IronMike's 2023 log: Fewer means better, right? (EO & RUS)

[reineke]

"Čizma glavu čuva..."

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most- ... thing-ever

Yep, the Slavic squat. So very Slavic. I've seen it passed on to other cultures, as well, and was surprised one day driving around Kyrgyzstan when I saw a whole Kyrgyz family (6 strong) and mom was out there by the side of the car squatting with her husband and sons...

Never heard about it although I feel like adopting the custom given the general lack of public benches here in the US. The tracksuit...thing rings a bell.

[IronMike]

So...over the years I've had occasion to visit Frankfurt. Starting in about 1990, I'd come to the city and gone to a bookstore close to the Hauptbanhof. This bookstore was a foreign language store, and from it I got my first Esperanto book. (An anthology of German stories, if I recall.) I visited it a couple more times in the '90s. Each time I'd find something that I couldn't leave without. After all, it was filled with books in foreign languages! I couldn't leave without something.

I think the last time I visited was in 2004, on my way back from Afghanistan. I never remembered exactly where it was, not the particular street, I mean. I only knew that if I was standing in front of the main train station, it was off to the right. If I was looking at 12 o'clock, the store was off to 1 or 2 o'clock.

So here I am again in Frankfurt and earlier today I found myself at the train station. I walked off in the direction of 2 o'clock. Didn't find much. Lots of Turkish stores. Lots of begging gypsies. A couple restaurants I would want to check out later. But no foreign language book store. Well, no book store at all.

Off to 1 o'clock I went. A different street. Fancy restaurants. And stores. Not what I remembered from those years past. But I kept walking. Surely, it had to be somewhere. And then it was.



Then I walked into nirvana...

German (of course), Spanish, Italian, Russian, French, Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Greek, Portuguese, Albanian, Catalan, Bengali and Serbian! Probably more, but I couldn't find it. I asked the wonderful little lady about Esperanto, and she said she used to have some but sold them all. I told her about the first Esperanto book. She and I talked about her shop and I told her about my troubles finding it. Turns out she moved from the first location (where I started my search!) to the current location a few years back.


The Russian and French sections.


Spanish


Portuguese and Turkish


Italian


Albanian, Serbian, Greek, Catalan, Bengali, Gujarati...

It was a wonderful visit. I got two books on Serbian. The woman was wonderful and spoke German slowly for me. She allowed me to take these pictures as long as I didn't take any pictures of her!

[IronMike]

Wow, it's been a while since my last update. I got back from Germany last weekend, immediately turned around and went to an event: Quiz night at our youngest daughter's school, theme was Show must go on! and our table dressed up as Chicago, with yours truly as Mr. Cellophane.

And then a wonderfully short work week, with Thanksgiving on the Thursday. So only one day of class this week, but with my classmate! We discussed the ratio of women:men in private company ownership. Very nice discussion with lots of wonderful vocab, all of which I left in my notebook at work.

In other news, my Russian book is going well. Таня Гроттер just got to the museum with her class; basically we're at the point where HP talks to the snake at the zoo. I'm not yet at the point where she'll discover her magic, but I can feel that coming. When I first got this book I was excited at reading a book in Russian for which there was no English translation, figuring it would be a nice challenge to not have a crutch. But seeing how it parallels (plagiarizes?) HP anyway...not sure I'm as excited as when I started.

[aaleks]

In other news, my Russian book is going well. Таня Гроттер just got to the museum with her class; basically we're at the point where HP talks to the snake at the zoo. I'm not yet at the point where she'll discover her magic, but I can feel that coming. When I first got this book I was excited at reading a book in Russian for which there was no English translation, figuring it would be a nice challenge to not have a crutch. But seeing how it parallels (plagiarizes?) HP anyway...not sure I'm as excited as when I started.

It seems Таня Гроттер is a parody on HP . I haven't read the books, only about the books.

На волне «поттеромании» широкую известность приобрели книги Емца, в которых использованы мотивы произведений Дж. Роулинг, - "Таня Гроттер и магический контрабас", "Таня Гроттер и исчезающий этаж", "Таня Гроттер и трон Древнира". Серия "Таня Гроттер" позиционировалась как пародия на серию "Гарри Поттер", однако была обвинена в плагиате и запрещена к публикации в нескольких странах. После третьей книги о Тани Гроттер, серия перестала быть «пародией» и стала самостоятельным произведением.
From here https://www.livelib.ru/author/15194-dmitrij-emets

[IronMike]

So I started listening to a Russian podcast and yesterday the guy was talking about the phrase тренировать на кошках. Unfortunately, I lost connection halfway through and I never got to what the hell the phrase meant. I thought maybe it meant to train really hard in preparation for something strenuous?

Well, no. I asked my teacher and she wasn't sure but promised to get back to me. Sure enough, it is a phrase from an old Soviet film, with familiar looking actors:



So apparently, it literally means to test on cats!

[aaleks]

(Edit: No idea why the youtube link didn't work. Will research.)

To make it work you need to delete everything except "-j79mA_6BAQ".
Like this [ youtube ]-j79mA_6BAQ[ /youtube ] but without spaces.

[Theodisce]

So I started listening to a Russian podcast and yesterday the guy was talking about the phrase тренировать на кошках. Unfortunately, I lost connection halfway through and I never got to what the hell the phrase meant. I thought maybe it meant to train really hard in preparation for something strenuous?

Well, no. I asked my teacher and she wasn't sure but promised to get back to me. Sure enough, it is a phrase from an old Soviet film, with familiar looking actors:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/-j79mA_6BAQ[/youtube]

So apparently, it literally means to test on cats!

(Edit: No idea why the youtube link didn't work. Will research.)

Perhaps: go train/practice with cats [...first, because you're not skilled enough to practice with humans yet, I guess].

[LinguaPony]

Perhaps: go train/practice with cats [...first, because you're not skilled enough to practice with humans yet, I guess].

Precisely. Just so you don't harm the humans.

[vonPeterhof]

Perhaps: go train/practice with cats [...first, because you're not skilled enough to practice with humans yet, I guess].

Precisely. Just so you don't harm the humans.

In the context of that scene it's more like "so that the humans don't harm you"

[Willow]

Perhaps: go train/practice with cats [...first, because you're not skilled enough to practice with humans yet, I guess].

Yeah, it's smth like this more or less.
Though, as for me, the associations born from this phrase are really unpleasant. I avoid to use it in my speech.