Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[Iversen]

The move will have to wait until "Skifteretten" has issued a certificate freeing the inheritance lots and determined the size of the inheritance taxes. This institution functions as a court if the if the heirs cannot agree, but otherwise you can choose private probate, which should be cheaper and faster - though 'fast' seems to be a relative word in this context. Until that has happened I'm not allowed to remove things from the house, but I stay alternately there and in my own flat. And I have been busy emptying drawers and cupboards and putting the content in plastic bags for easier disposal when the permission comes (one whole long lifetime going into the recycle mill, sigh) - and I have also done a fair amount of gardening which isn't prohibited. Besides I have finally used my mobile hotspot to access the internet, but I miss all the programs I have got on my old computer (for instance I just saw a message that Microsoft is going to finally kill off its office suite, and the 'Photo Impact ' I use to edit my all photos has long been discontinued).

OK, I have just returned from down there, and my language studies have mainly been focused on wordlists plus their repetitions (plus some more Occitan as goodnight ritual). For instance I have made one wordlist with some 300 words from Van Goor's klein Deens Woordenboek, 11. edition from 1979, and next time I'll do the repetitions of that and an older list. And no it's not boring - sometimes I even see amusing things.

DU: Zo heet een 'plumber' loodgieter in het Nederlands van het woord voor 'lead' (plumbum): lood. Oké, de oude Romeinen maakten zeker waterleidingen van lood (omdat ze niet wisten dat het erg giftig is), maar duurde dit gebruik van lood echt zo lang? Het Engelse woord 'plumber' en Franse 'plombier' kommen uit dezelfde bron, terwijl zo'n persoon in het Deens 'blikkenslager' wordt genoemd (of onofficieel 'bliktud' = bliktuit). De beoefenaars van de industrie doen aver hun best om het gebruik van de aanduiding VVS te promoveren. Het is ook vreemd - maar eigenlijk totaal logisch - om te zien dat een 'match' lucifer heet.

Kunst065.JPG

[Iversen]

I have spent some time today doing preparations for Ukrainian green sheets. The problem is that I only have internet sources for the grammar (including tables on the English Wikipedia), and they have indeed saved me the few times I have tried to write simple things in Ukrainian - but I want to have green sheets for the purpose. And making them is of course part of the learning process.

Beneath I show two things I have made today: a list of prepositions with their cases and the inflection of adjectives and substantives on one halfsheet.

Let's take the prepositions first. I used a list at ukrainianlessons, but supplemented it with prepositions from Wiktionary. The setup at ukrainianlessons is not far from what I want, namely lists of prepositions that only are used with one case separated from those that are used with two or three cases with different meanings, but it did take some cleansing before I had the list below - and that's not even finished: you may noticed that the prepositions in the genitive column aren't strictly in alphabetical order. I also noticed that the preposition "замість" (instead of) according to WIktionary governs the genitive, whereas it's used with the accusative according to the lessons. So maybe I commited the table to a green sheet a tad too early..

Just as in the other Slavic languages (apart from Bulgarian that has abolished the case system) the general rule is that if you don't know anything else then a random preposition most likely governs the genitive, so the lazy solution is just to learn the exceptions, including those prepositions that govern more than one case. And the usual tendency to have an opposition between movement and static marked by different cases also appears in Ukrainian:

Ukra_prep.jpg

And then the adjectives and substantives, where I have used some printouts I made from Wikipedia half a year ago. As usual the masculine and the neutrum are closer to each other than to the feminine, and the whole system is permeated with the opposition between 'hard' or 'soft' endings, but with two kinds of soft plus a 'mixed' cathegory - and therefore I have a space problem, which forced me to leave out the mixed substantives (after all they resemble those patterns that survived) plus some neutrum substantives that insert eiter an 'н' or a 'т' (cfr ім'я/імені and теля/телята) - they are called the 4. declension in the system. With a few exceptions 1. and 3. declensions only contain feminines, so I deal with the 2. declension first - and where you notice that there are two kinds of masculines: one with a's and one with y's, and since the a team resembles the 2. declension neutra alot I'm tempted to split them into two subdeclensions - but I have to think that one over. There are just some rules of thumb to separate the two groups, here quoted from Wikipedia:

The following rules are given in Ukrainian Orthography:[2]

Use the ending -а with
Names of professions, people’s names (first and last)
Names of plants and animals
Names of objects
Names of settlements and geographic places
Names of measuring units
Names of machines
Words of foreign origin, which describe geometric parts, concrete objects.

Use the ending -у with
Chemical elements, materials (note a few exceptions)
Collective nouns
Names of buildings and their parts
Names of organizations and their places
Natural phenomena
Feelings
Names of processes, states, phenomena of social life (both concrete and abstract)
Names of foreign origin that denote physical or chemical processes
Names of games and dances

The endings омі/емі have mostly outcompeted и/і. In the final version I may choose to put the twain locative endings on two lines to save horizontal space. There is a similar issue with ові/еві versus у/ю, where it seems that the -ові/еві 's have become prevalent, but I'm not quite sure about their distribution. And then there is of course the usual Slavic thing about the accusative being like the genitive for animates and like the nominative for inanimates. Luckily the Ukrainians haven't followed the lead of the Polish in having special endings for male humans (with the animate group). It's bad enough as it is...

Ukra-subst.jpg

[Carmody]

You sound as if you are extremely busy with so many different things.

When you have a moment could you please tell me if the art that is posted on your log is all yours or just some of it or none. I am not clear. The art work is very striking for sure.

Thanks.

Carmody

[Iversen]

All artworks whose names start with "Kunst" are by myself, but with a few exceptions I made them all before the mid 90s. All photos whose name starts with F plus a number are taken by myself. And yes I'm busy with many things, but I have dropped a few hobbies along the way - and then I just pick them up again for a short while whereafter they sink back into the usual deepfrozen stupor.

[Carmody]

Iversen

You really are busy now but if you ever plan to post your artwork on a website, I would love to see it.

Also, at some point in the future I would be grateful to learn what your thinking is on developing language skills on the one hand and your artistic skill set. Does visual memory of an artist enhance learning skills of the linguist.

I was a sculptor back in my days.......but have never heard anyone discuss he correlation between art and linguistic skills. I have heard music and math mentioned but never the visual arts.

[Iversen]

I don't have a personal website, but most of my paintings have been shown here in this thread - although it would definitely take some time looking through it all (I actually did this one or two years ago just to see what I had written - it took several weeks). And long ago in a far and foul-smelling past I even had a channel (njliversen) on Youtube where I published a series of language related videos, followed by a short series showing some of my paintings with comments in supposedly relevant languages - and I just checked: they are still lying there at the bottom of a bottomless cesspit, but I don't really want to look at them myself and I don't recommend others to do so - they are boring beyond belief. Luckily very few people ever noticed them.

As for the connection between arts and languages: I can see how intonations in music and languages may have some kind of connection (if you sing, which I don't), but for pictoral arts and language the relation is less clear (unless you do calligraphy). There is probably as much relationship between gardening or cooking and art as there is between art and languages - i.e. you can be good (or bad) at both without there being any clear connection. The nearest thing I have been to connecting them (at a superficial level) is that I in the 80s produced a series of paintings where each one illustrated a certain language - I have shown that series here on Llorg at the very start of this log (page 3ff) ..

FR: et presque comme un précurseur de cette série j'ai fait une peinture qui montrait des motifs du livre "Gaspard de la Nuit" par Aloysius Bertrand (que j'ai traduit en danois et partiellement publiée) et une autre sur "El Desdichado" par Gerard de Nerval ... "Je suis le veuf, l'inconsolé, le prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie" Ma seule étoile est morte, — et mon luth constellé / Porte le soleil noir de la Mélancolie." etc etc. (p2) La raison que je sait ce poème presque par coeur est que j'ai fait une analyse structuraliste comme un devoir pendant mes années à l'université, et la prof l'a rejetée. Et alors, qu'est'ce que on fait dans un cas comme ça? Ah oui, on la publie sans changements dans le magazine de notre institut .. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha .. et après j'ai écrit un autre pour un autre prof (si je me souviens bien il fallait écrire six 'mini-thèses' comme ça comme partie de l'examen - j'ai écrit un sur l'occultisme français). Pas de problème ...

EN: Since I wrote the poste about Ukrainian grammar earlier this evening I have been studying a text in Ukrainian about the Simon Janashia Museum in Tbilisi ...

EO: .... , kiun mi fakte vizitis en la jaro 2000. Aŭ pli ĝuste, la plej granda parto de la muzeo estis fermita pro paneo de kurento, sed en ĉambro ĉe la alia flanko de la korto iuj esploristoj sidis kaj studis malnovajn ostojn de Homo ergaster. - unu el la unuaj antaŭhomidoj elirintaj Afrikon. Kaj la malkovro iam estis tute nova, do ili tre ĝojis povi rakonti pri ĝi. Se mi revenos al თბილისი, mi esperas viziti la aliajn partojn de la kolektoj.

Homo ergaster fra Dmanisi in Georgia.jpg

[Carmody]

Many thanks.

It is going to take me a long time to go through and digest the Niels JL Iversen YouTube channel but it looks interesting so I will get back to you.

Thanks.

[DaveAgain]

I don't have a personal website, but most of my paintings have been shown here in this thread - although it would definitely take some time looking through it all (I actually did this one or two years ago just to see what I had written - it took several weeks). And long ago in a far and foul-smelling past I even had a channel (njliversen) on Youtube where I published a series of language related videos, followed by a short series showing some of my paintings with comments in supposedly relevant languages - and I just checked: they are still lying there at the bottom of a bottomless cesspit, but I don't really want to look at them myself and I don't recommend others to do so - they are boring beyond belief. Luckily very few people ever noticed them.

As for the connection between arts and languages: I can see how intonations in music and languages may have some kind of connection (if you sing, which I don't), but for pictoral arts and language the relation is less clear (unless you do calligraphy). There is probably as much relationship between gardening or cooking and art as there is between art and languages - i.e. you can be good (or bad) at both without there being any clear connection. The nearest thing I have been to connecting them (at a superficial level) is that I in the 80s produced a series of paintings where each one illustrated a certain language - I have shown that series here on Llorg at the very start of this log (page 3ff) ..

I watched a documentary recently which explained some of the symbols used in Anglo Saxon art, Treasures of the Anglo Saxons, the symbols used evolved from allusions to Scandanavian/Germanic legends to a melange of Scandanvian legends and Christian ones.

[Iversen]

It's a wellknown fact that many artists have used legends (mostly from the antique world or biblical tales) as motives, and some modernistic artists and critics have ridiculed 'literary' paintings. But it all boils down to: do excellent writers also become excellent artsts and inversely, or in other terms: is the ability to do great things with words also positively correlated with the ability to make great artwork? And there I'm sceptical, mostly because I have worked with both words (languages) and art and music, and I can't see that I draw much on my abilities in one sphere when I work in another.

I have thoughts in words and in sounds and in pictures, and they can occur at the same time without much interference, whereas listening to two pieces of music or one of those dreadful 'double dubbings' is anathema to me. I mentioned art versus gardening and cooking, and I do believe that the ability to see a garden or cake or piece of clothing ahead of time has something picturalesque to it, which suggest a correlation with artistic skills.

Ultimately being able to create works of different kinds may come down to the courage to try.

Kunst113.JPG

[Carmody]

Iverson,

Many thanks for the Niels JL Iversen YouTube channel. They look like strong, interesting and vibrant pieces.

Carmody