Jeff's language log

[jeff_lindqvist]

Anki summary for 2023

These are the number of cards due to review today, 1 Jan, 2024:

cs: 20
esperanto: 26
fi: 2
ga: 7
kernewek: 0
mandarin: 43
pt: 115
ro: 2
tp: 2
yue: 11

Not too different from last year's stats for the 1st of January. Again, most (if not all) cards are pushed more than one year into the future.

[jeff_lindqvist]

Summary of 2022
I don’t think I ever posted it one year ago, so here it is:

1-5
Italian - 312.75 hours: listening (during my daily walks...) + 6.75 hours of reading.
Swedish - 104.25 hours of reading
English - 104.25 hours of reading
Dutch - 6.75 hours of reading
Chinese - 4.75 hours of shadowing

Books devoured: 149
Depending on how you count.
Swedish - 63, English - 36, Italian (audiobooks) 50

Even if I don't count the audiobooks, it's still 99.

(Stats for 2021 here.)

[jeff_lindqvist]

2024 - Summary of week 1

First week of the year. Still freezing cold. Also first work week of the year. The heat was back Friday evening. Saturday afternoon, I went to a church concert: Gloria by Antonio Vivaldi. Nice playing - after all, it's baroque music. But I zoned out completely.

No books finished. I started doing my top secret South-East Asian exercises again, though. Always something.

DE: Librivox. I started the year by listening to Die Abenteuer Tom Sawyers by Mark Twain.

[jeff_lindqvist]

2024 - Summary of week 2

Back to normal. I finished one book - Drömmen om Atlantis (EN: Finding Atlantis: A True Story of Genius, Madness, and an Extraordinary Quest for a Lost World. David King's book is a biography about Swedish polymath Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702) and his fascination with Atlantis.

I watched a few movies, including The Etruscan Smile which to my surprise featured some Gaelic.

DE: More Librivox.

[jeff_lindqvist]

2024 - Summary of week 3

I finished one book - Ringens återkomst : texter om Tolkien (by Judith Kiros). As the title says - texts about Tolkien. No games (other than chess online - this week with an epic fail rate ...). Daily walks - some days with blizzard and 10 m/s. Lot of exercising in order to stay warm. It works. Of course it does. (Teango knows what I'm talking about. )

DE: More Librivox.

[jeff_lindqvist]

2024 - Summary of week 4

I finished a couple of books including Torv : resor på Brittiska öarna by Erik Andersson (the most recent translator of The Lord of the Rings + The Hobbit). Other than that, a few movies - Ip Man and Ip Man 2. The dialogue is mostly in Cantonese. An interesting thing is that a few actors don't use their native variety. For example, Xiong Dailin who speaks Cantonese as the wife of Ip Man is really a Mandarin speaker, Fan Siu-wong who plays the northerner Jin Shan Zhao is a Cantonese speaker. And in the sequel, actor Huang Xiaoming who plays Wong Leung, acts in Cantonese, but then does an interview in Mandarin. Alright, in our corner of the world it's not that unusual for actors to switch accents or even languages, but I still found this very interesting. Maybe it's very common over there, and of course, many could in fact be bilingual.

Moreover, in the the first movie, there is a scene with a Cantonese←→Japanese interpreter who says he doesn't understand the northern accent of Jin Shan Zhao - whereas all the other Cantonese speaking characters seem to have no problem ( ).

Anyway, watching the two movies (plus all the extra material) got me thinking of Cantonese for the nth time.

DE: More Librivox.

[qxz]

Wie finden Sie/findest du das Buch von Mark Twain? Als Kind haben Sie das Buch gelesen?

[jeff_lindqvist]

Ich habe das Buch (in Schwedisch) vor langer Zeit gelesen, ich glaube, es war in der 8. Klasse (und ich bin mir ziemlich sicher, dass es eine gekürzte Ausgabe für unsere Altersgruppe war ...). Ich erinnere mich, dass ich es als Film gesehen habe Anfang der 1980er Jahre (vielleicht sogar Ende der 1970er Jahre), und als Abenteuerroman hat es mir sehr gut gefallen.

Viele der Hörbücher, die ich höre, sind Klassiker, die ich als Kind/Teenager gelesen habe. (Literaturwerke, deren Urheberrecht abgelaufen ist, werden wahrscheinlich auf Librivox veröffentlicht.)

[jeff_lindqvist]

2024 - Summary of week 5

Reading. Most of my language related activities last week consisted of watching the additional material from Ip Man 2 - the interviews are almost exclusively in Cantonese, some in Mandarin. Both languages are like music to my ears. I logged on to Glossika and almost started a course - but I couldn't decide which variety of Chinese I wanted to study. So, nothing yet.

Saturday, I attended a concert (nothing but organ music):
Henri NIBELLE - Toccata
Theodor SALOMÈ - Cantiléne
Jehan ALAIN - Litanies
Jean LANGLAIS - Voix Céleste ur Suite Française
Jean-Baptiste ROBIN - Cinq versets sur le "Veni Creator"

• 2. Flamboiement
• 3. Le temps qui danse

Henri NIBELLE - Carillon Orléanais

I'm not familiar with any of the composers, but it was the best concert I've heard in a long while.

DE: More Librivox.

[jeff_lindqvist]

2024 - Summary of week 6

Reading. One book finished - Döda kvinnor förlåter inte by Katarina Wennstam. I hadn't read anything by her before. This is the latest novel, recommended by a co-worker.

DE: More Librivox. Earlier today I opened a book which I checked out from the library a few weeks ago. Daheim by Judith Hermann. I consider myself a fast reader, but not in German. Less than one page per minute. Nevertheless, the language is easy enough, with only a few unknown words per page.