Ezrae Via Linguarum Classicarum

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
Ezra
Orange Belt
Posts: 185
Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 9:33 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
In use: French, Spanish, Latin, Classical Hebrew
Studying: Classical Chinese, Italian, German, Japanese, Ancient Greek
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
x 631

September Update

Postby Ezra » Sat Oct 03, 2020 10:06 am

Months are surely flying fast! Another one is done, and it is time to look what was achieved. As usual, it was a slow month - about 40h of language studies in total. Way, way too little. But for now it will stay this way: too many other projects are competing for my attention.

Latin

It was a Latin month mostly. Mostly I read Augustine «Confessions» and hoped to read it to the end in September. Alas, did not make it through but there is not much left to read. I also read a lot of snippets from different books in Latin: it has become a habit of mine to open a random book in Latin among those downloaded, open a random page and read a random section. It is really great to understand that I can make sense of it.

Hebrew

Psalms. For now I am only reading, but learning them by heart would be a great way to boost my vocabulary (and, probably, other areas of my Hebrew as well).

Classical Chinese

Got back to CC. I do not remember whether I wrote it but for phonetics I had switched from onyomis to Palladius, which is Russian system for transliteration of Chinese characters to Russian language. Usually one needs it if you want to spell a Chinese name or title or specific term in Russian letters with respect to Russian phonetics.

My rationale to do this is: Imagine a mediaeval Japanese Confucian who is learning Classical Chinese. Would he learn Chinese pronunciation? Of course, not. There were not any standard Chinese pronunciation anyway. So, he would do it the Japanese way (onyomis). Now, if I imagine myself as a Russian Confucian then it is obvious I should use the Russian way — and this is, basically, Palladius system.

Someone might ask why I would not just learn Modern Standard pronunciation, and the answer is: it is a huge investmend of time, and it is not 100% cut I am going to learn Modern Chinese. For Classical Chinese any more or less coherent system of pronunciation will do. One might even get by without any.

German

Not much done with German. A few Assimil lessons and a couple of pages of Jens Thiemann's «Klartraum» (nothing interesting for now — pretty basic and common information on lucid dreaming). But I stay on the course.

Italian

I've read a little of Italian-Latin grammar. The text is in Italian but both languages are discussed. After finishing «Confessions» I might devote Latin time to this book, after all it counts both as Italian and Latin :).
9 x

Ezra
Orange Belt
Posts: 185
Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 9:33 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
In use: French, Spanish, Latin, Classical Hebrew
Studying: Classical Chinese, Italian, German, Japanese, Ancient Greek
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
x 631

CC & Latin Update

Postby Ezra » Fri Oct 16, 2020 11:25 pm

Classical Chinese

I've reached the downscaled yearly goal of 1000 characters in Anki deck. It did not require much: a series of consisted sittings through the second chapter of Menzi quickly brought ~80 charachters I needed. The second chapter is not yet finished. Whatever number of characters will be eventually reached this year, I will use it to set a new goal for the next. "Gran Ricci" is very handy, these days I just copy its entries almost verbatim.

Latin

I've finished Augustine's "Confessions". Great book. As I planned, I switched to "Grammatica generale delle due lingue italiana e latina" which is a parallel grammar for Italian and Latin written in Italian.
7 x

Ezra
Orange Belt
Posts: 185
Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 9:33 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
In use: French, Spanish, Latin, Classical Hebrew
Studying: Classical Chinese, Italian, German, Japanese, Ancient Greek
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
x 631

October Update

Postby Ezra » Thu Nov 05, 2020 11:41 am

So, it was mostly Latin & CC month.

Latin

After I had finished Augustine's "Confessions", I've returned to "Legatio Batavica". For now, my Latin progression is reminiscent of my French one. It took a while, until I was able to read it more or less fluently. There was a stage when I could read quite steadily but had to either look a lot into a dictionary or sacrifice some understanding to go through faster. My Latin studies are in the same stage now: I either had to refer quite often to dictionary to make sure I got everything right, or I omit something to read more (especially if the passage in question is not very interesting).

Q-words are still the problem.

Current plan for Latin is to read «Legatio Batavica» and then to start another parallel-text reading. Maybe something from Roman classics. I am also thinking about going through Adler's textbook again and do all of the exercises.

Classical Chinese (1063 characters)

I've made a good progress after I started to use daily stand-ups for reading Mencius and adding unknown characters to Anki. Until that, daily stand-ups were basically a dead time :).

My long-term schedule for Classical Chinese is:

1) Read a chapter of Mencius with parallel English translation putting unknown characters into Anki.
2) Learn those added characters.
3) Read this chapter again.
...
4) Repeat for other classical books on ctext.

Hopefully, I will be able to take on untranslated texts after that.

Italian

"Grammatica generale delle due lingue italiana e latina".

German

Not much done. I really need to form some daily habit.
7 x

User avatar
Ogrim
Brown Belt
Posts: 1009
Joined: Mon Jul 27, 2015 10:29 am
Location: Alsace, France
Languages: Norwegian (N) English (C2), French (C2), Spanish (C2), German (B2), Romansh (B2), Italian (B2), Catalan (B2), Russian (B1), Latin (B2), Dutch (B1), Croatian (A2), Arabic (on hold), Ancient Greek (learning), Romanian (on hold)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=873
x 4169

Re: CC & Latin Update

Postby Ogrim » Thu Nov 05, 2020 12:59 pm

Ezra wrote:I've finished Augustine's "Confessions". Great book.


How difficult did you find Augustine's Latin? I am thinking both vocabulary and grammar-wise. From my own experience I often find "later" prose texts to be easier to get through than some of the older Classics, like Cicero or Caesar. But then you also have Tacitus, whose prose I remember struggling with when doing Latin at university.
1 x
Ich grolle nicht

Ezra
Orange Belt
Posts: 185
Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 9:33 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
In use: French, Spanish, Latin, Classical Hebrew
Studying: Classical Chinese, Italian, German, Japanese, Ancient Greek
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
x 631

Re: CC & Latin Update

Postby Ezra » Fri Nov 06, 2020 3:19 am

Ogrim wrote:How difficult did you find Augustine's Latin? I am thinking both vocabulary and grammar-wise. From my own experience I often find "later" prose texts to be easier to get through than some of the older Classics, like Cicero or Caesar. But then you also have Tacitus, whose prose I remember struggling with when doing Latin at university.

I'd say Augustine is easier than many. His does not use archaic or too convoluted style even though "Confession"'s translations whether into English or Russian prone to intended archaization. I like his Latin a lot. Now, some philosophical concepts he talk about are complex and I had hard time to understand what he is talking about but this was the problem of concept complexity, not of language.
3 x

User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
x 1877

Re: Ezrae Via Linguarum Classicarum

Postby Cèid Donn » Fri Nov 06, 2020 4:56 am

I had to study patristics in grad school, and what I remember of Augustine (and I did have to read quite a bit of his writings in Latin, but that was ages ago for me now), is he really believed humans should follow ideals that guide their moral choice and actions, and the highest moral ideal that should be pursued was love. And since love requires an object, a beloved, the highest, most moral act a person could do is love God, the greatest of anything or anyone that could be love. Everything else kind of falls in line behind that, but boy, he could get fussy about details because of his philosophical bent. He drew quite a bit from neoplatonism, especially in regards to his teaching on evil. If you have any experience reading neoplatonic thinkers, that might help a little.

But the thing that really trips people up with Augustine is his teaching on predestination, which arguably is confusing for many people because it's not a very good argument, and some even consider him a heretic for it. But basically Augustine argued that God, being omniscient, has foreknowledge of everything we will ever do, and therefore knows if we will accept or reject God's grace. That's the gist of his idea of predestination and it becomes really problematic when you try to resolve it with the concept of free will, a cornerstone teaching in the Christian tradition regarding God offering us salvation and giving us the freedom to accept or reject it. Augustine arguably did not succeed at resolving this problem. He more or less simply held out that we were still free to accept or reject God's grace-- the whole "God did not will to save us without us" quote, which means God does not save us without us willingly choosing God's salvation for ourselves, refers to this.

I don't know if that helps or not, but that's most of what I can remember.
4 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

Ezra
Orange Belt
Posts: 185
Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 9:33 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
In use: French, Spanish, Latin, Classical Hebrew
Studying: Classical Chinese, Italian, German, Japanese, Ancient Greek
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
x 631

November-December Update

Postby Ezra » Tue Dec 15, 2020 10:54 am

Iti is time for another update! I intend to make another post in December to review the year 2020 while this one is devoted to my ongoing progress in language learning.

German

I finally started (more) serious assault on German.

First, I found an interesting youtube channel, called "НЕМЕЦКИЙ ЯЗЫК ПО ПЛЕЙЛИСТАМ С НУЛЯ ДО АВТОМАТИЗМА" (Learning German with playlists from zero to fluent). His author Alexander Bebris, a Russian polyglot, uses an Ollendorffian approach. In every lesson he explains a grammar point and gives 30-40 sentences, reusing same several themes, so a learner could use this grammar point fluently. I went through 12 lessons complementing them with some adhoc declination of this and that verb. It really helps (both declination and this Ollendorffian approach); the only downside is that it is very slow. I also made a couple of lessons from an actual Adler's German Ollendorff applying Bebris' strategy. I do not know whether he knows about Ollendorffs but clearly his approach is from the same school of thought. I am not sure I will continue Bebris' playlist (somewhat too slow to me) but I will probably go through Adler's Ollendorff now that I better understand how to use it.

Second, I started a parallel-text reading of Erich Maria Remarque's «Im Westen nichts Neues». I decided on Russian translation as a parallel text, which is very good. I've read this novel very long ago and quite liked it, so it is good to start reading German writers in original language.

Third, I continue a slow reading of Jens Thiemann's «Klaurtraum».

Latin

I am reading quite a lot in Latin these days. Mostly, it is «Legation Batavica» but I also read some bits and pieces from other books I've downloaded. My main problems with Latin are q-words (I slowly memorize them but not that fast as I would like too) and conjuctive which is used for a lot of things (an ablative among moods, one could say). I've read some chapters from an English grammar of Latin but then I found a good Latin textbook in Russian, author of which makes a good job in explaining conjunctive and its uses systematically. No, you still can not really learn Latin using his textbook (a usual grammar approach :D), but after a lot of actually read Latin his explanation were very illuminating. Probably, I need more active practice.

Hebrew

I've read Psalms and continued to the Book of Job! It turned out it is not my Hebrew was that bad but Psalms were that hard. I had to check the English translation all the time while reading them but I can read the Book of Job much more smoothly.

Classical Chinese (1183 characters)

I've finished the second chapter of Mencius. It yielded about 120 characters. Well, Chinese characters are hard, do not listen those who tell you otherwise! :) It is a slow ascent. But characters apart the language is not that hard: you have characters but you do not have gazillions of suffixes and word-forms. Also, unlike in Japanese where a lot of characters are not used in isolation but only as a part of a word, here every character is real word with real meaning. Actually, learning Classical Chinese might greatly contribute to my Japanese as it makes easier to understand etimology of compound Japanese word, nuances of their meaning and so helps with theirs memorizing.

French

Started to read «La Vie Intellectuelle» by Catholic philosopher Antonin Sertillanges. The book is devoted to, well, a life of an intellectual. I've only started but it seems to be interesting.

Church Slavonic

Devoted some time to dabbling into Church Slavonic. A very interesting language, especially for a Russian. It is probably very hard for those who do not know well a Slavonic language, though it seems to have certain pitfalls for Russians as well. First, it seems a lot similar to Russian while actually differing in a lot of points. First, it has a different conjugation system. Second, a lot of words has different meaning. For example, «теплый» is warm in Russian and «hot» in Church Slavonic. The net result is that actual attempt to translate from Church Slavonic through the prism of Russian will end in failure — and very probably in unnoticed failure. It is similar to modern Israelis reading Tanach through the lenses of Modern Hebrew or Chinese trying to read Classical Chinese works using Mandarin.
8 x

User avatar
cjareck
Brown Belt
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:11 pm
Location: Poland
Languages: Polish (N) English, German, Russian(B1?) French (B1?), Hebrew(B1?), Arabic(A2?), Mandarin (HSK 2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8589
x 2979
Contact:

Re: November-December Update

Postby cjareck » Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:23 am

Ezra wrote:Second, I started a parallel-text reading of Erich Maria Remarque's «Im Westen nichts Neues». I decided on Russian translation as a parallel text, which is very good. I've read this novel very long ago and quite liked it, so it is good to start reading German writers in original language.

I strongly recommend Ernst Jünger, "Im Stahlgewitter." Unfortunately, I read it only in Polish translation, but it was excellent.
2 x
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
Orange Belt
Posts: 185
Joined: Mon Jul 30, 2018 9:33 am
Languages: Russian (N), English (C1),
In use: French, Spanish, Latin, Classical Hebrew
Studying: Classical Chinese, Italian, German, Japanese, Ancient Greek
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8792
x 631

Re: November-December Update

Postby Ezra » Tue Dec 15, 2020 11:28 am

cjareck wrote:I strongly recommend Ernst Jünger, "Im Stahlgewitter." Unfortunately, I read it only in Polish translation, but it was excellent.

Indeed, I intend to read Ernst Jünger's «"Im Stahlgewitter."» after Remarque!
2 x

User avatar
MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2114
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
x 4824

Re: Ezrae Via Linguarum Classicarum

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue Dec 15, 2020 6:01 pm

Ezra, you set yourself a challenging and interesting reading list. I enjoy reading about your progress. Good luck.
1 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests