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 Nov 30, 2018 10:08 am

If you like Aranese, have you heard of Alidé Sans? Love her!
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iguanamon
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Fri Nov 30, 2018 1:32 pm

Ogrim wrote:Great to see you making so much progress with Catalan. Keep up the good work!... When using different language bases for learning an language (like German for Arabic), I've never really thought about the fact that the base lanaguage's culture could influence the content, but I can see that Spanish to Catalan gives itself to this, as both languages exist side by side in the same country.

Moltes Gràcies, Ogrim, M'agrada molt el català. Com t'ha dit, hi ha el plaer d'ho que és familiar i l'alegria del nou al mateix temps. Em vaig a continuar estudiant.

As to the cultural differences between the two language bases, well, it's not that big of a deal, and without going through the course again, it's basically just a general feeling that comes across to me in the Spanish based "El catalán sin esfuerzo" that the culture is a given between the two languages, which as you say, they both exist side by side. In the French course, there are more cultural notes given as French culture on a whole differs more from Catalunya. In the Spanish base course there don't seem to be any cultural notes. the notes are about linguistic features and the differences between Catalan and Spanish. As I said, I've spent probably two months total in Spain over the years. I was thinking of American learners of Spanish who may have more familiarity with Latin American culture coming to Iberian culture which is similar and familiar but also quite different to most of Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

One of the things I like about Catalan is the love of literature and art that the Catalans have. Despite being submersed in a global language like Spanish and without having a "flag and a navy" (well, ok, there's a flag but it isn't flying at EU HQ in Brussels, at least not yet), like the Sephardim, they have kept their culture alive and made it thrive despite the odds. I like that. In a homogenizing world it's good to have diversity. I think that's one of the prime reasons we are on the forum in the first place. Which brings me to-
nooj wrote:If you like Aranese, have you heard of Alidé Sans? Love her!

I follow several Catalan accounts on twitter and this came across yesterday from Llengua Catalana
Llengua catalana wrote:El disc de La Marató de TV3 i Catalunya Ràdio inclou per primera vegada una cançó en aranès. Es tracta de la versió que la cantant aranesa Alidé Sans ha fet del Viatge a Itaca de Lluís Llach. En aquest tema, Sans està acompanyada del cor occità Barrut, un cor de veus joves que dona nova vida a les polifonies i músiques tradicionals occitanes.
Alidé Sans va debutar el 2016 amb el disc Eth paradís ei en tu, i aquest any ha publicat un segon disc anomenat Henerècla, amb Paulin Courtial, un treball de música mestissa amb influències de hip hop, reggae, bossa nova i ritmes africans.
El disc de La Marató conté a més 17 temes cantats en català per una trentena d'artistes entre els quals hi ha Manolo García, Pablo Alborán, Álvaro Soler, Aitana, Jorge Drexler, Carlos Rivera, ruth Lorenzo i Sisa. El disc es posarà a la venda el 2 de desembre amb tots els diaris i també per iTunes.
La Marató de TV3 i Catalunya Ràdio és un projecte solidari que aquest 2018 recollirà aportacions per a la recerca sobre el càncer.

Synopsis: Alidé Sans debuted in 2016 with the album "Paradise is within you". The album of "The Marathon" (which is an event to raise funds for cancer research) includes her version in Aranés of a classic by Lluís Llach, "Viatge a Ítaca" (Voyage to Ithaca), accompanied by the Occitan Barrut Choir.

It was in your log, Nooj, that I first was exposed to Alidé Sans and when I saw the tweet, I remembered and I clicked on the link and was simply blown away by this song. This song is absolutely beautiful. Here is a link to Viatge entà Itaca by Alidé Sans and Cor Barrut (which I cannot embed here). edited to remove broken youtube link.

To others who are not as experienced in language-learning, this is an example of what I mean when I talk about "synergy" and multiple resources. These two different courses are enough to help me in two different ways. On their own, they're not enough to help me get to where I want to be with the language. Even if I memorized both courses and could spout the dialogs in my sleep, that wouldn't be sufficient. I get exposed to Catalan in the real world whenever I check my twitter feed. I discover new things that I didn't know I liked before until they came into my view. It's also why I browse other members logs who aren't learning the same languages as I am and why some day, with just a little extra effort, I may be able to understand another similar language with a proud history and discover another proud continuing story of a language and culture that refuses to just "go away".
Last edited by iguanamon on Tue Dec 04, 2018 3:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby Brun Ugle » Mon Dec 03, 2018 3:50 pm

I can’t remember if I’ve seen it mentioned in your log, so I thought I might just mention that Catalan is one of the languages Glossika offers for free on their new site.
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Thu Dec 06, 2018 6:29 pm

Brun Ugle wrote:I can’t remember if I’ve seen it mentioned in your log, so I thought I might just mention that Catalan is one of the languages Glossika offers for free on their new site.

Thanks, Brun Ugle. I signed up for Glossika Catalan some time ago but haven't been using it much. I don't like that TL is single rep. If I could design a course like this, I'd probably have it do at least double reps of TL... but... what do I know. I may go through it at some point.

Catalan
I've finished the 5 lesson "mini active wave" in Assimil's "El catalán sin esfuerzo". There's a lot in there to work on, a lot of conjugations, prepositions, conjunctions and at least three different ways to translate the very useful Spanish word "hasta". As I've said before, it's one thing to understand a similar Romance language and another thing entirely to produce it.

I tend to get annoyed with courses, but I want to persevere with this set. The only way I will be able to discuss Assimil with anyone is to actually finish the courses I am doing. As of now, I am not convinced that Assimil is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I find some things, which seem obvious to me that should be emphasized, not emphasized and lacking.

Conjugations in Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan are very important and they're just thrown at you without telling you which ones are used and why. Conjugation usage isn't exactly the same in Catalan as it is in Spanish, though it is very similar. When should I use "cal" and when should I use "haver" to express need? "Per i per a" doesn't seem to be exactly the same as "por"and "para" in Spanish, ditto for "en" and "a/al/als". So, I am also reading a Catalan grammar and am going to learn the conjugation tables for most common verb forms and the most common irregular verbs. My problem isn't that I don't recognize them but that I can't yet produce them and in my experience this is critical. These websites look like they may be helpful- Conjugate Catalan Verbs with an English base and Optimot from the Generalitat de Catalunya (via twitter) with a Spanish base. It's great that Catalans really want people to learn their language!

Occitan/Aranés
The other official language in Catalunya is Aranés with only about 5,000 speakers. Don't worry, I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of Occitan (at least not yet :lol: ), though I do like the music of Alidé Sans. I downloaded her two albums. She is an amazing singer and, in herself alone, an inspiration to learn Aranés. Below is an acoustic version of Audèths and a video of her visit to New York with English subs, amazing how much I can recognize in Aranés with English subs. I admire Alidé's efforts to sing in her language and make it important to other young Aranés-speakers in the Val d'Arran and to other Occitan-speakers in France and Italy.


Portuguese
What does a white Norwegian reindeer have to do with Portuguese?
Image
I saw this via twitter and BBC Brasil Filhote raro de rena branca é fotografado 'camuflado' na neve na Noruega (Rare white reindeer calf is photographed "camouflaged in the snow in Norway). Apparently it's a rare genetic mutation and not albinism, as I first thought.
Spanish
My writing class from the Escuela de Escritores has been delayed until January 16 because there weren't enough students signed up. :( .
While replying to Chmury's log, I discovered this course opening on December 10 Técnicas para la escritura creativa
Narrar será para ti sumergirte en lo humano, en sus misterios y contradicciones, convertirte en un conocedor de ti mismo y del mundo que te rodea. Asume este desafío y saldrás enriquecido, asume este reto y dispondrás de nuevas y versátiles herramientas. Vivir es el gran viaje, narrar, la posibilidad de contarlo.


Haitian Creole
M'ap li 1 Samyèl Chapit 23 nan Bib la ak koute podcast la "Atravè Labib" sou etid chapit la.
I'm reading 1 Samuel Chapter 23 in th Bible and listening to the Bible study podcast "Thru the Bible" about the chapter. I need to read more in my book Papa Dòk.
Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol
Reading the same Kapitulos of the Tanah in Rashi script as in Haitian Creole- the story of King David's rise.
Continuing with the holiday theme, since it's Hanukkah, there's no better time to try Bimuelos! "Bimuelos" are the Sephardic version of Buñuelos. As Sarah Aroeste sings- "They're more than just fried dough". There's a recipe here.
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby Brun Ugle » Fri Dec 07, 2018 6:39 am

But the TL is NOT single rep! You choose that in the settings. First, click the “start session” button. Then when the review page opens, click the gear icon.

At the top is source language and you can pick how long the pause is after. I pick 2x because it usually gives me enough time to say the target language sentence before I hear it. Unfortunately the pause is based on the length of the source language sentence and sometimes it’s much shorter than the TL sentence, but usually it works out OK for me.

Next is TL. Turn repeat on to hear the TL sentence twice. You can also adjust the pause between the repeats. Further down you also have the ability to record yourself (which I don’t use, so I can’t say much about it), you can pick your level (or test it, I think), choose which topics you want to include and even download the audio. It sends a link to your email and you have seven days to download it. If you choose to download the audio, but still want to do the regular session on your computer or phone, then click “yes” on the message that comes up.

Note, that when you open the settings, you have to use the arrows on your computer to scroll down, at least in the browser I use. I always forget and click the scroll bar and the menu disappears.
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Fri Dec 07, 2018 7:09 pm

Thank you, Brun Ugle. All I did was just click "play" and didn't even see the menu options! Right now, I have my hands full with two Catalan courses and reading and listening. Plus, I have to keep up with my other languages. I will investigate Glossika further at some point. It's been talked about so much on the forum, that I am curious to see what the fuss is about. Sometimes I feel left out here because, I haven't used and don't use very many of the common resources on the forum for learning. Up until now, I hadn't done an Assimil course, no Duolinguo, no Quizlet, no Memrise, no LingQ, no readlang, no Anki, and no Glossika. I'll let everyone know what I think about these two when I have enough experience with them.

Kudos to Mike Campbell for making Catalan and other minority languages available for free on his site. There is so much available for free for learning Catalan, I am amazed. That being said, There are only a few minutes of audio in Catalan on librivox. What's up with that?!
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Dec 07, 2018 10:19 pm

iguanamon wrote:There is so much available for free for learning Catalan, I am amazed. That being said, There are only a few minutes of audio in Catalan on librivox. What's up with that?!


I was looking for audio yesterday - no bible (OK, you've linked to some youtube readings of Genesis, but that's about it), no free and legal audiobooks, hardly anything course-like in the target language only... eventually I found a handful podcasts in faster Catalan than my brain was ready for (but I still gave it a try!). Maybe you'll find it useful.
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iguanamon
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Fri Dec 07, 2018 11:25 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:...I was looking for audio yesterday - no bible (OK, you've linked to some youtube readings of Genesis, but that's about it), no free and legal audiobooks, hardly anything course-like in the target language only... eventually I found a handful podcasts in faster Catalan than my brain was ready for (but I still gave it a try!). Maybe you'll find it useful.

Yeah, there's not a lot of audio books available at all for free and legal download. I did find "The Little Prince" on youtube. So far I haven't found non-learner intended podcasts with transcripts in Catalan. It's the one glaring omission from an otherwise resource-rich language. As to monolingual courses- there is ParlaCat and Digui Digui in a monolingual format.

Thanks for the podcast link, but I'm not quite at the point in listening yet where I'm ready for native podcasts... except for the news. If it weren't for the Spanish subtitles, watching Merlí wouldn't be very useful for me right now. With Haitian Creole I had the Bible and then the corresponding podcast of the study of each chapter with an accurate transcript. It was, and is, a great resource. Eventually, I'll find something.
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Thu Dec 20, 2018 9:39 pm

The end of the year is always an extremely busy time for me. This week, I didn't do any of my Bible readings in Ladino or Haitian Creole. It's kind of nice taking a break from it.

Haitian Creole
I have been watching the newscast from VOA most evenings... and that's about it other than an email with a Haitian friend up in the States.
Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol
NBT- nothing but Twitter.
Lesser Antilles French Creole
Some short conversations this past week and Twitter.
Portuguese
Conversations, reading online, listening... the usual.

Spanish
Besides conversations, reading, and listening/watching, I discovered some really good music videos that I'll share at the end of this post. I've been enjoying watching Winter league baseball from the Dominican Republic and Mexico. Also, late at night, I have been checking out the documentaries on Deutsche Welle en Español on youtube. The majority of these are dubbed into Spanish but the quality of the content is excellent, as one would expect from DW. I watched a documentary on the French island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean: Francia y su isla de Mayotte en el Océano Índico. I've been curious about Mayotte and I enjoyed learning about it. France, like several European nations, has a colonial legacy and the repercussions of that legacy are playing out today in Mayotte with illegal immigration from the nearby former French colony of the Comorros.

DW en Español also has a livestream channel on youtube- "DW en vivo". It streams live 24 hours a day with a newscast and magazine programs of interest.


Catalan
I'm advancing with both Assimil courses "Sans Peine" and "sin esfuerzo". I've been learning about festas (fiestas- esp) and dancing the "Sardanas". Les sardanas are a Catalan folk dance in a public square danced in a circle. The lesson has 14 lines of dialog but there are multiple sentences in each numbered "line" of dialog. The audio is still annoying me- too slow. I'm out of balance with my numbers of lessons as the French course has shorter lessons, so I'm on lesson 24 of "sin esfuerzo" and lesson 30 of "sans peine".

I'm also watching episodes of "Els Germans Kratt"- the dubbed animated PBS kids show about wildlife. This is just about perfect for me at this stage. I've watched about 30 episodes so far and there are a total of 92 on the 100x100 Catalan yt channel. In addition I'm now 60% finished with La Fórmula de la Felicitat by Stefan Klein (thanks again, Ogrim, for the recommendation) and am reading it extensively since I don't have access to a Catalan dictionary on my Kindle.

I also made and am reading a parallel text (Catalan-Español) of Amélie Nothomb's "Estupor i Tremolors". The language here at times is easy and at other times has some interesting twists to it. It's similar and at the same time, quite different to Spanish. It's the "20% that's different" that makes it interesting and frustrating to learn a similar language!

2018
I'll be writing a year end review next week.

Music
Cuban music was one of the things, along with baseball, that got me into learning Spanish in the first place. I've always loved "Guantanamera". The song is a classic Cuban "Son" tune and based on a poem by Cuban poet and patriot José Martí. Most often, I am annoyed at googles youtube algorithm recommendations but I clicked on this one and quite like it. It's a new version sung and played by "75 Cubans all around the world". It's really well done. You can find a version of the lyrics here.


Many people will know of Rubén Blades, the Panamanian salsa singer, and actor from "Fear the Walking Dead" and films. He's also a Harvard graduate, lawyer and ex government minister of Panamá. He played with some of the legends of salsa like Willie Colón and Tito Puente. I've been listening to Rubén Blades for years. One of my favorite compositions of his is "Pedro Navaja". You can think of it as the Latin American version of "Mack the Knife"... to which Blades pays homage here at the beginning of the video. Pedro Navaja has some good examples of the subjunctive in the lyrics -"Las manos siempre en los bolsillos de su gabán, Pa' que no sepan en cuál de ellas lleva el puñal." The version of the song below was recorded at the Lincoln Center with the orchestra and Wynton Marsalis. It's well worth a listen. "La vida te da sorpresas, sorpresas te da la vida."
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iguanamon
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Thu Dec 27, 2018 6:22 pm

Another year has almost gone and the new year, 2019 awaits. It's been a year of changes. Change is the one constant in the universe. January 1 is just an arbitrary date but it does serve as a time to pause and reflect. This year saw my island home on its way to recovery from the devastating storm, Hurricane Maria of September 2017. Things on the surface are back to "normal". I only got my internet service back in March of this year. We were fortunate to not have any hurricanes this year. Still, most of us here are not back to "normal". We may never be. It is a humbling experience to see where you live become damaged and broken. Nature's fury is uncontrollable and relentless. It puts things in perspective. Turning on a light switch, getting a cold drink out of the fridge, being able to cook, take a shower, surf the web, are things I no longer take for granted. One thing I've learned in life is that "everything is ok... until it isn't".

Language-learning wise, I've been maintaining my languages as usual and I started to seriously learn the next one, Catalan. At first I thought I could just dive in and read and listen and I would be fine. Well, alright, I knew that wouldn't serve for me to actually produce the language. I just didn't really want to do a course. So, now, I'm finally doing an Assimil course... two of them.

That doesn't mean that I'm going to join the Assimil fan club and become a convert. The two courses, one French-based and one Spanish-based are just what I need at this point since I would probably be too bored to use a from scratch course. I still don't like the audio speed. I am not a fan of the grammar-lite nature of the courses either. I'm about a third of the way through the courses... the Spanish one is longer and more intense. Now, I can easily read books and I am enjoying a series with the help of Spanish subtitles... which are becoming less necessary.

C2 is not my objective with Catalan. I'll be happy with a B2 overall. I may only get to Spain once every two or three years and I definitely don't live in a large city with a lot of immigration. My reading is already there. Which brings me to an observation and questions. At some point, it becomes difficult to balance all of these languages and at the same time keep them separate since four of them are closely related to each other and another two are also closely related in a similar way as the other four are to each other. God help me if I ever learn French or Italian... which I may do some day. I guess, for an Anglo, I have a very Latin soul. So, while there's an upside to studying related languages, a learner does indeed get a huge head-start, there is a downside. It still means having to actually study them for what they are, separate languages, in order to get them right.

Maintaining languages after working so hard to get them to a high level and keeping them there is a constant battle. Over time, over the years, it's been getting easier. I can take breaks and not lose anything, but a new language tends to take over and edge out the older ones as a priority. This is understandable. The seduction of the new language and the desire to learn it well seems to demand more attention. It's something that, if a learner who has just started their second foreign language after learning their first second language to a high level must keep in mind.

So today, I awoke and instead of doing "Assimil Catalan Sans Peine" and "Catalán Sin Esfuerzo" I read a few chapters/chapits/kapitulos of 1 Samuel in the Old Testament in both Haitian Creole and Ladino Rashi script. That's something I've been ignoring for a couple of weeks. I need to make more time for it because I enjoy it. I enjoy also how it makes me think. I never thought all those years ago having to sit in Sunday school at church that I would actually appreciate this, but I do. I see it as a window into the past and also the present human condition. It enlightens my understanding and there are certain truths that remain timeless that are always worthy of exploration.

If I go on to learn Russian, Arabic, French, Italian, German, Swahili or Sranan Tongo, how will I make room for them? How can I make room for them? That's probably too much thinking. I would have never thought that I could make room for seven languages eight and a half years ago when I first joined HTLAL. If I learn a next language, it will most likely sort itself out and find its place alongside the others.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year, good luck and enjoyment in your language use and studies. Most of all, I wish for peace, good health, and happiness to be with all of you.

Orevwa pou kounyea. Mwen swete nou yon Bòn Ane 2019! Mèsi pou li tou sa, mezanmi.
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