Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

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Herodotean
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Re: Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

Postby Herodotean » Sat Feb 05, 2022 6:55 pm

Χάριν σοι οἶδα.
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Herodotean
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Re: Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

Postby Herodotean » Wed Mar 16, 2022 5:23 pm

I haven't posted here partly due to the 502/503 errors and partly because life has recently made it harder to do anything with languages worth recording. To get back in the groove, I'm trying a different format: instead of, or perhaps in addition to, posting a weekly list of everything I've done, I'll occasionally post about a resource or technique I've been using. Thanks for reading, if you do, and if you don't, well, you aren't seeing this anyway.

For today: the Easy Spanish podcast. For me, this is relatively easy listening material. The hosts, Paulina (from Mexico) and Iván (from Spain), speak slowly and distinctly and usually discuss topics that are interesting enough for me to actually want to listen: growing up in Mexico vs. growing up in Spain, what languages are difficult and why, Mexican and Spanish Christmas traditions, etc. The most recent episode even featured a pre-recorded cameo from Manuel of Easy German (who apparently speaks Spanish!). When I'm not in the mood to work hard at understanding Spanish audio, this is my go-to.

I don't watch the Easy Languages videos very much because of the distracting English subtitles. I was surprised that the recent Easy German poll was strongly in favor of the current system -- in which both German and English subs are baked in -- but I suppose that means they know their market better than I do! The podcasts, on the other hand, are much more useful to me (though for now I understand much less of the German one).
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Re: Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Mar 16, 2022 5:34 pm

A pleasant "comfy" blog. Thanks for the pointer.
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Herodotean
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Re: Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

Postby Herodotean » Thu Mar 24, 2022 8:08 pm

I've more or less abandoned Persian for the past two months, and I've decided I'm not going to let it slip away so easily. Since I believe that Sobhani's Persian textbook is part of the problem -- its difficulty ramped up too steeply and it's written in one of my weakest languages -- I've bitten the bullet and purchased Assimil's Le Persan with audio. Blackwells UK currently has it at 71.47 USD including delivery to the US, which isn't too bad. If the more user-friendly Assimil format and my stronger French don't do the trick, then I suppose I'll let Persian go . . .
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Re: Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

Postby Herodotean » Sun Mar 27, 2022 11:29 pm

Today's Spanish listening (+ Iranian culture):

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Re: Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

Postby Herodotean » Mon Apr 04, 2022 5:49 pm

Despite my general dislike for transliteration and parallel texts, I'm finding Assimil's Le persan to be much more effective (I think) -- certainly more enjoyable -- than Sobhani's Persisches Lehr- und Lesebuch. The additional help and explanation in Assimil makes me think I might actually finish the book, while it became clear after a month or so that I was never going to finish Sobhani without additional resources. On the other hand, struggling with Sobhani certainly primed the pump for effectively using Assimil, so I won't consider it wasted time, and I may very well return to Sobhani after Assimil for consolidation and review.

For now, I'm aiming for two fifteen-minute sessions per day. Since I have the Assimil audio as well, I can do some of that while away from my desk.
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Re: Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

Postby Herodotean » Tue Apr 05, 2022 9:15 pm

My Latin translation of Xenophon's Anabasis 2.1.1-2. Corrections welcome.

ὡς μὲν οὖν ἡθροίσθη Κύρῳ τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν ὅτε ἐπὶ τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἀρταξέρξην ἐστρατεύετο, καὶ ὅσα ἐν τῇ ἀνόδῳ ἐπράχθη καὶ ὡς ἡ μάχη ἐγένετο καὶ ὡς Κῦρος ἐτελεύτησε καὶ ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ στρατόπεδον ἐλθόντες οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐκοιμήθησαν οἰόμενοι τὰ πάντα νικᾶν καὶ Κῦρον ζῆν, ἐν τῷ πρόσθεν λόγῳ δεδήλωται. ἅμα δὲ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ συνελθόντες οἱ στρατηγοὶ ἐθαύμαζον ὅτι Κῦρος οὔτε ἄλλον πέμπει σημανοῦντα ὅ τι χρὴ ποιεῖν οὔτε αὐτὸς φαίνοιτο. ἔδοξεν οὖν αὐτοῖς συσκευασαμένοις ἃ εἶχον καὶ ἐξοπλισαμένοις προϊέναι εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν, ἕως Κύρῳ συμμείξειαν.

Quomodo igitur Graeci (a?) Cyro congregati sint, cum bellum fratri (eius) Artaxerxi inferrent, quae ab eis ascendentibus facta sint, quomodo pugna facta sit, quomodo Cyrus obiverit, quomodo Graeci, cum ad castra advenissent, credentes se omnino vicisse atque Cyrum vivere, obdormiverint, in dictis prioribus manifestum est. Prima autem luce, duces cum convenissent mirati sunt Cyrum nec alium mittere qui nuntiaret nec ipsum explicare. Quam ob rem visum est eis, cum quae habebant paravissent seque armavissent, ulterius progredi, donec Cyro inciderent.
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Re: Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

Postby Beosweyne » Wed Apr 06, 2022 7:38 pm

Herodotean wrote:Quomodo igitur Graeci (a?) Cyro congregati sint, cum bellum fratri (eius) Artaxerxi inferrent, ...


Hi I found your Latin easier to read than Xenophon's Greek! A couple of things I noticed:

1. a Cyro: yes I would keep the 'a' since the agent is a person.
2. inferrent -> inferret (Cyrus is the subject). Related to this, I'm unsure whether Latin allows the subject to be entirely omitted the way Greek does: I would prefer to insert a pronoun like 'cum hic bellum fratri inferret'.
3. near the end 'ὅ τι χρὴ ποιεῖν' was untranslated.
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Re: Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

Postby Herodotean » Wed Apr 06, 2022 8:16 pm

Thanks for your comments, Beosweyne.

Beosweyne wrote:1. a Cyro: yes I would keep the 'a' since the agent is a person.

I'm not at all sure that Κύρῳ is the agent; in Greek the agent of an aorist passive verb would normally be expressed with ὑπό + genitive (ὑπὸ Κύρου). One commentator adduces this as a parallel to illustrate the dative of advantage, which seems right to me. I included the a in parenthesis with a question mark because, while the dative of advantage works in Greek, it seems to work less well in Latin.

Beosweyne wrote:2. inferrent -> inferret (Cyrus is the subject). Related to this, I'm unsure whether Latin allows the subject to be entirely omitted the way Greek does: I would prefer to insert a pronoun like 'cum hic bellum fratri inferret'.

Now that I look again, I think you're right that Cyrus is the subject of ἐστρατεύετο, because of ἐπὶ τὸν ἀδελφόν. But when I translated it, I took τὸ Ἑλληνικόν as the subject (hence the plural inferrent for Graeci in the Latin). I'm not sure that subject omission in Latin works exactly the way it does in Greek, but there's certainly no requirement for Latin verbs to have an explicit subject.

Beosweyne wrote:3. near the end 'ὅ τι χρὴ ποιεῖν' was untranslated.

Good catch!
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Re: Herodotean's log (Latin, Greek, German, Spanish, etc.)

Postby Herodotean » Sat Apr 16, 2022 6:07 pm

My new-to-me copies of the Klett DaF kompakt A1-B1 coursebook and workbook have just arrived. I spent only $20 for both of them, including $10 shipping from the UK for the coursebook, which I was surprised to find included all three CDs. The workbook was missing one of the two it should come with (not that it matters, since the publisher offers the audio as a free download from its website). Now I must steel myself to actually finish A-Grammatik before starting something new.

As I cope with a significant personal loss, I am finding comfort in Cicero's Tusculanae disputationes, which he wrote to console himself after the death of his daughter. Here's part of his discussion of the soul after death:
Cumque corporis facibus inflammari soleamus ad omnis fere cupiditates eoque magis incendi, quod iis aemulemur, qui ea habeant quae nos habere cupiamus, profecto beati erimus, cum corporibus relictis et cupiditatum et aemulationum erimus expertes; quodque nunc facimus, cum laxati curis sumus, ut spectare aliquid velimus et visere, id multo tum faciemus liberius totosque nos in contemplandis rebus perspiciendisque ponemus, propterea quod et natura inest in mentibus nostris insatiabilis quaedam cupiditas veri videndi et orae ipsae locorum illorum, quo pervenerimus, quo faciliorem nobis cognitionem rerum caelestium, eo maiorem cognoscendi cupiditatem dabant.

Since we are usually inflamed by the body's torches to just about all desires, and we are set on fire all the more because we envy those who have what we ourselves desire to have, we will certainly be happy when we have left the body behind and are freed from desire and envy. And as we do now, when we're free from cares -- we want to look at something and behold it -- we'll do much more freely and we will place our entire being in contemplating and understanding reality, both because by nature our minds have a certain insatiable desire for seeing what is true, and because the very margins of those places to which we will come made our knowledge of heavenly things easier as much as they made our desire to know (about them) greater.

In other news, I'm at Lesson 20 of Assimil Persian. Still much more manageable than Sobhani, but I'm starting to forget vocabulary introduced in previous lessons, and I wish each lesson's main text was two or three times as long. But the audio is invaluable, and Persian is just a cool language. Today I came across a paper on translations of the Shahnameh: Yektatalab and Karimnia 2013, who claim that the Shahnameh has been translated into Latin but fail to provide any references. The closest thing I can find is Wilken's 1805 Latin translation of the Persian excerpts in his chrestomathy.

On a whim I did a few Arabic alphabet lessons on Duolingo; a similar format would have been quite helpful for Persian.
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