Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Jun 07, 2023 9:55 pm

I have spent some time the last couple of days making comment files to the (incomplete) species lists of fishes I made earlier - I had already done the most primitive fishes, plus those that were forerunners of amphibians, reptiles, dinos and mammals and all that, but I had postponed the majority of the fishes (and the birds that lived after the KT event) because there are so many of them ... OK, now I have started the process, and because there are so many fish and most just look like, well, fishes, I have cut down on the detailed comments to the orders and clades and families and whatever the levels are called. And that means that the job has become manageable - and besides, there are some very old fish fossils around, but to be frank, most do not look very inspiring to an amateur as me, so I don't need to wrote a lot about fish paleontology.

The last big group I have worked on is called the Otocephala, and it's the sister group of an even large school of fishes called the Euteleostei - gnowing my way through them will be my next task, and it will be great fun (hm!). By the way, it still gives me a a hint of a jolt every time I see the form "fishes" - originally it was a strong German word with no plural ending - but when referring to species of fish(es) it seems that the professionals feel the urge to add an ending. OK, so be it..

Otocephala.jpg

Most of this in done with the English Wikipedia as my main source (it's also the only source for my cladogrammes), but sometimes there is room for ventures into other languages - although I try to stick to the Latin and English names to get some measure of homogenity. When I made the original species lists I found a homepage with Danish names for a lot of species, and it was very useful - the Danish Wikipedia has not much to offer in that direction. But as a mentioned, sometimes there is room for a look at other WIkipedias - like when I studied the Actinopterygii (bone fish). Apparently there has been an industrious Italian with some knowledge about the Gonorynchidae, and there were several Gonorynchean fish families where I only could get numbers for species and genera from the Italian Wikipedia, not the English one - which resulted in quotes like this one in my comments, like this one:

IT: Sorbininardus apuliensis è un pesce osseo estinto, probabilmente appartenente ai gonorinchiformi. Visse nel Cretaceo superiore, circa 72 milioni di anni fa, e i suoi resti fossili sono stati ritrovati in Italia.

Well, that may explain the interest for precisely this group of fisheseseseses. But there are other groups of fish(es) about which the Italians haven't felt the need to write an article - for instance I haven't found one dedicated to the piranha (piraña), where even the lazy Danes have delivered their contribution - as have the Neolatinists:

LAT: piranha (Portugallice) est piscis aquae dulcis familiae Serrasalmidarum ordinis Characiformium, sive in classificationibus alternis subfamiliae Serrasalminarum familiae Characidarum eiusdem ordinis. Species in fluminibus, planitiebus inundationum, lacubusque tropicis habitant. (...)

Speaking of Latin,

LAT: Anno 2112 commissio Unionis Europaeae postulationem specierum Latinarum introducendi nomina piscantium apud piscatores intendebant - sed postulationem videtur relictam esse. Nomina Latina de piscibus etiam hodie non video; "havkat" (Anarhichas lupus, anglice "catfish") danice semper quam "koteletfisk" venundatur...

'Koteletfisk' (Thyborøn).jpg

GER: Ich habe auch über eine weitere Reise nach Deutschland nachgedacht, wo ich 2022 mit einer 9-Euro-Karte gereist bin (unter anderem nach Rheinland-Pfalz und Koblenz). Mittlerweile kostet es 49 Euro pro Monat, was auch angemessen ist – aber leider handelt es sich nicht mehr um ein einfaches Ticket das man am Automaten kaufen konnte. Jetzt ist daraus ein Abonnement geworden, und man muß dieses Abonnement vor dem 10. eines Monats per Rechner oder Handy kündigen – sonst läuft es weiter. Warum müssen Lumpen, Bürokraten und Vollidioten mit ihren komplizierten Erfindungen alle Gute und Einfache Dinge ruinieren?

F6323a06 - Koblenz, Blick nach Ehrenbreitstein 2022.jpg
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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Thu Jun 08, 2023 2:03 pm

Since yesterday I have done something clearly unfishy, namely studied an article from the Polish Wikipedia about a Hungarian lutenist from the 16. century named Valentin Bakfark - unless of course you prefer to use one the alternative name forms: Valentinus Greff Bakfark, Bálint Bakfark, Bachfarrt, Backvart, Bekwark .... Strict orthography was not a main occupation of people back then, but there is a reason for the many names of this man, namely that he was employed in many different places and used a different form in every new location. He was born in Brassó (now Brașov in Romania), was then employed in Buda in Hungary (the left half of Budapest) and was ennobled there (not mentioned in the Polish article), stayed for some time in France and then got an offer from the Polish king and Lithuanian grandduke, Zygmunt II August, ...

PO: ...gdzie pracował w latach 1549-1566. Był bardzo szanowany i zarabiał tyle, że w 1559 roku kupił dom w Wilnie. Ale w 1566 roku coś poszło nie tak: Zygmunt nagle bardzo się na niego rozgniewał, a potem dom został zniszczony i Bakfark musiał uciekać, najpierw do Poznania (gdzie Zygmunt faktycznie też rządził), a stamtąd do Wiednia. Co było powodem? Angielska Wikipedia twierdzi, że przyczyna jest nieznana, ale polska Wikipedia jest bardziej precyzyjna: Bakfark powinien był przekazać informacje królowi pruskiemu Albrechtowi. Jednak zmarł na dżumę w Padwie we Włoszech w 1576 roku i znowu opinie są podzielone. Angielska Wikipedia twierdzi, że sam spalił swoich niepublikowanych dzieł, podczas gdy polska (i włoska) Wikipedia podaje, że spalenie całego dobytku osoby zmarłej z powodu zarazy było normalną procedurą. I jedno i drugie nie może mieć racji. W każdym razie większość jego produkcji zaginęła.

Kunst007.jpg
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Tue Jun 13, 2023 6:56 am

Yesterday I returned from a trip to Munich, and it was a hard trip in several ways, but worthwhile. The model was like my trip to Koblenz last year: nighttrain 1.class to save time and .. well maybe not money, because I could maybe have flown down there cheaper, but you never know before you see the final price. The thing about time was relevant because we have a drought, and I would have had to organize something about watering my garden if I left for longer time. As for the money: DB (Deutsche Bundesbahn) had fairly reasonable prices during the night even on 1.class, so.. Last year when I visited Koblenz the outwards train ran over somebody, and so did the homebound train. This year nobody died (although one train had to temporarily stop for medical attention to a passager). And because there weren't any 9€ tickets for free travel in a month this year the trains weren't nearly as overfilled, and punctuality was better. But when I had to change train in Neumünster North of Hamburg around midnight the train that should have been there had left early without passengers. Instead the personnel of the train that brought us there contacted their central office, and we were sent to Hamburg by taxi - and I miraculously catched my ICE train to Munich just before it left. On the way home we arrived in Flensburg and expected to see a Danish train northwards, but no - it had been cancelled due to a conflict (and not even the German train people had been informed of this). So instead of relying on maybe catching the next train two hours later I took a local bus to the border and another from there Northwards into Denmark. OK, I had to pay a bus ticket, but that's better than waiting for hours on a German train station and maybe even being stuck. It was worse for other passengers, who maybe had expected to go to places like Copenhagen (or in once case Sweden), and who didn't have any informations to base their decisions on.

In Munich I bought a 'Tourist ticket' for 27€ that gave me free local transport to just about anything I might want to visit there, but I had planned on buying the replacement for the 9€ ticket at 49€. But unlike the 9€ ticket it is based on a subscription model, and guess what - you need a German bank account to get it. Actually I wonder whether this isn't a blatant infraction of the EU rules concerning technical trade impairments, but apparently the central EU authorities have chosen to close their eyes - and the immediate consequence for me is that I have scrapped my plans to visit Germany repeatedly later this year, visiting several towns per trip (as I did on my epic five-day voyage to Koblenz last year).

GER: München ist eine große Stadt mit einer Fülle an Sehenswürdigkeiten, und ich hatte nur zweieinhalb Tage dort (mit zwei Nächten in einem hotel), also war das, was ich während dieser Zeit sehen konnte, begrenzt. Ich kam am Freitagmittag an und besuchte nachmittags vier Museen und aß eine Pizza quattro formaggi in der Nähe des Marienplatzes. Zum Glück hatte ich einen Kühlschrank in meinem Zimmer, den ich mit Proviant füllte. Am Samstag habe ich zunächst vier Kirchen besichtigt, dann die Residenz, das Sealife-Aquarium im Olympiapark und den Tierpark Hellabrunn und ein Einkaufszentrum gesehen und dort einen Burger gegessen. Am Sonntag mußte ich mit dem Zug nach Hause fahren um 20:50 Uhr, und um mein Gepäck nicht mit sich herumschleppen zu müssen, habe ich den ganzen Tag damit verbracht, Museen zu besichtigen: zuerst die neue Transportabteilung des Deutschen Museums, dann die Alte Pinakothek (die Neue Pinakothek ist derzeit geschlossen) und schließlich die immense Hauptabteilung vom Deutschen Museum. Und dann habe ich übrigens Pizza Sicliana mit Sardellen und Kapern zum Abendessen gegessen. Auf den Besuch vieler anderer Museen mußte ich jedoch aus Zeitgründen verzichten. Aber das sind die Bedingungen, wenn man nach Hause muß um seinen armen dürren Garten zu gießen.

EN: Luckily my German is quite OK, so I didn't even think about speaking anything else there. And I had several fairly extended conversations with museum employees and others. In the Old Pinakothek (an art museum covering the period from the Middle ages to the early 20. century there was a room where children and childish grown-ups could make crayon drawings. It's not my preferred technique, but I couldn't resist the temptation and produced the rather smallish thing to the left (about 10x10 cm), based on paintings in the room (some shown to the right). I took a photo of the result and left the room, but when I returned once more just before leaving the museum I saw several people - including two members of the staff- standing around it, staring. And they wondered why I didn't wanted to take the drawing with me, but I told them I collect paintings (my own), not drawings, and then one of the staff members asked for permission to take it. Actually I was not quite satisfied myself- with the pencils supplied it was impossible to draw fine details like fingers - but it was funny to see the reaction of the onlookers. And we got a good conversation, where I also mentioned an early case from my former home town, where I had produced a similar hotch-potch collage of elements from real artworks at the local art museum, and later I heard that it had been placed in the canteen of the staff.

Zeichnung aus der Alte Pinakothek.jpg
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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Fri Jun 16, 2023 8:18 pm

I have now done the repetitions of Slavic wordlists from my 30 language extravaganza, so now I just have to do them for Irish, Esperanto and Indonesian, which should be possible to accomplish before midnight. And then I may still be sufficiently awake to read some more before I fall asleep. Yesterday evening (or night) I read about a couple of churches in Thessaloniki in the mini guidebook I bought during the Polyglot congress in 2016 down there, and I expect to do some more churches tonight. My Greek has improved since then, but I did use it for some basic communication already in 2016 - including when ...

GR: ... συμπεριλαμβανομένου του χρόνου που στάθηκα κοντά στον Λευκό Πύργο και είδα εκατοντάδες Έλληνες να περπατούν προς την ίδια κατεύθυνση - μακριά από το κέντρο της πόλης. Γιατί το έκαναν αυτό; Ρώτησα έναν από αυτούς και είπε ότι ήταν η εθνική τους γιορτή - και δεν είχα ιδέα από πριν. Και μετά στάθηκα όρθιος μαζί τους και αγριοκοίταξα. Υπήρχαν κάποια στρατιωτικά στοιχεία και διάφορα σώματα, αλλά και διάφορα επαγγέλματα. Και αν δεν είχα αναρωτηθεί για την κατεύθυνση του πλήθους, δεν θα είχα δει την πομπή. Επιπλέον, περπάτησα και κοίταξα ερείπια και παλιές εκκλησίες, αλλά βρισκόμουν και στον ζωολογικό κήπο, ο οποίος είναι μάλλον άθλιος και παραμελημένος. Και φυσικά συμμετείχα και στο ίδιο το συνέδριο.

I have some other things lying and waiting for me on the chair that serves as night table at my bed, but with the miserable reading speed I can muster in my sleepy condition after midnight it takes time to get to them.

F5525b02 Thessaloniki 2016.jpg

Apart from that: I spent at least an hour yesterday checking possible travel options. I had actually decided to book a specifik two-week trip to Madagascar this fall, but it was already sold out, and the next trip from that company is in 2024. The problem is that I already have visited the area from the capital Tana to the East coast AND that I don't want to waste my precious (and costly) time at some boring beach, which is a part of some itineraries. Maybe I should book with a French or local company because the Danish agencies all offer Danish-speaking or Anglophone guides, and that would feel totally put of place on that island (where they speak a lot of different Austronesian languages, but also French). The reason that I would consider buying a roundtrip is that I know from experience that local transport in Madagascar is notoriously miserable. By the way, I should have written this in French...

OK, with my plan A in ruins I had to look at other destinations, but I have visited most of those I found interesting from the Danish agencies ... or it would have cost a fortune to go there or the travel plan didn't suit me. So I may just have to do more of those short improvised trips where I buy transport and book a hotel myself - that's what I did when I went to Munich/München, and I have done it many times before. At least there is a chance that there will be more varied weather next week so that I don't have to water the garden all the time. So far I haven't bought anything. And that means that I can spend more time studying my languages the next couple of weeks, but won't get any speech training. But that's simply not good enough! So far I have only used my English, German and Greek this year, and I'm not going to Southern or Eastern Europe before it stops raining there... but that's where they speak most of my languages.
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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Jun 21, 2023 5:36 pm

I have spent a lot of time on other things than languages since the message above. Saturday I participated in a meeting in my travel club, and the time until the meeting started was spent on visiting places in the area. Part of Sunday was spent on organizaing my photos from Saturday, and the rest plus Monday and parts of Tuesday were spent on my comments to comments to animal species - among other things I made a collection of cladogrammes that cover basically everything from salps to people. And why include the salps? Well, they have something called a notochord during their early development, but it is lost by the time they have completed their metamorphosis to adulthood. However that's reason enough to include them in the phylum Chordata, which again is part of the Deuterostomia. And what's the common thing among Deuterostomians? Quote Wikipedia: "In deuterostomy, the developing embryo's first opening (the blastopore) becomes the anus, while the mouth is formed at a different site later on. This was initially the group's distinguishing characteristic, but deuterostomy has since been discovered among protostomes as well." So basically we all first and foremost are assholes that develop a head much later on. I somehow expected that ...

Today started with a lot of rain, which I celebrated by buying a blueberry bush and planting it in the moist earth. But after that the dry spell is supposed to continue unabated, so I shall continue to name sunshine and blue skies as "møgvejr" in Danish (literally shit weather). At least the TV meteorologists now sometimes mention the downsides of perpetual drought instead of just inviting people to hurry to the beaches and get skin cancer. When we last had so much 'møgvejr' (2016) I stopped watching the weather reports because I couldn't stand watching the presenters rejoice extatically about one more week without rain. But I have read that Southern France is worse hit - there it has apparently been banned to water gardens or fill up swimmingpools. But the rich ones just pay the penalties and continue to enjoy their pools and gardens.

Kunst100.JPG

Today much time has been spent on checking and to some extent revising a version of my opus 31, which some nice people in the UK have found on the musical score site IMSLP, and now they apparently want to play the lot so they have 'sibeliused' it. For your information: Sibelius is a progam that can write musical scores so that other people also can read them.

In spite of all these diversions I have managed to do a few things with relevance to my language studies. For instance I finished the repetition round for my 30-language project yesterday. I had expected to do it Friday, but then I ended up doing something else. I have also finished the French Science et Vie mag I have been using instead of sleeping pills for the last couple of weeks. And then I have been studying extinct monster birds in Czech. Actually I don't study Czech, but it resembles some languages I actually have studied so it is close to being comprehensible.

I started out when I moved the issue of the Greek airline magazine "Blue" from my curent-task notestand and found a collection of texts in Czech below it. The first article (from Wikipedia) told about a wee 3,5 m high birdie named Teratornis, but then I somehow remembered good old Diatryma from my childhood - and then I read the short and simple article in Czech about it directly from the screen. But there ain't no Diatryma on the official list anymore - it has been renamed as Gastornis. Why? Well, I have read several Wikipedias to learn why. And let's first quote the Danish article:

DA: "Gastornis, eller Diatryma, er en uddød slægt af store fugle der levede i Palæogen perioden. I Europa blev slægten kaldt Gastornis, hvis medlemmer var gennemsnitlig 1,75m høje. I Nordamerika var der en slægtning der var 2m høj, som blev placeret i sin egen slægt Diatryma. De anses nu for at være samme slægt, Gastornis. De havde et usædvanligt stort næb, der muligvis betyder at de var kødædende. De havde kun små vinger, så de kunne ikke flyve."

But this is not quite correct - current science has moved on, and as the Czech article writes, [CZ]"v roce 2012 se zjistilo, že byl býložravcem". How come? Well, it was "velmi pomalý, neměl na konci zobáku zahnutý hák (jako ostatní draví ptáci) a na nohou neměl ostré drápy." So it was apparently just a big slow fat vegetarian that cracked nuts with its monstrous beak. Or in other words, something like a flightless parrot - except that it now is diagnosed as a distant relative of your favorite duck. And what about the name?

SLK: Příběh za jménem je také složitější. Pojmenoval ji monsieur Hébert v roce 1855 po Gastonu Plantém (který vynalezl jakousi baterii, ale viděl i podivné kosti) na základě neúplné kostry (mimo jiné chyběla hlava). V roce 1874 našel slavný Američan Cope mnohem kompletnější kostru a nazval ji Diatryma. Takže v mém dětství existovala dvě samostatná jména, ale dnes víte, že Diatryma je 'jen‘ jiné jméno pro Gastornise – a to nemá nic společného s geografií.

F2346a03_Diatryma-La Plata, Argentina.jpg

SP: Pero hay otro tipo de pájaro gigante que no ha sido relegado al vegetarianismo: los Phorusrhacidae (o aves del terror) es una familia extinta de aves superdepredadores que principalmente vivian en América del Sur desde hace 62 a 1.8 millones de años. Su tamaño iba desde 1 a 3 metros de altura. Según Wikipedia en español: Se considera que sus parientes más cercanos en la actualidad son las chuñas o seriemas, que miden alrededor de 80 centímetros de alto. Entre otras cosas, los conocí en el zoológico de Foz de Iguaçu, y escribí lo siguiente sobre ese encuentro en mi cuaderno de viaje:

DA: Foz de Iguaçu (hvor de fleste besøgende på den brasilianske side overnatter) har også en normal zoo, som dog virker lidt hensygnende. Både fugleparken og Foz zoo præsenterer en skæg fugl ved navn seriema. Mit møde med den i Foz zoo forløb således: Der var fire seriemaer i et stort bur. Den første hoppede op på en gren og ytrede følgende: "Ah .. AH .. AHH .. AAAaaaaaaAAAAAHHHHHHH". Derpå total tavshed, mens den vurderede virkningen. Og så igen: "Ah .. AH .. AHH .. ARHH... AAAaaaaaaAAAAAHHHRRHHHH". Nu hoppede fugl nr. 2 op på en anden gren og skrålede med, "Ah .. AH .. AHH .. AAAaaaaaa-AAAAA-HHHHHHHHH-AH-AH". Så startede nr. 3. Nr. 4 - formentlig den laveste i hakkeordenen - skævede først konsterneret på sine artsfæller, men efter en 3-4 minutters koncert gav den sig også til at gale op fra bunden af buret. "Ah .. AHH .. AAAaaaaaa-AAAAA-HHHHH-HAH-RAAAH-AH-AH". Herefter mente fugl nr. 1 åbenbart at det kunne være nok og tavsheden bredte sig lynhurtigt igen. En af fuglene hoppede hen og gloede på mig. Det så grangiveligt ud som om den undrede sig over at jeg var der endnu.

F2315a0x_seriema.jpg
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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Thu Jun 22, 2023 10:55 am

It's now midday, and apart from a brief gardening action I have been watching TV until now. When I switched it on there was a program about ..

FR: ..le peintre impressioniste français Claude Monet, mais comme il est normal, une voix allemande s'est mélangé à la voix originale française. Mais même si je reçois mon signal par câble, il s'est avéré que cette chaîne franco-allemande avait la possibilité de choisir sa langue - et je suis donc passé au français, ce qui a fait taire l'agaçante voix allemande. Monsieur Monet a développé une fascination pour la cathédrale de Rouen, qu'il a peinte sous toutes sortes de lumière à toutes les heures possibles de la journée. Et lorsqu'il rejoignit ses nénuphars à Giverny, il emporta avec lui une documentation unique sur cet édifice gothique. Et je l'ai entendu en français, qui était bien sûr la seule langue appropriée pour ce sujet. Ensuite, il y avait une section sur les têtes de dragon, les gargouilles, qui ornent les cathédrales françaises, mais font également partie d'un système médiéval de drainage.

Kunst071.JPG

EN: After that I have mostly watched stuff in English, including something about construction errors, but also something about the wandering Ark. They had to do in English since I don't understand Ivrit - sorry. for the inconvenience When I went to the channel it was in the middle of a description of the Philistine harbour city Ashdod. The Philistines once conquered a Jewish army and grabbed the Ark. But according to the Bible they had all sorts of problems with that thing and returned it to the Jews - maybe in the hope that it would be as bothersome to them. Then it seems that it spent some time in a place called something like /Kinya ti ahrim/, officially just twenty years until it was moved til Jerusalem - but the site seems to have been in use for at least two hundred years.

The problem is that Jerusalem was a modest town at best in the smaller of two Jewish countries at the time, Judah - and not only did the place with the weird name blossom for far too many years, but it's hard to see why the strong kings of the Northerly Israeli state would have sent a superholy object down to their competitors in the South. And this is where logic and history come together. The Northern kingdom was smashed by the brutal Assyrians, and when those bad guys left again it was the Southern country, Judah, that under the king Josiah absorbed the ravaged area. And Jerusalem only really started to flourish from that point.

It has been exceedingly difficult to prove that the glorious kings David and Salomo even existed, and Josiah's scribes may have rewritten the history a tad to make it seem more glorious than it was. And the Babylonians arrived and dragged part of the population away, including the academics of the time - so when they got the chance to return home they just continued telling the story as defined by the scribes of Judah (don't rock the boat!). Where the ark is now is another question, but the programme even suggested that the thing was replaced at keast once, and that the object described in detail in the Bible simply wasn't the one allegedly carried around by the Jews centuries earlier. There is an Assyrian relief that shows a box carried along in a procession with war spoils, and it doesn't fit the description in the Bible. So the message must be that we don't know what happened, and we shouldn't trust the old sources blindly.

Right now I'm watching a report about a Canadian apartment building that had been clad in inflammable polyethylene because somebody was a raving mad fool who only looked at the price tag - and then that house in Victoria on Vancouver Island went up in flames with several of its innocent inhabitants.

Yesterday evening I did manage to study the Czech text about the mighty bird Teratornis, which contrary to Gastornis/Diatryma and the thunder birds could fly - and it had a cousin named Argentavis magnificens which was even more magnificent - it had a wing span of up to 7 m. The critter below is just a gull, but I haven't painted neither Teratornis nor Argentavis yet. Maybe I should - I still have all my old painting gear including canvasses.

Kunst093.JPG
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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 » Sun Jun 25, 2023 9:47 pm

We finally got some rain Wednesday morning, and the meteorologists prdect more rain around noon Monday and maybe som later in the week. I took that as a signal that it wouldn't be too foolish to add some more plants to my garden - which I have been reluctant to do during the last month or so because of the drought. And I ended up with a bunch of roses in different colours and shapes, including some that can climb and crawl if you provide them with something that can support them. And I bought some Antirrhinum (snapdragons) to add some colour, but it is unlikely that they will survive next winter. Time will tell whether it was worth the effort, but it took a couple of days to do the whole thing.

I did however study Greek for several hours last evening. In my airline magazine Blue - which has supplied me with short bilingual study text for years - I found a long article about Irakleio on Crete, which I recently visited. It is marred by references to unattractive eateries and bars and shops (like the preceding article about Paris), but I skipped those - and by the way, if I ever see such places mentioned in an airline magazine I expect them to snobby and expensive and mediocre. The article was hoewver long enough to keep me occupied for some time. And after that I got the idea to search for "Ηράκλειο" on Youtube ("Iraklio" won't do - then you only get Anglophone videos).

GR: Πρώτη φορά είδα κάτι από ένα μεγάλο βίντεο του Τάση Δούση. αλλά δυστυχώς δεν μοιραζόμαστε μουσικά γούστα, οπότε δεν το είδα μέχρι το τέλος. Τα επόμενα βίντεο που βρήκα είχαν απλώς εικόνες ή ταινίες μικρού μήκους από την πόλη με μουσική χωρίς σχολιασμό, και φυσικά δεν μαθαίνω τίποτα από αυτό. Κατέληξα να παρακολουθώ ένα βίντεο 40 λεπτών που ονομάζεται "Γυρίσματα..". Ομολογουμένως έχει και μουσική υπόκρουση, αλλά στη μέση αυτή η μουσική είναι ενόργανη και λιγότερο ενοχλητική. Ωστόσο, χαίρομαι που οι άνθρωποι που έκαναν αυτήν την ταινία δεν χρειάστηκε να αποφασίσουν το πρόγραμμα της ημέρας μου, το οποίο περιλάμβανε πολλά μουσεία αλλά ούτε ένα εστιατόριο. Οι περισσότεροι τουρίστες στην πόλη ελπίζουμε να επισκεφθούν το αρχαιολογικό μουσείο με τους θησαυρούς από τους Μινωίτες, αλλά υπάρχει επίσης ένα καλό μουσείο ιστορίας, ένα μουσείο αρχαίων εφευρέσεων και ένα εντυπωσιακό μουσείο Φυσικής Ιστορίας με, μεταξύ άλλων, τα διοράματα παρακάτω.

F6416b03_dioramaer, Iraklion.jpg

Today I have studied texts from Wikipedia in Slavic languages. First one about bagpipes in Polish, then one about sunflowers in Bulgarian and finally one about the Ruthenians in Ukrainian. But it seems to be rather vaguely defined who these Ruthenians were. The article mentions the Arab dplomat Ibn Fadhlan and his description of a burial ceremony, and it is normally seen as a burial of somebody with wiking ancestry. The article also mentions the reputation of the Ruthenians as fierce and murderous warriors (and cunning traders), but then adds that the Byzantine Greeks were just as brutal in their dealings with the - and this is the pertinent point - Rus. On the other hand the Anglophone Wikipedia tells that "Ruthenian (руска(ѧ) мова, рус(ь)кй ѧзыкъ;also see other names) is an exonymic linguonym for a closely related group of East Slavic linguistic varieties, particularly those spoken from the 15th to 18th centuries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in East Slavic regions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth." And that's not the same as the old kingdom Rus that had Kyiv as its capital. So the confusion is total, and maybe "Ruthenians" should just be seen as a loose term that covered all Eastern Slavs, used by barbarians who didn't know better. That being said, now Ruthenian is recognized as a minority language im several countries in the region, but apparently not all the potential speakers see themselves as part of that minority. And by the way: "Ruthenian" is not the same as "Rusyn".

Rusyn coat of Ams (Wikipedia).jpg

In between I have also had my TV switched on, and then accidentally I saw the last moments of a Danish TV program about dialects, and when that ended I switched to NDR from Germany and to my surprise saw there the last moments of a program called "Platt im Norden", which looked like it could be part of a series. So now I'll have to check every Sunday between 11 and 12 to see whether there will be more episodes.

Platt: Ik höff in die ölle Dagen "Talk op Platt" op NDR sehn, aver sie höffen dann Platt door bannig vele Johren Platt, so 't wöör voor mi totaal onverwachtens noch eenmal een heel platte Programm op de Kiekkasten to sehn - obschoonst 't wöör bloots sien Endung. As Ina Müller hett schreven (als Titel vun een Beuk): "Platt is nich uncool".
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inu
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby inu » Tue Jun 27, 2023 5:01 am

So now I'll have to check every Sunday between 11 and 12 to see whether there will be more episodes.

No, you don‘t. Just check every last Sunday of a month. ;)

"De Noorden op Platt" läuft an jedem letzten Sonntag eines Monats ab 11.30 Uhr im NDR Fernsehen, danach ist die 30-minütige Sendung in der ARD Mediathek zu sehen. Erster Sendetermin ist der 29. Mai.

NDR offers more TV and radio programms in platt. (Hope the link works.) You can find the programm in the ARD Mediathek too. If you have access. I don‘t know if it‘s available outside of Germany.
https://www.ndr.de/kultur/norddeutsche_sprache/plattdeutsch/Plattdeutsch-in-Radio-und-Fernsehen,platt710.html
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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 » Thu Jun 29, 2023 9:50 pm

GE: Früher habe ich auf meinem alten Computer Sendungen in den Mediatheken der deutschen Sender (und den entsprechenden Sammlungen von dänischen Fernsehsendern) öfters geschaut, aber dann konnte ich das plötzlich nicht mehr, und ich habe mich auf meinem neuen Computer nie wieder richtig daran gewöhnt - aber ich sollte ganz sicher diese Gewohnheit auf jeden Fall wieder aufnehmen, jetzt wo es wieder möglich ist. Meine Mutter hatte Zugang zu Astra, aber mit der Umstellung auf digitale Übertragung ging die Zahl der Sender zurück, die Bäume im Garten wuchsen und irgendwann funktionierte die Umstellung nicht mehr. Die Mediatheken wären also potentiel mein Rückweg zurück zu den Sendern, die ich nicht mehr live sehen kann - zumindest nicht, bevor jemand mir die Satellitenantenne wieder zurück zum Leben gebracht habe..

EN: Yesterday and today I have spent some time on fish commentaries - and the Anglophone Wikipedia is my main source there, with a large margin. However I sometimes also consult other Wikipedias - and now I have mentioned the senile frailties of my old computer I should probably also mention that I can't switch to other language versions anymore if I use Firefox*, but the function fortunately still works on Chrome (but for how long?) - and I can see on my comments that I sometimes have quoted those versions. Like German with the "Makrelenartigen" (Scombriformes). Ou français sur "La reproduction des syngnathidés" (trumpetfishes and seahorses).

* edit: now Wikipedia's language hopping miraculously work again even in Firefox (but of course not in the Explorer that came with the Windows 7 back in the stone age)

Snakehead fish (Channa channa) - WIkipedia.jpg

But the old lady still can show Youtube videos (even though I have to click through some exhortations to update my obsolete software every time I start the program). Yesterday I first listened to piano music by Thalberg and Liszt, but then I got lured to watch a video about the pronunciation of a lot of long dead languages, and after that the thing showed me other similar videos. On of these (about the spread of the Indoeuropean languages) could be heard in other languages than English, and I chose of course Portuguese, but when you first get sucked into the Anglophone bubble it's hard to remember that there are other languages in the world - and Youtube's primitive search mechanism doesn't have the essential language choice of Google search so you have to FIGHT to leave the Anglophone bubble. Ok, I searched for Barcelona and got a lot of videos about Barcelona - in English :roll: . Then I added "Català", and it showed me a mixture of Anglophone videos about Barcelona and Anglophone pseudocourses in Catalan for less-than-beginners (plus pianoworks by Liszt and Thalberg in the right margin). Then I searched for "Barri Gòtic" but still mostly got Anglophone junk with a few interspersed Castellano items. :evil:

While writing these lines I did the same search again to confirm my obersations and had to roll down through the same depressing pile of Anglophone dung plus three or four items in Spanish and one in -guess what!-Polish!! But then I at least found one promising item in Catalan far down the list ("La recreació ideal del Barri Gòtic"), which I'll watch more attentively when I have finish writing this tirade. The point is of course that there only is one language in which there is something called "Barri Gòtic", and that's Catalan - so if Youtube wasn't so intent on submerging people in Anglophone stuff against their will it would start out giving suggestions that actually corresponded to the thing they had asked for. That being said: once you find a gem in the slag and watch it, it will propose something in the same direction in the right margin (unless you delete your cookies of course - then you are back to square one). Yesterday I ended up connecting directly to the homepage of the Catalan channel TV3, and there I did find a lot of junk programs too, but at least they were in Catalan.

Youtube Barri Gòtic - irrelevant stuff.jpg

CAT: Per cert, he visitat diverses vegades el Barri Gòtic, i també recordo haver esmentat alguns dels seus llocs d'interès (com la catedral i el Museu Marés, que té autèntiques ruïnes al soterrani). La primera vegada que vaig visitar la ciutat, em vaig asseure amb les dames envellides a la plaça de la catedral per a mirar la sardana. Un d'ells em va preguntar si jo sabia el català, i jo vaig dir - en català -que malauradament no podia parlar la llengua -i després vaig escoltar tota la sèrie de barcelonines als bancs grans xiuxiuejant entre ells: "el diu que no sap català, però ho diu en català". Trucs com aquest són divertits...

I have also studied a text about sunflowers and the use of herbicids in Bulgarian, but this rant has already become too long so I'll postpone any comments to that theme.

F0314a04_Sardana (1978).jpg
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby sfuqua » Fri Jun 30, 2023 2:10 pm

I, too, find google's algorithm to be infuriating. It is part of why I don't fear a Google take-over of the world. Google has a really hard time figuring out what I like to watch on YouTube, and it has an even harder time figuring out what I like to listen to for music. :shock:

One thing I tried actually seemed to work. I assume that Google is listening all the time, so after one of its stupider suggestions for what I want to listen to, I stopped and said, "Google, this music is stupid. I am completely bored with these suggestions. You are a dumb algorithm!" I continued to insult it for a while and then stopped. Nothing happened, but when I next opened Google music, it asked if I would like to enter some data about my music preferences. I spent about 10 minutes answering questions about what kind of music I like. :D
Google's suggestions have been much better ever since then. :lol:

Maybe I will lecture Google today about my YouTube suggestions. :D
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荒海や佐渡によこたふ天の川

the rough sea / stretching out towards Sado / the Milky Way
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