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

[Expugnator]

I find GLOSS lessons rather long, a bit chaotic and overall complex, so they don't really fit my schedule. Also the ILR levels are misleading: I tried doing 1-level Indonesian lessons, and they are actually almost B1! If I ever get back into them, it will be right before abandoning textbook-like resources all together.

I'm sure it works more smoothly for a semi-transparent language, but even so it's much more practical to just open an Assimil lesson where everything is within a couple of pages-range plus one sound file.

[jeff_lindqvist]

My experience is similar to Expugnator's. I've never used GLOSS regularly - I just check it now and then when I'm reminded that it exists. Maybe the lessons I've checked have some really specific vocabulary? Maybe my (supposedly) "strong" target languages aren't that strong after all? Maybe I should use GLOSS more? Maybe the lessons are more advanced than they say?

[iguanamon]

Spanish:
Baseball season is heating up now that the playoffs are near. Here in the Caribbean, and especially in nearby Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, it is especially popular. I've been watching games in Spanish and enjoying them. I read and/or listen to something in Spanish everyday. I speak often. It requires no special effort to do that.
Recently, while helping someone else here on the forum, I remembered a website with free and legal ebooks in Spanish, back when I got my first kindle and needed something to put on it. The website badosa.com has 34 ebooks in Spanish downloadable in several formats and can be read online also. The authors are generally contemporary- there are a couple of classic public domain books there too. These authors/writers are generally not established and the site has given them a platform for exposure. They're not all novels, some are short stories.
I've read a few of these books in the past and liked them. I downloaded a short story- a murder mystery called Asesinato en el laboratorio de idiomas by Alm@ Perez. I'm about halfway finished with it and I'm enjoying it... not bad for free and legal.

Portuguese
I continue to listen, read and speak most days of the week. I downloaded a copy of Guerra e Paz by Tolstoy in Portuguese translation. Whether I not I will actually read the gargantuan tome remains to be seen. It's over 1,200 pages in English translation, basically three or four regular novels. The list of characters is overwhelming. The plot revolves around the lives of aristocratic Russian nobles, so not very relatable, but yet it's a classic of world literature.

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

I've tried to read it before in English (and French- there's lots of French in this Russian novel) and couldn't get past the first two chapters. Since I got into language-learning, I;ve read a lot of Tolstoy short stories in translation in three of my languages- including Haitian Creole. I really like his writing and appreciate what he has to say. He was a contemporary of American author Mark Twain. Given my problems in reading the book in the past, I thought I'd seek some advice on how to read it and I fiund this article Just 1,238 pages to go: could you read War and Peace in a week?. I also watched this video on youtube.


Haitian Creole
I finished Liv Rit/The Book of Ruth in the Old Testament. That's not much of an accomplishment since it's the shortest book in the Bible. Ruth itself was a breeze but the accompanying Atravè Labib podcast is twice as long. The Pastè/Pastor, Pastè Storly Michel, has one full half an hour podcast on the first three verses of Chapit/Chapter 3. Mezanmi ! He does say that it's one of the most important books in the Bible and I am enjoying his take on it.
I'm about a tenth of the way through the book about Papa Dòk. So far, it's still dealing with cultural and personal background. I expect it will start moving into his taking power soon.

Catalan
This past couple of weeks Catalan has been taking up a lot of my reading time. What got me started thinking about reading War and Peace in Portuguese was the fact that I am reading a translation of some Tolstoy short stories in Catalan Lleó Tolstoi - Contes Primera Serie. This is an old translation dating from 1903- 115 years ago. I've had difficulty reading older language in Catalan before, but this translation has presented almost no problems in comprehension at all, surprisingly. Almost every unknown word I come across is in the dictionary I have, or a slight difference in spelling. I've finished the first tale "No s pot tirar llenya al foc" or "You can't take firewood/fuel off the fire". In English, it's translated as "A Lost Opportunity". The next story I am near finishing is "El Mujik Pakhom".
So I put down Stefan Klein's book La Fórmula de la Felicitat for now. I'll come back to it soon.
The Spanish ebook site, Badosa.com (Català), has seven short stories/books in Catalan for free and legal download, that I'm looking forward to exploring. Back in 2011, I couldn't have read them at all. Now, after seven years of language learning, I can. What the experience of learning related languages, and trying to puzzle them out has done for me is make it so much easier to segue into a language like Catalan. A lot of the grammar and vocabulary is similar to something I already know in another language, and a lot of it... well, it isn't. There's enough that's different and that's what makes it interesting and compelling to me to explore and learn.

Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol
I've been taking a break from Djudeo-espanyol this week. I'll get back into it next week.

Mèsi pou vizite ak li sa ki mwen ekri isit la. Orevwa pou kounyea, mezanmi.

[coldrainwater]

Portuguese
I continue to listen, read and speak most days of the week. I downloaded a copy of Guerra e Paz by Tolstoy in Portuguese translation. Whether I not I will actually read the gargantuan tome remains to be seen. It's over 1,200 pages in English translation, basically three or four regular novels. The list of characters is overwhelming. The plot revolves around the lives of aristocratic Russian nobles, so not very relatable, but yet it's a classic of world literature...I've tried to read it before in English (and French- there's lots of French in this Russian novel) and couldn't get past the first two chapters...

Guerra e Paz is indeed a true classic, well quoted. I watched the video you posted and she gave quite decent advice (though the tact I took was a bit different since on first read I did not try to map out and tackle all the personages). Coincidentally (and timely perhaps), I am just finishing it as an audiobook in Spanish, one chosen initially for listening practice. I am not sure I would have made it through reading it in paperback. Even though I am familiar with the period somewhat historically, it was a tough one to relate to initially for the reasons you described. It is about a 62 hour listen on audiobook and the epilogue starts with about 4.5 hours of narration left to go (wow, I thought). I am 100% confident that my attention was not (100%), but I did feel notable attachment to the times and characters in the last third of the book. Like you, I may give it a second go some year in hardback. I hope this start is going well for you since your last post!

[reineke]

Catalan
This past couple of weeks Catalan has been taking up a lot of my reading time. What got me started thinking about reading War and Peace in Portuguese was the fact that I am reading a translation of some Tolstoy short stories in Catalan Lleó Tolstoi - Contes Primera Serie. This is an old translation dating from 1903- 115 years ago. I've had difficulty reading older language in Catalan before, but this translation has presented almost no problems in comprehension at all, surprisingly. Almost every unknown word I come across is in the dictionary I have, or a slight difference in spelling. I've finished the first tale "No s pot tirar llenya al foc" or "You can't take firewood/fuel off the fire". In English, it's translated as "A Lost Opportunity".

The story was also translated as "Quench the Fire," "A Spark Neglected Burns the House," "Neglect the fire and you cannot put it out" and "Put out the fire or it will spread”...

Posar [o tirar ] llenya al foc [o atiar el foc ] (Fer augmentar les discòrdies...

No es pot = cannot
tirar llenya al foc = throw fuel to the fire

[iguanamon]

Thanks, reineke, I blew that one! I guess I had "retirar"/"withdraw" on my mind and also thinking of "tirar fotos" from Portuguese which means to "take" photos. The joys of being a beginner and similar languages... where sometimes a banana is just a banana .

It's been a year since Hurricane Maria struck my island home of St Croix and plunged us into chaos and darkness for months. It's natural that the much bigger island of Puerto Rico is grabbing the headlines. We Virgin Islanders are used to being a forgotten little backwater of the American Empire. While things on a surface level are back to "normal" (although there are still many homes with FEMA blue roof tarps), it will take years for things to really come back. Many of us still carry the psychic wounds with us, even if we don't talk about it much.

When you have your normality stripped from you, losing electricity, communications and internet suddenly and for a prolonged period of time (in the Caribbean tropical heat), it is jarring to your system. I adapted. Luckily, I had resources to hand that I could use without internet. Life continued and language activities continued despite the hardships. Language activities were a solace to take my mind off of the post-storm misery.

In the grand scheme of things, losing electricity, internet, work, money, while significant, was nothing. My home was undamaged and many others were severely damaged. I still have my livelihood and my health. Turn the page. ¡Adiós, María!

Spanish
Have had a house guest for the past week from Puerto Rico and have been speaking a lot of Spanish every day.

Portuguese
The usual- listening, speaking, reading.

Djudeo-espanyol/Ladino
More of the same- some reading, some music, some listening. I've started reading the book of 1 Shemuel (1 Samuel) in Rashi in parallel with...

Haitian Creole
Reading 1 Samyèl in the OT. I also resumed reading "Papa Dòk" in HC translation.

Catalan
I finished Tolstoy's second volume of tales (100 year old plus translation) and have thoroughly enjoyed his writing. I'm going to pick back up with Stefan Klein's "La fórmula de la felicitat" and try to finish watching the first season of "Merlí" on Netflix. I've also started following more Catalan accounts on twitter. I learned via twitter that there's to be a Catalan language film festival in Algherro (Alguer), Sardinia. I'll have to see if I can find some of these films to watch.



I don't think, right now, that I'll be as active in speaking Catalan, but one thing I've learned is that you really never know how a language will work itself into your life. I am open to the possibilities.

[James29]

Sometime go out to a high point on the east side of the island and watch the sun rise. You'll be the first person in the country to see the sun rise that day.

[rdearman]

Sometime go out to a high point on the east side of the island and watch the sun rise. You'll be the first person in the country to see the sun rise that day.

No you wouldn't actually.

Guam: Where America's Day Begins. Guam is an island territory of the United States, rich with cultural heritage and pride, located 900 miles north of the equator in the Western Pacific.

[zenmonkey]

Sometime go out to a high point on the east side of the island and watch the sun rise. You'll be the first person in the country to see the sun rise that day.

No you wouldn't actually.

Guam: Where America's Day Begins. Guam is an island territory of the United States, rich with cultural heritage and pride, located 900 miles north of the equator in the Western Pacific.

I thought it was Wake Island and McMurdo? Or some place up in Alaska (depending on the time of year).

UTC+12....

[rdearman]

I think it is more to do with where the International Date Line was drawn than the geography of the planet.