Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

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Tristano
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5141
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Re: Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Postby Tristano » Wed Aug 23, 2017 7:44 am

Theodisce wrote:It's intriguing that Romanians succeeded in basically reinventing their language, at least when it comes to vocabulary (a 19th century dictionary classified Romanian as a Slavic language, or so I'm told), whereas it did not happen to that extent with Katharevousa, which ended up being substituted with Demotic after having left some traces (I guess some still use Katharevousa, but they are few). Any ideas why?


I don't think that Romanian was classified as Slavic honestly. What I think is that like other languages (for example Turkish) they wanted to purify the language by substituting part of the invasors' vocabulary with (in this case) Romanian words.

(It would be brilliant if English does the same and bases the spelling on the Icelandic one [for me].

Imagine a dialogue like this:
- Hæ!
- Hæ Endriú, uót’s ap?
- Naþing spéshal Tómmý. Há is going uiþ iór maðer?
- Shi is still in ðe sikhás!
- Oh, it spæts mí! Uót a béd goin-on! Strenþ!
- Þenx Tómmy. Bíar?


Aaaaaahh. 8-)
)

To my ear Romanian sounds like Italian pronounced by people who have been largely exposed to Slavic languages, but this sensation is obviously influenced by my knowledge of history.


Romanian is definitely Italian spoken by a Russian man who drank too much Palinka.

As for audio books, the Italian ones are read with rocket speed, at least those I bought. After 380 hours of input it is no more the problem it was at the beginning of the journey though.


I never used an italian audiobook in my life (and I will probably die without doing it) but I find it hard to believe, Italian is always read in a slow and solemn way :D (but I believe you.) But great to hear that with practice this is not anymore a problem :)
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Tristano
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Re: Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Postby Tristano » Wed Aug 23, 2017 7:58 am

Danish
After 250 played sentences, Clozemaster says that I got the 86,5% correct and the 13,5% wrong. I'm doing this without any previous exposure to the language. For comparison Romanian says 94.3% correct and 5,6% wrong after 4000~4500 sentences. I expect it anyway to shrink with the time. The fluency fast track of the Danish course is of 7419 sentences, more than the double than the Romanian one. I expect to have quite a good level of read Danish by the end of the course. Which is weird because:

I have not any clue about how to pronounce Danish, nor I really care about it.


Since the Danish spelling is one of the worse ever, with the pronunciation being even more difficult than English (that for me is already impossible), I decided to treat written Danish and spoken Danish as two separated languages. I will probably attempt to listen to spoken Danish only after having tackled Swedish, Icelandic and Norwegian, whether speaking Danish myself is definitely out of my plans. I will learn how to speak a scandinavian language though and that would be most probably Swedish. But that would not be before my Romanian is fluent.

Romanian
Apparently the names of body parts, animals and commonly used objects are almost all of Slavic origin, which would make it very difficult to read a novel but very easy to read non-fiction. Here Duolingo is giving me a good help where Clozemaster didn't bother about. Extensive and intensive reading will also help me to partially fix the problem.
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Re: Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Postby reineke » Wed Aug 23, 2017 6:24 pm

Hand, head, face, nose, eyes, teeth, fingers, jaw, blood, skin and other words denoting body parts and related words should all look familiar to an Italian. Leg: picior and gambă. Likely different meanings but you've got even that one covered 50% right from the start. You'll need to struggle with "cheek" but that one is immediately usable if you are learning Slavic languages. Hen, rabbit, bear, cow, fox, the African animals and some other animals are also recognizable. While I also see some "new" words this is hardly a problem (especially since you're interested in acquiring passive vocabulary). Good luck.
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Tristano
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Re: Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Postby Tristano » Wed Aug 23, 2017 9:31 pm

reineke wrote:Hand, head, face, nose, eyes, teeth, fingers, jaw, blood, skin and other words denoting body parts and related words should all look familiar to an Italian. Leg: picior and gambă. Likely different meanings but you've got even that one covered 50% right from the start. You'll need to struggle with "cheek" but that one is immediately usable if you are learning Slavic languages. Hen, rabbit, bear, cow, fox, the African animals and some other animals are also recognizable. While I also see some "new" words this is hardly a problem (especially since you're interested in acquiring passive vocabulary). Good luck.


Oh but I wasn't whining. :) I definitely enjoy the process.
Decoding the similar words as related or not is a skill on itself.
I tested a colleague and my girlfriend (both Dutch and both with knowledge of English. My girlfriend one knows also some German and Italian) with some Danish vocabulary. My colleague was horrible, he could not finding the answers and was insulting me when I was guessing that "penge" means money. Even more when I told him that I got it right because in Icelandic is "peningur" or something similar. My girlfriend instead came with a theory that it is related with the English "penny", which I don't know if it is true but I find interesting.

Without the necessary context though, it would be not clear if "sange" in Romanian means blood (from Italian) or monkey (from French).
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reineke
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Re: Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Postby reineke » Thu Aug 24, 2017 3:12 am

"Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits."
Mark Twain

I'm glad you're enjoying your language learning. It's OK to show one's ahem human side.

Yes, processing cognates and discarding false friends under real operating conditions is a skill. Internalizing them is yet another problem. I am taking my time with the "easy" Spanish words like basta and largo.
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Tristano
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Re: Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Postby Tristano » Thu Aug 24, 2017 6:48 am

And pronto :)
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Re: Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Postby tarvos » Thu Aug 24, 2017 8:00 am

Tristano wrote:
reineke wrote:Hand, head, face, nose, eyes, teeth, fingers, jaw, blood, skin and other words denoting body parts and related words should all look familiar to an Italian. Leg: picior and gambă. Likely different meanings but you've got even that one covered 50% right from the start. You'll need to struggle with "cheek" but that one is immediately usable if you are learning Slavic languages. Hen, rabbit, bear, cow, fox, the African animals and some other animals are also recognizable. While I also see some "new" words this is hardly a problem (especially since you're interested in acquiring passive vocabulary). Good luck.


Oh but I wasn't whining. :) I definitely enjoy the process.
Decoding the similar words as related or not is a skill on itself.
I tested a colleague and my girlfriend (both Dutch and both with knowledge of English. My girlfriend one knows also some German and Italian) with some Danish vocabulary. My colleague was horrible, he could not finding the answers and was insulting me when I was guessing that "penge" means money. Even more when I told him that I got it right because in Icelandic is "peningur" or something similar. My girlfriend instead came with a theory that it is related with the English "penny", which I don't know if it is true but I find interesting.

Without the necessary context though, it would be not clear if "sange" in Romanian means blood (from Italian) or monkey (from French).


For monkey, they say maimuță. It comes from Greek.
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Tristano
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Re: Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Postby Tristano » Thu Aug 24, 2017 8:44 am

tarvos wrote:
Tristano wrote:For monkey, they say maimuță. It comes from Greek.


Funny! I wasn't aware of Greek words in Romanian that are not indirectly imported from Latin.
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Re: Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Postby Theodisce » Thu Aug 24, 2017 9:38 am

There are some of them, like drum (road). At some point the Danubian Principalities were ruled by the Greek Phanariot elite.
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Tristano
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Re: Tristano's log 2017: Wanderland in the Netherlusts

Postby Tristano » Thu Aug 24, 2017 10:00 am

Theodisce wrote:There are some of them, like drum (road). At some point the Danubian Principalities were ruled by the Greek Phanariot elite.


I see! :)
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