If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
User avatar
Walinator
White Belt
Posts: 19
Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2021 1:43 am
Location: Washington D.C., US
Languages: English (N), Dari Farsi (N), Arabic (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17013
x 72

Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Postby Walinator » Fri Jul 09, 2021 8:01 pm

Deinonysus wrote:I am considering spending some time on French alongside Arabic but I think I have to be very careful to make sure my work on Arabic doesn't get derailed.


I doubt that will be a problem. From what I've read, Levantine Arabic (which I believe is the one you're going after) has quite a lot of loanwords from French, so, even if you do spend a considerable time on French, its not a complete detriment to your Arabic.
1 x
Corrections And Feedback Welcome

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Postby Deinonysus » Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:47 pm

Xenops wrote:Some thoughts:
1. The BPL has access to The Great Courses, which include The Golden Islamic Age (last I looked).

2. I enjoyed Jack Zipes’ English editions of A Thousand and One Nights. He picked 500 or so of the most unique stories. Also unfiltered—I will never think of a sword sliding into a sheath the same way again. :shock: :lol:

3. My adult self, for some odd reason, prefers reading about the culture of Calormen than Narnia. :?

Thanks for the heads up! I'll sign up for a BPL card and watch that course. I've only gotten a few paragraphs into the French version of 1001 Nights and it's already talking about fathers weeping over their strangled daughters, so I don't imagine that version pulls its punches either. I've only read a couple of the Narnia books so I'm not familiar with the Calormen. I'm sure I'll read the full series one of these days.

Walinator wrote:
Deinonysus wrote:I am considering spending some time on French alongside Arabic but I think I have to be very careful to make sure my work on Arabic doesn't get derailed.


I doubt that will be a problem. From what I've read, Levantine Arabic (which I believe is the one you're going after) has quite a lot of loanwords from French, so, even if you do spend a considerable time on French, its not a complete detriment to your Arabic.
Good to know! I've heard that French is very important in that region so I'm not surprised that they have a lot of loanwords.
3 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Postby Deinonysus » Tue Jul 13, 2021 3:07 pm

I have ultimately decided not to spend any time explicitly studying French. That has a very high probability of derailing my Arabic studies. I usually have a tendency to jump from language to language, but now is the time to stick with Arabic until I've reached by goals. There will be plenty of time for me to improve my French and German later. For now I will restrict myself to reading in French and maybe getting back into watching France24 every day.

I've caught up to where I was in Duolingo and Pimsleur. It took me two weeks which is exactly what I expected. I am really far behind in Assimil though. The reason is that I would be binge-watching Attack on Titan until late at night and then I would only be awake enough to do one Assimil lesson if any. But I have finally caught up on all the episodes that are out so far, so hopefully I will be able to start doing a few Assimil lessons a night until I'm caught up. I would also like to start Mastering the Arabic Script, although I might wait until I finish Duolingo depending on how much energy I have.

I started reading a book on the history of alchemy. I knew the word originally came from the Coptic name for Egypt (plus the Arabic definite article al-, of course), but I assumed it was an Ancient Egyptian art. But as it turns out, it is fairly young, and it came from Hellenistic Egypt, after the days of Caesar and Cleopatra. The great pyramid had already been standing for some 2700 years when the oldest extant alchemy texts were written. Hellenistic Egyptian alchemy is covered in chapter 1, and its refinement during the Islamic Golden Age is covered in chapter 2, so I'd like read at least that far.

I forgot to post an interesting observation about the Arabic name of 1001 Nights. It is actually أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ‎ Alfu laylatin walaylatun, or "a thousand of a night, and a night". I checked Hebrew Wikipedia and it seems to be translated word for word as אלף לילה ולילה (elef layla velayla). I wonder how common this construction is of using a number in the construct state followed by a singular noun; I asked my mom if it seemed familiar to her in Hebrew but she said it wasn't.

Arabic seems to have the same distinction as French where a night is general is masculine, but a night as a discrete period of time is feminine (soir vs. soirée). The masculine version of night is ليل (layl). The title of 1001 nights uses the feminine form. From what I could see in Wiktionary, Hebrew used to have this distinction but no longer uses the masculine form.
11 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Postby Deinonysus » Thu Aug 05, 2021 7:05 pm

Well, I got distracted and spent a few weeks studying Sumerian, but I was able to get it out of my system and get back to Arabic.

Progress

I'm also back into the Polyglot Fitness Challenge after dropping it for many months. I went for a nice run in the rain this morning at high tide and got a beautiful view of the stormy water! I think the run was around a mile and a quarter, or around 2 km. I also did a few pushups and situps. That meets my goal of running twice a week. As I said in the thread, I've gone through several languages since initially setting a French-based goal, so I'm revising the language portion of my goal to just work on whatever language I happen to be working on at the time.

I'm up to 100% strength in Duolingo Arabic, and I only need to get a few more skills from level 4 to level 5 and I will have maxed out everything before the third of five checkpoints. But the first two checkpoints were very short, so I'm actually just over half way through the course.

Pimsleur is going a bit slowly but once I start dropping my daughter off at daycare every day I should be up to five lessons a week.

I've been procrastinating at night and before I realize it, it's too late to start an Assimil lesson. I'll need to start turning off electronics earlier. I'm also trying to finish The House of Seven Gables. I started it almost a year ago and for whatever reason I stopped reading it around 5 chapters from the end, so I'm picking it back up. Sadly I don't think I've finished a single novel in the past year. I'll have to pick up the pace!

Fun Facts

I just realized the other day that the Arabic word طيب (ṭayyib) is related to the Hebrew word טוב (tov) (both meaning "good"). It's more transparent in a Semiticist transliteration ṭoḇ. They both come from the proto-Semitic root *ṭāb. Knowing that these two words are related, I won't accidentally spell it with a ת instead of a ט because I'll remember that it's emphatic in Arabic!

There's also another fun fact that I was going to post a couple of weeks ago before getting sidetracked. In the Great Courses series on the Islamic Golden Age, they had an episode about the famous explorer إبن بطوطة (Ibn Baṭṭūṭa). His name is actually a variation of a word I already know from an Arabic board book I got for myself and my daughter! The word بطة baṭṭa means "duck", and بطوطة means "duckling", so Ibn Baṭṭūṭa means "son of a duckling!" Here is a page from the book:

20210805_144813.jpg

Sadly, I haven't been able to find a book like this for the Hebrew alphabet, so my daughter actually knows the Arabic alphabet better. One time she was playing with a toy dreidel and she asked me what was written on it, so I told her "this is noon, this is sheen..." (these letters both have the same name in Arabic and Hebrew) and she asked me, "Where's meem?" The corresponding Hebrew letter is called "mem."

Anyway, apparently nobody knows how he got that nickname. I was also wondering what the difference was between "ibn" and "bin." I looked it up and believe that "ibn" is used when it's before a single name, but it's "bin" when it's in the middle of a name, so in the Wikipedia article about him, they give his full name as a bunch of names followed by "Bin Baṭṭūṭa". "Bin" is sometimes spelled "ben", which is exactly equivalent to the Hebrew בן. Another example, the name Moses Maimonedes is a Hellenized version of משה בן מימון (Moshe ben Maimon), or in Arabic (which I believe was his native language), موسى بن ميمون (Mūsā bin Maymūn).

Amusingly, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa was absolutely scandalized by all the topless women in Mali, yet he declared the Maldives to be a paradise because of how easy was is to marry and divorce women there, although he piously stayed at his limit of four wives at any given time.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
10 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Postby Deinonysus » Mon Aug 16, 2021 2:30 am

العربية

Arabic is going about the same as before. Good progress in Pimsleur and Duolingo, some progress in Assimil.

Pimsleur

Pimsleur upgraded my subscription from Modern Standard Arabic specifically to All-Access, which makes their entire library available. I didn't realize that was an option! That opens up some possibilities that I hadn't considered before. I've been interested in Lithuanian for a while and Pimsleur has a 10-lesson course in that. I might go through it when I have hit some particular milestone in Arabic. It also seems that Teach Yourself Lithuanian is now available as a $4 Kindle edition, so I got myself a copy. After I'm done with all of Pimsleur's Arabic courses maybe I'll go through the rest of their short courses, as will as Haitian Creole (which I've already bought) and Ojibwe, which are both 30-lesson courses.

It seems that they recently came out with a third level of Castilian Spanish. I finished the first two levels just over a year ago, and I think I would feel much more confident after completing a third. I think that after I finish the two Assimil Arabic books, I will plan on going through Assimil Spanish. Working on another Assimil book will encourage me to finish the second wave for Perfectionnement arabe. At the same time I will review Pimsleur Castilian Spanish II and also do Spanish III. It will take many months for me to finish both of the Assimil Arabic books, so this won't be for a while.

Hawaiian

This is unrelated to Pimsleur's new subscription model but I've been thinking about what I would do after I finish Duolingo Arabic. I do want to eventually use that time slot for Mastering Arabic Script and then the Ahlan wa Sahlan textbook series, but before that I think it would be nice to keep going with Duolingo, which will encourage me to keep reviewing the Arabic tree. I think I would like to finally finish the very short Navajo tree (I did actually get very close the the end), and then I thought it might be nice to go through the Hawaiian tree. It came out at the same time as the Navajo tree and was initially also quite short, but it has grown substantially. There is also a pretty solid looking Mango Languages course that is available; like all of their endangered language courses, it is free to the public. I'm considering doing it as a mini FLC, but there is also a very tempting book available called Learn Hawaiian at Home that is not expensive and comes with CDs, so we'll see.

I enjoy Hawaiian music and I also love listening to the Hawaiian versions of Moana's songs (performed by the original singer). It's one of my daughter's favorite movies and even though I've listened to it a million times it never gets old. Lin Manuel Miranda is a genius! And so is Auli'i Cravalho who plays Moana. Unfortunately the complete Hawaiian dub doesn't seem to be easy to get ahold of at the moment, but hopefully Disney+ will add it at some point. They have already added the Māori dub which also features several original cast members reprising their roles.

Hawaiian would be my first language from Oceania, so I will have studied a language from five of the six inhabited continents. At some point I'll have to study Quechua and complete the set. :lol:

I know these are a lot of distractions from Arabic, but I think that by planning strategic short-term dabbles to reward myself for reaching particular milestones in Arabic, I can keep my wanderlust in check and prevent myself from getting totally derailed by a larger project.

Polyglot Fitness Challenge

I tried to run the route of a local 5k that will take place in October. I only ended up making it 2 miles (3.2 km), but I think that is still my longest ever run (I think my previous record was a mile and 3/4, or 2.8 km). It took me just over 30 minutes to do that run and then walk half a mile back home. Nowhere near championship material but not too shabby for my first try! I ended up turning back because I didn't want to risk passing out in the heat. It was pushing 90 F (over 30 C), so it was a bit too hot to be running. Next time I do a long run I'll have to get up earlier so it isn't as hot! Maybe next time I'll make it the full 5 km (3.1 miles).
9 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Postby Deinonysus » Tue Aug 17, 2021 2:22 pm

This appears to be my thousandth post. I guess I need to get a life! :lol: :ugeek:

العربية

My past couple of Pimsleur lessons have dealt with ordinal and masculine cardinal numbers, and numbers are coming up soon in Duolingo as well. It's crazy how similar Arabic and Hebrew numbers are! There are a few regular sound correspondences that can get a little confusing, especially with the sibilants. Here is a handy chart:
Arabic Hebrew Sibilants.png

The Arabic letter ث (ṯ, or the "th" sound in English) appears in a lot of Arabic numbers and corresponds to the Hebrew letter שׁ (shin). שׁ itself actually comes from a merger of the Proto-Semitic *ṯ and *š, while the Arabic س (s) comes from a merger of the Proto-Semitic *s and *š. So for example the Arabic masculine numbers 2, 3, and 8, إثنين (iṯnayn), ثلاثة (ṯalāṯa), and ثمانية (ṯamāniya) match the correspending Hebrew numbers שניים (shnáyim), שלושה (shloshá), and שמונה (shmoná).

A knowledge of Arabic is very helpful for spelling Hebrew numbers. For example, the Arabic letter ع (ʿayn) appears in the masculine numbers 4, 7, 9, and 10, أربعة (arbaʿa), سبعة (sabʿa) تسعة (tisʿa), and عشرة (ʿašara). The Hebrew letter ע (ayin) is no longer pronounced in standard Modern Hebrew, but it is preserved in the spelling of the corresponding numbers ארבעה (arba'á), שבעה (shiv'á), תשעה (tish'á), and עשרה (asará).

It is also helpful to know that because the Arabic number one is واحد (wāḥid), the Hebrew number one (akhát) must be spelled אחת and not אכת; if the latter were the Hebrew spelling, you would expect the Arabic number one to be pronounced something like واكد (wākid). Conversely, knowing that the Arabic word for King is ملك (malik), you can guess that the corresponding Hebrew word "mélekh" is spelled מלך and not מלח.

: 128 / 230 Duolingo Arabic
: 13 / 77 Assimil l'arabe
: 13 / 90 Pimsleur Modern Standard Arabic

Polyglot Fitness Challenge

I've been maintaining my goal of running at least twice a week for a couple of weeks now. There's a newly paved bike path near my house with nice smooth asphalt so I did my first successful barefoot run in probably ten years at this point. I made an attempt a few years ago but the path was obnoxiously rocky and I kept stopping to brush the rocks off of my feet. I think I'll slowly start to experiment with some rougher road conditions until that doesn't bother me anymore. I didn't time this morning's run but it felt like I was able to run faster than usual. Maybe that was because I run better when I can feel the ground, or maybe it's because at 0.8 miles (1.3 km) it was less than half the distance of my last run so I didn't feel like I had to pace myself as much.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
10 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

User avatar
Querneus
Blue Belt
Posts: 836
Joined: Thu Dec 01, 2016 5:28 am
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Languages: Speaks: Spanish (N), English
Studying: Latin, French, Mandarin
x 2269

Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Postby Querneus » Tue Aug 17, 2021 5:55 pm

Deinonysus wrote:There are a few regular sound correspondences that can get a little confusing, especially with the sibilants. Here is a handy chart:
Arabic Hebrew Sibilants.png

The Arabic letter ث (ṯ, or the "th" sound in English) appears in a lot of Arabic numbers and corresponds to the Hebrew letter שׁ (shin). שׁ itself actually comes from a merger of the Proto-Semitic *ṯ and *š, while the Arabic س (s) comes from a merger of the Proto-Semitic *s and *š. So for example the Arabic masculine numbers 2, 3, and 8, إثنين (iṯnayn), ثلاثة (ṯalāṯa), and ثمانية (ṯamāniya) match the correspending Hebrew numbers שניים (shnáyim), שלושה (shloshá), and שמונה (shmoná).

One thing I find fun about these correspondences is that since שׂ and ס are both pronounced /s/ (in both Masoretic and modern Hebrew, but not in some stages further back...), this effectively means there are words that have /s/ in Arabic and /ʃ/ in Hebrew (from Proto-Semitic *š), and viceversa (from Proto-Semitic *ś):

- Arabic لسان‎ lisaan 'tongue', Hebrew לשון‎ lashón 'tongue'
- Arabic حسب ħasaba 'to calculate, compute', Hebrew חשב khasháv 'to think'
- Arabic سلام‎ salaam, Hebrew שלום‎ shalóm

- Arabic عشب ʕušb 'grass', Hebrew עשב 'ésev 'grass'
- Arabic شعر šaʕr 'hair', Hebrew שער se'ár 'hair'
3 x

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Postby Deinonysus » Wed Aug 25, 2021 3:18 pm

@Querneus: Yes, it's funny! It's also helpful for detective work in Hebrew, because if two related words in Hebrew and Arabic both have an "s" sound, then it's probably written with a ס in Hebrew, otherwise it's probably a ש in Hebrew (so since the number 10 has a "sh" sound in Arabic, I can correctly guess that the Hebrew number 10 is עשרה and not עסרה).

اللغة العربية

I think I'm starting to hit my stride. I'm making good progress in Duolingo and Arabic, and I'm almost where I left off in Assimil. I'm back to doing at least one Assimil lesson a night because I decided to institute a policy where I turn off all screens after I put my daughter to bet. I've also gotten back into reading which is a nice bonus. I only have two chapters left in The House of Seven Gables and I'm also rereading Chris McDougall's Born to Run, a very entertaining and fascinating piece of gonzo journalism that inspired me to get into barefoot running, and I'm also more than half-way through Cuneiform by Irving Finkel.

I've finally gotten to the part of Duolingo where they teach the numbers, and I don't agree with the way they have chosen to do it. They are not spelling the numbers out, but rather introducing the Arabic symbols for the numbers. These symbols are good to know, but they are not even used in all Arabic speaking countries! It would have been better for them to teach the spellings and leave out the symbols, or maybe they could teach the symbols in a small bonus skill after teaching the spelling of the numbers. I have been preferring to spell the numbers out because that is more challenging to me; they are all lined up in order on my Arabic on-screen keyboard so that kind of gives it away! Unfortunately, on about half of the questions they do not accept the numbers spelled out and only want the symbols; I have been reporting these as I find them.

I was starting to get a bit sad that after a couple of months I still don't understand news headlines much better than I did when I had first learned the Arabic script; I'm still only able to pick out proper nouns and some small grammatical words. But I am starting to understand some more practical language. I saw a Reddit post title that said something like صباح الخير من بغداد (good morning from Baghdad) and I understood every word of that. I also saw a video of Laoshu talking to a Lebanese guy and I understood everything that they said to each other (except that I think Laoshu fumbled the initial greeting at first and ended up saying some gibberish, but after that he did great). It took me a little while after his passing to be able to watch his videos again but they're inspirational and entertaining. I especially enjoyed his older pre-level-up videos where he was filming from his home with a whiteboard and talking about his favorite learning materials.

I have been trying to get a bit better at typing in Arabic. I really like the optimized layout that I found. It's much more comfortable to type than the standard layout and doesn't hurt my hand. I've been practicing on 10fastfingers and Monkeytype and so far my Words Per Minute is in the teens, occasionally hitting 20 WPM. Hopefully I will be able to get it faster with practice.

: 138 / 230 Duolingo Arabic
: 18 / 77 Assimil L'arabe
: 14 / 90 Pimsleur Modern Standard Arabic

Polyglot Fitness Challenge

It just so happened that there was a one-mile race in town, so I ran my very first competitive race! I had no idea how I would do. I found a chart of typical mile times by age and experience, and thankfully I didn't run like an absolute beginner in my mid thirties. I ran like an absolute beginner in my early thirties! I think my time was 9:24, which is just under the average for a 20, 25, or 30 year old beginner. I was probably in the last 10% of finishers, but I did finish, and I'm pretty sure I was the only one who ran it barefoot!

I just remembered that Dance Dance Revolution exists so I substituted a trip to the arcade for my first morning run this week and I might keep doing that until the arcade closes on Labor Day. I went one round and I was a bit surprised at how strenuous it was. I wasn't running out of breath thanks to the jogging, but my legs started getting a bit weak. I'll need to build my strength back up! Back in high school I could get through most songs on Heavy difficulty except for some very challenging ones (like Max 300) that I had to do on Standard. This time around, I started with a song on Light mode and then moved up to Standard, but it was pretty challenging! I'm thinking about getting a DDR pad for home so I can keep playing after the arcade closes for the season. I have a bunch of the games for PS2. I think DDR could be very good for improving leg strength and helping me to keep up my stamina for more strenuous activity, which could translate to faster run times.
Last edited by Deinonysus on Sun Aug 29, 2021 7:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
9 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Postby Deinonysus » Sun Aug 29, 2021 7:17 pm

عربي

Making pretty good progress. I'm about half-way to the fourth of five checkpoints in Duolingo Arabic. I'm also over half-way through Unit 1 of Pimsleur MSA. My criteria for adding a language to my profile as a "beginner" language are that I can introduce myself, make small talk, order food, and ask for directions. I think I'm already close to there in MSA to be honest. Maybe I'll add it soon. It's been a while since I've studied Indonesian and Icelandic, I might have to take them down because they've gotten pretty rusty. Maybe I'll give them a refresher at some point.

: 141 / 230 Duolingo Arabic
: 20 / 77 Assimil L'arabe
: 16 / 90 Pimsleur Modern Standard Arabic

The key cluster and trackball clusters for my Ultimate Hacking Keyboard finally came! I pre-ordered them close to a year ago and they had a lot of delays, but I'm glad it finally came. With the key cluster I can easily press "enter" with my thumb instead of my pinky, so Duolingo doesn't hurt my hand anymore!

20210829_150228.jpg

(The numpad is a separate item)

My Arabic typing is starting to hit 20 WPM a bit more consistently now (nothing to do with the modules, I just got them a couple hours ago). I'll keep working on it. My English typing seems to have improved a bit too. I'm hitting 60 WPM on the 100 most common words pretty consistently. Last time I was working on it it was in the low to mid 50s. Could certainly use more drilling but any improvement is good! That's with my custom multilingual layout; I'd probably type a bit faster on QWERTY because I've been using it longer (over 20 years vs. just over a year on my latest layout), but I don't take typing tests with QWERTY.

Polyglot Fitness Challenge

I ran 5K for the first time! Well, it was slightly abbreviated, more like 4.8K. There's going to be a 5K in October and I ran the route, but there's an extra 10th of a mile past the original starting line that I didn't do. I never time myself exactly but I think it took around 40 minutes. Nothing to write home about but not bad for my first time! I think I'll sign up for the one in October and I'd love to get it down to half an hour by then.

For running on smooth, freshly paved asphalt, I never needed much in the way of calluses, but this route goes over some rougher beat-up road and sidewalk with rocks and seeds so I'll probably need to build some up to run better on these kinds of conditions. I did develop a raw spot on one of my feet that will probably turn into a bit of callous, but over all it doesn't particularly hurt to run on roads and sidewalks in bare feet. I think that's a major misconception. When I ran the one-mile race people were saying I must have tough feet or that I must need to soak them after a painful run, but that really isn't the case (in fact, my feet are pretty smooth and soft because every run I go on exfoliates them!). It's very important to hit the ground very lightly with the forefoot or midfoot when you run barefoot and have a shorter stride (less time between steps), so I'm not stomp-stomp-stomping my feet into the ground the way a lot of people run in padded shoes. I try to make sure my running sounds like a soft pitter-patter, like the sound a dog or cat makes when they run.

It's also important to make sure your footfalls go straight down! Otherwise you could scrape or stub your toe. I did that the other day and had to cut my run short, although luckily my toe didn't bleed and I was able to run back home.

I've been doing push-ups, sit-ups, and squats after each run. I'm up to 10 each, so I've reached half of the running portion of the Saitama workout and 10% of the calisthenics portion.

Reading & Music

I finally finished The House of Seven Gables! I'm also almost done rereading Born to Run and after that it shouldn't take me long to finish Cuneiform. Next, I think I'll try to polish off the rest of my list of outstanding books that I started but never finished: War of the Worlds and The Picture of Dorian Gray. After that, I'm leaning towards reading Emma.

I've started practicing the recorder while my wife and kid are out of the house. I got an Alto recorder (it's a plastic Yamaha with Baroque fingering) in hopes that it would sound a bit less shrill than the standard Soprano recorder, but to be honest it doesn't sound to bad most of the time. I've gone through lesson 1 and part of lesson 2 of Enjoy Your Recorder: The Trapp Family Singers' New complete method of Instruction for the Recorder, which I picked up on a trip to the Trapp lodge in Vermont a year or two ago. I never ended up going through it, but now that I have the house to myself for a good chunk of the week I think it's finally time!

I've been interested in learning the recorder for a while. It gets a bad reputation from memories of trying to play cheap plastic ones as kids, but I think it's a beautiful instrument with a very pure sound.

On days when I don't have the house to myself, I've been trying to practice piano every day. I've been working on the first movement of Bartók's For Children. Maybe later I'll try to finally finish learning Debussy's La fille aux cheveux de lin!
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
9 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

Ezra
Orange Belt
Posts: 185
Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 9:33 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
In use: French, Spanish, Latin, Classical Hebrew
Studying: Classical Chinese, Italian, German, Japanese, Ancient Greek
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
x 631

Re: If you give an עכבר a كعكة

Postby Ezra » Sun Aug 29, 2021 9:09 pm

Deinonysus wrote:The key cluster and trackball clusters for my Ultimate Hacking Keyboard finally came! I pre-ordered them close to a year ago and they had a lot of delays, but I'm glad it finally came. With the key cluster I can easily press "enter" with my thumb instead of my pinky, so Duolingo doesn't hurt my hand anymore!

It looks gorgeous with this pads! Though it does seem to cost a small fortune as well :D.
1 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests