tiia's log (FIN, SPA, SWE, EUS)

[tiia]

Today I had my defense. It's over. I'm happy and feel like I'm smiling all the time.
I really made it!
(Except for one small thing, I couldn't get done yesterday due to technical difficulties. I solved it today, and it doesn't even affect the grade, so no stress here.)


Finished listening the 7th Harry Potter a while ago. I'm having to look what else I'm now going to do with languages. I might be finally able to start Slovak seriously; and look into what language course I can get to the next semester. (It's the last semester I'm entitled for the university's language courses, except if I started studying for another degree.)
I might be reading some books in German again... I went to a fantasy (and sci-fi) book fair two weeks ago, there were too many interesting books.

[tarvos]

Sometimes I wished I knew some Dutch. The Dutch researchers do have some interesting material on the subject. At least their newer publications are mostly in English, which is great. Honestly, I never thought I might be interested in Dutch some day. (Though I've met nice people from there with a good sense of humor.)

Well, yeah. Obviously. Since our country is basically shoreline with houses plonked on it, that makes sense.

[tiia]

Sometimes I wished I knew some Dutch. The Dutch researchers do have some interesting material on the subject. At least their newer publications are mostly in English, which is great. Honestly, I never thought I might be interested in Dutch some day. (Though I've met nice people from there with a good sense of humor.)

Well, yeah. Obviously. Since our country is basically shoreline with houses plonked on it, that makes sense.

Am I confused and don't find that I mentioned what my thesis was about, or is it just too obvious?


edit: I found the comment about the topic.

[tarvos]

You said shore management, right? I specifically looked for it because you mentioned Dutch, and besides that, water management and civil engineering truly is one of the few scientific domains where the Dutch really are top of the line.

[tiia]

It's probably not happening too often one becomes interested in Dutch due to the research going on there.
Shore protection was the term I was using. I had almost forgotten that I had mentioned it here. In my case it's a part of civil engineering, where I focused on all the water-related stuff.

[tarvos]

It's not that strange - the Japanese actually had a term for it back in the days when they were isolated from other countries - they only traded with the Dutch and used it to keep abreast of western technology. It's called rangaku. As the Dutch were avid seafarers and in the seventeenth century some of the best scientists around were Dutch, that was actually not that strange. Those glory days are past, but not too long ago (last year perhaps?) a Dutchman won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and several Nobel laureates have been Dutch over the years.

[tiia]

I'm having time for my languages again.
I got some audio with transcription in Spanish, which seems to be ok so far. It's aimed at students in the B1-B2 level range. It contains of 20 stories each lasting about 8-10 mins. The stories seem to be suitable for my level of comprehension, though they could be a bit more exciting. Sometimes I don't understand why they wrote down the translation of one word, but not of another one in the transcription. (There are only few words translated.)


And Slovak again. I took out the material I had organized myself nearly two years ago. Surprisingly I haven't forgotten everything. Today I didn't really do any excercises, but spend quite some time to figure out how to actually type Slovak.

As I have already been using different keyboard layouts for years, adding one for Slovak more didn't seem like a huge issue for me. (Fyi: I'm running ubuntu 16.04 with Mate.) Well, I had to find out there is actually a limit for the amount of different keyboard layouts one can add. And that the limit is four. However, I already had four layouts, so the "add"-button was disabled. Being afraid of not being able to add a layout once again, I didn't even want to try deleting one of them as a test.
There seem to be some methods of exceeding the four-layouts limit, but I didn't try any of them. Using IBus as input method might have also allowed me more than four layouts, but somehow switching between the layouts with a shortcut didn't really work that well. It simply didn't switch. If you're once used to using the menu key for switching, you don't want to go back to switching the keyboard layout with the mouse.

In the end I took a closer look at the four layouts I already had, and decided that the Finnish layout is actually sufficient for typing Slovak. It also works for Spanish. So I might even delete the Spanish one. I haven't really been using that one anyway, as the fourth position had been taken by Russian until the end of last year. If that's not enough in the long run, the normal German layout will be the next one to be kicked out. (For everyday use I find the German (Eliminate dead keys) layout more useful anyway.)
I'm wondering what people would do, who really learn more languages that really require another keyboard layout, e.g. due to another script...

Btw. as long as one only uses slovake.eu to type answers to the excercises, it's not per se necessary to have access to all the letters with diacritical marks. They just show those letters, so you can click them, if you can't find the on your keyboard. But to be honest, I prefer typing words as a whole, without having to click one letter in every second or third word.

------
Went to a book shop. Ended up with Rivers of London. - In German.

[tiia]

Again I'm a master at planning my trips long time ahead... Well, I'm absolutely not. So next week I'm going to Budapest. I booked my train tickets today. They were still surprisingly cheap ones left. I'm going to stay there for 5 days, although I actually I would have prefered 4 days, but well... I won't complain. A night in a hostel is cheaper than leaving a day earlier. Still need some place to stay overnight, but yesterday there was still space in some hostels, so I'm not bothering too much about it.

[tarvos]

I use Windows and I have like, what, 20 different keyboard layouts?

[tiia]

So I'm in Budapest now. Interesting city so far. I haven't tried out the nightlife yet and I'm not sure whether I will do that at all. I'm behaving a lot more like a typical tourist than usual. I even participated in one of the free walking tours today and visited a museum. The free walking tour was nice, I even talked to two nice people there. But still I was lazy and took the tour in English and not in Spanish. But I've heard Spanish on the streets quite often.
Generally there seem to be visitors from everywhere. I've heard so many different languages, even Finnish!

Tomorrow I'm planning try to rent a bike to explore the Danube outside of the city center, and to make the trip more comfortable for my feet. They really don't feel that well after 9 hours of standing+walking with nearly no breaks. (I always forget taking long enough breaks.)

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I registered for some languages courses at university as it's the last time I can take some courses there. Right now that would be the same Spanish course I didn't continue last semester, and two beginner's courses in new languages, though I will probabaly still drop one of those. (Better sign up and then sign out again than not getting a place.)

Sometimes I feel like I'm unusual here just because I get along with courses quite well...