Nótaí galaxyrocker - Ancient Celtic Languages, (Old) French, Latin, Old English

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Amandine
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and French with wanderlust ramblings

Postby Amandine » Sun Aug 14, 2022 11:56 pm

Good luck bringing home the thesis!
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- thesis done!

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Aug 21, 2022 9:22 am

16/08:

Episode of PM (28 min)

Weekly Recap and Thoughts

French Listening: 28 min
French Reading: pages
Irish Reading: pages
Irish Listening: min
Histore du livre: 330 / 722
Éan Cuideáin: 72 / 227


This week was basically what I thought it'd be. But my thesis is done and will be submitted today after I reread it. Then I'm free for a least a few days. Gonna get back into targeted language practice then. Still semi-preparing to TEG C1, depending on if I have a job and how much it pays, and will also start working again with French grammar. I really need to practice speaking French more honestly, especially if I intend to go to France next year as is currently the plan (unless I get a job I enjoy). I'm going to try to finish the French book I'm reading by the end of September as well - I have to, it's due back to UCD then! Same with the Irish one though I hope to finish it much sooner.

I might end up dabbling some with Old Irish and Old French again now that I'm free, as well as maybe Middle Welsh or Modern Welsh or Breton. All in hopes of doing independent research even if zi don't go to France. We'll just have to see what happens.

Otherwise I hope everyone had a good week and that yalls coming week is good
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Back with a vengance

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Aug 28, 2022 10:57 am

22/08:

Episode of PM (27 min)

23/08:

Episode of Baile an Droichid (30 min)

24/08:

2 episodes of Baile an Droichid (60 min)
2 episodes of PM (54 min)

Requested Cruinnscríobh na Gaeilge from Dublin City Libraries. Parts of it will be super basic, but I hope it helps me stop making some of the silly mistakes I've made. I need to get better at pronunciation now too, as that's the cause of some of them!

Also did a lesson from Grammaire Progressive today. Some of the exercises do annoy me, because they're made with teachers in mind, even if there's an answer key. Specifically those that I did today where it asked you to change one type of article to another. But overall, I think I got it. Need to just stick with working through the book.

25/08:

Episode of PM (27 min).
Episode of Baile an Droichid (30 min)

Last Thursday of the month, so the Pop-Up Gaeltacht was on. Thus I spoke Irish for a few hours in the evening. Finished Éan Cuideáin as well. Even though it was 227 pages, they weren't huge pages (mass market paperback size, but in hardback, as old books are wont to be), but it was still a good chunk of reading for me this week. I've got the next Irish read requested from Dublin Libraries, though it has to come from Carraroe. It's a book I have, actually, though I only have the school edition which is about 60 pages shorter. Figured I'd read the longer one and compare, and am searching for a copy of the longer edition to buy as part of my Conamara collection. We'll see when it finally reaches me. Hopefully by next week.

26/08:

Baile an Droichid (30 min). Episodes 21/22 of the second series.

Episode of PM (23 min)

27/08:

Baile an Droichid (30 min). Episodes 23/24. I've finally reached the end of where I've downloaded, and will have to download more. Will likely be cleaning up the audio so it's just the parts relating to the show as well, which means no more extra listening to news from 2020 to get me to the 30 minute mark. It'll be good though, cause it'll make it easier to listen to more at a time hopefully.

Episode of PM (30 min)

Weekly Recap and Thoughts

French Listening: 131 min
French Reading: 72 pages
Irish Reading: 155 pages
Irish Listening: 180 min
Histore du livre: 402 / 722
Éan Cuideáin: 227 / 227

Man, it's good to get back into stuff after the thesis. Especially given how much free time I'll have for the next two months or so, should be able to make a lot of progress if I can stay focused.

I'm torn on whether to keep going with PM or return to Inner French. Sometimes they're easy, especially when I can stay focused, but sometimes there's just too much vocabulary and it gets out of control. I might return to Inner French for a bit and see, though any other historical/science based podcasts that could be good for intermediate learners would be appreciated. Maybe I'll just return to documentaries as well, for the time being. I think documentaries might be the best to practice my listening simply because I find it a bit easier to focus on them as opposed to letting my mind wander. Might experiment along with that.

I only did the one lesson from Grammaire Progressive this week, but I hope to get more regular next week. I have time, it's just a matter of sitting down and refining my writing ability. Same with Cruinnscríobh na Gaeilge when it finally comes in. I also need to be more consistent working through Learning Irish. I got it at a nice discount from the Conradh na Gaeilge bookshop as I donated a rare book (Second edition of an Ó Cadhain work -- I bought the first edition so didn't need it anymore). While it's below my level, there's a lot in there I've never systematically learned, and the review and practice would honestly do me wonders. As would listening to the audio and really working on pronunciation.

Otherwise, I've been thinking about adding in something new. Probably going to go back to Old Irish or Middle Welsh, but maybe Old French as well. It'll be one of the older languages, or Breton, simply because I want to prep for the strong possibility of going to Brest next year (again, I should've gone this year but oh well). We'll see what comes up. There's also the nagging desire in the back of my mind to at least get passive skills up in Spanish, using something like Dreaming Spanish. But really, I need to focus, especially if I intend to take the C1 Irish exam at the end of the year.

I'm also working on another Irish project, transcribing some old books of folklore from places in Conamara. I'm first going from the insular script to the new, keeping the old spelling, but then I'm going to 'modernise' the spelling. However, I don't intend to standardise anything; so if the spelling represents a dialectal form, I intend to keep said form in the text I'm transcribing. So, some examples, in Conamara they would often say 'dhó' instead of 'dó'. If 'dhó' is written in the text, I keep that and don't change it to 'dó'. If it's 'dó' in the text, I also keep that. There's a few places where I'm struggling to figure out how to adapt it, like the future tense where he writes 'feicfe', for example, which is standard 'feicfidh' but pronounced as 'feicfe' in the dialect. This used to be more common in older works, and Ó Cadhain and P. Óg Ó Conaire both used it, especially in dialogue, to show this off. I'm leaning towards keeping it, but would appreciate advice from anyone who might've done something like this before on the matter.
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galaxyrocker
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- August Review

Postby galaxyrocker » Thu Sep 01, 2022 8:31 am

30/08:

Episode of Baile an Droichid (22 minutes)
Episode of PM (26 min)

31/08:

Episode of PM (26 min)

August Recap and Thoughts


French Listening: 392 min
French Reading: 152 pages
Irish Reading: 207 pages
Irish Listening: 372 min


28/08 - 31/08 Recap and Thoughts

French Listening: 26 min
French Reading: pages
Irish Reading: pages
Irish Listening: 22 min
Histore du livre: 402 / 722


Overall not a horrible August given that I had a thesis due and dropped off listening for quite a while. Reading was good and kept me on pace, and hopefully I'll be more consistent in September.

I'm still torn about my French comprehension. I am getting better, but I don't know if PM is too difficult or not. I might see about finding an official B1/B2 prep booklet and seeing how I fare there, or just go back to documentaries (which do give me more exposure, beihn longer). Anyway, all the stuff with French makes me wish that Irish had more high quality resources. Shame most TV stuff is done by non-natives often with weird pronunciation and it's hard to get dedicated listening. I do need to make sure I've got RnaG on, but the Conamara show is often while I'm at the gym, which makes it difficult to listen to as they've got their own music on really loudly. We'll just have to see and experiment some.

Gotta figure out if I'm really gonna try to focus on any of the Old/Middle X languages right now or just these two. I should probably do OI at least, and the others would help with my project goals even if I don't go to Brest next year. Otherwise hope all is well with y'all.
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and French with wanderlust ramblings

Postby galaxyrocker » Sun Sep 04, 2022 10:25 am

01/09:

Amhránaíocht an Chlub tonight, so Irish speaking was guaranteed, as was hearing sean-nós. While I don't sing (no confidence in it), it's nice chatting with everyone and hearing others, some who are quite good, sing. It's the first Thursday of every month, so if anyone is interested and visiting Dublin, feel free to pop in. As long as you don't speak/sing in English, you'll be welcomed with open arms. We've had people singing in Italian, French and Turkish before. Just not English.

Epsiode 2-28 and 3-01 of Baile an Droichid (22 minutes)
Episode of PM, second part of one talking about sorcery in the Middle Ages. Was quite neat. (26 min)

02/09:

Got back into watching French documentaries today. Stumbled upon a channel on YouTube titled Peuples en danger
which documents the life and aspects of life of various peoples throughout the world, especially those not as adjusted to modernity or who live very different from the West. The episode I watched was titled Peuples du monde : Himalaya, les vallées oubliées du Paldar (52 min) and discussed people from these valleys. It followed a group of them from one town as they traversed other towns to trade, as well as a Hindu festival they attended at the end. One of the people on the group had great English (from what I heard before/after the French dubbing), so they were able to get interviews and translations with the others. Overall it was neat, and gave me a desire to visit there.

I decided to start Ros na Rún from the beginning. They've got 4 complete seasons of it up on YouTube at the moment, and are partway through the fifth. Given it's closer to 30 seasons now than 20 (and closer almost 2k episodes!), it'll take a long while for YouTube to catch up, but it's great to see them there. Especially with high quality Irish of a lot of the Conamara-based actors, though there are lots of dialects from all over the area. It's funny, as I've met a few of the actors on my trips to Conamara, and one of them in Dublin even with a nice thick Donegal blas. It'll be a good complement for Baile an Droichid, which I'll also keep listening to. Today I watched the first two episodes (30 min total). It's not something I'd generally watch, but with Irish beggars can't be choosers really.


03/09:

Watched another documentary from the same channel as yesterday, this time about the Dogon of Mali. (52 min) Was basically a short introduction to their way of life and culture, as well as very little about the history and how they purposefully kept them closed off to outsiders, as well as interaction with Islam and their natural religion, etc. The most interesting part to me was about their festivals, with all the masks, etc that are pretty widely renown. Was a bit more difficult than the one yesterday, but I can understand most of the words, even if I don't know what the word means. Tried turning on subtitles just to see, but they're auto-generated CC on YouTube, and are not good.

Episodes 3/4 of Ros na Rún today as well (27 min). Really interesting to just see how much tv has evolved, but it's nice hearing the good Irish. Also even better, there's no subtitles on this episode...I just realised that they weren't there halfway through it. Guess that shows how good my Irish has become, which is great.


1/09 - 3/09 Recap and Thoughts

French Listening: 130 min
French Reading: 62 pages
Irish Reading: 0 pages
Irish Listening: 79 min
Histore du livre: 464 / 722


A little disappointed in not getting my 70 pages of French reading this week; it's entirely my fault and I just didn't sit down, and let my attention wander elsewhere. I've got to stay on pace, or even ahead of it, to make sure I finish this book before I have to have it returned to UCD at the end of the month. I need to up to about 12 pages a day to get done by the 25th, which would give me plenty of time to spare. I can do that, just have to get focused.

I'm going to go ahead and ask now so I can have time to buy it/get it shipped before the end of the month when I have to have my current French book finished, but does anyone know of any (semi-)academic works on magic in French? Looking at things like the history of magic/magical thinking across multiple cultures, how it was perceived, etc. I've tried searching 'l'histoire du magie', but it just gives me a bunch of fiction stuff, and nothing really non-fiction or academic. Does anyone know a good site for finding academic books in French? I might try Google Scholar to get articles and go from there, but a list of academic publishers, or high quality non-fiction ones, would be nice. Or, what about some general and/or academic approaches to history of civilisations? Say, a broad-overview history of China, or Japan or France? Preferably mostly pre-modern in focus. Or, just what's your favourite book to read in French? I'm open to just about anything, and probably should broaden my reading, though academic works interest me the most (and if you know any academic level books on Celtic Studies...) I've got some hits from a friend of mine who has a PhD in Celtic Studies, so we'll see about following up some of them as well at the end of the month.

For Irish, I'm still waiting on the book I requested to come in to the library nearest me; it has to ship from the Gaeltacht, so who knows when that'll be (if it doesn't get canceled!). I'm kinda upset I didn't do any reading, though, despite easily doing two weeks worth last week (it's not a good excuse!). I've got the books, and I can easily go to one of the other Dublin Library branches and get some other shorter ones that'll be fairly quick to read, even if they're not Conamara-based seanchló/seanlitriú. I can even choose from Conamara authors (or other high quality ones)! It's just a matter of doing it. I think I will tomorrow, after my interview, because I do need to keep my Irish reading up as much as possible.

The videos I've watched recently about the peoples of the Himalayas have actually made me look at teaching in Bhutan again. I know they have an English-language curriculum, and having experience with math and science (and being a certified teacher with post-secondary degree both in education and maths/physics) it seems like it'd be great, at least for a year to experience it. Maybe that's what I'll do next year if I don't have a job here. Could be a great start to an international teaching career shift as well, as opposed to tech which is what Ireland is most likely to offer. It's something I'll have to think hard about because I do love Ireland and want to pursue the Celtic Studies options, but a chance to see the rest of the world would be amazing, and teaching could be a good way to do that.

I think I'm also going to try to summarise the videos I watch more. I found myself zoning out, so having to summarise it really could help. Especially if I do it in French. Could be huge practice, as I rarely get any productive skills in French and it's mostly just passive all the time. Might have to dig up that website that lets you write and gets it corrected by natives; anyone remember the name? I think also getting back to transcribing works will be good for me at this level, following the B1-B2 level of my plan. I can hear the separate words, it's just writing them down, getting things like liasion and vocabulary that are killer now. Some well-focused transcription work could do wonders. PM has transcriptions, so I might start doing a few minutes of it daily, also looking up the words I don't know. I'm fine on Anki, using the most common 5k deck, but might start making a new deck for words I'm encountering outside that, as well as one for Irish.
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and French with wanderlust ramblings

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Sep 04, 2022 12:07 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:I'm going to go ahead and ask now so I can have time to buy it/get it shipped before the end of the month when I have to have my current French book finished, but does anyone know of any (semi-)academic works on magic in French? Looking at things like the history of magic/magical thinking across multiple cultures, how it was perceived, etc. I've tried searching 'l'histoire du magie', but it just gives me a bunch of fiction stuff, and nothing really non-fiction or academic.
Someone mentioned one here recently, I think one translated into French from English.

https://www.dk.com/us/book/978146549429 ... he-occult/

Searching the radiofrance.fr website offers a four-part series on witches.

https://www.radiofrance.fr/francecultur ... -sorcieres

Looking at the publications of the interviewees might offer you something.

Does anyone know a good site for finding academic books in French? I might try Google Scholar to get articles and go from there, but a list of academic publishers, or high quality non-fiction ones, would be nice. Or, what about some general and/or academic approaches to history of civilisations? Say, a broad-overview history of China, or Japan or France? Preferably mostly pre-modern in focus. Or, just what's your favourite book to read in French? I'm open to just about anything, and probably should broaden my reading, though academic works interest me the most (and if you know any academic level books on Celtic Studies...) I've got some hits from a friend of mine who has a PhD in Celtic Studies, so we'll see about following up some of them as well at the end of the month.
The Open Textbooks in French (and other languages!) thread might help you. Gallica.bnf.fr has an almost infinite supply of out of copyright books.

You might like Flammarion's Champs collection.

Two French history books I liked are Histoire des cathares and Regine Pernoud's biography of Aliénor d'Aquitaine.
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and French with wanderlust ramblings

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Sep 04, 2022 5:42 pm

My favorite book to read in French and one of my favorite books in any language is the novel Le grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier (978-1530046690).
I also like the French translations of the stories of Anton Chekhov, or Anton Tchekhov in the French spelling. Check with your favorite used-book seller for French editions. Fair warning. Chekhov isn't for everyone, but if you get into him reading one of his stories can be emotionally draining.
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and French with wanderlust ramblings

Postby guyome » Sun Sep 04, 2022 8:37 pm

galaxyrocker wrote:I'm going to go ahead and ask now so I can have time to buy it/get it shipped before the end of the month when I have to have my current French book finished, but does anyone know of any (semi-)academic works on magic in French?
No idea about magic in particular but academia.edu is what I often use when tackling a topic I don't know much about. The Holy Grail being an article aimed at non-specialists, with tons of bibliographical references specialists usually take for granted.
In a similar way, you can also try your luck at persee.fr, a large database of French academic journals.

Also, the PUF (Presses Universitaires de France) has a collection called Que sais-je ?, short inexpensive volumes (128 p., 10€), maybe comparable to OUP's A Very short Introduction to series. The series has been running for decades and they regularly publish new volumes to replace older ones.
I see they currently have one on witchcraft (2002) and two on magic (Rony, 1973 and Servier, 1993), as well as titles like Le merveilleux dans la littérature française du Moyen âge (Poirion, 1982). Older volumes may not be sold by the editor anymore but the collection was so popular that used copies shouldn't be hard to locate.
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and French with wanderlust ramblings

Postby Amandine » Sun Sep 04, 2022 11:51 pm

Mona Chollet, a Swiss journalist wrote a book called Sorcières about the history of witches, I haven't read it but I gather it is a feminist take on the history of witchcraft so might not be what you're looking for in that regard but it was a big bestseller in France and has been released in English as In Defence of Witchcraft. If it has a bibliography that might provide some leads to historical texts on the topic?

I'm a big fan of Recyclivre in Paris and elsewhere which sells second hand books. I've had numerous shipments to Australia and they've always been prompt with reasonably priced shipping. Maybe a browse through the university book section and something will catch your eye? https://www.recyclivre.com/taxons/categ ... e/histoire

Edit: BTW I just read this article on an Irish language doco that's going to be on TV, sounds interesting!
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Re: Nótaí Galaxyrocker -- Irish and French with wanderlust ramblings

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Sep 05, 2022 6:18 am

Amandine wrote:Mona Chollet, a Swiss journalist wrote a book called Sorcières about the history of witches, I haven't read it but I gather it is a feminist take on the history of witchcraft so might not be what you're looking for in that regard but it was a big bestseller in France and has been released in English as In Defence of Witchcraft. If it has a bibliography that might provide some leads to historical texts on the topic?
I watched a documentary about anti-Semitism recently. If I remember correctly one point mentioned was that the witch hunts in Europe happened in countries that had expelled their jewish populations. A new whipping boy was needed.
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