Military historian's corner - EN, HE, ZH, AR, sometimes RU, FR and DE

[Deinonysus]

I just saw a thread where someone has been asking about how to write sounds that certain Yiddish letters make in Polish. I'm assuming that Yiddish uses the same alphabet and sounds as Hebrew (though maybe I'm wrong here). I'm not sure if you can answer this question, but if anyone here can, I think it would be you! I'm not sure if you've seen the thread, so here is a link:

https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=10225

Well... almost but not quite. Yiddish uses the Hebrew alphabet, but it isn't used the same way. Unlike in Hebrew, Yiddish words are completely phonetic and you can tell the exact vowels that are used. The exception is Hebrew loanwords, which are spelled the same as in Hebrew so you won't know the vowels unless you know the word. But, Yiddish Hebrew pronunciation is very different from standard Modern Hebrew. For example, Yiddish had a vowel shift from Middle High German where a long /o/ becomes the diphthong /oi/. This is why the Yiddish equivalent to the modern German phrase "o Weh ist mir" (meaning "oh woe is me") is "oy vey iz mir". This sound shift also applies to the Yiddish pronunciation of Hebrew, so the Hebrew name for Moses, משה, is pronounced Moshe /mo.'ʃɛ/ in standard Modern Hebrew but Moyshe /'moi.ʃɛ/ in Yiddish.

Also, the letter ת (tav) could be either hard or soft in classical Hebrew. The hard sound was a /t/, but the soft sound was pronounced /θ/, the voiceless "th" sound. These sounds have merged in Modern Hebrew and are both pronounced /t/, but in Yiddish the distinction is preserved with the soft ת being pronounced /s/ instead of /t/, so the letter ב (bet /bet/ in Modern Hebrew) would be prounced "beys" (/beis/) in Yiddish. The original /θ/ sound is often preserved in English, which is why you may see a Temple Beth Israel or talk about the Sabbath rather than Shabes (Yiddish) or Shabat (Modern Hebrew).

Also, the question doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the Polish language. It has to do with a vowel difference between standard Yiddish and the dialect of Yiddish that comes from Poland, and specifically the question was about how to reflect the difference in an original romanization system.

[StringerBell]

Guess I read that too fast! Thanks for the corrections.

[Theodisce]

French
I have abandoned French for years, but I started writing a book on the battle of the Marne in 1914, so there will be plenty of opportunities to refresh my knowledge... As I said before, I can read with a dictionary; I wish to be able to read without it. Speaking or listening comprehension are less important skills for me. Writing is not necessary, at least for now.
There are a lot of French archival materials online. And they are all handwritten - it will be a challenge to read them...

French listening, although somehow more demanding, can be an important skill for a historian (or anyone interested in history). Think about all the treasures of France Culture, the fair amount of free recodings of university lectures available online, the excellent audio that accompanies some articles of Le Monde Diplomatique and many other things waiting to be explored (not to mention excellent audiobooks - in fact, it is due to them that I'm devouring the crime novels of Zygmunt Miłoszewski right now ). When I began with French, I was sure I was never going to be able to listen to it with enough comprehension, it was all about reading. Fast forward to today: few months ago I wrote and presented my paper in Paris. To be sure, I hired a native speaker to proof-read it, but I'm happy I was able to write something proof-readable in the first place. Of course, it's totally up to you and you know best what suits you. I just want to say that I was overestimating the difficulty of developing my French listening skill for a while.

[cjareck]

The topic about Yiddish was about transcription of its sound into Polish. I have no idea about its pronunciation so I do not felt myself competent to respond it.

French listening, although somehow more demanding, can be an important skill for a historian (or anyone interested in history).

In the end effect, I want to learn the language to the point I feel comfort using it. Besides Polish I can say it about my English and German only. You may see, even on this forum, that I make some errors in that languages too, but my comprehension (reading and listening) is on high level. I struggle with Hebrew now.

Hebrew
I managed to use my Hebrew quite a few times already. Not each time I understood the response, but was able to impress even my colleagues by producing quite fluently a few sentences in this language in a row. Nevertheless, something about 70% of communication is in English. This is, however, much less then the last year. I started feeling confident in speaking even if I am almost sure that I will not understand the answer...

I have visited one of my LEs! It was very nice! He and his wife invited me and my colleague for a delicious supper. We spoke a mix of Hebrew, Polish and English. But it was fun!

[cjareck]

I decided to at least try to plan my Language learning in more detail again. Perhaps it will not be a disaster again

Hebrew
After my visit to Israel, I feel that Hebrew is becoming a useful tool, not a toy anymore. I could say what I wanted, and I was understood. Only my comprehension was too low - so I understood about 50% of the answers. I do not mean that I understood 50% of words in the answers, but that in half of the cases I had to ask for a reply in English or something like that.

In case of the books, I can recognise the title in most cases, especially that inside are often English versions I will probably start writing an article (in Polish) about 188th Armoured Brigade on the Golan Heights in 1973, and I read an encyclopedic entry about its commander. I was able to understand the most important things from the text. I did an OCR on it, and my LTW shows about 50% of the words are known. Since this was done on the raw OCR result, some letters could be recognised wrong, and the real level is even higher.

I think I have - at least for some time - defeated my plateau in case of Hebrew. I really enjoy learning and have a lot of motivation. I decided to push forward with Hebrew as far as I can, so everything else has to wait. I finished adding Lesson 27th to Anki, but I need about a week to do all the drills at least once. My earlier plan of finishing FSI in June does not seem to be possible. Nevertheless, I hope to finish it in September and then only repeat drills on Anki and learn new words from my materials.

Daily plan for Hebrew:
- listening 15 minutes
- 10 new words with LWT
- Anki

Plan for April
- finish Lesson 28th of FSI Hebrew

The lessons 29th and 30th seem to be much shorter, so maybe I will manage to deal with them both in May.

Arabic and others
A friend of mine photographed for me a book in Arabic which is about Suez Crisis. Using it will be a challenge, but I will deal it when I finish FSI Hebrew or get bored with it

I think that I will have some English practice because I plan to apply for funding for my research. Even if Polish is the official language of Poland, this does not apply to academia, and at least part of the papers have to be filled in English.

I started working on a book about the battle of the Marne in 1914, so sooner or later I will practice my passive knowledge of French

[StringerBell]

I think that I will have some English practice because I plan to apply for funding for my research. Even if Polish is the official language of Poland, this does not apply to academia, and at least part of the papers have to be filled in English.

Let me know if you need any proofreading!

[cjareck]

Let me know if you need any proofreading!

Thanks! I will surely let you know. Probably in a month or something like that.

[cjareck]

Hebrew

Daily plan for Hebrew:
- listening 15 minutes
- 10 new words with LWT
- Anki

Well, I managed my daily plan only for the few first days. I had to prioritise things, and finishing lesson 27th was crucial for me. So I had 28 new Anki cards per day during last week and hat about 150 - 175 to review daily. It was hard, but since yesterday job is done!

Plan for April
- finish Lesson 28th of FSI Hebrew

I have done about half of the work needed to prepare audio for Anki cards of the 28th lesson. I think that the weekend should help me with that job! I will wait a few days with starting a new lesson because I do not want that a number of my reviews cumulate above 200. Such a task would be too exhausting for me.

I had two excellent LE's this week. In one I was able to understand everything my LEP was saying in Hebrew. We just had a conversation. He is older and more patient, so he spoke slowly with simple phrases. My other LE speaks more naturally, and I struggle to understand him. I think that such a combination is optimal. It doesn't give me false confidence but also tells me that I am not that bad When I have a high level of listening comprehension with my younger LE, it will simply mean that I have reached a conversational level of Hebrew. I must stress, that after six months of weekly exchanges I feel the difference and that difference was proven by my visit to Israel. I can't wait what will happen to my Hebrew after another year of exchanges

I am working hard on an article about the disaster of the Barak's Brigade (188th Armoured Brigade) in the Yom Kippur War. There a lot of Hebrew materials, but not much time. I had to put everything into Google Translate to save time. Nevertheless, the level of my Hebrew is already good enough that I can select the most important parts and also check if GT doesn't lie to me.

Others
Everything else is on hold - just a few Anki repetitions.

[cjareck]

A colleague from work asked me for help in some paperwork (he is my superior so he could just order me to do it) and this took me 2 days and exhausted me a lot. I was just filling in tables with content from other tables. Surely work for clerk not academic, so I was psychically exhausted and almost felt a force field pushing me back when I tried to work with that. Unfortunately, this job came as I was at the peak of my will to push forward with FSI Hebrew. I still have a motivation to do it, but earlier it was almost a desire

Hebrew
As stated above, my tempo was slowed down. I am in about 1/3 of Anki cards for the 28th lesson. Maybe I will finish it this weekend; if not, this should be soon afterwards.
I asked my LEP to record some sentences from the Foreword of Avigdor Kahalani's book. That will take some time to put it into Anki because preparation of such cards takes a lot of time. Most of it is for thinking which picture will be the best reminder for the word.
I read to my LEP the sentences he recorded earlier, which I practised as Anki cards. He said that I read them splendidly. I think, he just wanted to be nice, but I presume it was at least OK.
My other LEP reads the same four texts for half a year and each time I see progress! Till last time he worked on a pronunciation of the words, now he added the sentence melody to it. In many cases, he reached a native level! This is unreachable for me in any language, but, I think that it also is not my goal. Maybe English is an exception, but I do not suppose to speak that good.
I hope to revive my LWT, and I put there three texts from the Podcast channel "Making history": https://www.ranlevi.com/%D7%9B%D7%9C-%D ... %99%D7%9D/ and was happy to find out that my database had about 45% of the words already!

So my plans for the future are:
- finish adding lesson 28 and review all cards at least once till end of April
- add the recorded sentences from Kahalani's book and translate them with LWT
- after finishing the above - choose the most important sentences from "Making history" podcast and add them to the Anki and translate everything with LWT

Others
Other languages are still in defensive. I only use English and sometimes German in my work. In the case of Arabic and Russian, I review only flashcards.

[cjareck]

A short update - I have successfully finished adding lesson 28th of the FSI course into Anki. If I manage to make 28 new cards per day, I should complete it in 9 days. Hopefully, I will not exceed 200 cards daily because of that.