Josquin's Classical Log - Graeca non leguntur

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Jar-Ptitsa
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Re: Josquin's Ceol agus Ól - TAC 2016 (Irish, Russian)

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Sun Jun 12, 2016 6:31 pm

Das ist doch klasse!!!! :) Ich freue mich sehr, dass du soviel Spass in Irland gehabt hast.
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Re: Josquin's Ceol agus Ól - TAC 2016 (Irish, Russian)

Postby Montmorency » Wed Jun 15, 2016 10:25 pm

Nice write-up @Josquin. Did your friends actually refer to that spirit as Schnapps?
I was wondering if it was poteen.
(Well, maybe it's all the same sort of thing really, under a different name).
(After a google search, I have learned that the distilling of poteen has been legal since 1991, having been illegal for over 300 years....but still available! :-) ).
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Re: Josquin's Ceol agus Ól - TAC 2016 (Irish, Russian)

Postby Ogrim » Thu Jun 16, 2016 6:41 am

Nice report from your trip to Ireland. I spent four days in Dingle last autumn, and I'd love to go back there some day. Beautiful country!
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Re: Josquin's Ceol agus Ól - TAC 2016 (Irish, Russian)

Postby Josquin » Sun Jun 26, 2016 12:43 pm

SUNDAY, 26 JUNE 2016

Thank you, guys, for all your comments! Yes, I enjoyed my stay in Ireland enormously and I'll definitely return to the Emerald Isle rather sooner than later.

Since returning from Ireland, I haven't been doing a lot language-wise. I worked through lesson 22 in Learning Irish and I think I have finally mastered the paradigms for the modh coinníollach. I had learnt them through Teach Yourself Irish some time ago, but I didn't practise them, so I forgot them pretty quickly. I also received a package from Litriocht containing the New Irish Grammar by the Christian Brothers, Peig, and An tOileánach. Peig seems to be manageable, however An tOileánach seems to be more difficult. Both are written in Munster dialect, which might be a challenge for me having mainly dealt with Connemara Irish by now. Especially the verbal endings will take some time to get used to as well as some differences in vocabulary.

Other than that, I don't know what to study right now. After returning from Ireland, my enthusiasm for Irish has dropped a bit, but I don't know what to study instead. I might get back to Russian, Japanese, or Portuguese or finally get started with Persian or Arabic. I don't know. I'm not really into languages for languages sake right now. I'd like to need my languages for something, a job, a vacation, or something else. I have got interested in politics and journalism over the last few months and I'm toying with the idea of working abroad some day. I don't know. I have been living in Germany all my life and I have never been abroad for longer than a few weeks.

My love for languages has always been a love for other countries, peoples, cultures. I'm a bit tired of sitting at home and studying without a purpose. I'd like to use my languages and see the world. I remember Ari writing some day over at HTLAL that he went to China in order to learn Mandarin, not the other way round. I think, for me, it is the other way round. I want to learn languages in order to go somewhere. I'd love to use and improve my Russian in St. Petersburg, my Japanese in Kyoto, my French in Paris, my English in London and New York. I'm not cut out for sitting at home and studying in silence without ever using my languages.

Okay, this has been kind of a rant now, but you see what I'm getting at. I think I'm yearning for some kind of adventure and my languages might be a gateway for that. I think I'll have to give this some more thought, but I really need to go abroad at some point. We'll see. Until then, I'll probably keep doing some Irish and some other languages now and then.

@Montmorency: No, they didn't call their spirit "schnaps", that was my wording. I don't know if it was poteen or how exactly it was called. It was some simple clear spirit (maybe similar to vodka) and they had flavoured it with strawberries. It was pretty mild though, compared to some other spirits.
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Re: Josquin's Ceol agus Ól - TAC 2016 (Irish, Russian)

Postby Josquin » Sun Jul 03, 2016 1:44 pm

SUNDAY, 3 JULY 2016

Contrary to what I wrote in my last post, my appetite for Irish has miraculously come back. I'm on lesson 26 in Learning Irish now and I haven't studied a language this consistently since I started Russian three years ago. In fact, I have been doing some Irish every day now, up to an entire hour per day.

Gaeilge

It seems my Irish has finally caught up with the learning curve of Learning Irish and it also seems Ó Siadhail has you learn the difficult grammar first before he gives you the easy stuff. So, after learning the future tense, the conditional mood, the present habitual, and the past habitual, I have finally arrived at the past tense. Yay me! Similarly, after dealing with prepositions like "ar", "as", "ag", "ó", "de", and "do", we have finally arrived at the elusive word "i" ("in"). It seems, after arduously conquering the first half of the book, it's only downhill from here.

I'm still not happy Learning Irish focuses on the dialect of An Spidéal instead of giving you a broader view of the language, but that's what you have to live with when you want to study Irish. Either you get the artificial Official Standard or a patchwork of dialects. I rather liked the approach of Irisch für Anfänger, which teaches "Standard Irish with a focus on West Irish". I think it's the best you can do as a beginner, if you neither want to learn exclusively the artificial standard nor one specific dialect.

Wanderlust

I still haven't decided what to study besides Irish. On the one hand, I would like to work on my Russian, my Japanese, and my Portuguese again, on the other hand, I'd love to start a new language. I have been toying with the idea of studying either Persian or Arabic for some time now, but I also might do something completely different and study a Native American language. I have always been interested in Lakota, since I watched "Dances With Wolves" for the first time. It might be a good idea to at least dabble in it a little bit. We'll see!
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Montmorency
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Re: Josquin's Ceol agus Ól - TAC 2016 (Irish, Russian)

Postby Montmorency » Mon Jul 04, 2016 2:20 am

Josquin wrote:I'm still not happy Learning Irish focuses on the dialect of An Spidéal instead of giving you a broader view of the language, but that's what you have to live with when you want to study Irish. Either you get the artificial Official Standard or a patchwork of dialects. I rather liked the approach of Irisch für Anfänger, which teaches "Standard Irish with a focus on West Irish". I think it's the best you can do as a beginner, if you neither want to learn exclusively the artificial standard nor one specific dialect.


I suppose there is a similar problem with Welsh. People tend to think of there being two main varieties of Welsh: Northern and Southern, and while that's broadly true, it's also an oversimplification. I'm not sure there was ever an official artificial standard exactly, but I think some traditional courses did tend to gloss over the differences, and just throw in a few words that were different in each of the major dialects, and hope for the best.

At least more modern courses do give both Northern and Southern varieties equal weight (i.e. having two versions), but they cannot be expected to cope with the true variety that one is likely to find "in the wild". In practice, I think an unfamiliar accent is going to throw the learner much more than the relatively small differences in vocabulary and an even smaller difference in grammar. Hopefully that can be overcome with sufficient listening to a variety of sources.

Wanderlust

I still haven't decided what to study besides Irish. On the one hand, I would like to work on my Russian, my Japanese, and my Portuguese again, on the other hand, I'd love to start a new language. I have been toying with the idea of studying either Persian or Arabic for some time now, but I also might do something completely different and study a Native American language. I have always been interested in Lakota, since I watched "Dances With Wolves" for the first time. It might be a good idea to at least dabble in it a little bit. We'll see!


Ahem, well, Welsh would be sufficiently different from Irish not to cause interference, and future trips to Ireland could quite efficiently take in parts of Wales as well... :-) (e.g. Fly to Manchester; travel due west across North Wales to Holyhead; ferry to Dublin ...)
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Josquin
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Re: Josquin's Ceol agus Ól - TAC 2016 (Irish, Russian)

Postby Josquin » Mon Jul 04, 2016 9:55 pm

What about literary Welsh? Doesn't that work as some sort of written standard? I've heard it's considerably different from spoken Welsh.

I must admit I've been toying with the idea of studying Welsh for some time now, but every time I open a Welsh textbook I realize I'd rather study Irish instead. So, I thought it might be best not to study anything Celtic besides Irish for the time being.

However, which language this will be isn't sure yet. I'm in a fix between Arabic, Persian, and Lakota. I have ordered some Lakota materials from the library in order to get some information about the language, but I don't know if I'll go through with seriously studying it.

I have been watching some YouTube videos about Arabic pronunciation lately, especially the infamous "Ain" (ع). I think I'm at a point now where I can say it, but I'm not very good at it yet. I would need some more practice for my pronunciation to become more natural.

In other news, I have restarted watching Кухня! I'm on episode 7 of the second series now. I love how Max is running from one catastrophe to another, in his private life as well as in his working life. He's really been acting like a jerk lately, so one might say he had it coming.
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Re: Josquin's Ceol agus Ól - TAC 2016 (Irish, Russian)

Postby Montmorency » Mon Jul 04, 2016 10:59 pm

Josquin wrote:What about literary Welsh? Doesn't that work as some sort of written standard?


Yes....I was kind of deliberately ignoring literary Welsh. :-) Partly because I haven't really studied it at all, and partly, as you say, it's quite different from the spoken language.

As you probably know, or can probably guess, standardisation first started with the first translation of the Bible into Welsh by Bishop William Morgan in 1588* (as with Luther in Germany, and as with the King James version in England). From what I have read it was pretty artificial and didn't correspond to any version of spoken Welsh anywhere. And I think it suffered from them trying to bend it into the sort of grammatical shape that they were used to in Latin.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think written Welsh in modern times is a kind of spectrum, ranging from simply a written version of the colloquial spoken language (with very variable spellings), through more formal language for official purposes, to more literary language for poetry and highbrow literature. Most of what I have read once I started reading has fallen into the first category.

but every time I open a Welsh textbook I realize I'd rather study Irish instead.


Well, if you were to go the SSiW route, you could put away the textbooks (at least for a good long time...). :-)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M ... translator)
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Re: Josquin's Ceol agus Ól - TAC 2016 (Irish, Russian)

Postby galaxyrocker » Tue Jul 05, 2016 12:20 am

Josquin wrote:Gaeilge

It seems my Irish has finally caught up with the learning curve of Learning Irish and it also seems Ó Siadhail has you learn the difficult grammar first before he gives you the easy stuff. So, after learning the future tense, the conditional mood, the present habitual, and the past habitual, I have finally arrived at the past tense. Yay me! Similarly, after dealing with prepositions like "ar", "as", "ag", "ó", "de", and "do", we have finally arrived at the elusive word "i" ("in"). It seems, after arduously conquering the first half of the book, it's only downhill from here.

I'm still not happy Learning Irish focuses on the dialect of An Spidéal instead of giving you a broader view of the language, but that's what you have to live with when you want to study Irish. Either you get the artificial Official Standard or a patchwork of dialects. I rather liked the approach of Irisch für Anfänger, which teaches "Standard Irish with a focus on West Irish". I think it's the best you can do as a beginner, if you neither want to learn exclusively the artificial standard nor one specific dialect.


I admit that Learning Irish is a tough nut to crack. I think it's much more useful in conjunction with a teacher, who can split the lessons into a different order based on what they think is useful.

However, I still think it's one of the best books for learning Irish precisely because it focuses on dialects, which means it'll actually help you interact with native speakers. But, I could also be biased because I came at it after I had a fairly decent command of Irish, and my goal is dialect learning.

I still haven't decided what to study besides Irish. On the one hand, I would like to work on my Russian, my Japanese, and my Portuguese again, on the other hand, I'd love to start a new language. I have been toying with the idea of studying either Persian or Arabic for some time now, but I also might do something completely different and study a Native American language. I have always been interested in Lakota, since I watched "Dances With Wolves" for the first time. It might be a good idea to at least dabble in it a little bit. We'll see!


You're not alone in this. I'm currently leaning towards Finnish or Romanian. Just trying to find resources to actually use and stay focused. Wanderlust is a real problem!
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Re: Josquin's Ceol agus Ól - TAC 2016 (Irish, Russian)

Postby Josquin » Tue Jul 12, 2016 9:36 pm

@Montmorency: Thanks for the info! I was wondering about the relationship between colloquial and literary Welsh, so your account was really helpful. However, it doesn't look like I'll be studying Welsh in the near future. Sorry about that!

@galaxyrocker: Yes, in conjunction with a teacher, Learning Irish might be an unvaluable resource. On it's own, it's a bit dry and grammar-orientated.

It's okay the book chooses a certain dialect, but I think it might be better for a learner not to specialize too much. For example, Ó Siadhail meticulously explains the phonological idiosyncracies of the Cois Fharraige dialect and gives IPA for every single word while there are other Connemara (and Munster) dialects that are much closer to written Irish.

Of course, you learn to speak like an actual Gaeilgeoir from Cois Fharraige, but on the other hand you miss out on Munster and Ulster Irish completely. So, I'm a bit torn. On the one hand, I think the Official Standard is a necessary evil one has to live with, on the other hand, one should strive to speak as natural Irish as possible. For a learner, I think it's inevitable that he or she will mix vocabulary, pronunciation, and maybe even grammatical phenomena of different dialects.
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In other news, I got some resources for Lakota, but I don't think I'm going to study it very seriously. I'll probably want to learn something about the language, not necessarily gain actual competence in it. My next real language will probably be Persian. I'm feeling irresistably attracted to it more and more.

Also, I made a recording of myself reading a text from Irisch für Anfänger. I know my pronunciation isn't perfect (I got some broad and slender consonants wrong and my intonation is very German), but it has gotten a lot better since I started learning Irish. Enjoy!
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