg
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