Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

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lichtrausch
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Re: Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

Postby lichtrausch » Wed Jul 20, 2022 10:02 pm

I got about 50 pages into 乳と卵 (Breasts and Eggs), but the Kansai dialect was causing me trouble so I stopped and read a primer on it. I restarted the novel and it's going a lot better this time. I also started reading Moby Dick, which I've been looking forward to for a long time.

In recent years my interest in science fiction has declined, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. But after another false start with a scifi novel, this time Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, I realized the problem. I've lost all patience for world building. As soon as an author starts throwing made-up names at me and expounding on made-up cultures and societies, I get impatient. There are so many interesting real societies and cultures on Earth that I know so little about, so why am I spending my limited time learning about made-up ones? I get it, there are good reasons to read these types of books, but personally I would rather read other stuff for the foreseeable future. Science fiction about the near future still appeals to me, because these books are interesting thought experiments, often a serious attempt by the author to predict what human society and the solar system will look like in 20 years or whatever. A book that takes places 200 or 2000 years in the future is basically fantasy since we don't have a clue what things will look like then given the rate of technological advance.
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lichtrausch
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Re: Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

Postby lichtrausch » Tue Aug 09, 2022 4:50 am

I've been super focused on improving my Mandarin listening skills. I try to keep my content varied in terms of topics, dialects (mostly Standard, Northern, and Taiwanese), sex and age of speakers, speed and clarity of speech, etc. As I'm listening to a video I continually ask myself "did I understand exactly what was just said?" If the answer is no I rewind a few seconds to check the Mandarin subtitles and listen again.

I'm still doing low intensity Russian. One of the pleasures of learning Russian has been finding German loan words that travelled east but not west (AFAIK) such as цель (Ziel), рыцарь (Ritter), and слесарь (Schlosser).

I finished reading 乳と卵 (Breasts and Eggs) which had a bizarre plot and strong writing. The book had a short story tacked onto the end called あなたたちの恋愛は瀕死 (Your Love is on its Last Legs) which had a funny plot twist (or horrifying if you take the story too seriously). I also read Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America by Charles Murray. Controversial topic but worth grappling with IMO.

Moby Dick is going well. It's a long book but the chapters are very short so I read one in the morning and one in the evening. It will take a few months. I also started the science fiction novel 火星照耀美国 (Red Star Over America) by Han Song and The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast by Andrew Lipman.
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lichtrausch
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Re: Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

Postby lichtrausch » Thu Aug 25, 2022 3:49 am

I finished reading The Saltwater Frontier. It's a fascinating history of early New England, New Netherland, and the various Native ethnic groups of the region. The book was sprinkled with Dutch and Algonquian words for things like ship types. One of the highlights of the book was learning about the critical role Algonquians played in creating the global whaling industry.

I finally finished level one for all the lessons of the Duolingo Russian tree. Next up is some proper grammar study. To that end I checked out Teach Yourself Russian from the library, which I've already started going through.

The Boston Public Library had a meager selection of language learning materials. No comprehensive grammar of Russian for example. But their selection of books in foreign languages was impressive. Thousands of books in Chinese and Russian. Hundreds of books in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Arabic. Dozens of books in Greek, Irish, Hindi, Hebrew, Polish, Korean, Haitian Creole. So many languages, so little time.
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lichtrausch
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Re: Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

Postby lichtrausch » Tue Sep 13, 2022 4:08 am

My Mandarin was put to the test last weekend. I attended a Taiwanese wedding! I was able to follow the MC pretty well, although his Taiwanese accent added an extra layer of difficulty for me. I was also able to follow a good deal of the conversation at my table, and understood about 90% of what was said to me over the course of the evening. Which is good enough for some short exchanges, but not for a long conversation. When spoken to I would reply in Mandarin when the appropriate response came to me, but otherwise in English for the sake of keeping the conversation going. Considering where my Mandarin listening skills were a year ago, I'm pretty satisfied with how it went.

While reading Moby Dick I ran across a reference to a poem by Friedrich Schiller called Das verschleierte Bild zu Sais (The Veiled Image at Sais), so I found it online and gave it a read. You will never catch me reading a book of poetry, but I do like to read the occasional poem for variety's sake.
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lichtrausch
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Re: Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

Postby lichtrausch » Thu Oct 13, 2022 5:23 am

I finished reading 火星照耀美国 (Red Star Over America). This strange novel is a Chinese nationalist's wet dream. Japan has literally sunk into the sea. The US has again descended into civil war (but not before eliminating African Americans through gene editing), and low and behold, China has taken its rightful place among nations as a shining beacon of innovation and prosperity. The book is riddled with race essentialism. Japanese characters are cruel *because* they are Japanese. American and European characters are deceitful and cowardly *because* they are white. Chinese characters are wise and generous *because* they are Chinese. Any time a character breaks with a crude racial or ethnic stereotype, the author makes a special note of this shocking event. The only good thing I have to say about this book is that some of the descriptions of scenes and places were well done.

Last weekend I had a long conversation in German at a local brewery. Nice to discover that my spoken German is still alive and kicking. Speaking of German, I also read a novella called Die Klosterschule (The Convent School) by Barbara Frischmuth, and I started watching Biohackers on Netflix.
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Re: Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

Postby DaveAgain » Thu Oct 13, 2022 5:30 am

lichtrausch wrote:I finished reading 火星照耀美国 (Red Star Over America). This strange novel is a Chinese nationalist's wet dream. Japan has literally sunk into the sea. The US has again descended into civil war (but not before eliminating African Americans through gene editing), and low and behold, China has taken its rightful place among nations as a shining beacon of innovation and prosperity. The book is riddled with race essentialism. Japanese characters are cruel *because* they are Japanese. American and European characters are deceitful and cowardly *because* they are white. Chinese characters are wise and generous *because* they are Chinese. Any time a character breaks with a crude racial or ethnic stereotype, the author makes a special note of this shocking event. The only good thing I have to say about this book is that some of the descriptions of scenes and places were well done.

Last weekend I had a long conversation in German at a local brewery.
Are you now peddling the all-Germans-drink-beer-and-eat-sausages stereotype? Shame on You! :-)
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lichtrausch
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Re: Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

Postby lichtrausch » Thu Oct 13, 2022 7:34 pm

DaveAgain wrote:
lichtrausch wrote:Last weekend I had a long conversation in German at a local brewery.
Are you now peddling the all-Germans-drink-beer-and-eat-sausages stereotype? Shame on You! :-)

Where else would you find Germans in October? In a pizzeria? ;)
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lichtrausch
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Re: Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

Postby lichtrausch » Thu Nov 03, 2022 2:08 pm

The Boston Book Festival was held last weekend in person for the first time since the plague hit. One of the sessions I attended was with the authors Yiyun Li and Gish Jen. Li mentioned that she has a soft ear (耳朵软), which means that she is easily influenced. Incidentally, Li is one of those rare authors who has achieved literary success writing in a foreign language. She has an immediately noticeable Mandarin accent when speaking English, but that hasn't stopped her from mastering the written language to a level most native speakers never will. Take heart, language learners of the world!

I finished Teach Yourself Russian (without doing any of the exercises). Russian grammar is quite complex, but all in all it feels like a further elaboration of German grammar, so it's manageable. I think the book gave me a good grounding in the language, and now the plan is to read lots of news articles and memorize everything important about Russian morphology. I will do that by referencing grammar resources as I work through the articles and other input. I will also incorporate Russian with Max videos into my studies.

I started reading 东方 (In the East) by Wei Wei, an epic novel about a Chinese soldier's experiences in the Korean War.

I've also been reading a lot of articles in Korean about the horrific Itaewon "crowd crush". It boggles the mind how a scene of youthful revelry can so suddenly turn into one of unspeakable horror.
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lichtrausch
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Re: Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

Postby lichtrausch » Thu Dec 01, 2022 6:12 am

Last weekend I was in NYC and went to the Flushing neighborhood which is now the city's largest Chinatown. I had about an hour of immersion with people who spoke Wu-flavored Mandarin and Taiwanese Mandarin. Challenging and useful as always. I made stops at Kinokuniya and Koryo Books but didn't buy anything for once. There's a few reasons for my unusual restraint: I still have plenty of books from past trips to Kinokuniya, one of my local bookstores now has a Japanese section, and Korean has been on the back burner so I haven't been reading any of my Korean books.

I finished reading Moby Dick, which lived up to the hype. I also finished the first of 东方's six parts called 山雨 (Mountain Rain), which takes us right up to the moment when PRC forces are about to cross the Yalu River into Korea. I also squeezed in Criminal (In)Justice by Rafael Mangual, which was excellent. Now I'm reading volume two of ノルウェイの森 (Norwegian Wood) by Haruki Murakami. I've read it several times in German translation but this is my first time going through the original.

While riding the train through Queens in NYC I learned a new meaning for an English word. There was a group of teenage boys in the train car who, after spray painting a phallus on the train door, climbed out of the speeding train onto its roof to prove how fearless they were. They called it "surfing".
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Re: Lichtrausch's Log: The Sinosphere and Indoeuropean

Postby Querneus » Fri Dec 02, 2022 8:53 am

lichtrausch wrote:While riding the train through Queens in NYC I learned a new meaning for an English word. There was a group of teenage boys in the train car who, after spray painting a phallus on the train door, climbed out of the speeding train onto its roof to prove how fearless they were. They called it "surfing".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/train_surfing

Wiktionarians have found uses from the late 90s.
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