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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby guyome » Tue Jan 05, 2021 10:54 am

Chaghatay
Lesson 9 has what is to me a better ratio of new words vs. amount of reading, so there's that. I still wish there were much more reading material though...

Reading notes
1) Past participle öltürgän is used twice as a sentence-ending verb form:
Toḫta Āḫūnni yatqan öydä milṭiq birlän atip öltürgän. [end of the text]
"They shot Tokha Akhund with a rifle in the house where he was staying. [end of the text]"

I don't think this use has been introduced yet, nor does it seem to be explained in further lessons. Lesson 8 only covers two things:
1) -ǧan/-gän forms used as adjectives (yanǧan mullalar "having-returned mullahs" > "mullahs who have returned")
2) -ǧan/-gän forms used with case suffixes (mullalar yanǧanda "at the mullahs having-returned" > "when the mullahs returned").
Given this, the use of öltürgän as a sentence-ending form doesn't seem self-evident. Manchu uses the same past form -ha/-he/-ho as past participle and past tense, so I wouldn't be too suprised if Chaghatay did the same. Still, it would be nice if some explanation was given in the lessons.

2) What is the Accusative doing here if Qutluq Bāčkīr is the Subject of kelip?
Qutluq Bāčkīrni näččän ādamlar birlän bu yärdin kečädä kelip, Šawkat Āḫūnni alip berip, taǧarǧa solap, daryāǧa tašlap öltürgän.
"Qutluq Bachkir came to this place with a few people, took Shawkat Akhund out for them, put him in a bag, and threw him in the river, killing him."
Manchu sometimes uses the Accusative marker be after the Subject of a sentence, but this happens when the sentence itself is part of a larger sentence. Here it doesn't seem to be the case (or maybe it is and the sentence goes on after the end of the extract used in the book? Could that also explain the use of -gän as an apparent sentence-ending form?).

3) Vocab problems:
- yänä bir munčä "several more" is hard to understand without the translation, especially since munčä isn't explained until lesson 14
- kir- "to enter", appears in one example (section 9.8) but not in the vocab list of this lesson
- tüš- "to make camp", given in the vocab list of lesson 11
- kät- "to leave", not in the vocab list (but is in the Glossary)
- čap- is given as "to speed", which I guess is the basic, dictionary meaning but doesn't really fit here, where it's used with a direct object: bir miŋ bäš yüz tütün kišini čaṗiṗ. So, what does "to speed people" mean? The author's translation suggests something like the Qalmaqs "speedily bringing people" in ("the Qalmaqs came to Toqquz Tara. They ran there with 1,500 households of people").

4) typos:
- talašadurǧanlar (text)/talašidurǧanlar (translit.)
- Sulṭān barip (text)/Sulṭān berip (translit.)
- kečädä "at night/in the evening" has been left out in the translation.
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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby księżycowy » Tue Jan 05, 2021 8:18 pm

I'm finding your notes about errors and grammar coverage quite helpful for the Chagatay textbook, thanks Guyome!

I'm thinking it might be worth my while to eventually pick up a grammar for Chagatay, so I can supplement the textbook (and add on the missing pieces). I'm also curious about the other book you've talked about is like: Eastern Turki Grammar. What is it like? Is it worth the sticker price?
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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby guyome » Wed Jan 06, 2021 9:13 pm

You're welcome, księżycowy!
I started posting those merely for myself, in order to help me if (=when) I ever take up Chaghatay again but I'm glad they may be useful to others too!
(I'll post more about the Eastern Turki Grammar tomorrow.)

Manchu
I've read the first six sections of Mencius and their commentary. That's around 70 Manchu pages in the 1677 edition I'm using. On average, Manchu books have a lot less text on one page than a contemporary book in English. Maybe a 1-to-3 ratio.
So, all in all, I haven't read that much but I'm taking it slowly, not rushing thought the text as fast as I could, in order to make vocab stick. The text is also slightly more convoluted than many other Manchu texts, probably because it aims at rendering Classical Chinese rethorical devices.

Reading a text and its commentary is really good for repetition. Sometimes, the commentary merely repeats the Mencius, adding a few words here and there for clarity's sake; at other times, it expands on it, but always remains quite close. It's like a natural SRS. Very convenient.

I'm also combining Manchu and Latin by reading each section of Mencius in Latin after I'm done with the Manchu translation and its commentary. There is a rather large number of Latin translations of Mencius around.
The one translation I'm using most often is the one published by Séraphin Couvreur in 1895 (see here for a pdf). Couvreur (1835-1919) was a Jesuit missionary to China and a prolific translator. He produced a number of Chinese-French-Latin editions, as well as a Classical Chinese-French dictionary that is still highly regarded today, or so I've read.
Another translation I occasionally check is the one in Zottoli's massive 5-vols. Cursus Litteraturae Sinicae (not all volumes are available at archive.org). I've been somewhat fascinated by this work for years and I've read quite a few of Zottoli's translations by now (mainly eight-legged essays in volume 5). His Latin translations are a bit clunky though, mainly because their goal is to follow the Chinese very closely (that's also the case with Couvreur but in a less intrusive way, I feel).
Stanislas Julien (1797-1873) also produced a Latin edition of Mencius in the 1820s.

Chaghatay
Nothing done today. I'll probably work through lesson 10 tomorrow and will stop after that. Studying lessons 11-16 would take me far too long and Persian is waiting.
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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby księżycowy » Wed Jan 06, 2021 9:29 pm

guyome wrote:(I'll post more about the Eastern Turki Grammar tomorrow.)

Ok, I'll keep my eye out for that, thanks!
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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby guyome » Thu Jan 07, 2021 6:28 pm

księżycowy wrote: I'm also curious about the other book you've talked about is like: Eastern Turki Grammar. What is it like? Is it worth the sticker price?
Here are some details about Eastern Turki Grammar, although you'll soon realise that I'm in no way very qualified to talk about the book!

Eastern Turki Grammar refers to a three-part work published by Swedish missionary Gösta Raquette in 1912, 1913, and 1914. Raquette died in 1945, which means the work is out-of-copyright in most countries. A pdf of all three parts can be found at the Lexilogos page for Uyghur. As far as I can see, archive.org has scans of part 2 and 3 only.

The work is made of 50 lessons and a glossary. It teaches the "dialect of Eastern Turkestan as it is spoken now-a-days". This would mean something really close to Modern Uyghur I believe, but later in the introduction, Raquette mentions that "the reading exercises are, to a great extent, extracts from Eastern Turki books, or folk-lore stories writtn down by native mollahs."
So, it seems the book would be suitable as an introduction to the written language too. I don't know enough about Turkic languages to say how much 15th c. Chaghatay, early 20th c. written Eastern Turki (=Late Chaghatay/Early written Uyghur?), and early 20th c. spoken Eastern Turki would differ between themselves. As I said above, there is very little difference between what Schluessel and Raquette teach at the beginning of their respective books.

Each lesson consists of a grammar section, a vocab list, and sentences for translation, ET-to-Whatever (given both in Arabic script and transliteration) and English-to-ET. There is no Key.
Raquette's grammar explanations are generally very short. For instance, he introduces the full declension in lesson 6 and the only explanations are the short English translations in the chart: "yolning, of the road; yolgha, to the road; yolda, in the road", etc. In the same way, the Present tense is taught in lesson 9 simply by giving the full paradigm män qilämän, sän qiläsän, etc.
I guess that would kind of work if the reader already knows a bit about Turkic languages, or if he has some general linguistic knowledge. Maybe the very nature of Chaghatay grammar ("take stem, put suffix, put another suffix,...") lends itself rather well to this bare-bones type of explanations.
Other lessons give more detailed explanations but, overall, I think Schluessel's Introduction is more helpful.

Raquette was writing a practical guide to the language for "foreigners who live in Eastern Turkestan" and this shows in some of the lessons, where the vocab is mostly about food or daily necessities. Maybe that could be a problem if you're using the book with the goal of immediately reading Nava'i :D but, in the long run, I doubt it'd matter much. And if, like me, you're mostly interested in texts from 19/20th c. Xinjiang, Raquette's vocab choice and sections about coinage and the like are a big plus.

My personal take on the book, but I've only worked through the first 10 lessons, is that Schluessel's Introduction, despite some annoying things, makes tackling the language (and the script) much smoother. Still, I can definitely see myself working through Raquette at some later point, to learn more vocab and get more practice (especially since Chaghatay texts aimed at learners are not exactly common, might as well make good use of the lengthy exercises in Raquette).
raquette.jpg
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Last edited by guyome on Thu Jan 07, 2021 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby księżycowy » Thu Jan 07, 2021 6:41 pm

Thanks a ton for your thoughts and observations! I think I'll eventually pick up a copy.
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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby guyome » Sat Jan 09, 2021 4:07 pm

Persian
DLI lesson 34.
Back on the Persian wagon. I can't remember some of the words taught in previous lessons but reading through the vocab lists twice or so should take care of most of them. If not, I'll move on anyway and trust DLI's in-built SRS.

Manchu
I finished reading the 13th fascicle of the Inenggidari giyangnaha sy šu i jurgan be suhe bithe, which covers the first part of the Mencius and its commentary. Content-wise, it dragged on a bit and felt less incisive than the earlier sections. Language-wise, my impression remains the same: reading a commentary (this one, at least) means plenty of repetition, which is good.

I may start reading something else now. Nothing against Mencius, just for variety's sake. I'll think about that tomorrow.
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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby guyome » Sat Jan 23, 2021 7:22 pm

Not a lot to tell. I've spent time on other things during the last two weeks and language study suffered somewhat as a result.

Persian
I made some progress with DLI Persian but it feels more and more like I'm not getting much out of it: the vocab taught rarely appears in the material I read/listen to (and the grammar was already covered in Assimil).

That may be because my vocabulary is now slightly larger, so it would make sense for the newly taught words to show up less often outside of the course but still...my vocabulary is still pretty small (1500 words?) and it's like none of the words taught in the last 15 lessons has showed up in my extra listening/reading.

There's also the fact that the circumstances that pushed me back to Persian in October(?) no longer obtain. My interest in the language remains high but it's been slightly harder to stay motivated.

I'm thinking of putting DLI aside for now and focusing and reading easy texts as a way of building up my vocab faster.

Manchu
I have been doing plenty of Manchu reading: dialogues from the Cing wen ki meng and the Tanggū meyen; palace memorials by Niyan Geng Yoo on the Lobjang Danjin's rebellion, which took place in the 1720s in what is now China's Qinghai province. This is an important episode because it takes place at the beginning of Manchu involvement in Tibetan affairs, in a series of events that would ultimately turn Tibet into a de facto Manchu protectorate (with consequences still very much on display today).

I have now started reading the so-called Tale of the Nishan Shamaness.
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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby Lycopersicon » Wed Jan 27, 2021 5:02 pm

guyome wrote:
Persian
I made some progress with DLI Persian but it feels more and more like I'm not getting much out of it: the vocab taught rarely appears in the material I read/listen to (and the grammar was already covered in Assimil).

That may be because my vocabulary is now slightly larger, so it would make sense for the newly taught words to show up less often outside of the course but still...my vocabulary is still pretty small (1500 words?) and it's like none of the words taught in the last 15 lessons has showed up in my extra listening/reading.

There's also the fact that the circumstances that pushed me back to Persian in October(?) no longer obtain. My interest in the language remains high but it's been slightly harder to stay motivated.

I'm thinking of putting DLI aside for now and focusing and reading easy texts as a way of building up my vocab faster.



Hi!

Should you wish to evaluate the proportion of high-frequency words which you have not come across during your studies, I suggest you have a look at the Pearson Edexcel GCSE Persian specification from page 76 onwards.

I am not allowed to post links but you should be able to find it easily.

GCSE students are expected to be able to recognize about 2000 words. Those words are all high-frequency vocabulary items that you will encounter in newspapers, contemporary fiction etc. You will find a list in the specification document.
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Re: Guyome's log [LAD, LAT, MAN, OCC, PER, YID]

Postby guyome » Wed Jan 27, 2021 7:07 pm

I have downloaded it and it looks like an interesting and useful resource. Thanks for posting about it!

https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/q ... -2018.html
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