The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

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nooj
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby nooj » Fri Jan 27, 2017 3:07 am

Iguana, are you at all interested in Haketia, the Djudeo-Espanyol of the Maghreb?
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Brun Ugle
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Jan 27, 2017 7:18 am

Thanks for all those great links. I would have given your post several hearts if I could have.
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby Bakunin » Fri Jan 27, 2017 2:25 pm

Thanks for sharing your views on the future of Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol and suggestions what to do to make it easier to learn, that was a very interesting read. Have you thought about doing some of that yourself? It might actually be a lot of fun to work on such materials, and doing this you would certainly learn a bit yourself as well :D
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Fri Jan 27, 2017 5:22 pm

I don't think I've ever had so many comments on my log. This must be what it's like for Cavesa, Brun Ugle and Systematiker. I'll try to respond to you all.
kujichagulia wrote:I saw them advertising Ministério do Tempo at RTP Play... I'm sure it's way above my level, and my priority is Japanese and getting through DLI Portuguese Basic...

You are into the meat of the DLI Portuguese Basic Course right now. What you are seeing in the course will be reinforced by your chats, reading and listening. Definitely finish it and try to work with it consistently and you will be fine.
Systematiker wrote:I watched the trailer you linked - "very similar" seems to be an understatement!! :lol: Totally not tempted to watch one and see how much I can follow, no, not me...

Yes, RTP bought the format from RTVE. You might want to add Mandarin too (see below)!
Wikipedia Español wrote:La serie está siendo adaptada en Portugal y China.

Bolio wrote:...I hope you have been well. Just wanted to stop by and say hello. Thanks for all you do on this site. ...

Thank you for the kind words, Bolio. It's good to see you are continuing with your Spanish studies. Remember listen consistently and don't flit from flower to flower like a hummingbird to every resource under the sun- until you are satisfied with your listening skills. It takes time, persistence and consistency.
vogeltje wrote:... obtuve una 7, pero de vez en cuando tenía suerte porque no lo sabía pero por casualidad elegí la repuesta correcta

¡Qué bueno es verte aquí nuevamente, vogeltje! No te preocupes tanto, mi puntuaje en el quiz fue un poquito afortunado también. Adiviné la palabra más larga en italiano. Por suerte, acerté la respuesta. Pero no acerté la respuesta correcta sobre el orígen de la palabra "jaguar".
nooj wrote: ...are you at all interested in Haketia, the Djudeo-Espanyol of the Maghreb?

Hi, nooj. I find your log interesting, especially your learning of Tachelhit. To answer your question: I read about Haketía a few years ago when I started learning Djudeo-espanyol in earnest. The fact that it has even fewer resources than Ladino has available- print or audio, and had been somewhat "re-hispanicized" since the middle of the 19th century made it less attractive to me. Add in the fact that like Ladino, there would be no one for me to speak with and the lack of resources means that I couldn't learn it. At least with Ladino I can interact with the Ladinokomunita forum and native-speakers.

With Ottoman Djudeo-espanyol I had enough resources to learn the language. The fact that with my Spanish, Portuguese and Ladino it makes Haketía readily transparent to me makes it unlikely that I will want to learn it. A long time ago I found this website on Haketía: Voces de Haketía. This article in English, Haketía: Discovering the Other Judeo-Spanish Vernacular., provides a good overview of the language.
Brun Ugle wrote:Thanks for all those great links. ...

You're welcome. De nada.
Bakunin wrote:Thanks for sharing your views on the future of Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol and suggestions what to do to make it easier to learn, that was a very interesting read. Have you thought about doing some of that yourself? It might actually be a lot of fun to work on such materials, and doing this you would certainly learn a bit yourself as well :D

Thank you, Bakunin. That's my plan- to do what I can to help. I can make some parallel texts to help people learn to read Rashi text. I greatly admire what you do and have done with the Thai minority languages. You're right, it would help me learn more and be quite satisfying to me to work on some of these ideas. I still have yet to get comfortable reading Solitreo (Ladino cursive writing) and that's coming soon on the "to do" list. I can do subtitling on some videos. I'll have to learn that skill. Something that bothers me, for example, is the play I linked to had to have had a script for the actors to learn their lines. Why couldn't that be uploaded and linked to or used to subtitle the video? To me it seems like an obvious thing to do but I guess that the people involved aren't looking at it as a language-learner would look at it. It's frustrating because the resources exist but aren't being shared or combined in the most beneficial way to think of future learners or preserving the language.

In your learning of Thailand's minority languages, you've been forced to develop your own learning materials and even your own script for learning. Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol has always been a written language- consistent across the dialects from Sofia, Bulgaria to Izmir, Turkey and Salonika, Greece to Tangier, Morocco. I will do what I can to help but there's a lot that universities and institutes can do to make things easier for future learners- like providing transcripts. Take the example of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority. The IBA has a daily 15 minute broadcast in Ladino. I listen quite often. Each broadcast obviously has a script. The scripts are undoubtedly computer generated. They could easily be uploaded and stored along with mp3's of the newscasts. This would be a big help to future learners but it just isn't being done, probably because it hasn't been thought of yet.

There is a version of the Old Testament in both Rashi script and Romanized. I could make a parallel text but I can't copy and paste Rashi because it can't be OCR'ed. Neither can I figure out how to type in Rashi. The only thing I can think of is to take an image of the pdf and adjust it to use on the left side. This will be somewhat time consuming but I'm willing to give it a go. I can also make a Romanized version of some of the 19th century Rashi script books.

I will definitely contact the university people with my ideas. I'd like to be able to help future learners to be able to learn their ancestral language more easily. I think my experience as a self-learner can bring a new perspective to this that the university hasn't considered- not that I am putting myself on the same level as university academics.

I read your article on your Isaan learning and was quite impressed. I have yet to learn a non-written language. What you are doing will help smooth the way for future learners of these languages. It is always good to see you around the forum. You are a genuine inspiration with your innovative methods.
Last edited by iguanamon on Wed Feb 15, 2017 11:37 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Bakunin
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby Bakunin » Fri Jan 27, 2017 7:55 pm

Yes, you should definitively contact all of those institutions like IBA and universities and try to get them to release transcripts if these are available anyway. I find transcripts immensely useful.

Regarding the Rashi script, there must be a way to write it on a computer. If not, you might be able to create one yourself. It just takes a font, and that can’t be so difficult. If you find someone willing to do the design, a kickstarter project might be enough to get the funding. Or you could try to do the design work yourself? You could also try to get the community interested in doing the font and working on language learning materials, for instance a community-based transcription, subtitling or translation project (for parallel texts). You as an experienced language learner are in a unique position to structure these materials and make them useful for other learners.

Don’t be too impressed by what I’m doing, I’m basically just having fun! Sure, I do hope to provide something useful to other learners, but almost everything I do is driven by my own passion for language learning and cultural diversity, and I’m clearly the beneficiary number 1 from all of that :D
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby galaxyrocker » Fri Jan 27, 2017 11:29 pm

iguanamon wrote: Something that bothers me, for example, is the play I linked to had to have had a script for the actors to learn their lines. Why couldn't that be uploaded and linked to or used to subtitle the video? To me it seems like an obvious thing to do but I guess that the people involved aren't looking at it as a language-learner would look at it. It's frustrating because the resources exist but aren't being shared or combined in the most beneficial way to think of future learners or preserving the language.

In your learning of Thailand's minority languages, you've been forced to develop your own learning materials and even your own script for learning. Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol has always been a written language- consistent across the dialects from Sofia, Bulgaria to Izmir, Turkey and Salonika, Greece to Tangier, Morocco. I will do what I can to help but there's a lot that universities and institutes can do to make things easier for future learners- like providing transcripts. Take the example of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority. The IBA has a daily 15 minute broadcast in Ladino. I listen quite often. Each broadcast obviously has a script. The scripts are undoubtedly computer generated. They could easily be uploaded and stored along with mp3's of the newscasts. This would be a big help to future learners but it just isn't being done, probably because it hasn't been thought of yet.


I have to say, this is a great idea. One of the universities in Ireland, Maynooth University, actually sorta does it. They take clips from a weekly news cast, about 2 minutes along, and have questions, regarding listening comprehension (something rarely found, which is much needed, imo) as well as transcripts. I'd love if they'd expand this, or get TG4 on board so that they could have full scripts of all the shows. It'd be great for documentaries and such. Makes me wonder if I could should email TG4 to ask about it; I'd make them myself, except their shows go away after a set amount of time.

Thanks for the idea!
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Sun Jan 29, 2017 6:18 pm

iguanamon wrote:
vogeltje wrote:... obtuve una 7, pero de vez en cuando tenía suerte porque no lo sabía pero por casualidad elegí la repuesta correcta

¡Qué bueno es verte aquí nuevamente, vogeltje! No te preocupes tanto, mi puntuaje en el quiz fue un poquito afortunado también. Adiviné la palabra más larga en italiano. Por suerte, acerté la respuesta. Pero no acerté la respuesta correcta sobre la orígen de la palabra "jaguar".


Muchas gracias :) Eres simpático y tu log siempre me gusta leer porque es muy interesante.

¡Qué divertido que el diccionario de Cambridge tenga "kitty" como sinónimo de jaguar jaja!

ImageImage
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iguanamon
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Sun Feb 26, 2017 11:48 pm

Gracias por tus palabras tan amables, vogeltje.

It's been almost a month since I last updated my log. I'm still around but have been away visiting family up in the states for a while. My mom and dad drove down to South Florida and I flew up to spend some time with them, which was nice for them in the winter to get away and allows me to meet them halfway. There's a train at the Miami airport that goes all the way up to West Palm Beach. Public transit in the States isn't what it is in Europe but the Miami Tri-Rail is well run and an easy, cheap way to travel. It also saves my father from having to drive all the way into Miami. One of the downsides of being multilingual is not being able to tune out the multilingual train announcements. Miami Tri-Rail has repetitive announcements in English, Spanish and Kreyòl. I managed to speak all my languages except Djudeo-espanyol while I was up there. I also got in some reading in Portuguese, Ladino, Haitian Creole and Spanish.

Spanish
Spanish has been getting short shrift in the past year because I've been concentrating on improving my Haitian Creole and Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol. Miami and South Florida are essentially bilingual and increasingly quadrilingual/ With Spanish, English, HC and Portuguese. With these four languages, Miami and South Florida are open wide. I shall have to go back and spend some more time up there on my own someday soon.

On the way back home, I stopped off in one of the airport bookstores. Ironically, given the huge number of travelers from Latin America, there is only a very small section dedicated to books in Spanish there. What was available wasn't all that inspiring but one book caught my eye- 1984 by George Orwell in Spanish translation. With all the recent political turmoil going on, I had been wanting to re-read the book anyway. I hadn't read it since school. The price was only $8 and I had a three hour flight ahead of me. So, since I was going to read it anyway in English, why not Spanish? I bought it. I'm now about three quarters of the way through it. It's a recent translation- 2013 and a quite good one. I'm now at Book Two, Chapter 9 where Winston is reading in Goldstein's manifesto (a book within the book) the section about "La Guerra Es La Paz"/"War Is Peace". For those who have never read this classic book (Mark Twain defined a classic as "a book which people praise and don't read"), it was written in 1948 and describes a dystopian world divided among three super-states which are in a state of perpetual war and whose citizens are rigidly controlled and monitored by the State (Big Bother). "War is Peace", "Ignorance is Strength" and "Freedom is Slavery" are the mottos of the State of Oceania which includes Britain, Ireland, North and South America, Australia and Southern Africa. The protagonist is a low level functionary in the Ministry of "Truth" whose job it is to rewrite the past at the whim of those in power.
George Orwell wrote:...El problema es el mismo para todos los superestados, siendo absolutamente imprescindible que su estructura no entre en contacto con extranjeros, excepto en reducidas proporciones con prisioneros de guerra y esclavos de color. Incluso el aliado oficial del momento es considerado con mucha suspicacia. El ciudadano medio de Oceanía nunca ve a un ciudadano de Eurasia ni de Asia Oriental —aparte de los prisioneros— y se le prohibe que aprenda lenguas extranjeras. Si se le permitiera entrar en relación con extranjeros, descubriría que son criaturas iguales a él en lo esencial y que casi todo lo que se le ha dicho sobre ellos es una sarta de mentiras. Se rompería así el mundo cerrado en que vive y quizá desaparecieran él miedo, el odio y la rigidez fanática en que se basa su moral. -"1984", Libro 2, Capítulo 9 (Traducción Miguel Temprano García)

George Orwell wrote:The problem is the same for all three super-states. It is absolutely necessary to their structure that there should be no contact with foreigners, except, to a limited extent, with war prisoners and coloured slaves. Even the official ally of the moment is always regarded with the darkest suspicion. War prisoners apart, the average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to him and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. -"1984", Book 2, Chapter 9

The above quote rings very true to me and encapsulates one of the main reasons I learn languages. I'm quite enjoying re-reading the book and discovering new insights that I didn't have when I was much younger. A benefit for learners reading translated and non-translated classics is that there is a lot available online (chapter synopses, comprehension questions, discussions and analyses) because these books are assigned reading in schools and universities.

From 1984 to the present and the ealry to mid 20th century too- the new album by Albita Rodriguez- titled Albita is out now and I just bought it. I've been listening to her music for years and this album harks back to the glamorous big band era of Cuban music and Benny Moré. Just try to stay still while listening to "Se te cayó el tabaco"!


For those who want to listen to spoken Cuban Spanish: Entrevista con Albita en CNN en Español
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby PeterMollenburg » Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:35 am

Glad you're enjoying 1984 :) Orwell apparently knew where society was being steered. He was an inside man, member of exclusive clubs, privvy to exclusive interests of which he was supportive for the majority of his existence. It's a book that could be taken as a warning cloaked in a cloaky-like cloak of cloakyness or as a work of entire fiction with too many coincidental similarities to our world yet enough disimilarities to throw one off the scent. Orwell's 'hobbies' and this book provide clues to our world and the puppet masters pulling the strings in a predetermined less-than-utopian future.

South Florida sounds like an interesting melting pot of intersting cultures.
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iguanamon
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Mon Feb 27, 2017 12:34 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:Glad you're enjoying 1984 :) .... South Florida sounds like an interesting melting pot of intersting cultures.

Ahhh, Camarade PM, mon concitoyen de l'Océanie, I knew you'd appreciate that! You should re-read the book en français. It's right up your alley, gentle nudge.

South Florida is indeed a real potpourri of cultures. I speak more Spanish there than I do in Puerto Rico :lol: . All of the major languages of the Americas are there.
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