Guyome's log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
guyome
Blue Belt
Posts: 601
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2020 1:41 pm
Languages: French (N)
x 2424

Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Sun May 29, 2022 4:57 pm

It's been some time since I posted here and, to my utter shame, I have to confess I wasn't very active on the language learning front. Life and work got in the way, which meant Chaghatay had to go. I haven't found the will to take it up again since but I'm not too worried about that.

These days I'm mostly surrendering to my whims and fancies. As a result, no real studying is happening but this leaves more time for endulging in some long-delayed short-time projects and reading.

For instance, I read Philip Kerr's "Berlin Noir" last week, a series of three crime novels featuring Bernie Gunther, private detective/policeman in Nazi Germany. I found them enjoyable enough and they apparently set me into the mood for...

Gascon
...Pèire Bec's Lo hiu tibat (1978). The book has been sitting on my shelf for more than a year but it's only now that I'm getting to it. In it, Bec narrates episodes of his life in Austria/Germany in 1943-1944, as a Frenchman sent to work in the Reich (see Service du Travail Obligatoire for more on this).

I've read the first part of the book ("Hilde"), which is made of five stories pertaining to the time when Bec worked in Vienna as a clerk:
1. Bec and Hilde, his Austrian colleague, are terrified because a frame containing Hitler's picture is broken and they have to find a way to replace it discretly
2. Bec meets Francesco Colombo, an Italian tailor. The two become friends
3. Bec's office sees the arrival of an ex-soldier from the Russian front. He replaces Bec (but only for a very short time)
4. How Bec and Hilde dealt with bombings on various occasions (from late May 1944 on)
5. How Bec accidentally met with Baldur von Shirach. Later he is transferred to Waldeck and parts with Hilde.

In the foreword, Bec writes slightly ambiguously about the reality of the events he describes, basically saying something like "Of course, the work is autobiographic...but I have modified some stuff. Of course, it's real...but it's re-lived reality." Make of that what you will :)

Nevertheless, I'm enjoying the read so far. It builds on the Kerr novels I mentioned earlier in the sense that these books have reminded me that, for millions of people in Germany, the period from the late 1930s up to the early 1940s wasn't so tragic after all. Life went on, they spent time with their loved ones, went to work every day, etc. To be honest, reading about all this relative normality after reading/listening to so many Yiddish Holocaust survivors stories over the last ten years feels somewhat...obscene? disturbing? But that's part of why I find reading this book interesting, it gives me, or rather it reminds me of, a different aspect of this period.

There are some other things I'd like to comment upon (Is Bec's Gascon a calque of French? The way the dialogues are presented in the original language cum Gascon translation, etc.) but maybe I'll keep these for another post.

Here is a short extract from p. 60-61, together with my poor attempt at a translation. Pèire Bec, his Italian friend Francesco and other foreign workers have just been accused of stealing 300 Marks in the café they were having a drink in. The owner wants to search them before they leave but Francesco adamantly refuses.
Dens aquesta escadença lo patron, qui ne'n podèva pas mes e n'avèva pas mes cap de dobte sus la culpabilitat de Francesco, que bondiscoc tau telefòne, en bèth cridant de mes en mes :
- Ich rufe die Polizei an ! Ich rufe die Polizei an ! [Qu'apèri la polícia !]
- Francesco, per favore, lasciati fare la perquisizione ! Tu vedi bene che chiamano la polizia ! [Francesco, dèisha-te hèr la folhada. Que vedes plan qu'apèran la polícia !]
Francesco que devarèc alavetz deu son jocader, blèsme deu bijarrèr, bohabrac e lagrimejant e, en bèth m'espiar plan dens los uelhs, que'm getèc a la cara :
- Pietro, tu non sei degno di essere Italiano ! [Pèire, n'ès pas digne d'èste Italian !]

At this time, the owner (who was at his wit's end and had no doubt anymore about Francesco being guilty) sprang on the phone while shouting more and more:
- I'm calling the police! I'm calling the police!
- Francesco, please, let them search you. You can see that they're calling the police!
Francesco then climbed down from his perch, pale because of anger(?), short of breath and crying, and, looking at me right in the eyes, he threw to my face:
- Pèire, you're not worthy of being Italian!
14 x

guyome
Blue Belt
Posts: 601
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2020 1:41 pm
Languages: French (N)
x 2424

Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Fri Jun 03, 2022 8:21 pm

Another whim I've been surrendering to as of late is taking some time to explore the oïl linguistic domain. Not in a comprehensive way of course, just digging a little more deeply here and there.
A few months ago I spent some time on Walloon and posted about the resources I found in the Walloon resources thread. More recently, I have been spending time getting acquainted with Norman.

Norman
Like all 'langues régionales' in France, Norman isn't doing too well at the moment but there is a surprising (to me) amount of books published in it.

The only textbook I've been able to find is V'n-ous d'aveu mei ? by Hippolyte Gancel, republished/refreshed in 2020 as Apprendre le Normand en 30 jours. My second-hand copy of the older edition is in the mail and should arrive any day now.

In the meantime, I am reading through Fr. Charles Lepeley's (1889-1970) Chroniques patoises d'un curé de campagne. The texts were published in the 1920/1930s in the parish bulletin L'Hirondelle. Around half of these were selected and published in a bilingual edition in 2003. They're mostly short and humorous stories about parish life and human foibles. I'm reading a few of the stories each day and it's a painless way to get passively acquainted with the main differences between Norman and Standard French.

I've several other books lined up, two of these bilingual, the rest in Norman only. All of these were written by authors from the Cotentin peninsula. I made the choice to focus on this particular region since it seemed to be the most productive area in terms of literature in the past decades (I have yet to explore what's happening in the Channel Islands). Another reason was that, in my mind, the isolated position of the Cotentin peninsula may have led to the language being less influenced by Standard French. But that's just a hunch.

If you're looking for a detailed linguistic description of the Val-de-Saire variant of the Cotentin dialect of Norman, look no further than René Lepelley's PhD Le parler normand du Val-de-Saire (Manche) : phonétique, morphologie, syntaxe, vocabulaire de la vie rurale (1974).

A page from Lepeley, Chroniques patoises d'un curé de campagne in the 2003 edition.



Québécois French
Apart from Norman, I've been spending time listening to podcasts from Québec, courtesy of https://ici.radio-canada.ca/ohdio/balados. These don't present much of a linguistic challenge but I enjoy getting immersed in Québécois accent(s). Based on my very limited knowledgeof the linguistic situation in Québec, I surmise there is a whole level of Québécois that doesn't often show up in the rather standardised speech of most hosts. If you have any link to "hardcore" Québécois podcasts, feel free to post about them here.


Cajun French
This is mostly a musical exploration. I first listened to some Cajun music a few years ago and have been immediately hooked.

7 x

Purangi
Orange Belt
Posts: 138
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:57 pm
Languages: French, English, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish
x 635

Re: Guyome's log

Postby Purangi » Fri Jun 03, 2022 10:29 pm

I can certainly recommend some podcasts, but beware: "hardcore" Québécois podcast tend to focus on topics that are, well... "hardcore". Listener discretion is advised. Here is very short list, starting with the most "slangy":

Sous Écoute - By far the No. 1 podcast in Québec. Intoxicated comedians tell raunchy anecdotes about their career and life. Probably the most hardcore thing out there in terms of language register.
La Poche Bleue - Conversations about hockey with hockey fans and players.
3 Bières - Casual conversations on random topics.
Thomas Levac - Guy with histrionic personality gives too much information about his life.
Sexe Oral - Two girls talk about sex/relationships.
Répète pas ça - Conversations with Québec showbiz personalities.
Jay du Temple discute - Conversations with Québec showbiz personalities.
Deviens-tu c'que t'as voulu? - Same thing as the two above, but better.
Les sorcières - Feminist topics.
3.7 planètes- Comedian talks about environmental topics.

For Acadian French, L’Acadjonne is a interesting show where members of the diaspora from different Atlantic provinces come together to talk about their culture and language specificities.
7 x

guyome
Blue Belt
Posts: 601
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2020 1:41 pm
Languages: French (N)
x 2424

Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Sat Jun 04, 2022 6:55 am

Thanks, Purangi! That's exactly what I was looking for. I sampled bits of the first three and my comprehension jumps wildly up and down depending on who's speaking. La Poche Bleue is certainly going to be both a linguistic and cultural experience since I know next to nothing about hockey :oops:
2 x

guyome
Blue Belt
Posts: 601
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2020 1:41 pm
Languages: French (N)
x 2424

Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Sat Jun 18, 2022 8:23 am

Norman
I finished Chroniques patoises and I'm now reading bits of V'n-ous d'aveu mei ?, a textbook for Norman in 30 lessons. Surprisingly nothing is said in the book about pronounciation but I have found the audio for the first 10 lessons online.

I have also read Bernard Alexandre's Le Horsain (1988). Fr. Alexandre was a parish priest in the Norman countryside for more than 40 years and the book chronicles his life there. A lot of it is about religious and Church life but he also paints a broad picture of village life.
Most of the dialogues with his flock are given in Norman, with footnotes when the French equivalent is not self evident. His parish(es) were located in the pays de Caux, while the Norman I "study" is from the Cotentin peninsula, on the other side of Normandy.

Québécois French
Thanks to Purangi, I have spent a lot of time listening to podcasts in Québécois. Mostly Sous écoute and 3 Bières. I'd say I have listened to 4/5 episodes of each podcast, and some I have listened to multiple times. At first, I was missing a lot of stuff but it's been getting better and I can now understand a lot more. I'm really enjoying it.

Gascon
I finished Bec's Lo Hiu tibat, which was ok. Next I wanted something familiar to build my reading skills in a gentle way, so I went for Harry Potter. I'm not sure it was the right choice: language-wise it is more challenging than Lo Hiu tibat, which is fine, but it's harder to find motivation to read it. Maybe I'll switch to something else, either another volume of short stories by Bec or Lapassade's Sonque un arríder amistós.

Latin
Not doing anything really focussed but I'm reading a lot. In keeping with my "discovery" of Québec, Im reading bits of Creuxius's Historiae Canadensis (1664) and pieces from the Monumenta Novae Franciae, a massive collection of letters sent by (and to) Jesuits in Canada in the 17th c.

I'm also spending time with some easy readers like Septimus (1936), which has long been known to me thanks to this blog post but has only recently been scanned and put online.
13 x

guyome
Blue Belt
Posts: 601
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2020 1:41 pm
Languages: French (N)
x 2424

Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Wed Jul 06, 2022 8:24 am

Latin
I've been reading a lot this week, mostly short-ish works. I'll post about some of these, maybe they'll be of interest to others:

    • Suetonius, Vita Claudi
    For some reason, I find Suetonius quite hard to read. Maybe it's the amount of realia you need to know to make sense of what he writes, maybe it's something in his Latin, maybe a bit of both, I don't know.

    • Seneca, Apocolocyntosis
    Reading Suetonius paved the way for Seneca's Pumpkinification of (the Divine) Claudius, a work mocking Claudius' fate after his death. It's a work I reread from time to time, it's always fun.

    • Jocelyn of Brakelond, Chronica
    Long known to me through Beeson's Primer but I had never sat to read the whole work. Jocelyn was a monk at Bury St. Edmunds abbey during the late 12th c. and has left us an extensive chronic of the abbey's life during this time. He focuses almost exclusively on the profane side of things, i.e., he describes at length the many conflicts between the abbey and secular powers for feudal rights, between the abbot and the monks themselves, but says very little about what I'd call religious life per se. There is something of a dog-eat-dog atmosphere pervading the whole work.

    • Carlo Maria Rosini (1748-1836), bishop of Puozzoli, wrote a number of Latin works over the years. I have read his Dialogues (a man tries to get rid of tourist guides while visiting an Italian city; a schoolboy is overjoyed when holidays come, only to be set straight by his teacher...).
    Rosini also wrote a number of comedies. Right now, I'm reading his Larvarum Victor (Ghostbuster), in which extravagant youths conspire to get their hands on more money.

    • Loriquet, Vita D. Musart (1823)
    Nicolas Musart (1753-1796) was a Catholic priest who died guillotined during the French Revolution. As could be expected, the Life spends quite a few pages praising his virtues but there are also many interesting details about his early years, parish life before the Revolution, strifes in his parishes during the Revolution, his exile to Netherlands and Germany and finally his coming back to France, arrest and death.

    Mentor, Galli Duo (1964). A book aiming at teaching Latin through the story of two French children time-travelling to 1st c. BC Italy. Not a literary masterpiece but a curious and interesting book nevertheless.
    There is another, earlier, Mentor volume for Latin which I'm using right now. I'll probably post more about these two later.
14 x

guyome
Blue Belt
Posts: 601
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2020 1:41 pm
Languages: French (N)
x 2424

Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:44 am

Latin
I finished Rosini's Larvarum victor (Ghostbuster). The ending felt a bit rushed but all in all it was a fun read. Rosini wrote several other comedies and I'll probably read these in the near future.

Right now, I started reading Saeculorum transvectio, a short novel by Genovefa Métais (1929-2012) about a Roman being brought back to life in the 1970s.

I'm also making use of the older Mentor Latin (1950). The book's goal is to teach Latin by having you read a Latin text and then translate it back into Latin using the French translation. All new words are glossed at the bottom of the page and all words, be they old or new, are subtitled through the whole book with this gloss's number, so that you can go back to when they were first introduced and refresh your memory if need be.
I've long wanted to try something of the kind, which I guess is similar to Assimil's second wave or maybe Luca Lampariello's bidirectional translation method, but the main problem I had was that "good" translations can be so far removed from the Latin text that it makes it hard to go back-and-forth from one to the other.
The Mentor book solves this problem by:
- first making use of a text in which the Latin and French word order is rather similar, the first sections of Lhomond's Epitome Historiae Sacrae
- going for a rather literal French translation
- using various devices, like brackets (for French words not to be translated), hyphens (for groups of words to be rendered by one Latin word), numbers (for word order), and putting the first letters or the main consonants of the Latin word under the French one to help you remember some of the more tricky words.

That's for the first part of the book. Starting with p. 75, the Latin word order is closer to what you'd expect in a real Latin text and other devices are used as subtitles to the French translation, to help the reader figure when the verb should be put at the end of the sentence for instance. The texts are first taken/adapted from Lhomond's Epitome (life of Moses, p. 75-95) and then from the Roman Breviary (p. 97-143; lifes of St. Martin, St. Genevieve, and St. Therese of Lisieux).
In the last part of the book (p. 146-233), the texts are two longer lives composed by the author of the book: a life of St. Vincent de Paul and a life of St. Louis. These are more complex and less help is given.

I'm enjoying the process so far, doing about one section daily. It is certainly helping me get a better grip on some vocab items but it remains to be seen how useful the whole thing will be in the long run.


13 x

guyome
Blue Belt
Posts: 601
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2020 1:41 pm
Languages: French (N)
x 2424

Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Sat Jul 09, 2022 9:22 pm

Latin
I finished reading Saeculorum transvectio, it's only about 75 pages long. The story line was promising: a Roman, and Apuleius' own freedman to boot, has been sort of cryogenized by his master, only to be found and brought back to life in the 1970s. Exciting!
I was then understandably somewhat disappointed by the execution. When the author takes time to dwell on things and flesh out situations, the book has its moments. But most of the events, people, situations or emotions encountered by Lucius are given a rather perfunctory treatment.
I found the Latin very clear and solid, pleasant to read though. There's not that many neologisms and most of them are rather easy to figure out. So, while the story was something of a letdown, I'd still recommend the book if you're looking for something different to read in Latin.


In my last post I gave some details about the 1950 Mentor Latin. In 1964, the Mentor company published another Latin textbook called Galli Duo. This one appears more in line with the previously published German and English Mentors, in that it's not bilingual and does not rely on retranslation. You're supposed to read the grammar sections (1-29) at the beginning, and then the story. There are exercises at the end of the book. As in the 1950 Mentor, each word is given a unique number when it first appears (30-2274) and every word up to the end of the book will come with its number, making it easy for the reader to go back and check the meaning if he has forgotten it. A nice touch is that some words are given several numbers, for instance their unique number and the number of the relevant grammar section (see cogitans in the picture below, 1432 is the word's unique number and 27 refers you the the grammar section dealing with present participles).

I'm not sure how efficient the book would be for a complete beginner but if you've been dying to read about two French children being sent from the 1960s to 25 BC Italy by their uncle and his time-machine, look no further!

15 x

guyome
Blue Belt
Posts: 601
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2020 1:41 pm
Languages: French (N)
x 2424

Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Fri Jul 22, 2022 7:33 pm

Latin
I was on holiday for a few days which kind of disrupted my 1950 Mentor Latin routine but I'm trying to get back to it, working through one new section and a couple of the previous ones each day, on average.

The holiday wasn't totally devoid of Latin reading though since I had taken the second volume of Aulus Gellius' Attic Nights with me and managed to read through Books XI and XII. It is an interesting mix of notes about language use, philosophy, anecdotes, etc. I had only read the odd entry so far, so it's nice to get a better view of what a 2nd c. AD Roman would find worthy of being jotted down.
The Latin is clear and the entries not too long so it's a very good candidate if you're looking for something to read in short busts.

Manchu/Classical Mongolian

The last ten days or so have seen renewed activity in the hitherto neglected field of Manchu and Classical Mongolian. I guess it's that time of the year...
9 x

guyome
Blue Belt
Posts: 601
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2020 1:41 pm
Languages: French (N)
x 2424

Re: Guyome's log

Postby guyome » Sun Sep 18, 2022 8:42 am

Yiddish
Last week, the New York Times published what may well be the first Yiddish article of its history. It's a translation of their report about Hasidic schools and education in NYC. This has aroused a lot of comments in the Hasidic community, as can be seen on yiddish24 and various forums.
The Forward has an article about the translation itself, how and why it sometimes departs from the English original.

It has been a long time since I did much with Yiddish, but I have read a lot over the last couple of days. At least a lot more than before. Here are some of the titles I read through:
    Yaponishe mayśelakh (1921). A collection of Japanese tales, although I share Rebecca White's questioning (here) about how much embellishement took place
    Zamlung fun pionerishe dertseylungen (1927). A collection of stories for young communists ("pioneers") published in the USSR. No great literature but I was interested in seeing what kind of material was offered to the Yiddish-speaking youth then. It is quite varied: stories about communists and police brutality before the Revolution, a fairy tale about Lenin, a story about the plight of two young Chinese rickshaw drivers, moral advice about helping your mother, etc.
    In dem bloen kestele (1928). Another Soviet publication for children, which reads better than the previous title. Three different stories, in which the narrator explains how he was arrested by the Polish police while on his way to the Fourth Komintern Congress in Moscow in 1922 and how he managed to escape; how, as a kid, before the revolution, he missed his first 1st of May celebration because he saw spies everywhere; how, as a youth, he helped taking care of someone who spied on the workers's communist activities
    • Kornhendler, Der toyt fun Yeshu in...Poyln (1934). A short story about Jesus climbing down from the cross in a Polish church and wandering around, being eventually beaten to death during a pogrom. A bit too much talk and lamentations in the first part and then everything happens very quickly but there is something harrowing about Jesus's total helplessness
    • Gordin, Yesus Kristus un Karl Marks tsu gast in Nyu York (ca. 1900). Moses, Jesus and Karl Marx visit New York to find out who among them has the most followers. Contrary to Kornhendler's story, this was written with humor in mind
    • Kornhendler, Der tsenter zum minyen (1960). Another fantastic short story, this time about a Jew visiting Alsace and being asked, while he's waiting for his train to Basel, to be the tenth person in a minyan. Follows a dreadful trip in a horse carriage to an old synagogue in a small Alsatian village, and an unsettling encounter there. Months later, the narrator learns who the people he prayed with really are. I liked the story and will probably read the other two in Kornhendler's 1974 collection Fun der un yener velt
    • Borodulin, Af yener zayt Sambatyen (1929). One of the few SF novels in Yiddish. A scientist has disappeared just after creating a death ray. A journalist tracks him down on the other side of the Sambation river, in the land of the Red Jews...I'm only 30 pages or so in but I like it so far. It's definitely not complex, highbrow literature but the combination of death ray and Jewish mythology is enticing.
12 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests