zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

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Brun Ugle
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Brun Ugle » Thu Jul 19, 2018 4:54 am

rdearman wrote:And that ladies and gentlemen is why I shall not be learning Tibetan. :D

I, on the other hand, thought, “Wow! That looks like fun!”
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zenmonkey
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more Tibetan

Postby zenmonkey » Thu Jul 19, 2018 6:19 am

Brun Ugle wrote:
rdearman wrote:And that ladies and gentlemen is why I shall not be learning Tibetan. :D

I, on the other hand, thought, “Wow! That looks like fun!”

I was frustrated last night (looking things up made me miss my streak on Memrise) and there are smarter ways of thinking about it and grouping some of the rules. But figuring that out means digging through a variety of resources for rules that modify tones and sounds on top of grammar rules. Tibetan is fun - it is like a new shiny toy based on a new math.

In fact, kids spend years learning to rote spell (there are videos on youtube).
For example, a phoneme like /ŋā/ spelled in one instance as རྔ is going to be spelled as:

- ra nga-ta' ngā (for the name of the components, ta' tells you it goes under)

and a vowel marker for /u/ making it རྔུ, ngū and the math is then :

- ra nga-ta' ngā shab-kyu ngū

you can almost see the equals signs in there. Add a (silent) prefix like གརྔུ you get :

- k'ao ra nga-ta' ngā shab-kyu ngū (the o added to k'a tells you it is a prefix).

or, in my head, k'a * (ra / nga) -> ngā + shab-kyu -> ngū

All that to just say /ŋū/!
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby Ani » Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:31 am

That looks super fun. And so pretty at the end.
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby kulaputra » Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:09 am

Tibetan has possibly one of the deepest orthographies outside of ideographic writing systems like Chinese. The writing system preserves the pronunciation (more or less) as it was in the early 9th century AD. And you thought French or English were bad- both have orthographies which have only been "frozen" in the last couple hundred years. On the other hand, Tibetan's been frozen for ~1200 years. Since then Tibetan has lost lots of consonant clusters, e.g. why a word written as bka' brgyud is pronounced like "Kagyu."
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Jul 20, 2018 7:57 am

kulaputra wrote:Tibetan has possibly one of the deepest orthographies outside of ideographic writing systems like Chinese. The writing system preserves the pronunciation (more or less) as it was in the early 9th century AD. And you thought French or English were bad- both have orthographies which have only been "frozen" in the last couple hundred years. On the other hand, Tibetan's been frozen for ~1200 years. Since then Tibetan has lost lots of consonant clusters, e.g. why a word written as bka' brgyud is pronounced like "Kagyu."


Indeed, it certainly is deep. I'm working in parallel on Ladakhi, which tends to maintain an older pronunciation but the depth is just as huge a problem. By the way, བཀའ་བརྒྱུད་ (kagyu) which may have Sanskrit influences and those adds another level of complexity. But that is an interesting term in that we have also the old reconstructed pronunciation /*pka(ɣ).brɡʲut/.

Add to that Umê, Zhuza and Bêcug scripts and it will keep me happy for a while.
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Jul 22, 2018 12:44 pm

This last week has been interesting - I'm tired and sore and need a nap.

Friday and yesterday I helped my oldest to move her apartment in Strasbourg. We rented a truck, went and got a few things from my old apartment in Germany and then headed down to Strasbourg for the actual move. How is this language related? Well, the whole move was in 6 languages.
The first three you can guess. At a highway stop, we watched a group of people ordering food and joking with the counter person in a language we couldn't identify and just had to ask. Albanian! We had a very short impromptu lesson. And finally, in Strasbourg not only did we get a bit of Grenzsprache (not quite Alsacien) but I got insulted in Arabic when I had to manoeuvre the truck into a parking spot. :lol:

German
Finished reading Die Araber von Morgen and I've ordered the other two. My ex and daughters have read this in French and recommended it. It's an engaging read, I want to see what comes next. My FB page is also in German and I'm spending time doing the Anki pronunciation cards. Had an exchange for 30 minutes in German with Brun Ugle. And watched a few hours of tv in German with English subtitles. My GF has decided to take the A1 test end of this month (for paperwork) and the B2 test in September. So I'm looking forward to seeing how that changes our Haussprache.

Next three weeks - I hope to continue with a bit of review, audio input and, now ride on the coattails of the gf's studying.

Hebrew
Completed 4/5 lessons in Assimil, Anki and started a bit of FSI since that was a topic here in one of the threads. I'm good with that. I didn't have a lesson this week because my teacher is on vacation. Also dipped a toe into utalk (thanks Brun Ugle!!).

Next three weeks - I plan to continue with Assimil - might or might not reach the 20 lessons initially planned but it should be close. I also want to get back with my italki lessons. I may or may not add FSI or memrise material I have for review.

Setswana
I've been doing the Memrise course every day and am very much enjoying this and consider it excellent. It doesn't have sound, which is a miss, but it is structured in such a way that I am actually learning a lot. And I've been able to produce phrases spontaneously (to the chagrin of the people around me). I'm sticking to this material! It is a huge contrast with the Tibetan Memrise material... a little Anki too, but inconsistently. Oh, and I forgot - the utalk material is pretty good!

Next three weeks - We have a bi-weekly call with the Setswana Study Group, I'm looking forward to that, and will just continue with the current Memrise material. Maybe throw in some of the UNISA material I recorded off the web to create Anki cards. Need to build those.

Tibetan - Had my lesson this week and it was good to get back into it, but I was terrible. Ugh. I recorded the session and it is full of ugly pauses, crusty errors that I know I shouldn't make. But I'm back in the course and I look forward to our weekly sessions. Plus with the recorded material, I've cut out with audacity a lot of example sentences. Now I need to build Anki cards with that. Been brute forcing myself through an Memrise that is focused on pronunciation - it is awful, In the worst sections, I'm only getting retention rates at times of about 40% (that's just 15% above randomly choosing an answer!) but I'm willing to give it a go for a while to see where it leads. A few of these cards i'm just marking as 'off' and moving on. I may do that more frequently this next week so I can move on to real vocabulary.

Next three weeks - Continue with my classes, see where Memrise goes and really review my material and prior lessons. I'd like to get my notes, Anki recordings, material better organised.

Prep work I'm behind - both for Tibetan and Setswana I have recordings ready to be made into cards. Some of that is for today. I'm keeping a very simple spreadsheet for tracking and it works so far. I've also been developing an app for tracking my learning, more on that sometime in August.
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vyxr
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby vyxr » Sun Jul 22, 2018 11:14 pm

Can I ask what your motivation is in Tibetan? Are you interested in Buddhism or Tibetan culture, or is it more of a linguistic pursuit? The script and orthography are extremely interesting, but just reading about it satisfies that curiosity for me, so I'm wondering if there is anything that draws you to it and keeps you going other than the language being fascinating and unique.
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jul 23, 2018 5:09 am

vyxr wrote:Can I ask what your motivation is in Tibetan? Are you interested in Buddhism or Tibetan culture, or is it more of a linguistic pursuit?.

Sure! Despite my forum name, I am not a follower of eastern religions or culture. It’s a linguistic and travel pursuit. About 10 years a I did Chadar. This is to travel on the frozen Zanzkar river to enter the valley in winter, when all the overland passes are closed due to altitude and snow (near the Himalayas). It was an amazing trip and something that marked me.
I’m interested in the region, Ladakhi and Tibetan because of those travels.

I AM interested in Buddhism but only as how the culture and religion are part of the overall historical and social environment. I am interested as an outsider looking in.
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zenmonkey
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more tibetan joy

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Jul 24, 2018 12:09 am

Got to love a language where you can confuse ལྟ་ལྡ་ལྔ་ The last one means five.

But for the first, 'lta', the dictionary entry is quite interesting.... even the dictionary gives up...


IMG_7120.jpg
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zenmonkey
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Re: zenmonkey's multilingual adventures of a traveller

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Jul 29, 2018 10:37 pm

Sunday evening and just got back from Strasbourg - we spent the weekend enjoying the city with my daughter and I picked up a few books including a book for the Annamite language!
I had to travel to Paris on Monday and Tuesday and that sort of ruined my free time this week.

German
Received the next volumes for Die Araber von Morgen and will be starting that. We've been practicing German and I had a 30 min Skype session with Brun Ugle. German hasn't been very intense this week.

Next two weeks - Continue with a bit of review, audio input and reading.

Hebrew
Completed 3 lessons in Assimil and signed up for an iTalki lesson next week. Quite a light week.

Next two weeks - Increase sessions this week and get back on top with the pressure of iTalki. I may or may not add FSI or memrise material I have for review.

Setswana
Still doing the Memrise course every day. We had a good study group session. I have homework to complete and utalk to work on.

Next two weeks - Continue with the Setswana Study Group, I'm looking forward to that, and will just continue with the current Memrise material. Maybe throw in some of the UNISA material I recorded off the web to create Anki cards. Still need to build those.

Tibetan - Worked on my cards and some study on my notes. I have a lesson this week and worked with memrise.

Next two weeks - Continue with my classes, see where Memrise goes and really review my material and prior lessons. I'd like to get my notes, Anki recordings, material better organised.

Prep work I'm behind - but improved with both Tibetan and Setswana this last week.

So not the most effective week - but still active.

Oh, yeah, 6WC challenge is coming...
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I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar


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