Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sun Mar 20, 2022 10:25 pm

And now to the daily report - today's languages.

I started out with the culinary part of The rough Guide's phrasebook to Dutch - but I have already commented on that, and I didn't see anything really surprising. Then Greek (and English), using my trusty issue of the magazine "Blue" from Aegean Airways. Today I went through several descriptions of restaurants, and I'm not too well equipped to read about cooking. In one of the sections readers are urged to taste "νανάκι κοτόπουλο", and none of these words were found in my dictionary - but it's clearly a dish based on poultry meat (to be sure I looked it up on Google). There is a translation, but it omits this passage. Readers are also advised to sample the succulent "λαβράκι πάνω σε χυλομένη ρευιθάδα με τσορίθο και δεντρολίυανο", which is translated as "bass on a rich chickpea stew with chorizo and rosemary". Neither the "λαβράκι" (=European bass) nor the adjective "χυλομένος" were to be found in my dictionary, but the translation seems to be correct. I had however guessed the meaning of "χυλομένος" because the ancient Langenscheidt dictionary had " χύλος" = 'Brei" = 'porridge'. I have always thought that porridge looked as vomit so now I don't feel tempted to eat at that restaurant despite its Acropolis view.

But in spite of such problematic recipes the Greek didn't pose too many problems, and I also got through an announcement of a golf tournament on Crete and learned a few new words in the process like for instance "ερασιτέχνης" for 'amateur' and "γιπέδο 18 οπών" for 'golf course with 18 holes'. One thing that wondered me is that both the venue and the hotel that should accommodate the participants had their names written in English in the Greek text. Don't the Greek themselves use those facilities?

From Greek to Polish, where I used a bilingual airport magazine from Krakow, named "Airgate". And then the easy going was over - my Polish is apparently still not good enough just to hammer through a simple airport article without help. But I worked my way laboriously through some articles about București, including one about two bookstores, one about a restaurant and one about the Muzeum Narodowe Chlopa Rumuńskiego (or 'Muzeum Național al Țăranului Român' (Museum of the Romanian Peasant) if you prefer the Romanian spelling). I may have visited one of the two bookstores, but apparently without buying anything. However I did buy several Romanian books in Cluj, and I also bought a Romanian grammar in Romanian somewhere, but forgot it in a hotel room in Albania. That's life.

After that it was quite natural to study a couple of excerpts in Romanian from the homepages of hotels where I have stayed. Contrary to Wikipedia and official announcements such pages rarely use the full gamut of special letters, so one sign that my Romanian isn't totally disastrously rotten is that I can copy such texts while supplying the missing diacritics.

IT: E inoltre, oggi ho letto molto italiano, ma non con l'aiuto di un testo su carta . Ho guardato National Geographic sulla TV (senz'audio, ma con sottotitoli in danese), e qui si parlava di paleontogia come visto da Italia. Potrebbe non andate a Venezia per vedere animali morti, ma in realtà c'è un museo di storia naturale eccellente lì. Ed il programma menzionava un piccolissimo dinosaurio di nome Ouranosaurus (solo 7-8 metri di lungezza) che ora si aveva stato trovato in duplicato - e quando ho voluto trovare l'indirizzo Internet del museo tramite Google, ho visto anche l'immagine di quest'animale - illustrato qui sotto cun una riconstruzione dal sito web del museo. L'immagine di un Triceratopo deriva dal mio primo viaggio interrail nel 1972, quando ho visitato il museo corrispondente a Milano.

E poi, ovviamente, ho continuato a leggere di dinosauri su Wikipedia in italiano.

Ouranosaurus _ Venezia.jpg

P0115b02_Triceratopus_Milano.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
3 x

User avatar
mick33
Orange Belt
Posts: 139
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2015 6:39 am
Location: Lakewood, Washington, USA
Languages: First language: English
Languages I'm focusing on learning now: Italian.
Languages I'm learning but not focusing on: Afrikaans, Polish, Finnish Turkish, Spanish, Swedish, Catalan, Hungarian, Russian.
Just for fun I sometimes learn a little of: Hindi, Japanese, Indonesian, Georgian, Thai etc.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=762
x 361

Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby mick33 » Mon Mar 21, 2022 1:18 am

Iversen wrote:OK, time to list my activities since yesterday.
First I continued my wordlist based on Dutch food. The language guide I use is Anglophone, but I translate the lot into Danish, and then I sometimes have to find out what the English terms actually mean. Like "koolraab" which is translated into English as "swede' .. in Danish it is "kålrabi', and I wonder how the English name came along. There are other cases where Dutch and Danish are similar and English differs, and then there are foodstuffs which simply aren't eaten everywhere (I hope)- like the "kapucijners", which are said to be "marrowfat peas" (gosh!). One special thing about Dutch culinary vocabulary is that it apparently has adopted a lot of words from Indonesia, which the Dutch ruled long ago under the name "Batavia".


Ek weet die groente dat in engels kohlrabi is noem maar jy het die deens woord kålrabi geskryf. Ek het gedink dat kohlrabi en kålrabi dieselfde groente sou wees, maar hierdie plante is nie dieselfde groente nie. Ek het ‘n foto van kålrabi gesien en ek dink dat dit lyk soos ‘n rutabaga of 'n turnip. Ek is ‘n bietjie verward omdat in die engels taal kohlrabi ‘n soort van wild kool is.
Last edited by mick33 on Mon Mar 21, 2022 5:15 am, edited 4 times in total.
1 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon Mar 21, 2022 8:55 am

DU: De Nederlandse "Koolrabi" is Brassica Oleracea, maar "Koolraap [is](Brassica napobrassica, synoniemen: Brassica napus var. napobrassica, Brassica napus subsp. rapifera)". Dat is genoeg om de mensen in verwarring te brengen!

EN: The English version of WIkipedia states that "Rutabaga (/ˌruːtəˈbeɪɡə/; North American English) or swede (British English and some Commonwealth English) is a root vegetable, a form of Brassica napus (which also includes rapeseed). Other names include Swedish turnip, neep (Scottish), rwden/rwdins (Welsh), and turnip (Canadian English, Irish English and Manx English) – however, elsewhere the name "turnip" usually refers to the related white turnip. The species Brassica napus originated as a hybrid between the cabbage (Brassica oleracea) and the turnip (Brassica rapa). (...) Rutabaga is the common North American term for the plant. This comes from the Swedish dialectal word rotabagge, from rot (root) + bagge (lump, bunch)".

SW: PS: Jag är inte säker på att svenskarna är stolta över att ha levererat just detta ord till engelskan...

Kunst126.JPG

EN: English "Kohlrabi (pronounced /koʊlˈrɑːbi/; scientific name Brassica oleracea Gongylodes Group), also called German turnip, is a biennial vegetable, a low, stout cultivar of wild cabbage. " ... so not the same as the Nordic vegetable, cfr this table from the Danish page about Brassica oleracea:

Chou.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
7 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Tue Mar 22, 2022 10:27 pm

Just an ultrashort message this time (I have to get up early tomorrow): I have made a wordlist with some 330 Ukrainian words this evening. And earlier today I finished the culinary section of the Dutch Rough Guide phrasebook. And after that I read an old series of descriptions of Geological periods in Afrikaans. I have put the latest issue of the magazine Esperanto and an Portuguese magazine from the series Super Interesante on my nightchair. And for once that's about all ...

To my defence I have to state that I have written other things on this forum today, and I have listened to something like 9 hours of music by G.F.Händel.
7 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Fri Mar 25, 2022 8:34 pm

I returned from a family visit earlier today and then met some fellow-travellers from my travellers club, so I have not done any studying today. But since I am spending more time at my mother's place now than earlier I have had to think through what I can do do there. The most tangible result is that I have noticed that I own both Van Goor's Kleen Deens Woordenboek (Danish<>Dutch) and a micro Langenscheidt (German<>Dutch), so the former has now been permanently transferred to my mother's house. And since I now travel by car (I just bought one) rather than bus and train I can also carry more luggage, so I could in principle bring along a whole suitcase of study materials if I wanted to do that. But I also know that it is hard to study when there are other people in the rooms - I could do it during my schoolyears, but today I get distracted by the mere presence of other people when I study (also because one purpose of visiting my mother is to talk to her). On the other hand I could probably study in the middle of a busy highway without whincing simply the noises there are impersonal.

So I did bring along a number of small language guides and a Portuguese magazine, but alas - I didn't find time to study them. I did however do two things: I put a few hundred Greek words into a wordlist ('as usual' you could say, haevn't we heard that before ? ... well, at least since I deposited my oldest micro Langenscheidt there) and I reread an old text collection in Spanish, Catalan, Italian and German about proboscids (i.e. relatives of elephants), culled from the respective Wikipedias. I have actually written comments to this collection during my first study period with them, but maybe a few words more wouldn't harm. The big difference this time was of course that I could read them without at any point wanting to look a single word up in a dictionary, and precise therefore old truly through-gnashed study texts are excellent as goodnight reading stuff. And proboscids are fascinating animals.

ES: Los primeros representantes de este grupo (los numidotéridos) de animales se desarrollaron ya en el Paleoceno, el primer período posterior a la extinción de los dinosaurios, pero eran pequeños animales que probablemente vivían de roer plantas acuáticas. Las especies más antiguas conocidas se conocen casi exclusivamente a partir de dientes encontrados en Marruecos (como Eritherium), pero de Numidotherium un poco más tarde se conoce al menos un esqueleto casi completo. Y también se han encontrado huesos razonablemente representativos también de Moeritherium de Fayum en Egipto. Parece que los colmillos comenzaron a desarrollarse antes de que el labio superior formasse una trompa corta similar a la de los tapires actuales, pero una vez que comenzó el desarrollo resultó en muchas especies divertidas. El desarrollo llevó, por ejemplo, a gonfotéridos y platobelontes con colmillos que formaban una especie de pala, y a tetralophontes y stegotetrabelodontes con cuatro colmillos (el que probablemente era menos inmanejable que solo dos). La proboscid más grande de la historia (y quizás el mamífero terrestre más grande) fue el Paleoloxodon namadicus, que podía alcanzar una altura de los hombros de más de cinco metros, la misma altura de la cabeza a los pies de una jirafa bien desarrollada.

AF: Vandag leef net drie spesies: die Indiër, die Afrikaaner - en terloops, daar is gevind dat daar 'n derde is, naamlik die bosolifant uit Afrika (Loxodon cyclotis), wat volgens ontledings van DNS eintlik nader verwant is aan 'n uitgestorwe Europeër spesies genoem Palaeoloxofon antiquues as met die steppeolifante (Loxodon africana). Maar as dit 'n feit is, hoekom word dit dan Loxodon genoem en nie Paleoloxodon nie? Die bosolifante woon in die woude van Wes-Afrika en die Kongo-kom. En ek kan nie onthou of enige dieretuin geadverteer het hulle te besit nie.

EN: The painting below should illustrate life on Earth during the Pliocene (right before the Ice age), and I have forgotten which proboscid species it illustrates - but maybe some Amebelodontes becuse of their spade-shaped teeth.

x13a.jpg

By the way, the closest relatives to the proboscids are the Sirenians (dugons, manatee), with the Hyracodea (hyraxes) slightly further away. The extinct Embrithopoda with for instance the impressive Arsinotherium were closer to the seacows and elephants than the hyraxes are - rather than to the rhinos as you might think:

F4814b03_Arsinoitherium (Teyler, Haarlem).jpg

Kunst151.JPG
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
4 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sat Mar 26, 2022 8:34 pm

Today I at long last got around to do the repetitions of the Ukrainian wordlists I have been filling out recently - all in all some 400 words, some from texts, others from the dictionary I bought in Lviv a couple of years ago. I do expect to be ready to read in the language soon (with some assistance from translations and dictionaries), but speaking it is another matter - and writing in Ukrainian is also just a dream for the moment. But man liveth not from words alone, and it irritated me more and more that I didn't have an overview over the morphology, so I concocted an 8 page mini morphology from the Anglophone Wikipedia. At some point I ought to make my own green sheets, but for that I need more comprehensive sources - maybe I can get them through the Royal Library here, possibly from a defunct Slavic university library from the days where people studied other languages than English (I'll ask a librarian about that). I don't expect to find anything in the ordinary public libraries. If they had something it would have been borrowed by fugitives now, but the language was conspicuously absent from our library shelves even before the invasion, and it takes time to build a stock.

Ukrainian repetitions.jpg

After that I went through some more micro articles from the Greek airline magazine "Blue", mostly about restaurants and bars at their destinations.

GR: Έχω διαβάσει πολλά περιοδικά αεροπορικών εταιρειών, μερικά στις αντίστοιχες γλώσσες, άλλα μόνο στα αγγλικά ή με αγγλική μετάφραση. Τείνουν να είναι "glossy" (και χρησιμοποιώ εσκεμμένα μια αγγλική λέξη εδώ, επειδή οι συγγραφείς αυτών των περιοδικών κάνουν το ίδιο για να φαίνονται έξυπνοι και κομψοί) - σπάνια μου αρέσει να επισκέπτομαι τα μέρη που επαινούν, ακούγεται σαν να είναι εντελώς ακριβά και κενόδοξα και μυρίζουν γαστρονομία υψηλού στοιχήματος ή την κατανάλωση αηδιαστικών κοκτέιλ, και όσο περισσότεροι άνθρωποι που δεν εμπιστεύομαι τραγουδούν τους επαίνους τους, τόσο πιο δύσπιστος γίνομαι. Αλλά το περιοδικό έχει ακριβώς το σωστό επίπεδο για εμένα.

And finally I studied excerpts from the homepages of three of the hotels I have used in Romania, some with missing diacritics which I then had to supply myself - I hate to see them missing, it's like having holes in the bed linen at your hotel.

RO: Una dintre acestea era situată într-un oraș cu denumirea incomodă Drobeta-Turnu-Severin, situat pe malul Dunării. O faimoasă îngustare a râului (Poarta de Fier) este destul de aproape de acest oraș, dar este cunoscut și ca locul unde împărator roman rău și lacom pe nume Traianus a construit un pod pentru a venit să ucide și jefui bietul pământ nevinovat Dacilor. A folosit banii furați pentru a construi Colosseumul, iar apoi, apropo, a ridicat un stâlp la Roma pentru a se lăuda cu faptele sale murdare. Există o copie al stâlpului într-un muzeu din București, dar în și în jurul muzeului din Drobeta-Turnu-Severin se pot vedea rămășițe ale podului original precum și o machetă - există și un mic acvariu la subsol. Și deși românii vorbesc acum un descendent al latinei vulgare, ei ii numesc cel puțin 'Dacoromân'.

AL: Tani kam studiuar edhe artikull për Kopshtin Botanik në Tiranë ..

F3905a02_Pontus_Traiani.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
5 x

User avatar
zenmonkey
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2528
Joined: Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:21 pm
Location: California, Germany and France
Languages: Spanish, English, French trilingual - German (B2/C1) on/off study: Persian, Hebrew, Tibetan, Setswana.
Some knowledge of Italian, Portuguese, Ladino, Yiddish ...
Want to tackle Tzotzil, Nahuatl
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=859
x 7030
Contact:

Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Mar 27, 2022 7:54 pm

I saw the Arsinotherium and instantly knew where that was taken. That's one of my favorite museums!!

Next time you are in the Frankfurt area, the Darmstadt museum is also worth visiting.
2 x
I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sun Mar 27, 2022 8:47 pm

Yes - that's where they have got a quagga

F0630b03 -Quagga, Darmstadt.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
4 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon Mar 28, 2022 6:04 am

Saturday evening i reread my proboscid collection (cfr comments above) as goodnight reading - which is one way of getting the repetition I need as a language learner, but also an expression of a general interest in paleontological matters. And then it occurred to me that the dead animals weren't properly sorted according to clades, partly because I had taken the texts from different Wikipedias - but in the middle there was also a text in Catlan about the causes for the demise of the mammoth and other big animals.

CA: I la guerra és entre aquells que ho troben sorprenent que la majoria d'animals grans s'extingeixin tan bon punt arriben els caçadors humans a una zona i els que preferirien culpar al clima. El fet és que la megafauna de Amèrica del Nord, per exemple, va sobreviure una edat glacial amb interglacial posterior rere una altra, però després va venir l'home clovis, i el puff, després la majoria van desaparèixer. A les Illes Balears, les petites cabres de les cavernes (Myotragus) van viure almenys 5 milions d'anys, i després es van extingir fa uns quatre mil anys. Potser van ser desplaçats per cabres i ovelles humanes, però probablement també tenien un gust massa bo per al seu propi bé.

EN: Anyway, I decided to make a Word-file with those tusk-bearers in a mixture of chronological and taxonomic order, and when I had done those I would of course add the seacows and hyraxes too since they are related .. and then I couldn't stop. I did the rest of the Ungulates (hoofed critters) too, and I took me a whole day to finish the end with the mighty giraffe and its relatives, present and unpresent. Luckily Wikipedia has cladistical tables for most animal groups, and in many cases it also has articles with pictures - but not all. And that's where the language learning and upkeep gets its due because sometimes the best pictures and descriptions aren't found in the English version, but in some other version in a language which I hopefully can understand.

IT: Per esempio c'è una bella descrizione del Lambdotherium popoagicum nella Wikipedia italiana, mentre la versione inglese si limita ad affermare che "Lambdotherium ("Wave Beast") is a genus of North American brontothere.". Ma mancava un'immagine di una ricostruzione (le ossa sono soltanto una soluzione secondaria), e poi ovviamente si cerca su Google - e juhu, ce n'è una. Fortunatamente, il mio compendio degli ungulati è solo per uso interno, quindi posso prenderlo come screenshot, e poi unaa specie di più è nella borsa.

EN: By the way the most wellknown brontotheres were big lumpy rhino-looking animals that lived some 40 mio. years ago, and when I was young they were also called Titanotheres - but the science of Paleontology has moved ahead since then and combined the two groups/names. And one result of this irrepressible lust for change is that some traditional animal groups have been split up, others coalesced, while some species moved to other locations in the cladistical tables, in some cases because of genetical information which wasn't accessible yet during my choldhood, where I started to study paleontology. By the way: I just noticed that I missed something yesterday: it seems that there now is such a thing as a group "Afroinsectiphilia" ( :lol: ), which comprises everything from aardvarks to tenrecs from Madagascar - and the learned ones seem to think that this assembly is a relative of the group with elephants. It didn't exist as a group during my infancy, and some were not even seen as ungulates, but now I'll have to include that group later today.

Afroinsectiphilia.jpg

And this is a screendump from one of the (so far) 45 pages in my Wordfile:

Ungulata.jpg


And now I'm already thinking about covering the rest of the mammals with similar lists.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
5 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sat Apr 02, 2022 12:14 am

Iversen wrote:And now I'm already thinking about covering the rest of the mammals with similar lists.

And that's exactly what happened - I'm right now in the middle of an overview over the rodents, and there are an insane number og genera and species there! And after that the carnivores and bats...

When I was from 10 to around 15 years old I collected animal names (and even learned some Latin in the process), and I ended up with somewhere between an third and half of all the species from the amphibians, reptils, mammals and birds on my lists - and given that the internet didn't exist that was a fairly respectable result. My current project actually started with the idea that I could paint a painting with half a dozen extinct elephant species around a table or walking in some kind of procession... but then I realised that I had to read up on the history of the proboscids first. And then I decided to extend the project to all of the mammalians and their forerunners from the Permian and Triassic.

In a sense it's the feeling from my old project that has returned, except that this time I can take the information from Wikipedia and other sources. Another difference is that I don't try to get as many names as possible - nay, this time I may just take one species with English and Latin names from each genus (sometimes also the Danish name) plus an image. It wouldn't serve any purpose to build a complete list since there are qualified people who do exactly that on the internet, and Wikipeda has already more information that I could ever gather myself. The main reason to do the operation is to refresh my cladistic knowledge.

And there are a few surprises - on top of the sheer shock at being reminded of the infinitesimally microskopic selection of animals we are shown on TV or in zoos. OK, the coverage is reasonable with big mammals like antelopes and elephants, but not with mice and bats - and not even with beaked whales or lemurs. It has also been an eye opener to see how much the scientific nomenclature has changed since my teen years. In the Wikipedia article about the mammals there is a cladogramme in the section "Molecular classification of placentals", and here you notice that the elephants aren't with the ungulates (hoofed animals) anymore - they are placed in a new section called "Atlantogenata" together with the Xenarthra - i.e. sloths, armadillos and anteaters, but not the aardvarks nor the pangolins. When I was young these five groups formed the order 'Edentate' (i.e. no teeth), but new research has shown that the dental reduction didn't result from common ancestry - it's just a secondary development. It's also new knowledge that the whales descend from a landliving species that was close to the artiodactyle (even-toed) ungulates. Today the nearest relative of the whales is the hippo, and some zoologist are even considering putting them inside the artiodactyle group (just like we now know that birds just are dinosaurs that survived).

I expect to continue the project, but the end is nigh (unless I fall for the temptation to continue with for instance the birds or - even worse -fish). I have to 'do' the last rodents, the carnivores (now 'ferae') and the bats.

And languages? Well, today I went to the public library to reserve an Ukrainian grammar - or rather: the get one from somewhere else because the library has never owned one itself. The only one they could offer was a 'modern' grammar from 1949, but maybe it's OK - I'm number 2 on the reservation list. Then I went to first the 'Royal' library and from there to the university, section "Arts". I'm not sure there is even a single student of any Slavic language left there, but they have the Slavic library from better days stored in their magazines, and next week I should be able to use a Routledge grammar in their reading-room - In principle I could also get the book home, but there is a certain amount of red tape involved with that because I haven't got an umbilical cord to the university anymore. But I can probably distill the information I need to make green grammar sheets in a few days, given that I already have printouts from Wikipeda with the main features of the Ukrainian morphology (and have done the same exercise with other Slavic languages). I hope that I can start reading Ukrainian for fun this summer, but the main problem could be to find something interesting to read.

Mammalia.jpg
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
6 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests