Mork's Log 2017

[Carmody]

Most grateful for your comments re La Peste and Camus. I am now one third of the way through. I make no promises as to finishing but will do my best to persevere. Could never have started it without your comments. No one ever said it would be fun...

Also thanks for your suggested URLs on French book sales and the rankings. I refer to it often for my purchases.

I just bought another Amelie Nothomb book: Mercure

Just in case you may find it of interest, here is another book listing of a different kind:

Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prix_du_roman_de_l%27Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise

[MorkTheFiddle]

Most grateful for your comments re La Peste and Camus. I am now one third of the way through. I make no promises as to finishing but will do my best to persevere. Could never have started it without your comments. No one ever said it would be fun...

Also thanks for your suggested URLs on French book sales and the rankings. I refer to it often for my purchases.

I just bought another Amelie Nothomb book: Mercure

Just in case you may find it of interest, here is another book listing of a different kind:

Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Prix_du_roman_de_l%27Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise

It's good to hear my remarks about Camus bore fruit. Camus is often classified as an "existentialist" and always denied that he was one. Never really understanding what "existentialism" is, I can't say who is right. What I can believe and say is that Camus sees the world in a clear-eyed way and his mind never flinches from what looks like the truth to him. Reading him for me is like taking a cold shower on a hot day.
It is also good to hear the source for books helps you. A couple of Nothomb's books are lying around here somewhere, but I have not read them yet.
Thanks for the reference to the Grand Prix du roman. What a rich source of authors for me, because only a handful of them were already familiar to me. My favorite name, qua name, is Henri Queffélec. My favorite title is 2084: le fin du monde. It is pleasing to find out that Joël Dicker is Swiss. I see his books translated into Spanish at a local Barnes and Noble from time to time, and always suspected he was an American self-help economics guru. But now I can try him out, though in French, not Spanish.
Of course, you have done me no favors. My dining room table is stacked with books and books to be donated to charity. The shelf space that is now clear I fear is destined to be filled with more French books.

[Carmody]

Ok, in the interests of honest and full disclosure re Albert Camus' La Peste, I have today stopped at page 162 of 278 pages of this Folio edition of the book. Yes, I realize he was winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, and is widely respected even today. However, reading him today, I find him very dated on numerous levels and not a worthwhile read for me for now. I leave the enjoyment of this book to others wiser than myself.

If you ever wish to have a more detailed discussion of the book by all means say so, but for me for now I am happy to move on.

Thanks in any case for the encouragement along the way.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Ok, in the interests of honest and full disclosure re Albert Camus' La Peste, I have today stopped at page 162 of 278 pages of this Folio edition of the book. Yes, I realize he was winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, and is widely respected even today. However, reading him today, I find him very dated on numerous levels and not a worthwhile read for me for now. I leave the enjoyment of this book to others wiser than myself.

If you ever wish to have a more detailed discussion of the book by all means say so, but for me for now I am happy to move on.

Thanks in any case for the encouragement along the way.

You gave it the old college try, reading even more than half of it. Reading something I don't like is a bad investment, nor would I expect someone else to. Just the other day I finished Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I should have stopped half way through. The novel has its moments, but a lot of it is silly hogwash, IMHO, of course. And I'm still stuck at about 60% of Proust's À la recherche and don't foresee finishing it.

DaveBee in this thread (https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... start=1130) recommends Culturethèque. You have to sign up, of course (but it's free). There is a section on the home page called Learn French. Click on Learn French, and you'll see Levels listed on the left (but only A1- B2). Clicking on "click here for materials geared to your level" will bring up books at that level that you can download and/or stream. As it turns out, there are a couple of novels by George Simenon given for level B2. Maybe worth a look? At B2 I see one novel by Northomb, several by Philippe Claudel (a writer unknown to me), but none, I am happy to report, by Camus .

[Carmody]

Thank you as always for your understanding and wise guidance.

[MorkTheFiddle]

The language logs of other members make for interesting reading. If you are reading this and I have not got to yours yet, I will, and if you have not read the logs of other members, you should start.

I'm reading
Últimas tardes con Teresa by Juan Marsé (Spain) (paperback from the library)
La Guerre et la Paix by Leo Tolstoy (paperback translated by Boris de Schloezer)
The Battle of Marathon from the 6th book of The Histories by Herodotus (LWT based on a pdf)

Always on the back burner, but a bit most everyday on Kindle:
Les Essais by Montaigne
Mémoires by Saint-Simon
La Novela de Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (I don't know who the translator is)

I still await the second saison of Eureka dubbed into French to come in the mail. Cavesa called this an excellent segue into understanding spoken French, and she is right.
I'm still working on Kaamelott, with thanks to Eleni and Cavesa.
I watched the first episode of Epitafios, Argentine series about a serial killer. I have the first season on DVD picked up for less than $10. Tip of the hat to Iguanamon for suggesting this.
Still working on the old animated series Justine Je T'aime. Thanks to Reineke for the link.
Also still watching Hélène et les garçons. I'm up to episode 34. A light romantic comedy with some moments not so light.
The other day I discovered on Youtube ¡Habla Español! con Unlimited Spanish by Oscar, whom I know from LingQ. Oscar tells stories in very early intermediate Spanish.
From time to time I still pick up Père Goriot and read and listen. I'm about 1/5 of the way through.
Finally, in Ancient Greek I'm glancing from time to time at Geoffrey Steadman's edition of Plato's Meno and at the same time trying to make some sense of some irregular aorists.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Vocabulary Assessments

A few days ago I tried to calculate how many words of Ancient Greek I know. Here are some rough approximations based on three different assessments.
1. Using a Greek-English dictionary and random numbers.

The dictionary I used was An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, which is based on the 7th edition of Liddell and Scott’s Greek English Lexicon, Oxford, 1996. The random numbers came from http://stattrek.com/statistics/random-number-generator.aspx 13 August 2017. Two separate sets of random numbers were generated, one set for 20 pages, and another set for one entry on each page:

Random numbers for pages:
273 104 853 186 367 065 059 746 506 073 464 684 024 610 005 668 740 283 075 030

Random numbers for entries:
28 36 01 12 27 28 35 05 01 22 33 10 24 01 34 26 12 18 18 17

The words that correspond to the page/entries are these:

ἐξέτασις close inspection, scrutiny; military review
ἀποπιπτω to fall off
ὑψιχαίτης long-haired
διαγραφή marking off by lines
θωητογενής of mortal race
ἀνδραποδιστής slave-dealer, kidnapper
ἀναξθρίδες trousers worn by eastern nations
στέωμεν 1 pl and aor 2 subj of isthmi
μετενεκτόν should be changed
ἀνοικομομέω to build up
λανθάνω to escape notice (last item on page) **
προς (only item on page) **
αἰτιατἐιν one must accuse
παρμόνιμος poetic for παραμ-
ἀγηγέρατο Epic 3p plpf passive of ἀγείρω
πρηθῆωαι apr 1 passive inf of πιπράσκω
σπῆι Epic dative of σπέος
ἐπεισκυκλέω to roll or bring in one upon another
ἀντανάγω to lead up against **
ἀκρίς a locust

The words I knew are followed by double asterisks. Note that “λανθάνω” was the last entry on the page, which did not have 33 entries, “προς” happened to be the only word on the page, and I guessed the meaning of ἀντανάγω based on its parts (not a difficult guess).

2. Using “known” words for Ancient Greek in LWT

I picked a set of 20 from a list of 57,925 total words encountered. It was roughly every 2,896th word on the alphabetized list. Again, words known are marked by a double asterisk.

ἀμελέτητος unpractised, unprepared,
ἁπαλία softness,
Ἀττικὴν Attica**
γυναικοκρασία womanish temper,
δρυογόνος oak-grown,
ἑλκτέον one must drag
ἐπιλαμπρύνω make splendid, adorn
εὔωνος of fair price, cheap
ἱμάτια neut nom and acc pl diminutive. Clothes, mantles.**
κελάδημα rushing sound
λήγεις you stop. pres 2s of λήγω ἀνθεῖς καὶ {λήγεις} καὶ σὺ καὶ ὁ στέφανος.
μοιχίδιος begotten in adultery
ὀμφακός [unavailable]
παρόρμημα incitement, stimulant
πολυπλασιάζω multiply,
πωτάομαι fly about
συμπαρακαλέω call upon
τοι at il.1.28 = σοι, to thee
φενάκη false hair, wig,
ὠκύτης swiftness, fleetness,


3. Using a percentage calculated from an experiment on Greek Vocab that James Tauber is running on knowledge of words in New Testament Greek.

Tauber has provided a few assessment activities, and right now my percentage of known words (not lemmas) of New Testament Greek is 56.5%. I have read little or none of the New Testament in Greek, but the number seems inflated to me.

Conclusions

The rough percentage of words known for the guesses made from the lexicon correspond rather closely to the words from LWT: 3/20 or 15% vs 2/20 or 10%. They also correspond to my own (bleak) seat-of-the-pants estimate.

Unless I in fact do know roughly 50% of the words in the New Testament, the number seems unexplainable. More will be forthcoming no doubt on this matter from Tauber, so I’ll put off any speculation.

Edit: To Correct Spelling

[MorkTheFiddle]

I'm reading
Últimas tardes con Teresa by Juan Marsé (Spain) (paperback from the library)
La Guerre et la Paix by Leo Tolstoy (paperback translated by Boris de Schloezer)
The Battle of Marathon from the 6th book of The Histories by Herodotus (LWT based on a pdf)

I still await the second saison of Eureka dubbed into French to come in the mail. Cavesa called this an excellent segue into understanding spoken French, and she is right.

Still working on the old animated series Justine Je T'aime. Thanks to Reineke for the link.

I dropped Últimas Tardes. The book's time has come and gone.
In French I read and listened to (Audible) Chapter 1 of Zola's La Bête humaine, but its time has also come and gone. I'm quitting Juliette Je t'aime, too. The second story line, in which it turns out Juliette is pining for her late husband, struck out for me.
I dropped The Battle of Marathon and switched to Diodorus Siculus's (Diodorus the Sicilian) description of the ill-fated Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415 bc. For the first time ever studying Ancient Greek, I felt like Ancient Greek was an L2 I knew something about and not some artificial language invented by Facebook robots. There was a flow, not uninterrupted by look-ups, but nevertheless a flow and a pleasure in the reading. Diodorus is not one of the heavyweights of Greek literature, but his prose is clear and understandable, unlike that of Thucydides, who requires a committee of classic scholars to decipher, and stays on topic, not wandering off to discuss prostitution in Babylonia, for example, like Herodotus will do. Diodorus also tends to repeat key words frequently, making it easy to remember their meanings.

The second season of Eureka arrived, and I have watched the first six episodes. The show still impresses me. I no longer rate Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 as my favorite science fiction shows. Now it is Eureka. Commander Data, however, remains the best of the invented characters of the Star Trek series, with Q,the Borg and Major Kira coming in distant seconds. None of the main characters of Eureka really stands out. Perhaps because the plots are event driven rather than character driven?

[DaveBee]

Commander Data, however, remains the best of the invented characters of the Star Trek series, with Q,the Borg and Major Kira coming in distant seconds.

Incorrect. Quark is the best character in the Star Trek universe. The others are just there to demonstrate what a not-best character looks like.

[MorkTheFiddle]

Commander Data, however, remains the best of the invented characters of the Star Trek series, with Q,the Borg and Major Kira coming in distant seconds.

Incorrect. Quark is the best character in the Star Trek universe. The others are just there to demonstrate what a not-best character looks like.