Mork the Fiddle's Log (Ancient Greek, Spanish, French)

[reineke]

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[MorkTheFiddle]

That would mean that after the fifth change, should your drive end up locked to a different region you would not be able to use it for any US discs. If you're a more advanced user of technology and have programs running in the background taking care of this I apologize for spending too much of your time and log space.

Since I'm already here let me add that while *I'* would never slow down any audio below the normal speed, it's certainly worth a try. Just don't get addicted to it.

No, I appreciate what you have told me. This series is the only PAL series I have ever played, and I don't expect to play any others, at least not for awhile. This is also the only dvd I have ever slowed down beyond the recommended speed. I have used Audacity to slow down speech, though never with Spanish or French.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Inspired by episode 2 of El Ministerio del tiempo, I began Lope de Vega's play El remedio en la desdicha yesterday and finished it this morning. One of the main characters is captured, released if he promises to come back in 3 days, he comes back in three days with his sister, who is also his wife, and both are set free. In the meantime brother and sister tell each other how much they love one another. They do so many times and at length.

Episode 7 inspired me to read Lazarillo de Tormes. I'm only part way through. There is no love in Lazarillo de Tormes.

These inspirations can be chalked up as one more thumbs up for El Ministerio del tiempo.

[MorkTheFiddle]

This morning I completed a long-time goal of reading Herodotus in the original Greek. Well, almost. I skipped Book 2, the Egyptian business, and part of Book 3 because they bore me to tears. I am also in the midst of reaching another long-time goal, reading Aeschylus' Agamemnon in the original Greek. Helpful in these matters were the Perseus versions of the Greek for looking up vocabulary meanings, Macauley's translation of Herodotus (1890) at Sacred Texts and Smyth's translation of Agamemnon (Loeb via Perseus). Neither translation is literal, but both are literal enough to help clear up puzzling phrases and clauses.

Now I have to decide on my next Greek prose project. I have Thucydides, Diogenes Laertius, Arrian and a couple of other to choose from. I'm leaning toward Thucydides.

In Spanish, I'm reading Doña Barbara, and in French, L'Amant de la Chine du Nord, by Marguerite Duras (the screen writer for Hiroshima Mon Amour).

In French, I have watched the first two seasons of The French Village in French with English subtitles.
The third season with subtitles is due out this month, but I am going to try to up my understanding of spoken French to watch the last four seasons without subtitles. In addition to the usual suspects, the following series seem to be helpful:

Chez Mimi
Learn French with Victor
Hélène et les garçons
Parley-moi
La Vie quotidien
Easy French

and Gloss.

Un cœur en hiver has been recommended on the net as fairly easy to understand. I reserved a copy from the library. Finally, I lined up several documentaries in French to watch over the next few weeks.

[MorkTheFiddle]

French Un cœur en hiver, which I cited in my last post as recommended as easy, was not easy for me. Maybe a few weeks farther down the road. While watching Hélène et les garçons I thought it was almost, almost, good enough to be a real series. Turns out it was a real series. When one of the leads dropped out, it morphed into a second series, which in turn spun off to a third series, and finally that third into a fourth series, to which the lead who dropped out of the first version returned. All the series were relatively popular with the public but panned by the critics. Here are the names of the other series, though perhaps not in the correct chronological order: Le miracle de l'amour, Les vacances de l'amour and Les mystères de l'amour. It would seem they all fall into what one wag once called, referring to French in Action, as the "hormonal method" of learning a language. Finding any of these for sale anywhere proved frustrating. Just one or two seasons turned up. For Hélène et les garçons I should add there are no subtitles.

More movies were recommended by françaisavecPierre.
Recent and popular, at least with Pierre's classes: La famille Belier (2014), Qu'est-ce qu'on a fait au Bon Dieu ('14), Le Prénom ('12), Intouchables ('11), La nouvelle guerre des boutons, Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis ('08), Persepolis ('07), Les Chorists ('04), Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, and Le dîner de cons.
Older, perhaps no longer as popular, were Un air de famille, Nikita, Léon, La vie est une long fleuve tranquille, Au revoir les enfants, Jean de Florette, Manon de Souces, Le père Noel est une ordure, Le Chèvre and Les Bronzés.
Hard core film buffs may like Pierrot le fou (1965) and Le régle du jeu (1959).
Note that I did not list all of them, and I forgot to note some of their dates. Of those I list, I have seen with English subtitles and liked Nikita, Léon and Au revoir les enfants. I watched but did not like Le régle du jeu. I would not call any of them "easy."

I am still reading L'Amant de la Chine du Nord.

In Spanish I am still reading Doña Barbara.

In Ancient Greek I am still reading Agamemnon and began Thucydides Book 1. Perseus is my Virgil for both.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Scratch Thucydides, add Polybius.

L'Amant de la Chine du Nord is finished. Excellent novel and I plan to read more Marguerite Dumas.

Doña Barbara was put on standby and replaced by the Spanish translation of La novela de Genji. Too much witchy stuff in Doña Barbara. I wanted some big fat book to read in Spanish, and La novela de Genji fits the bill. I've also been looking into the delicate poetry of Esteban Manuel de Villegas, 17th century poet and translator too of Anacreonta.

Pierre of francaiswithPierre provided four series on YouTube good for practicing listening to French:

(1) a series of lectures by Henri Guillemin (too tough for me right now)
(2) La droit de savoir (tough for me)
(3) Les enquetes impossibles (tough for me)
(4) Envoyé spécial (tough for me)

Pierre also references http://www.arte.com, which has some longish documentaries.

[sctroyenne]

You should not have any trouble playing PAL DVDs on a computer however you can change the region coding on a normal drive only 5 times before it is locked to the last region played.

Ah, good to know. Thank you.

Just passing by and saw this. One feature of players like VLC is that they override the whole switching mechanism so it will function like a universal DVD player. Just be sure to not click "yes" on the system message that pops up asking if you want to switch the region and it will just play in VLC (and others) and the system will never be the wiser.

The film/TV selections you cited are good ones I think. That's good that you get TV recommendations that can be found online.

[MorkTheFiddle]

The film/TV selections you cited are good ones I think. That's good that you get TV recommendations that can be found online.

Getting the TV shows online is convenient and the quantity of shows and the length of the shows fill a big gap. There are a number of shows in each "chain," and the length runs to about an hour for each. If I can listen to three or four hours a day of French of all kinds, including audiobooks and YouTube videos other than what Pierre recommends, I think I should be up to the standard I want to be at in three or four months. Especially since I am not starting from Level 0 (though close ).

Thanks for the heart and the comment.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Good voices read a number of French plays hosted by Litteratureaudio.

[MorkTheFiddle]

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