Ezrae Via Linguarum Classicarum

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jianpanxia
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Dec 12, 2019 4:58 am
Languages: Chinese, English

Re: October Update

Postby jianpanxia » Wed Dec 25, 2019 4:53 am

Ezra wrote:A fabulous month. I did not fully achieve my goals, and the end of month was somewhat uninspiring due to some RL stuff, but in the language learning department things were pretty fabulous.

Latin (38 h)

The king of the month was Latin. Having finished firstt volume of Augustine's "Confessions" with the aid of parallel text, I proceeded to the second part of Justus Lipsius' "De constantia" unaided. Unfortunately, it is still far from being easy. To get through a page tooks me about 15 minutes. Still, it allows for more or less rewarding reading as I am interested in Stoic philosophy and Justus Lipsius is one of much less known stoics out there.

Classical Chinese (30 ½ h)

Going through Fuller. CC is a nice change after heavy-inflected Latin. On the other side, characters are the main time sink: I have to check every new character in a dictionary (as Fuller usually only gives a meaning pertaining to the given text passage) and add it to Anki. So I am on 15th lesson now. I actually like Chinese stories provided in this textbook from Zhuang Zi, Garden of Stories, Han Fei Zi, Mencius etc. They might seem trivial at first but underneath there is strong, even brutal pragmatism and a very practical outlook.

Hebrew (20 ½ h)

I've read 30 chapters of Jeremiah. Much more easy to read than Isaiah. Its language less flowery and there are much more prosaic chunks.

German (20 h)

I've finished 23 units (3 of them in this month) of "German for reading". Ideally, I would like to finish it in November, leaving Worman's readers for next month. In general, I like German language. Nice phonetics (unlike French), nice orthography (unlike French), great literature (unlike French; well, it is great enough but not my type of greatness). Somehow, I like German's syntax and the way you can create compound words on the spot.

Italian (3 h)

Not much time was devoted to Italian. I've started to read "Grammatica generale delle due lingue italiana e latina"

Japanese (2 ½ h)

Seems like not much love to Japanese either. I've actually contemplated dropping Japanese altogether but decided against that at the end. It is probably that Classical Chinese has filled my Far East slot almost entirely, so there is not much energy left for another Far East language. Still, I will probably try to finish one ranobe and then we will see.


If you can already ready classic Chinese smoothly, the chance is that you can also partially figure out the meanings of some Japanese text (without knowing their soundings). Japanese share a lot of characters with Chinese.
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Ezra
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Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
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Studying: Classical Chinese, Italian, German, Japanese, Ancient Greek
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
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Re: October Update

Postby Ezra » Wed Dec 25, 2019 12:22 pm

jianpanxia wrote:If you can already ready classic Chinese smoothly, the chance is that you can also partially figure out the meanings of some Japanese text (without knowing their soundings). Japanese share a lot of characters with Chinese.

Alas, I am far from being able to read Classical Chinese smoothly! :)
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jianpanxia
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Dec 12, 2019 4:58 am
Languages: Chinese, English

Re: October Update

Postby jianpanxia » Fri Dec 27, 2019 4:12 am

Ezra wrote:
jianpanxia wrote:If you can already ready classic Chinese smoothly, the chance is that you can also partially figure out the meanings of some Japanese text (without knowing their soundings). Japanese share a lot of characters with Chinese.

Alas, I am far from being able to read Classical Chinese smoothly! :)


My suggestion is - start from Modern standard Mandarin - leave the Classical to a later stage (or maybe you would never really need to study it...)
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Ezra
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
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Re: October Update

Postby Ezra » Fri Dec 27, 2019 10:51 am

jianpanxia wrote:My suggestion is - start from Modern standard Mandarin - leave the Classical to a later stage (or maybe you would never really need to study it...)

This is a quite common recommendation with enough good reasons behind it. I am still not going to follow it :). Learning Mandarin first is a quite detour from the original goal and a huge investment of time. Neither I am able to allocate this time at this point, nor Mandarin can itself provide me enough motivation to sustain this effort. Another problem is that by learning Mandarin first I will judge Classical Chinese via lenses of Mandarin, while I would prefer to judge Mandarin via lenses of Classical Chinese. I might start learning Mandarin later when I feel the need for resources on Classical Chinese in this language.
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cjareck
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Re: Ezrae Via Linguarum Classicarum

Postby cjareck » Fri Dec 27, 2019 2:14 pm

Similar situation is with Biblical vs Modern Hebrew. I'm learning Modern and it surely is useful in understanding some basics of the Hebrew Bible, but grammar and vocabulary are different.

Ezra if you ever start learning Mandarin I will be happy to hear from you about the evolution of the language from the Classical Chinese!
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Please feel free to correct me in any language


Listening: 1+ (83% content, 90% linguistic)
Reading: 1 (83% content, 90% linguistic)


MSA DLI : 30 / 141ESKK : 18 / 40


Mandarin Assimil : 62 / 105

Ezra
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Re: Ezrae Via Linguarum Classicarum

Postby Ezra » Wed Jun 10, 2020 7:33 am

So, it is time for an update. Have not posted for a while as I am pretty busy these days but my quest in search of classical languages' mastery still continues!

Latin

Latin has started to pay off. I can open almost any non-fiction mediaeval or Renassaince book in Latin and follow what's going on. Classical works are still quite hard. Currently I am going through "Legatio batavica ad magnum Tartariae chamum Sungteium, modernum Sinae imperatorem" which is a report of Netherlands ambassy to China.

Classical Hebrew

Currently working through minor prophets. My intention is to start learning Psalms by heart as soon as I get to them.

Classical Chinese

I've shelled out 160$ for the five-year online access to Gran Ricci dictionary which is the best European dictionary for Classical Chinese. Basicaly, it made the whole enterprise feasible. I also reached the third part of Fuller's textbook which has no grammatical commentary and only texts + meaning of characters, and realized that I might go straight to Mencius (accompanied by translation). My goal is to work through Mencius this year and put all characters to Anki. Reading some Classical Chinese grammar would not hurt either.

German

I have graduated to reading non-fiction in German. Currently I am reading "Jens Thiemann - Klartraum" which is a book on Lucid Dreaming. A lot of unknown vocabulary but syntax is easy.
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guyome
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Re: Ezrae Via Linguarum Classicarum

Postby guyome » Wed Jun 10, 2020 11:35 am

Ezra wrote:Currently I am going through "Legatio batavica ad magnum Tartariae chamum Sungteium, modernum Sinae imperatorem" which is a report of Netherlands ambassy to China.
What a nice coincidence, I read a few pages of it just the other day! Not a title I thought I'd ever seen mentioned here. It's one of the first Neo-Latin works I tried to read a few years ago. At that time it was too hard for me but I remember I was overjoyed at finding that there was a sizeable body of Latin works that would let me combine my interest in Latin and in the Qing dynasty (if I remember well, I was fresh out of a Classical Latin textbook and didn't know much anything the vast Neo-Latin corpus).

Are you reading it cover to cover?
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Ezra
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Re: Ezrae Via Linguarum Classicarum

Postby Ezra » Wed Jun 10, 2020 3:40 pm

guyome wrote:At that time it was too hard for me but I remember I was overjoyed at finding that there was a sizeable body of Latin works that would let me combine my interest in Latin and in the Qing dynasty (if I remember well, I was fresh out of a Classical Latin textbook and didn't know much anything the vast Neo-Latin corpus).
Indeed, there are so many interesting books in Latin!
Are you reading it cover to cover?
Yes.
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Ezra
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Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
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Jule Update

Postby Ezra » Sun Aug 02, 2020 10:14 am

Jule was low-intensive month in relation to language study as I've devoted a lot of time to my other self-learning projects. Still there is some progress.

Hebrew

Finally I made through the minor prophets and finished the prophets parts of Tanach. This was an interesting journey. Books in this part are very varied in difficutly and style. The most interesting for me were the Former prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings). There is not as much prophesizing as plot and action. The hardest is Isaiah. The latter and minor are more about prophesizing and, let's say, counselling on human-God relationships which eventually started to slow me down due to certain repetitiousness and wrathfulness of the message, though it seems, it was based on the human inclination of people to do same errors.

Ezekiel was very interesting for me due to his visions. It is clear he is trying to describe something he had never seen before, and this is a clear mark of genuine experience of transcending ordinary perception.

Having finished the Prophets I moved to Psalms. Not yet started to learn them by heart.

Latin

I continue to read "Legation Batavica". Certainly not a fluent ride, still I am moving through more or less steadily if slowly. The text is quite interesting: not only because it tells us about China and neighbour countries of that time but it shows a quite different European mindset comparing to ours.

For now Latin is my favourite classical language. Maybe I am a Roman at heart, or — in light of my desire to learn German — a Holy Roman :D.

German

Not much work was done. I'd say what was done is little. But the strategic plan is still the same: get German to B2 and then to C1. Among all my modern languages German is the on I would benefit most in getting it to high-functioning level. Going to concentrate more on it in August and will add something outside of my usual reading-only approach.

Classical Chinese

The same as with German. Not much done. The plan for the year was to add 1500 characters into Anki. I have about 850. So I need to add about another 650. "Adding" by itself is quite laborious: it means parallel CC-English reading, going to Gran Ricci dictionary, then extracting main meanings and putting it finally into Anki. The text I use is Mencius. I am not sure the best way to approach my goal. At first I wanted to make main efforts on weekdays but it does not seems like this strategy is working. Maybe I need to force myself to a couple of month of everyday work of adding 10 new characters daily, and then I would be set till the end of the year.

Others

Japanese et al. did not get any attention :(. This is really sad. But there is only so much time and I have to decide and "decide" comes from the Latin's "decido" - to cut off. The fact I spend decent chunk of time to non-productive occupations does not help, though I suspect this tendency is a kind of unconscious self-protection. I had an unpleasant episode of a "mental overtraining" when my ability to concentrate and think lucidly diminished significantly. It passed after I spent a couple of days on relaxing and watching Netflix.
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Ezra
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Posts: 185
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Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
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August Update

Postby Ezra » Sun Sep 06, 2020 11:04 am

Another slow month. A lot of time was devoted to professional and some other non-language-learning projects. Still, something has been done.

Hebrew

Moving slowly through the Psalms. They are also varied in style and complexity and feature a lot of unknown vocabulary, so I have to lean onto dictionary and English translation quite heavily. It seems that I am progressing more slowly in Hebrew than in Latin but this has to be expected.

Latin

I am one quarter through «Legatio batavica». Also I returned to parallel-text reading of Augustine's «Confessions». Parallel-text reading has become very easy but I decided to read it to the end this way. It does seems parallel-text reading allows to absorb some grammatical constructions and annoying "q"-words easier than looking over and over in dictionary or grammatical reference.

German

I did not much about German but I did something: fourteen Assimil lessons! I chose Assimil to bootstrap my listening and speaking German abilities which I need to pass B*-certification and, obviously, to use my future German abilities in professional settings.

I has to say I really like German prononciation: it does not give me much troubles (unlike, say, French) and scariness of "schmetterling" is blown out of proportions :).

Classical Chinese

Anki-only. I scaled down my yearly goal of 1500 Chinese character to 1000: it seems more realistic at this point. I could meet this goal, I think, if not for other projects arised in Jule-August. The general plan is still the same: reading Mencius and putting unknown characters to Anki.
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