Ogrim's Krambu - a plethora of languages, mostly European, both old and new

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Ogrim
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Re: Ogrim's language experiences - Russian, Romansh, Arabic and more

Postby Ogrim » Tue Oct 03, 2017 3:42 pm

Català
Aquests dies pas molt de temps veient la televisó catalana per tot ho que està passant des de diumenge passat. No vull parlar de la política ni dels polítics espanyols y catalans, ni de la possible independència de Catalunya, només vull dir que m'entristeix la situació i espero que hi hagi una solució que no faci més mal a la convivència de la gent d'aquest gran país.

Español
El domingo también vi la television pública española TVE, y comparando cómo presentaban los acontecimientos allí con la presentación de TV3 Catalunya tengo que decir que parecía que hablaban de realidades diferentes. Mi conclusión es que nunca hay que fiarse de un solo medio de comunicación - la perfecta objetividad no existe. Por eso también hay que aprender lenguas, para buscar fuentes diferentes de información y no aceptar una sola versión como fiable.

Apart from following what is going on in Catalonia, I also found time to do some real studying. As I have a nasty cold I did not go out at all during the weekend, so I spent a good few hours with Arabic again, and I also managed to squeeze in a litlle bit of Greek. It was mainly a revision of vocabulary and a few small exercises with irregular aorist forms of verbs, but at least by doing something I make sure that my Greek doesn't fall totally behind again. It is still not a priority though.

I even found time to watch a really interesting programme on RTR about the Portuguese community in Engiadina Ota, the Eastern part of la Rumantschia. Interesting because it gives a nice example of successful integration and of linguistic diversity. In the programme you hear spoken Portuguese, Romansh, Italian, Swiss German and Standard German - I found it particularly interesting that Italian seems to be used as a "bridge" language between Portuguese and Romansh - a kind of Romance lingua franca. The show has German subtitles so if you know German I encourage you to watch (and even if you don't but know Portuguese or another Romance language). It was a programme that made me happy again after watching the depressing news from Spain.
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Ogrim
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Re: Ogrim's language experiences - Russian, Romansh, Arabic and more

Postby Ogrim » Fri Oct 06, 2017 3:20 pm

Romontsch sursilvan

Il davos temps sun jeu staunchels da suandar las novitads dil mond, che dattan buca motiv per selegrar. Pervia da quei sun jeu returnaus a leger romontsch ed a tedlar musica romontshca. Schebein ils medis romontschs era tschontschan dils gronds problems dal mond s’occupan els oravontut da quei che schabegia en Grischun ed ella Svizra – leu dat ei buca biars problems.
Also, quei fageva temps che jeu vevel buca tschercau nova musica romontscha, aber ier hai jeu anflau entgins novs discs d’artists che jeu enconuschevel gia, ed auters che jeu encounschevel buc. Sin quel diari hai jeu schon en 2015 menziunau il rapper Ivo Orlik alias Giganto. En 2016 ha el presentau in niev disc en collaboraziun cun in auter giuven cantadur sursilvan, Mattiu Defuns. Sigl emprem disc da Giganto dava ei canzuns da rap scandelus, stil “gangsta rap”, aber sin quel niev disc ei la musica pli moderada e lirica. Il disc senumna Undas, e cheu ei in clip dalla canzun Crei en tei.



Mattiu Defuns ei buc in rapper, anzi in cantadur da pop tradiziunal, e cheu ina canzun ch’el conta suls, cul tetel “Stagiuns”.



Ils primers a fer rap sin romontsch eran ils members dalla gruppa Liricas Analas, che han presentau lur emprem disc en 2004. Ussa han els fatg tschun albums, il davos en 2016 cul tetel Banalitad. Liricas Analas sun fetg populars ella Svizra, buca sulettamein ella Rumantschia. Jeu haiel bugen la canzun da quei clip numnada “Dar il maun”.



English translation

Lately I am tired of following the news which do not give many reasons for being happy. I have therefore returned to reading in Romansh and listening to Romansh music. Although also the Romansh media talk about the problems in the world, they tend to concentrate on what goes on in Grison and in Switzerland – and there they don’t really have many worries.

So, I had not been looking for new music in Romansh for a long time, but yesterday I started to search around and I found a few new albums from artists I already knew as well as some new artists I hadn’t discovered before. In 2015 I wrote in this log about the rapper Ivo Orlik aka Giganto. Last year he released a new album in cooperation with another young singer from Surselva, Mattiu Defuns. On Giganto’s first album there were rap songs that made quite a scandal, “gangsta rap” is not usual in Romansh. On this new album the music is more moderate and lyrical. It is called Undas (Waves) and here is clip with the song Crei en tei (Believe in yourself).

Mattiu Defuns is not a rapper, but a singer/songwriter of more traditional folk pop, and here is a song of him called Stagiuns (Seasons).

The first ones to do rap in Romansh were the members of the group Liricas Analas, who released their first album in 2004. Up until today they have made five albums, the last from 2016 with the title Banalitad. Liricas Anals are really popular in Switzerland, not only in the Romansh-speaking part. I like the song in this clip, it is called Dar il maun - Give your hand.
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Ogrim
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Re: Ogrim's language experiences - Russian, Romansh, Arabic and more

Postby Ogrim » Fri Oct 20, 2017 1:43 pm

I am just one book from completing my Reading Challenge on Goodreads. I set the target at 26 books, and I should be able to finish the 26th this weekend. Looking at the list of books I have a nice spread of languages:
1 book in Spanish
1 book in Italian
2 books in Catalan
3 books in English
3 books in Portuguese
3 books in Russian
3 books in Norwegian
4 books in French
5 books in German

Of course, number of books doesn't say anything about number of pages. A couple of the German books were pretty short, 100 pages or so, while the Spanish one was almost 900 pages and two of the Portuguese ones were around 400 pages each. The three books in Russian probably count for around 600 pages altogether. The book that will complete the challenge is also Russian, and with that I will get close to 1000 pages of Russian read so far this year. This excludes of course all the other non-fiction stuff I read on internet, in newspapers and magazines. As I am reading another few books in parallel as well, I should easily get to 30 books or more before the end of the year, which is not too bad considering the time I've had available.

One language that is missing from this list is Romansh, but I hope to add it as well, as I am now finally reading a novel called Hannes, written in the Vallader idiom. It is a challenge because I am mostly used to reading Sursilvan, and Vallader is the idiom that differs the most - I'd say the difference is comparable to that between Spanish and Portuguese or even Catalan. Still, I manage to get the flow of the story, and fortunately there is a good online dictionary Vallader - German which I consult when I am stuck. There I also found a free grammar book for Valader in the form of a pdf which I have now downlowded to my Kindle.

Truth is I am spending more time on Romansh again, to the detriment of my Arabic and Greek studies. I am not good at being persistent :( . It does not mean that I have given up on those two, but the motivation is not as high as it was a few weeks ago, and my experience tells me that in that case I rather slow down and do something else, knowing that the motivation will come back eventually.

Edit: My Goodread profile is here if anyone wants to connect.
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Re: Ogrim's language experiences - Russian, Romansh, Arabic and more

Postby Saim » Fri Oct 20, 2017 7:36 pm

Ogrim wrote:Català
Aquests dies pas molt de temps veient la televisó catalana per tot el que està passant des de diumenge passat. No vull parlar de la política ni dels polítics espanyols i catalans, ni de la possible independència de Catalunya, només vull dir que m'entristeix la situació i espero que hi hagi una solució que no faci més mal a la convivència de la gent d'aquest gran país.


Et sap greu si et faig unes petites correccions?

Jo pas està ben dit si vols parlar català insular, a Catalunya i a l'extrem nord del País Valencià es diu jo passo ("passu" pronunciat amb reducció vocàlica). Suposo que ja ho sabies, això, però com que no has especificat quin dialecte parles t'ho comento per si de cas...

Español
El domingo también vi la television pública española TVE, y comparando cómo presentaban los acontecimientos allí con la presentación de TV3 Catalunya tengo que decir que parecía que hablaban de realidades diferentes. Mi conclusión es que nunca hay que fiarse de un solo medio de comunicación - la perfecta objetividad no existe. Por eso también hay que aprender lenguas, para buscar fuentes diferentes de información y no aceptar una sola versión como fiable.


Ya, yo el día del referendo vi TVE y TV3 y flipé con el nivel de editorialización en TVE. A mi también se me ocurrió esa idea de que hay que aprender idiomas para poder tener acceso a más fuentes de información, me dio mucha motivación mucho para estudiar más árabe y ruso. :)
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Ogrim
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Re: Ogrim's language experiences - Russian, Romansh, Arabic and more

Postby Ogrim » Mon Oct 23, 2017 2:16 pm

Saim wrote:Et sap greu si et faig unes petites correccions?

Jo pas està ben dit si vols parlar català insular, a Catalunya i a l'extrem nord del País Valencià es diu jo passo ("passu" pronunciat amb reducció vocàlica). Suposo que ja ho sabies, això, però com que no has especificat quin dialecte parles t'ho comento per si de cas..


Gràcies per les correccions. De fet voldria escriure "passo", però sembla que la correcció automàtica em va jugar una mala passada. No escric molt sovint en català i no sempre encert amb l'ús de "ho".


The last week my daughter has taken part in a theatre production by a local American group for young actors. A bunch of 14 to 18-year olds playing the musical Anything Goes by Cole Porter. As a supportive dad I have been helping a bit and I watched the show twice. It was a great success and very professionally done. Some of the young people taking part are huge talents. This is not a musical that you see on stage very often, which is a shame, because it is really fun and you leave the theatre smiling and humming. My daughter played a minor role on stage, but she loves taking part and the camaraderie between the youngsters is great.

What has this got to do with languages and language-learning? Not a lot, except maybe two things: Although an American group, it is open to any young person who can express themselves in English and likes to sing, dance and/or act. So the group has members from at least 20 different nationalities who can share their joy of musical theatre in a common language. (And let's admit it, the best musical theatre is done in English.) Secondly, I find that the songs of Cole Porter show how elegant English can be; his ability to play with words and to create amusing or beautiful rhymes apparently without any effort is really amazing.

OK, enough "proud-father-talk" ;) . Due to time spent in the theatre this weekend I did not have time for much else, so did not manage to finish the Russian book I mentioned earlier after all, but will certainly do so this week.

I did spend some more time on Vallader (which by the way I should have spent doing Arabic :roll: ) because as I progress reading the novel Hannes I get more and more intrigued by how different it is to Sursilvan. I've listened to quite a lot of spoken Vallader without finding it very difficult, but I guess the Vallader I hear on RTR (Radiotelevisiun Svizra Rumantscha) use less complicated words and structures than the literary language in the book. So I've been going through some parts of the grammar pdf I found online to better appreciate e.g. the differences in some verb conjugations. It would of course be great if I could get my Vallader to the same level as Sursilvan, but I really have to stop wanderlusting around if I want to get anywhere with Arabic and maybe Greek. So, this week it is back to my Langenscheidt courses. 8-)
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Re: Ogrim's language experiences - Russian, Romansh, Arabic and more

Postby Ogrim » Mon Nov 06, 2017 9:28 am

The last two weeks we had the Toussaint school holidays here in France, and the last five days I took the family to Nice. As Air France had been so kind as to give us 800 euros worth of vouchers due to a delayed flight last Christmas (long story), we could take a direct flight down to the Côte d'Azur. It was my first time in Nice, and I must say that I liked the place very much. I was actually surprised to see how Italian the old town is, although I should have guessed as Nice was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia for several hundred years and only became part of France in 1860. The Italian influence is omnipresent also in the cuisine. Most restaurants have pasta and pizza on the menu, and it is the real stuff. I had the best seafood spaghetti I've eaten since I visited Sicily 10 years ago :D . As Nice is the second most visited city of France (after Paris), tourism means that you hear a lot of languages on the street, but unfortunately it also means that most waiters will automatically address you in English and give you English menus instead of French. :( The tourism also means that everything is quite expensive. The French riviera is not the place to go for cheap holidays - it rather attracts people with a lot of money, so even in "normal" restaurants you pay a lot more than you would in other French cities for the same food and drink.

Another interesting monument in Nice is the Russian Orthodox Cathedral, which is the largest Orthodox church in Western Europe. Construction started in the late 19th century and it was inaugurated in 1912, just five years before the Russian revolution. The church was meant to cater for the large Russian community that lived in or visited Nice at the time. Russian nobility was very much attracted to the French riviera. I heard a lot of Russian on the street, and several shops, restaurants and hotels have signs saying Мы говорим по-русски.

Image
The Russian Cathedral in Nice.

While in Nice I finally managed to finish the novel/thriller Моё чужое лицо, and with that I've completed my Goodreads challenge for the year. I struggled with this book, not because the language is particularly difficult, but because I found the story a bit boring - there are too many pages where very little happens, and the ending is not very surprising. As a thriller it leaves a lot to be desired. I now have to decide which Russian book to read next. I have several on my list, so the question is whether to go for something "heavy" or "light" this time.

I'm about halfway through the Romansh novel Hannes, and reading Vallader is getting easier as I progress. I still feel more comfortable with Sursilvan though, so my next Romansh book will be in that idiom. I found one that is really "up my street", as it is called Ina famiglia d'Alsazia en duas uiaras mundialas (An Alsatian family in two World Wars).

For some reason most German books I read tend to be non-fiction, and currently that is also the case. I am reading a book called Islam verstehen: Geschichte, Kultur und Politik by Gerhard Schweizer. I find it very interesting as it is not the typical outline of Islamic history and faith. Schweizer puts Islam into a bigger context, explains the different tendencies and sects within Islam, makes comparisons with Judaism and Christianity - all in a mostly neutral and objective way.

Still working on Arabic, slowly but surely. Not sure if I ever will get to a level where I can use the language in any meaningful way, but as long as motivation is there I will keep moving on.
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Re: Ogrim's language experiences - Russian, Romansh, Arabic and more

Postby Ogrim » Tue Nov 07, 2017 4:34 pm

In my post yesterday I did not mention that we made an excursion to Grasse, the world capital of perfume. There are three main perfume producers in Grasse: Galimard, Molinard and Fragonard. We visited the Fragonard factory for a guided tour, and although I have never had a particular interest in perfumes, it was actually quite fascinating to learn how perfume is produced, and you also understand why it can be quite expensive, at least when it is made with real flowers and not with synthetic products.

There are only three "universities" in the world where you can study to become a perfume maker. All three are in France, and one is in Grasse. The studies have a duration of 18 months to two years, but after that it takes some seven years of practice to become a professional perfume maker, who should be able to distinguish some 2.000 fragrances. The best of them become "noses" (les nez) - there are only about 100 of them in the world, and the best of the best can distinguish up to 6.000 different fragrances :shock: .

On another note, I have been wanderlusting again, this time into Dutch, thanks to a certain Mr. Puigdemont who is making waves in Belgian media. I was curious to see what the Flemish press had to say, and I was happy to see that I can still understand most of what I read, although I have hardly done anything with Dutch since I left Belgium over 15 years ago. (Reading Dutch also brought back fond memories of my time in Brussels, but that is just nostalgia... 8-) ) It is harder to make sense of spoken Dutch, but I understand the Flemish variety better than Netherlands Dutch.

But no, I am not going to add Dutch to my list of languages - although I'll probably read Flemish newspapers from time to time, just for fun. ;)
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Re: Ogrim's language experiences - Russian, Romansh, Arabic and more

Postby Ogrim » Mon Nov 13, 2017 10:54 am

Two years ago I wrote about my trip to Dingle, Ireland. Time flies, and last week I went to Ireland again with my wife for her biannual Irish "singing do". This time it took place in Dublin, and we spent four great days there enjoying Irish hospitality and love of music. Although you see a lot of written Irish on street signs etc, I cannot say I heard the language much. The only time was when in one of the singing sessions someone sang a song in Irish called Mo Ghille Mear (My Gallant Hero). Here is version of the song by the Choral Scholars of University College Dublin:



I love the sound of Irish, and it is a pity that, in spite of being the national language of Ireland, there has been very little success in revitalising the use of the Irish language in everyday life. From time to time I have played with the idea of learning a little bit of Irish, but the fact that it is not very much in use is one of the reasons I have never made the effort.

I did not do much serious studying during the time in Dublin, there was so much else to do. We went to Trinity College and saw the Old Library and the Book of Kells, we did the tour of the cathedrals and the pub crawl in Temple Bar. ;) Then there were all the singing sessions and pub concerts - I am always amazed by the strength of the folk music tradition in Ireland.

I did manage to read a lot on the flight out and back again. I am almost done with Hannes, the book I am reading in the Romansh idiom Vallader and I made progress with the German book about Islam I referred to earlier in this log.

Now I am done with travelling until Christmas, so I should be able to get back into the routine and pick up Arabic again, and hopefully find some time for Greek, which has been neglected the past few weeks.
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Re: Ogrim's language experiences - Russian, Romansh, Arabic and more

Postby Ogrim » Fri Nov 17, 2017 3:58 pm

I´ve finished Hannes and I am quite proud of myself for having managed to read a 200-page novel in Vallader. It is one of the joys of Romance languages - the more you know the easier it is to pick up a new one. I will therefore soon start reading a book in Putèr, which is pretty close to Vallader, but with enough particularities to be considered a separate idiom of Romansh.

The novel itself was very enjoyable. Superficially it is a crime story, about a man called Hannes coming home to find out that his wife and his half-brother have been killed in his house during a trip he made to Greece. Most of the book tells the story about Hannes and his wife in the years leading up to this event. The ending is by no means surprising, so the real value of the book is rather the descriptions of the characters and the story of their life rather than the crime mystery.

In this week's Russian class we discussed recent events in the Middle East (Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in particular) and we read an article about climbing the career ladder. The article had a lot of useful new vocabulary related to working life, e.g.

Служебная лестница - career ladder
Дух честолюбия - ambition
Творчество - job satisfaction
Разложено по полочкам - pigeon-holed
Втягиваться в эту гонку - to be drawn into the rat race.

Yesterday I spent some time digitalising my Langenscheidt Arabic course. The iPad makes it very easy - I use the camera with a scanner app to take pictures of the pages, and the app convert it into a pdf document which I can then store on any device. The reason for doing this is that I carry my iPad with me almost everywhere, and this way I don't have to pack the book in addition to the tablet as well. For ease of use I made a separate pdf document for each chapter, and a separate one for the vocabulary list at the end.

I keep on exploring Arabic music, but I have a certain weakness for Rai, and I really enjoy this song called Abdel Kader, performed by Cheb Khaled, Faudel and Rachid Taha, three great Rai artists.

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Re: Ogrim's language experiences - Russian, Romansh, Arabic and more

Postby aaleks » Fri Nov 17, 2017 5:17 pm

Творчество - job satisfaction

Why? I can't think about any context in which creation/сreativity (творчество) could be translated as job satisfaction. It could be that I don't fully understand what 'job satisfaction' means, of course. To me 'творчество' is a process of creating something, 'job satisfaction' is more about result.
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