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

[guyome]

Thanks, einzelne. No secret, I'm afraid I just like spending time browsing Google Books, archive.org and the like.

[Herodotean]

As my lack of activity here suggests, I’ve recently had much less time for language learning than usual, and so I’m hundreds of pages behind in the Super Challenges: about 350 pages for Latin and 250 for Greek. On the bright side, despite being so far behind, I need only read about one additional page per day in each language from now till the end of the challenge in order to finish on time (I’m completely ignoring the “films” component). I will shamelessly use easy texts to help me catch up. For Greek, that currently means (Pseudo-)Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca; for Latin, Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos.

November goals:

• Greek
  
  • continue reading Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander
  • finish Plato’s Phaedrus (languishing since August or so)
• Latin
  
  • continue reading Apuleius' Metamorphoses
  • continue reading Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos
• German
  
  • read at least a page per day of Seewald’s Benedict XVI biography (I have the Kindle edition to facilitate word lookup)
• Spanish
  
  • resume Dos Vidas – I’m paying for that RTVE subscription, after all!

Edit: Apollodorus, not Apollonius!

[Herodotean]

In a bit of what is probably wishful thinking, I bought a Persian Bible that I found in a bookstore the other day. It says in English that it was photographically reproduced from a 1904 edition. Will I ever be able to read it? The answer is a definite maybe.

[Beli Tsar]

In a bit of what is probably wishful thinking, I bought a Persian Bible that I found in a bookstore the other day. It says in English that it was photographically reproduced from a 1904 edition. Will I ever be able to read it? The answer is a definite mabye.

From what I've seen, the recent NMV translation is excellent, readable and accurate. The older translations (like this!) are... really not.

Plenty modern Iranians struggle badly with reading them, let alone language learners. They will often be completely unable to understand whole sentences, though doubtless this depends on how much older literature they are familiar with.

I'm not sure what the issues are entirely, although part of it is a deliberately archaistic style and peculiar vocabulary choice that goes with that. I suspect the translators were trying to mimic the style of the King James, rather than that of the Greek.

The NMV is available online as well as on paper, so it's easy to have a look at. Bible.com has a nice parallel text tool that works well with the NIV in English, which since it's another clean, accurate modern translation, works well alongside, as indeed do some more word-by-word modern English translations.

It's a good language-learning tool, and available in audio versions as well

Perhaps not the most encouraging thing to stay after a new purchase.... Hopefully your reading of older Persian literature will counterbalance this?

[DaveAgain]

Bible.com has a nice parallel text tool that works well with the NIV in English, which since it's another clean, accurate modern translation, works well alongside, as indeed do some more word-by-word modern English translations.

Biblegateway.com has a different editions in parallel columns layout option too.

[Herodotean]

In a bit of what is probably wishful thinking, I bought a Persian Bible that I found in a bookstore the other day. It says in English that it was photographically reproduced from a 1904 edition. Will I ever be able to read it? The answer is a definite mabye.

From what I've seen, the recent NMV translation is excellent, readable and accurate. The older translations (like this!) are... really not.

Plenty modern Iranians struggle badly with reading them, let alone language learners. They will often be completely unable to understand whole sentences, though doubtless this depends on how much older literature they are familiar with.

I'm not sure what the issues are entirely, although part of it is a deliberately archaistic style and peculiar vocabulary choice that goes with that. I suspect the translators were trying to mimic the style of the King James, rather than that of the Greek.

The NMV is available online as well as on paper, so it's easy to have a look at. Bible.com has a nice parallel text tool that works well with the NIV in English, which since it's another clean, accurate modern translation, works well alongside, as indeed do some more word-by-word modern English translations.

It's a good language-learning tool, and available in audio versions as well

Perhaps not the most encouraging thing to stay after a new purchase.... Hopefully your reading of older Persian literature will counterbalance this?

That's helpful information, thanks! It's somewhat disappointing that the translation I purchased is probably not the one I should eventually try to read. On the other hand, it's nice to have a physical book in Persian that wasn't made for learners. Whether I'll ever read older Persian literature of any variety remains to be seen.

[Herodotean]

To 2022, I say good riddance, not least because it was a terrible year for language learning. I won't even bother revisiting the goals I set for it. For 2023, I hope to catch up in reading for both Super Challenges (I'm currently about 500 pages behind in each language) and perhaps join the Output Challenge for Latin and/or Greek. Beyond that, que será será.

[Herodotean]

Tonight's German listening: Schubert's "Die Götter Griechenlands."



Text:

Schöne Welt, wo bist du? Kehre wieder
Holdes Blütenalter der Natur!
Ach, nur in dem Feenland der Lieder
Lebt noch deine fabelhafte Spur.
Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde,
Keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blick,
Ach, von jenem lebenwarmen
Bilde Blieb der Schatten nur zurück.

Compare Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us," written at about the same time:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

[Herodotean]

Latin (reading) Super Challenge: 20 pages gained (now only 465 pages behind!)
Greek (reading) Super Challenge: 3 pages gained (now 484 pages behind)
Output Challenge: 554 words (1079 total; all in Latin so far)

Latin

• Apuleius, Metamorphoses. 4.5–35, 5.1–13 (~35 pages). I'm well into the Cupid and Psyche embedded narrative, which I've read before; the rest of the Metamorphoses I'd read only in English translation. Apuleius' florid and exuberant style takes a bit of getting used to, but now that I'm acclimated I find it delightful and not terribly difficult (at least with the in usum Delphini running prose paraphrase within reach). When I read the Cupid and Psyche story in Latin, I used my university's copy of the Oxford text, which contained some previous reader's acerbic annotations about how absolutely insufferable it was; though I don't agree, and I'm using a different edition now, I still chuckle when I remember them.
• Tibullus 1.4
• A few pages from Gasparri’s Catechismus Catholicus

Greek

• Plato, Protagoras 348b–351e
• Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 6.11
• Pseudo-Apollonius, Bibliotheca (a few pages on Heracles)

German

• Seewald, Benedikt XVI: Ein Leben, pp. 40–47.
• Some WDR Reisen YouTube content with subtitles.

Spanish

• Some listening here and there.

[Herodotean]

In my career as a student, I took two especially terrible classes. The only two I ever dropped, in fact. One was trigonometry. The other was phonetics. Both of them, years later, still frustrate me, because I felt I should have been good enough to do well, but I was prevented by terrible instruction (for trigonometry) and terrible course design with zero practice opportunities before assessments (for phonetics). Since this is a language log, I bring up these lurid memories because I intend to give phonetics and phonology another go. I'm primarily interested becoming a more informed reader of scholarship in historical linguistics.

To that end, I've purchased Gussenhoven and Jacobs 2017, Understanding Phonology (4th ed.). It's not a perfect book, but it seems accessible enough, and the publisher has a free answer key available for the exercises. Gussenhoven and Jacobs are not at all interested in historical linguistics, but I think their overview will suit my purposes.

(I do not, however, plan to give trigonometry another go anytime soon . . .)