劳伦的博客 - Epistolia Laurentii

[rdearman]

Worked perfectly! Thank you.

[lorinth]

I reached two mileposts yesterday night, one in Mandarin, one in Latin, so it's time to take stock.

ZH

Yes! I've finished reading vol. II of 《鬼吹灯》. It took longer then expected, almost three months. Maybe there's a law inscribed on a stone somewhere that says: "Whatever Mandarin novel thou readest, Lorinth, three months will it take thee!" I've said many times on this log why I believe this book and this subgenre are interesting for language learners, so enough of that. One more thing though: there were parts of that book that I could read quite easily, for the fun, without worrying too much about the vocab and all. And there were other parts there were hard, where I had the impression I hadn't progressed at all. As an example, take this long-winded sentence in the last chapter: "缠绕穴心的迷蒙水汽所形成的微茫隐湿的圆环，以其朦胧如日、月之晕环，故名晕，隐隐微微，仿仿佛佛，粗看有形，细看无形，乃生气凝聚灵光现露之处，盖其为善状第一，葬于其中，生气不泄，水蚁不侵。" It's an enigma for me. I have only a very vague idea of what it's all about. Granted, I haven't tried very hard, because I was in a hurry to finish that last chapter. I intend to devote one full study session to crack the code of that one opaque sentence. BTW, the last chapter is a shameless cliffhanger to lure innocent readers into diving into vol. III immediately, but I think three novels about tomb raiding is enough. I want something else.

In other news, I've continued creating a GoldList (using HSK6 vocab). I haven't started the "first distillation" yet. I also have to mention that I have changed one element of the "canonical" Goldlist method: the original proposal uses 25 items for the initial list, and then 17, 12 and 9 respectively for the first, second and third distillation, i.e. 70 %. I use 20 items and 14, 9 and 6 respectively.

I created mp3s of all beginning level readers that I read years ago without using the accompanying sound files very much. My listening comprehension is so abysmal that I feel I have to start again from this very low point.

I watched a few more episodes of 熊出没 and 大耳朵图图.

LA

In Latin, I've finished reading chap. XLV of Familia Romana. It's a significant milestone because it's the last chapter that is supposed to be an "abridged version of ". In reality, there are many excerpts of latin poems before, and chapters XLIV and XLV themselves, whenever I checked, were largely identical with Livy's version. Which explains why those last two chapters were significantly harder then the preceding ones. I sometimes had to think hard. And I sometimes had to browse through translations of Livy (there are plenty of them online) to check my understanding or even guide me through some very difficult sentences.

So I think, I will take a rest from Familia Romana and read something easier for a while. I've started Lhomond's Epitome Historiae sacrae and have read a sizable chunk already.

I have found many audio resources related to "Familia Romana" and "Roma Aeterna" on Youtube. I've listened to extracts of several one-hour long podcasts featuring this guy being taught Latin at an advanced level (using Roma Aeterna and other resources) by this guy and himself teaching Latin to a kid (using Familia Romana), all through Skype or another such tool. Oh, and entirely in Latin of course. You can also check the series called La via de los humanistas.

[lorinth]

ZH

Started reading another novel in Mandarin: 病毒 by 蔡駿. It's supposed to be a thriller/horror story. I've read only a few pages so far, so I don't know whether I'll read it entirely, but the author does a good job of setting the stage and creating an atmosphere. There's an online version here if anyone's interested.

Apart from that, I'll spend the next 2 or 3 weeks with the kids and the family, so I'll have to switch to the rescue plan as far as language learning is concerned, i.e.:

- the only thing I'll really try to do is purge my Skritter character queue every day
- after that, *if* I have some time left, I'll try to read a bit in Chinese and/or in Latin, and that's about it.

Of course, just in case, I've loaded my phone to the brim with texts in Mandarin (病毒, the 60 page transcript of 小宝小贝理财记, 中国哲学简史 and its translation in English) and in Latin (Lhomond's Epitome Historiae Sacrae, the anonymous Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis, the Bucolica, etc.), plus many many mp3s in both languages. Whenever there's a an opportunity to spend a few minutes to listen to those languages, everything should be ready.

See you in a few weeks time.

[lorinth]

As expected, the past four weeks have not been focused on language learning, but on building intricate sandcastles, putting up and dismantling the tent and sipping Pastis while playing the pétanque. However, all was not lost for languages. It was not that bad actually.

ZH

I managed to stay afloat in Skritter and to clear up the vocab queue on a day to day basis. Granted, I've made things very easy, as I haven't added a single word for over 4 weeks, and I have stopped using Anki and Pleco altogether. I could restart in the near future, but I'm not even sure about that - see below.

As far as listening comprehension is concerned, I have done nothing. Zero.

I've continued reading 蔡骏's 病毒, though very slowly (exactly 24% of it, according to my Kindle). It's a rather interesting thriller featuring a mysterious suicide-inducing web page that has something to do with... ancient imperial tombs. You can't escape your destiny, lorinth.

These last few days, I've also started reading 冯友兰's 中国哲学史 (A History of Chinese Philosophy). It sounds scary but, provided you're interested in this subject, I can assure you that it's actually easier to read than an average sci-fi novel (BTW, Borges once famously said that theology was a subgenre of science fiction, ahah!). I had purchased the French translation (Précis d'histoire de la philosophie chinoise) and the idea was to read it in French and take the occasional peek at the Chinese version. It turns out the Chinese is quite manageable, and I've been working the other way around. I also use a notebook to take copious notes about the vocab and the ideas.

This could be a decent substitute for studying vocab, away from lists, golden books, SRS and the like. Talking about golden books, the lists I'd started while I was on holiday will probably start gathering dust, as I can now verify for certain that managing such lists is time consuming and absolutely requires that you sit down in a quiet place for extended periods of time, which, unfortunately, I won't be able to afford as I get back to work.

The former book I mentioned is for extensive reading, the latter is of course for intensive reading.

LA

During several long drives, I've listened to several 1-hour episodes of this fascinating Youtube channel featuring a guy teaching Latin in Latin to a teenager, using my beloved Lingua Latina/Roma Aeterna textbook.

Though I'd planned to read Lhomond's Epitome Historiae Sacrae, I ended up reading a sizable part of R.E. Giangola's "Oerbergised" edition of Vergilius' Bucolica Carmina. I've read the introduction by Giangola herself (in Latin of course) and the extracts of Donatus and Servitius presenting the work of Vergilius. After that, I've read, reread and thoroughly enjoyed the first three eclogues and part of the fourth.

Just as 水浒传 and Li Bai were the main reasons why I got interested in Chinese, Vergilius was the reason why I restarted studying Latin.

I also translated about a third of the first eclogue and extracts from the third. Of course, coming after demi-gods of French literature (Hugo, Marot, Valéry, Pagnol...), hordes of prominent specialists and generations upon generations of students who were fed Latin almost before their own native language, my translations are but a joke. I tried to transpose something of the hexameter rhythm in French, though.

So at the risk of exposing silly translations to the unsuspecting world, here are three couplets extracted from the third eclogue:

O quotiens et quae nobis Galatea locuta est!
partem aliquam, venti, divom referatis ad auris.

Oh combien de fois et comment Galatée m'a parlé
Vous, les vents, soufflez-en quelques mots aux oreilles des dieux.

Parcite, oves, nimium procedere; non bene ripae
creditur; ipse aries etiam nunc vellera siccat.

Halte, n'allez pas plus loin, mes brebis, la rive est peu sûre:
Votre bélier lui-même se fait sécher la laine.

Qui legitis flores et humi nascentia fraga,
frigidus—o pueri, fugite hinc—latet anguis in herba.

Vous qui cueillez les fleurs et les fraises qui naissent par terre,
Ô enfants, fuyez! L'herbe cache un serpent glacé.

[lorinth]

ZH

Continued reading 病毒, a novel for extensive reading.

In parralel, continued reading and studying 中国哲学史, non-fiction for intensive reading.

Continued studying characters in Skritter. My queue now contains 1776 characters. They are mostly taken from Patrick's Zein frequency list, but I started backwards, from character #3000 (i.e. 琛 [chēn] <archaic> treasure), so I keep hoping that it will become easier and easier...
I restarted adding characters yesterday.

Restarted doing transcription exercises with 慢速中文 podcasts (podcast #149).

LA

In Roma Aeterna, I read the (quite difficult) extract from Ovid's Fasti about the rape of Lucretia. Then I started reading chapter XLVI, i.e. Eutropius' take on what happened after the last Roman king was expelled.

[lorinth]

ZH

Continued reading 《病毒》 (Virus) by 蔡骏. I've now read 51%, according to my Kindle. Apart from certain parts about the history of the 清, it remains a rather straightforward book for intermediate learners, and a reasonably interesting read.

Also continued reading 冯友兰's 《中国哲学简史》( A Short History of Chinese Philosophy), though very slowly. I'm on e-page 36/482. Way to go.

Several listening/transcribing exercises using slow Chinese podcasts (#149 about “羊年”的“羊” and #148 about empress 武则天).

BTW, the Youtube channel I had linked to for 熊出没 was deleted (copyright claims), but despair not, there are plenty of other episodes on Youtube, e.g. here.

LA

I've worked quite a lot in Latin. Apart from reading some more of Virgil's Bucolica, I continued working on Oerberg's "Roma Aeterna". I've read chapter XLVI, i.e. an extract of Eutropius' "Breviarium historiae romanae". Eutropius is much easier to read than Livy, but also much drier (sounds like a litany of facts) and less lively. Still, it's interesting to read about that time when Rome ceased to be a city, turned into a peninsular power and started to raise eyebrows beyond the seas. Eutropius was not hard at all, so I'd soon finished reading it.

After that, I started chapter XLVII, i.e. extracts of Aulus Gellius' "Noctes Atticae". And that was another matter entirely. To put things in perspective, here's the last sentence in Eutropius:

Ac triumphans Marcellus spolia Galli, stipiti imposita, humeris suis vexit.

Fairly simple, typical SOV Latin sentence (with one short adverbial added in the "O" part), comprising all of 10 words.

And here's the first sentence of the chapter about Aulus Gellius (book XVII, chapter XXI):

Ut conspectum quendam aetatum antiquissimarum, item virorum inlustrium, qui in his aetatibus nati fuissent, haberemus, ne in sermonibus forte inconspectum aliquid super aetate atque vita clarorum hominum temere diceremus, [sicuti sophista ille apaideutos, qui publice nuper disserens Carneaden philosophum a rege Alexandro, Philippi filio, pecunia donatum et Panaetium Stoicum cum superiore Africano vixisse dixit, ut ab istiusmodi, inquam, temporum aetatumque erroribus caveremus,] excerpebamus ex libris, qui chronici appellantur, quibus temporibus floruissent Graeci simul atque Romani viri, qui vel ingenio vel imperio nobiles insignesque post conditam Romam fuissent ante secundum bellum Carthaginiensium, easque nunc excerptiones nostras variis diversisque in locis factas cursim digessimus.

Over 100 words (70 accounting for the fact that Oerberg ommitted the part between brackets) and all the clause types you could dream of: an "ut" clause to start with, with a relative clause inserted, then another "ne" clause, then the main clause, another relative ("qui"), and another ("quibus"), and another ("qui"), a time adverbial, etc. I confess I had to look long and hard at that sentence before it started to make sense. As far as style is concerned, Gellius is much more varied then Eutropius: some parts a longwinded, other are fairly simple. For the contents, this is the part where Gellius compares the timelines of Greek and Roman history ("Socrates was killed in Greece at the time when Camillus ruled Rome and defeated the Veii", etc.). So it's interesting to put things in perspective, but not earth-shattering literature either.

[lorinth]

ZH

Still reading and enjoying 病毒。 I've started the last quarter. This is the kind of book that you just cannot close, as you always want to know what will happen next. Though I haven't finished yet, it turns out it was an excellent choice for my level, an entertaining thriller written in plain language.

There are exceptions though: at times the author pretends to quote some history books or forensic reports, and those parts are more difficult. There was one quoted forensic report that was written in a language that looked to me like 文言, i.e. the literary language evolved from classical Chinese used until the dawn of the 20th century. E.g. one sentence of the report was:

吾百思而不得其解也。

I'd just studied 吾 in Skritter, so I knew it's an old equivalent of 我 (I). As far as I know, 思 (to think) is not used alone in modern Chinese. 其 is probably the object "it", which is also old-fashioned, I believe. And finally, 也 at the end of the sentence was (and no longer is) used as an affirmative particle. The good news is that I was more or less able to follow that part - though， while reading, I suspected it was not pure 文言, but a language that smacks of 文言. And indeed, when the hero finishes reading the report, he says:

端木一云的文字有些奇怪，一会儿文言，一会儿白话，可能当时人们的书面语就是半文半白的吧。

"Duanmu Yiyun's language was strange, part classical and part vernacular. Maybe, at that time, everybody wrote a mixture of both languages."

The report is supposed to be written around 1948, though, i.e. at least 25 years after the classical language was replaced by the vernacular.

BTW, the novel is available online here.

I've also done transcription exercises with three slow Chinese podcasts. Is it me, or do I start seeing the timid beginnings of tentative signs of improvement? Too soon to tell. Maybe in a few months' time I will be able to say that after years of whining about my listening comprehension, I only started seeing some improvement when I sat down at a desk to do the hard work of transcribing pages upon pages of podcasts, comparing with the official transcript, rewind, restart, etc.?

I read two more pages of the 《中国哲学简史》( A Short History of Chinese Philosophy).

LA

The end of lesson XLVII of Roma Aeterna, i.e. extracts from Aulus Gellius' "Noctes Atticae", was much easier than the beginning, so I'm done with it. After that, chapter XLVIII is Livy again, so I put aside my copy of Roma Aeterna and read two more letters sent 2000 years ago by Seneca to Lucillius (letters I, 1 about time and I, 2 about wanderlust, of all things). Beautifully written, thoughtful letters - exactly the kind of stuff that makes me happy to have learnt that language. Not counting that I personally feel very close to this philosophy.


GR

Right, I've just finished reading Seneca saying:

Non prodest cibus nec corpori accedit qui statim sumptus emittitur; nihil aeque sanitatem impedit quam remediorum crebra mutatio; non venit vulnus ad cicatricem in quo medicamenta temptantur; non convalescit planta quae saepe transfertur; nihil tam utile est ut in transitu prosit. Distringit librorum multitudo; itaque cum legere non possis quantum habueris, satis est habere quantum legas. 'Sed modo' inquis 'hunc librum evolvere volo, modo illum.' Fastidientis stomachi est multa degustare; quae ubi varia sunt et diversa, inquinant non alunt.

Which, basically, is an attack against wanderlust: "Food does no good and is not assimilated by the body if it is thrown out immediately; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; a wound does not heal if one medicine is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong, etc. "

However, I've been longing to teach myself some ancient Greek for years. So I looked around to see which interesting learning material I could find and came up with a list of three methods:

- Assimil's "Le Grec ancien"
- The Joint Association of Classical Teachers' "Reading Greek" series
- Vivarium Novum's version of "Athenaze". Yes they are the ones who use Oerberg's method to publish Latin readers

From the comments I saw on the net, all three are good and could fit the bill. Speaking of which, vol. 1 of Athenaze is the cheapest of the three; Assimil is pricey; and Reading Greek is quite expensive, as you really need three books, i.e. "RG: Text and Vocabulary", "RG: Grammar and Exercises" and "An Independent Study Guide to RG". There are Kindle versions, though, which are a bit cheaper.

In the end, I'd already purchased a used version of Assimil, with the CDs, so Assimil it will be. I've also found quite a lot of interesting material online, e.g. the original version of Athenaze and many text books, interlinear texts, etc. So, let's just hope I'll be able to stick to it. There's no shortage of material on my desk.

And, of course, now that I've made my coming out about ancient Greek, I will feel some pressure to persevere.

[lorinth]

ZH

Small world. Yesterday night, I finished reading a book (in French) called "Qu'est-ce que la philosophie antique?" by philosopher Pierre Hadot and, in his conclusion (p. 421 of the Folio Essais ed.), he quotes the very book by 冯友兰 I'm reading in Chinese, a part I read just a few days ago.

Ain't that strange.

Here's the quotation:

中国哲学家都是不同程度的苏格拉底。其所以如此，因为道德、政治、反思的思想、知识都统一于一个哲学家之身；知识和德性在他身上统一而不可分。

Chinese philosophers, to one extent or another, are all Socrates: the reason is that ethics, politics, reflexive thinking and knowledge are all unified in the person of the philosopher. In him [or her], knowledge and virtue are one and inseparable.


GR

Assimil Ancient Greek: over the last few days, I started with the alphabet and studied lessons 1-7.

[lorinth]

LA

Erasmus wrote something that might be considered a Borgesian book, i.e. a book containing many other books. Of course , it would be closer to Borges' spirit if it was a book containing all other books or, even better, a book containing all possible books - but I digress and anyway Erasmus' effort is a close approximation of infinity. The book, called Adagia, is built around thousands of quotes, proverbs, punch lines of the antiquity, etc, together with comments displaying the full gamut of Erasmus' astounding erudition.

Erasmus started with a few hundreds quotes, mainly in Greek (with a word for word translation into Latin) and Latin, and then he followed the rabbit, fell into the hole and collected several thousand more. That book was hugely successful in its time (first edition in 1500) and then, when Erasmus' entire work was banned and placed on the Index (in 1559), it fell into oblivion, just like the author's other books. Only "Laus Stultitiae" (In Praise of Madness) was published in the following centuries.

I've long wanted to read some Renaissance/Humanism Latin, so I thought it might be a good place to start. There's one recent bilingual edition in French, but it's awfully expensive. No way I could purchase that. Ah, but! The editors were kind enough to provide a free PDF of the Latin version (beware, there's a huge file hidden behind that link). The layout is pleasing to the eye, easy to use (line numbers, section numbers) and editable (I often add comments in the PDFs). My heartfelt thanks to the editors!

So I started reading at random - this is the kind of book you can open anywhere - and I realised that I don't really need a translation, because the Latin is within my grasp, with a modicum of patience and dictionary fumbling. Of course, my level in Latin is not so high that a good translation would not help me avoid mistakes, clarify things and make me save time (but I couldn't care less about the latter: the idea is not to read as much as I can but as deep as I can), but the price tag is a no starter. And if I had a bilingual edition, I would be tempted to peek at the French version too often and too soon.

Not only can you open the book anywhere but, in addition, there are sections of varying length, from 4 lines to several pages.

I've read two sections so far, the very short #300 (Ex ovo prodiit) and the longer #301 (Non est cujuslibet Corinthum appellere).

The second one, in particular was fun, as Erasmus devotes a couple of lines to the first explanation (not everybody can call at Corinth because the port is not easily accessible) and two pages to the second, naughtier one: Corinth had a lot of prostitutes, including the famous Lais, who demanded a lot of money from their customers. So, Erasmus says, the real meaning of that adage is: "Not everybody can afford to have fun" (in Corinth or elsewhere). I would beg to differ but, again, I digress.

[smallwhite]

吾百思而不得其解也。

I'd just studied 吾 in Skritter, so I knew it's an old equivalent of 我 (I). As far as I know, 思 (to think) is not used alone in modern Chinese. 其 is probably the object "it", which is also old-fashioned, I believe. And finally, 也 at the end of the sentence was (and no longer is) used as an affirmative particle.

「百思不得其解」 or 「百思而不得其解」 is a fixed idiom that is still in common use today. And using 文言 words here and there is a common way to spice up your writing, much like saying "lo and behold" or "ad nauseum" in English. I'm modern and westernised but I do that, too. My father does it quite often.

「吾百思而不得其解也」 seems to mean: I think 100 times and not achieve its explanation 也. 「也」 reflects a certain attitude, just like the modern sentence-ending particles do, but I can't explain it. I'm not very good at 文言.