Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

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Elenia
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Elenia » Thu Oct 26, 2017 11:17 am

jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Expugnator wrote:At Råta, Graal used the fom "erindre" which is a cognate to German erinnern, but not used much in Norwegian. It's probably archaic?


I assume so. We have "erinra" in Swedish, and it's not the first choice unless I want to express myself in an archaic or a formal way.


And yet it's such an elegant verb!
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:51 pm

Youtube has got some really fun and useful material for Hebrew. So far I had seen songs with Hebrew script, Hebrew transcript and English subtitles. Now I figured there are some films as well. It's comforting to know about those materials because I don't expect to find audiobooks.

Changing my reading strategy with German as I advance in the book. Now I read extensively when I only habve my phone available (the book is on the Kindle app), and when I can sit for reading I do it in parallel.

Still on German, I've finished all the available episodes for Slow German. As with Slow Chinese, I won't keep updated on new posts, but instead will move on to other resources. The thing is I'm not at an appropriate level for 'normal' German or for an audiobook, and this mostly due to lack of vocabulary. Moreover, lunch time is not much appropriate for fiction audiobooks. I need to pay attention so as to keep track of the story, and during lunch time I divide my listening time into several periods: walking to the car and then driving to the girls' school; then walking from home to the bus stop; then walking from the bus stop to my desk. I prefer to do either non-fiction audiobooks, preferably in stronger languages, or podcasts (which is what I have been doing for German, but it's a podcast for learners).

I have an English non-fiction audiobook - actually a radio interview about it - but the sound quality is suboptimal and I can only understand it when walking through silent streets - even inside a bus with airconditioning it gets too noisy. Anyway, that brings 2 hours of listening to figure out what I'm doing next, either for German or for Italian.

Still reading Georgian on the phone. The app doesn't even support rotating the screen to the landscape format. Today I increased the font size to make it more readable. It works, because now I can easily spot the format of the words I know and thus realize that they are the majority. It doesn't change how much I'm reading each day because my daily goal is in % not in number of pages.

Finally time for all the tasks, including Indonesian. Just have to catch up on Clozemaster.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Fri Oct 27, 2017 8:05 pm

Russian in exercises is quite useful now, as the exercises involve syntax and forming sentences. It's helping a lot with active skills. For example, now I'm used to emplyoing the past after чтобы in subordinate clauses that express volition. I know for long that the past has to be used, but it's always counter-intuitive because in Portuguese, Georgian and Greek it's either a present or future subjunctive (I refer to sentences as "The teach wants us to do the exercises). I'm also paying attention to how aspect influences meaning in those sentences.

Best day in listening-reading Mandarin ever. The language hasn't slowed down, it was the number of unknown words that has considerably reduced. I can skim the lines for known characters, which means I can take several looks at one single sentence while I listen to it so that I can figure out the syntax (Mandarin is a strongly left-branched word). I'm really happy about finally seeing some progress.

More car issues, another meeting I didn't see coming, leaving earlier and so we have yet another day where the tasks weren't all fulfilled. So no Greek, Hebrew or Indonesian. These are all beginner languages (maybe Modern Greek is almost intermediate) and when I started them I knew I would not always be able to dedicate time to them as I have many languages in the intermediate range. So, I'm fine with that so far. I might rearrange my schedule if I notice I want to progress faster in those languages.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Josquin » Fri Oct 27, 2017 9:31 pm

Expugnator wrote:For example, now I'm used to emplyoing the past after чтобы in subordinate clauses that express volition. I know for long that the past has to be used, but it's always counter-intuitive because in Portuguese, Georgian and Greek it's either a present or future subjunctive (I refer to sentences as "The teach wants us to do the exercises). I'm also paying attention to how aspect influences meaning in those sentences.

Maybe it helps not to think of the verb form as a past tense, but rather as a subjunctive whose бы has merged with the conjunction что. Similar things happen with если + subjunctive (It's more common to say "Если бы я делал" instead of "Если я делал бы"), only in this case the words are written separately rather than together.

For me, it's more difficult to remember that verbs of wishing and wanting etc. take чтобы instead of the ordinary что. Once I hear чтобы, it's quite natural for me to use the past tense verb form though.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby reineke » Fri Oct 27, 2017 11:49 pm

Josquin wrote:Maybe it helps not to think of the verb form as a past tense, but rather as a subjunctive whose бы has merged with the conjunction что.


No it doesn't :)
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Josquin » Sat Oct 28, 2017 11:57 am

reineke wrote:
Josquin wrote:Maybe it helps not to think of the verb form as a past tense, but rather as a subjunctive whose бы has merged with the conjunction что.


No it doesn't :)

Well, it helped me to understand the concept, but each to his own! :P
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby reineke » Sat Oct 28, 2017 2:22 pm

Чтобы (часть первая)
http://shininghappypeople.net/rwotd/ind ... &tb=1&pb=1
Чтобы (часть вторая)
http://shininghappypeople.net/rwotd/ind ... &tb=1&pb=1
Чтобы (часть третья)
http://shininghappypeople.net/rwotd/ind ... &tb=1&pb=1
Чтобы (часть четвёртая)
http://shininghappypeople.net/rwotd/ind ... &tb=1&pb=1
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Josquin » Sat Oct 28, 2017 4:02 pm

I have a problem displaying the sites you linked. Instead of Cyrillics, I only get question marks. Changing the encoding doesn't solve the problem. However, I thought this paragraph was quite interesting:
This ????? + past tense construction is sometimes referred to as the ?subjunctive mood? because it is equivalent to similar subjunctive uses in Spanish, French, German, and some other languages. It is used not only with the verb ?????? ?to want,? but also with many other verbs where one person asks/tells/orders another person to do something, especially ???????/????????? to request/ask, ????????/??????? to tell, ???????????/????????? to order, and ??????????/?????????? to suggest.

Terence Wade's A Comprehensive Russian Grammar also refers to the "subjunctive" after хотеть, adding in brackets: "чтобы + past tense" (p. 336). What I said about если is also supported by Wade (p. 333 f.).

The rest is pure terminology. You can call the verb form either "subjunctive", "conditional", or "past tense + бы". They all refer to the same phenomenon. The point is, and this seems to be the main difficulty, that the subjunctive mood in Russian is derived from the past tense rather than the present or even future tense. This is something you simply have to get used to though.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby aaleks » Sat Oct 28, 2017 6:46 pm

reineke wrote:Чтобы (часть первая)
http://shininghappypeople.net/rwotd/ind ... &tb=1&pb=1

Just in case. I looked up this link. The Russian examples are OK as illustrations of the rule but be aware that they're unnatural. Some of them sound funny like Она позвонила брату, чтобы он принёс сметану. Others just doesn't make sense - Машенька взяла иголку, чтобы мама пришила пуговицу (How long was Машенька holding the needle? And why didn't she give it to her Mom? :roll: ) .
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby reineke » Sat Oct 28, 2017 6:52 pm

aaleks wrote:
reineke wrote:Чтобы (часть первая)
http://shininghappypeople.net/rwotd/ind ... &tb=1&pb=1

Машенька взяла иголку, чтобы мама пришила пуговицу (How long was Машенька holding the needle? And why didn't she give it to her Mom? :roll: )


An insight into the Russian mind. :)
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