Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

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

Postby Iversen » Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:44 am

I think I have already mentioned here that I worked as a computer consultant (read handyman) in public service until five years ago, and last week I was contacted by my old workplace because they needed some new functionality in an application which I programmed in VBA for Excel long ago - and which to my surprise apparently still functions. I had reckoned that it would be simple to reuse the routines in visual basic which I used in the old system, but the new task demanded several things which I hadn't used there - and I have not worked with ADO and similar things for five years so my study time has effectively been allocated to relearning hardcore programming rather than to languages. And this experience has made me wonder how I ever could find the time and sheer energy to study languages while I still had a fulltime job.

In between or alongside my forays into the world of programming I of course also listened to TV and Youtube videos, mostly music while I was busy, but to some extent also to speech in my target languages when I didn't have to concentrate too much - and among these languages you find Esperanto.

EO: Unue mi nur aŭskultis iujn filmetojn pri denaskaj esperantistoj kaj raportojn de gehomoj, kiuj uzis certan lernan sistemon (tiuj kiuj flunkis ne faras filmetojn), sed poste mi memoris, ke la lasta numero de "Esperanto" menciis filmetojn pri Marso. La unua filmeto estis origine signifita kiel malferma diskuto, sed la viro simple babilis kun si mem pri siaj kabloj kaj iafoje ankaŭ pri la hispana lingvo. Ni tamen vidas virtualrealecan medion, kie vi estis en veturilo kaj revenis al ia kupolo, supozeble hejmo de la viro aŭ hotelo sur Marso (vidu bildon sube). Iuj gehomoj sur la Tero tre fervoras atingi ĝin, sed mi pensas, ke ĝi estus tro multekosta kaj malkomforta (polvo!) kaj naŭzema kaj sincere idiotega - simple sendu maskinojn kun artefarita inteligenteco (AI) tie supre kaj ni povos tutoj viziti la planedon en virtuala realaĵo (kun tempomallongigo ĉar la veturiloj ŝajne veturas tre malrapide tie supre). Parenteze, lia aŭto ankoraŭ komunikas kun li por la anglan kaj la hispana lingvoj - ĉu ĝi ne povas esti reprogramita (esperantiĉigita)?

Poste mi aŭskultis longan prelegon pri la sunsistemo de profesoro Amri Wandel, kiu estas la ĉefa forto pri la uzo de Esperanto por scienco - kaj do li signifa grava kialo por daŭre studi la lingvon. Mi simple ne volas aŭdi pli pri d-ro Zamenhof kaj pri mondpaco kaj pri organizaj problemoj de la movado. Estas neniu kialo atendi, ke la lingvo estos uzata en la sciencaj procezoj mem, sed poste estos ĝi estas tre ŝatanta ke ni ricevos la sciencajn rezultojn prezentitajn en Esperanto - kaj Marso estas tiel malproksime, ke oni preskaŭ povas pensa ke estus naturema paroli Esperanton tie supre - sed ne Klingona, ĉar ĝi estas multe tro milita, nek la lingvo parolata de bluaj estaĵoj kun flugiloj, ĉar la atmosfero tie supre estas tro maldika por grandaj flugantaj (mal-)estuloj. Tio estus ulokruelaĵo!

Esperanto-parolanta_ Marso_.jpg
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Iversen
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Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sat Apr 03, 2021 10:38 am

Today I have watched a program on 3SAT about the renovation of the organs of the Stephansdom in Vienna (Wien), and for once I have listened too - normally I try to use subtitles because I'm litening to something on my coputer, but a program about organs should be heard, not just watched. And yesterday I first spent an inordDZinate amount of time on the music of renaissance composers like Obrecht, Okeghem, Josquin des Prez, Agricola and Sermisy. The problem that all long pieces by these people are vocal, and I don't want vocal music in my collection, so the result is that I have collected a lot of short instrumental pieces of 1 to 3 minuts. And yesterday I got all that settled in a fashion which hopefully won't ever be changed - after all I have to shape my music collection now where my brain isn't too clouded and worn out. But after that herculean task I didn't want to listen to music AT ALL so instead I listened to a string of Youtube videos with speech. OK, I was first lured into watching a lecture about procrastination and creativity in English, but after that mostly popular science videos in Portuguese (Brazilian) and Romanian.

GER: Gut, jetzt weiß ich dann ein Bissel mehr über Orgelbau und -renovierung als vor eine Stunde. Die Steffel hat zwei Orgel, ein kleines sogenanntes Chororgel und das kolossale Hauptorgan am Westende. Die Organe sind natürlich denkmalgeschützt und dürfen ihr äußeres Erscheinungsbild nicht verändern, aber alle Pfeifen abgezogen und bewertet. Die Hälfte konnte wiederverwendet werden (nach kleine Reparaturen und Stimmung), während andere eingeschmolzen und dadurch wiederbelebt wurden - und Holzpfeifen (ja, so was gibt's!) mußten vom Grund auf neu hergestellt werden. Die Metalpfeifen sind vorwiegend von eine Mischung von Zinn und Blei gemacht, mehr Zinn je heller der Klang, und ich frage mich, ob die Mitarbeiter des Unternehmens Rieger in Salzach nicht ständig mit Blei vergiftet werden - zumindest der Herr, der die Rohre abstimmt, brauchte nach der Arbeitszeit total Ruhe und Stille, aber das kann man mit Blei im Körper nicht tun.

Nach der Sendung über das Orgel von der Steffel gab es übrigens eine Sendung über den Prater, den beliebten Freizeitpark der Wiener, einst ein königliches Jagdrevier, und da nach etwas über slowenischen Osterkuchen. Und gerade macht zuerst ein Bäcker, danach eine Bäckerin Schmalzer Guckelhüpffln mit 'Topffln' (etwas weißes wie geschlagenes Eiweiß - sonst als Eischnee bekannt), auch Patzerln genannt - aber jetzt sind wir in der Tschechischen Republik angekommen, glaube ich, obwohl es in der Sendung nur Deutsch gesprochen wird.

Stephansdom at - zurzeit für Besucher geschlossen.jpg

POR: O Youtube não tem pesquisa por idioma (pesquisa e filtragem em geral não são o seu ponto forte). Quando eu queria ouvir algo no português, tentei primeiro com a palavra "lua", mas acabou ver muitos videos irrelevantes. Aí tentei com "viagem Marte", e consegui achar muito material relevante, inclusive os seguintes vídeos:

Primeiras imagens reais de Marte - O que descobrimos?

VIDA NÃO BASEADA EM CARBONO será nosso futuro

por que o GOOGLE MAPS está ESCONDENDO a ALEMANHA?

Primeiras imagens reais de Saturno - O que descobrimos?


Os números 2 e 3 da lista foram feitos pelo Sr. 'Ponte em comum', um pequeno homem brincalhão com óculos redondos que fala como uma cachoeira - mas fica muito interessante ouvir seus vídeos. A vida na Terra é baseada no carvão, mas poderia você imaginar vida baseada no silício (que também é quadrovalente)? O problema é que o carvão pode formar longas cadeias (para proteínas, por exemplo), enquanto as cadeias correspondentes com o silício são muito frágeis. E é por isso que somos feitos de carvão e não de silício, embora haja muito mais silício na nosso planeta.

GER: Und die Deutschen haben Streetview auf deutschem Boden ganz einfach verboten, weil die dortigen Authoritäten es als Verletzung der Privatsphäre betrachten. Und so kann ich den Straßentourismus nicht von zu Hause aus betreiben, was sonst ein Alternativ wäre, gerade jetzt wo das Reisen fast unmöglich ist.

Kunst093.JPG

RO: Apoi am urmărit videoclipuri în limba română. Și aici am facut o încercare cu "călătoria Marte”, ceea ce a dus la o mulțime de jurnale de călătorie (poate fi un cuvânt cheie bun în viitor) iar nu foarte mult pe Marte, dar și la un videoclip despre bătăile de călătorie dintre Regatul Unit și România în acest timp covid.

Noile reguli de calatorie Anglia - Romania | Test Covid-19 obligatoriu | Covid-19 new rules

Andrada Ion care explică iadul birocratic cu un test scump după altul din fericire vorbește foarte clar, și, deși nu am ascultat româna în ultima vreme, am înțeles cam totul - inclusiv că nu este un moment bun pentru turism...

și asta:

Bun venit in Maldive | Welcome to Maldives || Vlog de calatorie || Travel Vlog Paradise 2020

.. dar Maldivele desigur nu vor fi următoarea mea destinație de călătorie dacă vreodată lumea își revine în fire.
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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:45 pm

I have spent some time today finishing a job for my old working place, which I left five years ago when I retired. I had made a clever little thing in Excel that could look some things up, and now they wanted it to look some more things up, and then they thought that the guy who had made the original application might be qualified to do the updating. But five years is a long time in computering so part of the job was to relearn quite a few things, like how to make ADO do what I want it to do and how to survive vBasic in general. It sort of resembles reviving a rusty language, except that I have promised to deliver a functioning product.

Apart from that I have listened to music, watched a Norwegian language program yesterday evening and a string of TV programs in English about paleontology AND produced a heap of new texts for intensive study today, mostly in weak languages and therefore mostly bilingual - however for Romance and Germanic languages this is not necessary. But since I have made some progress in my Slavic etc. languages I can now have some fun with the translation languages. I did study some texts in Russian, Bulgarian and Greek yesterday, but today I have been too busy.

So here is a list of my current study texts, new as well as older ones, sorted according to language rather than level. The translations are mostly to Romance and Germanic languages plus Esperanto, with one in Frisian (from Serbian) as the most daring expriment - but it doesn't seem too hard to read Frysk (presumably the version from the Netherlands) even though I haven't studied it.

Icelandic: an old collection of short articles from Lifandi Visindi, but I think I need a new set soon.

Dutch: Some paleontological texts, including an unread one about the 'Out of Africa' scenario - no translations.

Afrikaans: the last part of a fairly long text about the Karoo in South Africa and the extinct critters that have been dug up there plus anotherl set about some longgone periods in the history of the Earth- no translations.

Portuguese: an article about the object Sedna at the outskirts of the solar system and another about the former planet known as Pluto (no translations)

Romanian: another old collection. I have earlier mentioned an article about pizzas, but there are also some unread articles about cuisine in the Antiquity and in the Middle ages.

Irish: a few texts fra Wikipedia - but it doesn't seem to be an ambition among the cainteoirí of the Gaeltacht to boost the size of their Wikipedia. The longest text by far tells about the legendary hero Cu Chulainn.

Bulgarian: a new set two different texts about the Scythians (called 'citas' in the Portuguese translation) and something about archeogenetics which also mentions them - and an old set with an unread text about Genghis Khan.

Serbian from Rep.Serbska: a set with texts about a literary price (Aladin Luka) , new corona restrictions in Serbia and closure of some restaurants in Skopje, all three from danas.rs. Normally I would expect Cyrillic writing from that area, but this is in Latinitsa.

Ordinary Serbian from Serbia: an old set with texts about BeoZoo (the zoo of BeOgrad) and a new one with a page or so about the Bronze age and shorter articles about the chess players Lasker and Capablanca - it's this last one which I have translated into Frisian just for fun.

Slovak: several texts about the town Košice and its sights. I visited it in connection with the second gathering in Bratislava. It seems that I have missed at least one museum there.

Polish: an old collection with articles about the town Stargard, including one about a Prisoner's tower there. I think I have mentioned the first one, but then forgot that there was one more. And a new set about the chess player Nimzowitsch and another, quite long one about the opera composer Donizetti

Russian: well, I had forgotten an old, but unfinished set about fairground mountebanks and the history of the balalaika and another with an unread text about Crurotarsians (an extinct sister group to the crocodiles), so I made a new set about the fastest shrimp and the fastest spider in the world and the mysteries of lateral vision.

Modern Greek: an new set with a text about the unexpected find of phosphines on Venus (which the Greeks of course call 'Afrodite'), an text about the early history of Poland and from there to Copernicus and finally a textfrom Wikipedia about the Mediterranean Sea.

Albanian: something about stopping to drink booze and covid mutations from portalb.mk, i.e. from Macedonia.

Indonesian: I still keep the long text about the history of the Earth within reach even though I'm sure that it has been machine translated from English. But since it skips every other time period I have added texts from Wikipedia about the Devonian and Silurian plus one about the island Halmahera whicj I unfortuantely I haven't visited yet.


So among all these you may notice that there isn't a single line of literature, but there is also another thing that is missing: extracts from grammar books and articles about language learning. I have of course read such things in a number of languages, but I don't use them for intensive text studies - here I prefer genuine texts about popular science and culture. And contrary to expectation I actually do get through the buffet galore above - I have to add new materials around one time per week, even though I rarely work with more than one page in any one language during any one sitting - but then it's nice to be able to switch to another language from the collection. And suddenly I discover that I haven't anything more on print in some language and I have to get searching..

PS right now I'm watching a science program on Swedish TV which claims that squids have two sleep stages, and in one of them it appears that they dream. What do squids dream about?

Kunst010.JPG

And yes, I know that this is an octopus. Do octopusses dream?
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Iversen
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Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Fri Apr 09, 2021 7:33 pm

I have been on a family visit once again, but this time I brought along a handful of my bilingual printouts plus a printout of a "Polish grammar in a nutshell" by Oscar E.Swan. Did it change much? Nah, not really - I did read some Bulgarian as goodnight reading one evening (or rather night), and I read parts of the Polish nutshell - but the order of cases irritated me: since the accusative in Slavic languages in the masculine has a tendency to follow either the nominative or the genitive so its logical place should be between these two and not somewhere further down the line. Besides it is easier for me to read declension tables when the cases always are put in the same order, and by a sheer stroke of luck the order that is logical for the Slavic languages is also the one followed in Latin and most grammars written in Anglophone countries, but alas, not in German grammars - and even though the nutshell is in English it uses the order Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Locative, Vocative.

As for the vocative I learnt one thing, it is not only used with informal abbreviated names (-a -> -o), but also it is even compulsory with titles : blabla panie profesorze! (the vocative here is identical to the the locative). There is a reason that I had overlooked that: vocatives are exceedingly rare in the kind of popular science articles I have used as study texts. People with a more literary bent would have become confronted with these forms much more often.

The Bulgarian text mentioned Gengis-Khan (Чингис хан) in one of the first lines, which fooled me, but actually the article wasn't about him - it told about yoghurt in general, and the Mongol leader was just said to have used it for meat conservation in his army (and presumably feeding both the preserved old meat and the utterly vile rests of yoghurt to his fierce soldiers).

BU: Съобщава се, че руски изследовател се е чудил за големия брой стогодишни столетици в България и го е отнесъл към ненаситната консумация на кисело мляко там. Той вярваше, че разграждането на протеините в дебелото черво произвежда токсини, но че лактобактериите могат да противодействат на това. Но тогава бацилите задължително трябва да се поглъщат на живо, за да работят, и поради това тук, дори в Дания, се продават кисело млечни продукти с живи микроорганизми (пробиотици). Липсват обаче научни доказателства за предполагаемите положителни ефекти.

FR: Mais comment la consommation de yaourt s'est-elle répandue en Europe occidentale? On raconte que le roi de France François I souffrait terriblement de diarrhée et que le sultan ottoman Süleyman lui a envoyé un médecin qui a traité le roi souffrant avec du yaourt. Et quand celui-ci effectivement a maîtrisé son estomac galoppant, il est devenu populaire de manger du yaourt en France (au moins dans les classes supérieures) - et de là, l'habitude s'est répandue.

TY: Es verbreitete sich unter anderem in Deutschland, und ich persönlich bevorzuge den deutschen Joghurt, weil er so lecker 'cremig' ist. Joghurt von dänischen Hersteller ist normalerweise dünner. Sie können aber sehr viskosen Skyr herstellen (nach isländischem Vorbild), daher sollten sie auch in der Lage sein, wirklich guten dicken Joghurt herzustellen. Warum tun sie es dann nicht?

SLK: Jednodenná konzumácia jogurtu v Košiciach (na Slovensku). Boli s nimi ponuky v miestnom supermarkete, a vždy som mal rád rozmanitosť:

F5811b05_Yoghurt.jpg
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Iversen
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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...
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sun Apr 11, 2021 9:22 pm

I have spent some internet time listening to music, but also to speech videos. Those who have read this thread more than once may remember that I sometimes write about paleontology, and today I have listened to

FR: ... trois videos par mr. Simplex Paléo sur l'histoire des proboscidiens (y inclus les éléphants). Pendant mon enfance on savait q'il y avait encore deux espèces d'éléphants sur la Terre, celui d'Afrique et celui d'Asie. Et je savait que l'ancêtre de tous les proboscidiens s'appellait Moeritherium (parce que ses os avaient été trouvé dans le lac de Moeris en Egypte) et il ressemblait plutôt à un hippothame nain qu'à Dumbo. Mais le temps passe, et maintenant on sait que l'éléphant "'des forêts" d'Afrique est si loin génétiquement des éléphants de savane (Loxodonta africana) qu'il faut le traiter comme une troisième espèce (Loxodonta cyclotis) - et c'est aussi bien qu'on a réalisé ceci car les nombres de cet espèce diminue encore plus rapidement que les taux des éléphants de la savane ou celui d'Asie.

À l'autre bout de l'échelle temporelle - d'il ya 60 mio. d'années - on a trouvé un ancêtre diminutive de quelque kilos seulement, l'Eritherium. Et entre lui et nos trois espèces contemporains il y des créatures avec des dents comme une pelle, avec quatre défenses ou défenses droites d'une longueur de jusqu'à 4 mètres ou courbes comme ceux du mammut (Mammuthus primigenius) - qui d'ailleurs était plus proche à l'éléphant asiatique que celui-ci est aux éléphants d'Afrique. Et bientot les éléphants africains deviendront 'defennceless' parce-que les braconniers tuent surtout ceux avec les défences longues.

Monsieur Paléo a d'ailleur produit une longue série de programmes paléontologiques - et non seulement sur les animaux avec un tronc, mais sur l'entière histoire de la vie sur notre planète. Pour moi c'est une excellente opportunité pour maintenir mes capacités d'écoute sans entendre une seule fois le mot "covid".

EN: Yesterday I spent some time reading thing on the internet. I played chess until the mid 80s, and last time I made new bilingual texts I included some short biographies over famous chess players in a number of Slavic languages -

POL: .. .. takie jak artykuł Wikipedii o Nimzowitchu, który faktycznie zmarł w Kopenhadze a był najważniejszym teoretykiem szachów swoich czasów. Pracowałem dzisiaj z tym artykułem...

Kunst085.JPG

EN: During my recherches I also noticed a photo of a diminutive Wunderkind Reshevski playing simultaneous chess against grown-ups. But when I looked him up on the internet I somehow strayed into a forest of articles and fora that told about people with extraordinary memories - and not just because they had taught themself some mnemotechnic system, but more from years of hard training. Like pianists who learn whole concerts by heart - have you ever wondered how many notes there are in an average score? Quite a few, I can tell you. I read some anecdotes about musicians at the site pianoworld, including some I didn't already know.

The most surprising claim came however from another site wnycstudios and told about a jazz musician named Bob Milne. A researcher became interested in him because he allegedly could keep a conversation running while playing - but, hey, that's nothing - I listen to music while I write this, and there is nothing special in that. But at closer hinsight he revealed that he could listen to several strains of music in his head at the same time. OK, I can start a piece of music and let it play almost by itself, but only one - mr. Miller claimed to be able to have up to four simultaneous strands of music running, like one with Beethoven's Emperor concert, another with a symphony of Brahms, etc. Well, how can you test that?

The history goes that the research team sat down in an adjacent chamber with four grammophones or walkmen or whatever, and they told him when to launch each piece of music. Then they would later open the door and ask how far he had got in each of the pieces, and according to the article he was always EXACTLY at the same passage in each piece of music as the mechanical thingy in the adjacent room. But that's where I get suspicious because long works routinely are played at different speeds. For instance Brendel on Youtube does the Emperor concert in breakneck speed at 39 minutes while Rubinstein needs 45 and Lang Lang no less than 48 minutes to get through the same work. So how can Bob Milne then happen to be at the same note as the grammophone or whatever gadget the reseachers used when they decided to interrupt him? There is something fishy about this report, but the thought that anyone can have more than one piece of music running in his/her mind at the same time without getting raving mad is tantalizing. I can only manage one, and in most cases I haven't the whole damned work stored in my memory so for me the music rarely lasts more than a few minutes (longer for concerts which I have played myself), and 'my' music is not on autopilot - I have to remind me to keep it running, just as I have to do with most of my languages.

Kunst099.JPG

People who excel at memory contests almost always use some kind of mnemotechnical system, but those people in India who learn the vedas by heart do so reciting them in choir for years on end (here und here) - no clever palaces or ANKI decks. There are reports that these people develop enlarged hippocampi, like the taxi drivers in London who need to memorize thousands of street names and remember where they are. But now they use GPS and lose their superb orienteering skills. I suppose you have read about the Flynn effect? - the one that claimed that intelligence levels, as measured through standardized tests, were steadily raising. Ahem, not any more - since the mobil phone was invented the trend has been reversed: now we get stupider and stupider again.
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Iversen
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Thu Apr 15, 2021 10:37 pm

Music distracted me - bad bad music! :evil:

I collected vinyl records in the beginning (the 60s into the early 70s), and I have a list over them with all items notated with performers on durations down to half minutes - but I threw the records out last summer because I don't have a functioning record player any longer, and besides I hate hiss and scratches. Then I built a cassette collction, mostly as a supplement to the records - and I also have a numbered list over those with composer names, musicians and halv minut durations. Then around 1991-92 I bult another cassette collection, this times with cassettes for the major composers and the lesser composers used to fill the spaces. All works on the records and old cassettes were supposed to be in this new collection, together with a lot of new items. And here in the 21. century I first have transferred this last collection side by side to files, and therefore my file system now is organized with page a and b like cassettes, and most durations (per file) are around 45 to 50 minutes. But files are much more flexible than tapes, so I have now spent a couple of years moving items around and edited or replaced noisy recordings and things like that.

I'm now very close to having the collection that should keep me occupied for the rest of my life. Along the way I have of course documented all changes, but I felt the need to have a simple system where I could follow each item back in time - not in all details, but just to see when I got each work and whether I still have the original version. And it takes time to build such a system, time which must be taken from my languages studies, meals and/or sleeping time.

So since Sunday I have not studied much, but still read something before sleeping, and my ol' bilingual printoouts are excelent for this purpose because I then can avoid dictionary lookups. Or depending on the languages I use monolingual printouts, magasine or books. Last evening I returned to the fascinating history of the probocids with a set of texts in Spanish, Italian and German and another set in Indonesian.

SP: En la parte española, he coleccionado descripciones relativamente breves de algunos de los grupos y especies individuales menos conocidos del grupo, como por ejemplo los numidoteridos, que incluye Phosphaterium del Paleoceno, bautizado así porque sus restos fueron encontrados en una mina de fosfato. Pero también Paleoloxodon namadicus, que probablemente fue el mamífero terrestre más grande yá (la ballena azul es evidentemente más grande). Tenía una altura de los hombros de por lo menos cinco metros y un peso estimado de unas 22 toneladas. Cuando ero niño, yo aprendí de mis libros que el mamífero terrestre más grande era un rinoceronte sin cuernos llamada Baluchiterium. Luego pasó a llamarse Indricotherium, y ahora se ha encontrado un animal que era aún más grande. (LAT) "Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis"

IT: I testi italiani raccontano di proboscidi a quattro zanne, come lo stegotetrabelonte e il tetrabelodone, i quali si vedono nelle immagini di Google qui sotto. Non è tutto chiaro perché questi animali dovrebbero avere quattro zanne e come le usassero, ma..

IND: Di teks lain (dalam bahasa Indonesia) saya menemukan artikel tentang mastadon, yang sayangnya disebut "Mammutidae" sebagai satu kelompok - tetapi mammoth bukan bagian dari kelompok ini. Ada terjemahannya d dalami teks, tapi untungnya itu ditulis dengan warna oranye terang jadi saya bisa dengan mudah menghindari membacanya - dan yang mengejutkan sekarang adalah saya sebenarnya bisa melakukannya tanpa terjemahan.

EN: And now you may ask - aren't there other things to read about or listen to in this world? Oh yes, stone dead animals from the Permian era.

FR .. J'avais déjà écouté les trois vidéos de M. Simplex Paléo (serait-il québecqois?) sur l'histoire de proboscidiens, mais hier j'ai regardé trois autres vidéos sur la préhistoire des mammifères, i.e. l'histoire des thérapsides, pélycosaures et cetera.

DA: Men jeg har også læst lidt på mit modersmål (udover min daglige avis). I en artikel i Videnskabens verden fortæller en forsker, at han ved at studere skaldede skægagamer kunne konstatere at det er ét og samme gen (kaldet EDA) der styrer udviklingen af både skæl, hår og fjer. Det har der ellers været delte meninger om.

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Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
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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
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sun Apr 18, 2021 8:20 pm

Today I have walked something like 10 kms, and in (some of) the remaining time I have studied Polish grammar. Actually I started out studying a text about the Italian opera composer Gaetano Donizetti, who wrote something like 70 bel canto operas and ended up in a psychiatric asylum in Bergamo, where he died in a state of mental derangement due to neurosyphilis in April 1848 according to Wikipedia - so no, it wasn't a mental breakdown due to operatic over-exertion.

Kunst152.JPG

But while trying to get my ultra-fickle stream of minimal Polish consciousness launched I realised that my grasp on Polish grammar wasn't as automatic as you might wish, so I then grabbed Swan's Polish grammar and my own green sheets and wrote inflected random couples of adjectives and substantives until the endings had been reinforced in my mind, and.... well, then music caught me - I was sucked back into the historical project where I try to establish some kind of overview over when I got each item in my collection. And since there are 10.260 items it can't be done in a flash.

As for the green sheet below it is not meant to tell me everything, but just to remind me of what is there. So there are things like the choice between -y/i and -ow in the genitive plural where you have to know the inflection of each word - or consult Swan, which tells you that even the Polish native speakers can't agree on where the limit goes. For a time the tendency was to use -ow (which has the benefit of being clearly recognizable), then it seems that a countermovement pushed the limit backwards so that now more words end in -i or -y. My reaction to that statement would be to use -ow whenever I'm in doubt.

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Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
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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
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed Apr 21, 2021 6:23 pm

This morning I woke up from a dream that supposedly took place in a French setting - and there were streetnames and signs in French, and I formulated my few and insignificant thoughts in French. But it was a fairly grubby setting, with narrow dark streets that led nowhere, and I was staying in some kind of studio with a steel door which you should lock with metal flangs. The one point where the illusion broke down was a a display case on the wall, ostensibly with survival food (!!), but the content was Danish sweets - not real food.

Apart from that: today the Danish museums and libraries reopened after four months of closure. You might then assume that I went straight for the libraries, but no, I went for the museums - seven museums and one set of greenhouses in one day. And Oriental food at a restaurant, because even the eateries have reopened, but under crippling conditions: you have to reserve a table at least one half hour ahead, wear a mask whenever standing, keep distances and show a corona pass which is max. 72 hours old. Luckily tests are free here and there is ample capacity at the test sites - in part even without time reservations. My old Nokia can't show digital passes, so I went around with a paper document, and it was readily accepted. The one thing that still is closed because we are goverrned by cultural morons is the interior parts af zoos and aquaria (OK, two things: cinemas are also closed). If it weren't for that hole in the reopenings I would be off on a home country voyage in a leased car like last year, but now I just take the museums in my own town and other city museums.

There are some things in opening plan which In my opinion pose a health risk, like bars, sports and other places where people sing, shout, hug, kiss and get drunk (especially when done without masks) so time will tell whether we now also get a third wawe as in several other countries in the neighbourhood, but for the movement the situation seems to be stable at a low infection level.

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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 Apr 22, 2021 6:02 pm

My museum roundtrip continues unabated, this time to a neighbour town with four museums. After I have been to those I also visited the library, and if you now expected to see me write that tourism blocked me from studying, then I have a surprise: I actually managed to combine tourism and Russian. I looked at the shelf with Russian books and chose the thinnest one by far, which turned out to be an easy reader version of Pushkin's "Queen of Spades" (or "Pique Dame" in French, "Пиковая дама" in Russian).

RU: Книга о военном в состоянии умеренного алкогольного опьянения, который считает, что в карточных играх есть одна выигрышная комбинация. Эта комбинация срабатывает несколько раз для него, но я откладываю книгу до третьей попыткой, где он бы снова теряет все свои выигранные деньги, и все идет к черту. И меня это устраивает - мошенников нельзя поощрять. (...) Я не прочитал всю книгу, потому что она мне не понравилась. Но я понимал, что я читал, - вероятно, потому, что его словарный запас был сокращен до 2400 слов.

По возвращении я поискал Пушкина в Википедии и увидел множество названий, которые я знаю по произведениям разных композиторов. Чайковский, например, написал оперу "Пиковая дама". Однако в мою коллекцию его нет, в отличие от таких работ, как Руслан и Людмила (Глинка), Кавказский пленник (Кюи), Медный всадник (Глиэр), Евгений Онегин (Чайковский), Борис Годунов (Мусоргский), Египетские ночи (Аренский), Сказка о царе Салтане & Сказка о золотом петушке (Римский-Корсаков). Так что, возможно, было достаточно хорошо, что угрожающую пристрастие Пушкина к дуэлям не стоила ему жизни, пока он не написал несколько произведений. Он оставил глубокий след в истории музыки.

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Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
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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
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sun Apr 25, 2021 6:58 pm

Yesterday I visited four museums and a library, and it could have been five museums if I hadn't succombed to the temptation of eating a pizza funghi. Today I added four museums more in two towns plus one pizza with anchovies, but after that there will be a pause - all the museums in my neighbourhood which I haven't visited yet are closed on Mondays. But I can't relax totally, because I still have some libraries on my to-do list, and I'm going to have my first Pfizer shot tomorrow. So I can't just lie down and relax.

SCO: Ah've carried ane wee beuk aroond wi me the day, namely a smaw Scots dictionar, and ah've aw had a few opportuinites tae have a peek in it during ma recent perambulations, but nae tae the extent that it micht qualify as studies. And the dictionar isnae as guid and informative as the online dictionar frae Scots-online.

EO: Kaj mi havas amason da lastatempaj numeroj de la revuo Esperanto pretaj por mi kiel bonanoktlegado, sed praktike mi laciĝis legi pli ol unu-du paĝojn ĉiun vesperon - ankaŭ ĉar mi provis ĝisdatigi mian fotosistemo ĉiutage (kaj cetere atentu ĉi tiun forumon!). Kaj mi do estas laca kiel kompleta pensiula hejmo ĉiunokte (danalingve (DA) "træt som et helt alderdomshjem").

EN: By the way I'm amazed that my fellow countrymen and -women aren't flocking to the museums now that thay have the chance once again after four months of heartwrenching exclusion. In some places I have been the only guest, and in others I have shared maybe two or three floors with half a dozen of honestly interested citizens. To get in you have to wear a face mask and show a corona pass, valid for 72 hours, but the country is now full of places where you can get quicktested for free without a reservation. Nevertheless the logistics of combining this and actually going to a museum seems to be too much for my co-citizens. I have long accepted the fact that our politicians are culturally deprived blabberheads, but now I may also have to acknowledge that we probably have the politicians we deserve ...

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