A Very Dead Language Log (Abandoned--Admin, feel free to delete))

[Lawyer&Mom]

You mentioned previously wanting a French copy of Moana. The French dub is on the regular US DVD release. Library, perhaps?

[Cèid Donn]

You mentioned previously wanting a French copy of Moana. The French dub is on the regular US DVD release. Library, perhaps?

Thanks. I'll look into it. I know when I looked at copies for sale in my region a couple weeks ago, they only had Spanish dubbing.

[Lawyer&Mom]

You mentioned previously wanting a French copy of Moana. The French dub is on the regular US DVD release. Library, perhaps?

Thanks. I'll look into it. I know when I looked at copies for sale in my region a couple weeks ago, they only had Spanish dubbing.

Hmm. All our Region 1 Disney DVDs have French. I thought that was standard. The Amazon listing for Moana has French on both the DVD and Blueray.

[Cèid Donn]

Wow, I just checked Amazon and you're right. I was looking at ones at the local Target, and it was a DVD release, not the Blu-ray. I didn't bother check the Blu-ray after seeing that DVD only listed Spanish. I guess I misread it. It is possible Disney released a special edition for this part of the US aimed at Spanish speakers, but I couldn't say for sure. I just know I thought it said only Spanish and I was extremely annoyed because Disney had it pulled from Netflix right before Christmas and it was my go-to Netflix show for when I just wanted to watch something fun and up-lifting.

As for my local library--all copies are checked out at the two nearest locations. It's no longer on Netflix and it's very popular, so no surprise there. I'd have to go downtown to get the closest copy available, and nope, that's not happening. (If you saw our downtown, you'd know why--I only go there under penalty of a fine or arrest, like for jury duty.)

Well, I guess I'll have to see if I can find a spare $17 in next month's budget.

[Lawyer&Mom]

I’ve definitely seen differences in dubs between between DVD and Blu-Ray. (Why!?!!!). We get a lot of our DVDs for cheap at Goodwill, but Moana would be quite a find. Still it’s a good source for cheap French dubs.

The Moana Blue-Ray disc came with an extra DVD disc. Maybe you know someone who bought the Blue-Ray and doesn’t need the DVD? (I’d send you ours, but I think the DVD went to Grandma’s house!)

[Cèid Donn]

No worries, Lawyer&Mom. I'll find a way to get a copy somehow. I'll just have to wait a bit and that's OK.

Is anyone doing the Language Jam planned for this weekend? Someone at Duolingo made a post about it but it's too late for me--for something like that I would need more than a few days to psych myself up. But out of curiosity, I went through the selection process, and I entered once with Scottish Gaelic and a second time with French, and I got Swedish with Spanish as the alternate and Arabic with Japanese as the alternate respectively. Doing any of those languages for it would have been cool if I had known about it earlier, but I just don't feel like 3 days is enough to get myself geared up for that. So I'll wait and hopefully I will be able to do another time later on.

The construction nightmare on my street continues. It's made walking impossible--during the day, they're making too much noise and it's too upsetting for my dog. We live on the corner and it's hard to just take her out in the backyard to potty because she wants to bark at all the workers. She's had enough of this and I don't blame her. Likewise it's hard to hear my MP3 player over some of the noise. After sundown, because of how poorly they have things barricaded off with big machinery parked here and there and without a proper detour route around it all, it seems very unsafe as drivers don't know where to go and they probably aren't looking out for mentally preoccupied walkers shadowing language learning audio while walking their dog (plus we have a distinct lack of streetlights around here). I would drive outside of my neighborhood with my dog, but due to my recent cardiac scare, walking that far from my house seems too risky. I don't want to have to try to get back to my car and try to drive home during a tachycardia attack or something. They just need to finish this stupid construction already--it's been going on a month now!

I watched Je t'aime, je t'aime again today. I first watched that a few years ago for my TAC at Unilang. I definitely was able to understand the dialogue much better this time! It's not the best movie ever but I have a thing for old sci fi movies. A lot of elements of the story are pretty dated but I enjoy the kind of freer imagination filmmakers had about sci fi films back then--now it's all so formulaic and predictable, even when they try to break away from that (*cough* Annihilation *cough*). The first time I watched this movie it was an extremely poor digital copy posted on some funky, probably not very legal streaming site, and it was before the DVD/Blu-ray release. The copy I saw today is someone's upload of the DVD release on a different video upload site, so the quality was much, much better (although probably not any more legal). Anyhow, another thing to add to my SC total when I update it next.

I haven't had time to look for French short story this week so I'm just going to this easy Irish short story, even though it has parallel English text. I've been pushing myself pretty hard with the SSC so far so I think I can get away with taking it easy this week.

Speaking of Irish, I was rather annoyed with the Jeopardy! writers today: the word goblet does not come from the Irish word gob. It actually predates Modern Irish. It comes from the Proto-Celtic word gobbos that is the root of both gob in Irish and gober (to gulp, consume or ingest) in Old French. You know you're a Celtic Language Nerd with you get super irked by people using Irish as a short-hand for All Celtic Languages Ever because they assume it's all too hard to explain to people.


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The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 44 / 365

• Day 43 (Feb. 12) -- French: On Duolingo, I got all units from teh 3rd and 4th checkpoint leveled from 3 crowns (red) to 4 crowns (orange). Finished the last entry I had started in my journal.
  
  
• Day 44 (Feb. 13) -- French: On Doulingo, I leveled up 3 more units to 4 crowns (orange). Did two 20-minutes verb conjugation practice sessions.
  

[Brun Ugle]

I tried doing the Language Jam once, but I ending up not studying the language I got. I found out that I don’t like someone else telling me what language to dabble in and when. It takes all the fun out of dabbling.

[Cèid Donn]

Well, if there is anyone doing the Language Jam this weekend, I wish you luck and hope you have fun and learn something interesting. I think I saw that Lunamoonsilver was doing it this year, maybe, if I am recalling that correctly.

Myself, I have had a sh***y couple of days involving something terribly unhappy in my personal life and am very glad it's the weekend so I can distract myself with my languages. I've been inordinately focused on French this past week, to the neglect of my other TLs--the result of not having a proper study schedule in place, no doubt--but it's OK. I like French for my own reasons and despite my French path being very irregular and inconsistent over the years, I find studying it incredibly rewarding which in turn helps me cope with difficult things in my life.

Updates for now:

Short Story challenge

• Week 1: Gaelic -- "Top Twenties" by Michael Klevenhaus, from An Claigeann aig Damien Hirst, Leabhar 1
• Week 2: French -- "Les révoltés de la Bounty" by Jules Verne
• Week 3: Welsh -- "Côt Ruby" by Sarah Reynold, from Cawl: a Straeon Eraill
• Week 4: Gaelic -- "A' Bheinn Òir" by Iain Mac a' Ghobhainn
• Week 5: German -- "Vogelfrei" by Alastair Caimbeul, from Der Schädel von Damien Hirst. Band 1/An Claigeann aig Damien Hirst, Leabhar 1
• Week 6: Welsh -- "Dewis" by Lleucu Roberts, from Cawl: a Straeon Eraill
• Week 7: Irish -- "Madra na n-ocht gCos" (from oral tradition)

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The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 46 / 365

• Day 45 (Feb. 14) -- French/Gaelic: On Duolingo, I leveled up 8 more units to level 4. Spent about 90 minutes working on the remainder of the student packet for "A' Bheinn Òir."
  
  
• Day 46 (Feb. 15) -- French: On Duoingo, I leveled up 4 more units to level 4--at this rate I should have the rest of my tree all orange by Sunday. Did sentences in my journal using entrevoir, advenir, bâtir, grimper, basculer, préalable, aménager, étendre and entamer. With entamer, I looked up the different contexts for using it and compared them to the usage of synonymous like commencer and démarrer.

[MamaPata]

Really sorry to hear about the difficulties - that's really hard. Lovely that French helps in some way. That seems very optimistic and rewarding, following that path when necessary seems eminently sensible!

[Cèid Donn]

Thanks, MamaPata. Life is what it is sometimes and we just have to find a way to live through it. Focusing on what you love and gives you joy helps a lot. Speaking of which, my cats would like to say that I've been particularly needy lately.

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Q1 2019 Grammar-palooza

Intermediate Welsh : 9 / 40

• Most recently completed Unit 9: Aspect distinctions with verb-nouns
  
  Tomorrow I plan to work mostly on Welsh to try to get back on track with it (again). Never say die!

Intermediate Irish : 8 / 25

• Most recently competed Unit 8 : Directional Adjectives I

I haven't looked at German Quickly since I started reading Metro 2033. I will probably wait until I'm finished with it before I go back to GQ, because otherwise German ends up taking up too much time from other TLs.

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French Films SC : 49 / 100 -- 4428 minutes (+485 minutes)

• watched season 1 of Glacé - 282 minutes
• re-watched Je t'aime, je t'aime - 87 minutes
• watched 2 episodes of The Umbrella Academy with French audio - 116 minutes

French Books SC : 26 / 100 -- 1320 pages (+32 pages)

• still reading Les trois Mousquetaires -- 241 pages completed (+32)

Gaelic Films SC : 16 / 100 -- 1448 minutes (+88 minutes)

• re-watched Guthan nan Eilean Series 2: Outdoors on You Tube -- 88 minutes
  
  I'll move on to the next GnE series next

Gaelic Books SC : 14 / 100 -- 728 pages (+5 pages)

• completed 5 letters from Leabhar nan Litrichean - 5 pages
  
  I'm kind of mad at myself for neglecting my Gaelic reading so much. I want to re-read An Creanaiche next, and then a book I haven't read yet, Ann an Glac Ghilleasbaig by Coinneach I. Macleòid.

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The 2019 365 Day Language Challenge : 47 / 365

• Day 47 (Feb. 16) -- Irish/Welsh: Reviewed Units 6 and 7 in Intermediate Irish and then completed Unit 8. Completed Unit 9 in Intermediate Welsh and reviewed the word list from the last short story I read, "Dewis."