Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby David1917 » Fri Apr 26, 2019 1:56 pm

Iversen wrote:But apparently not awesome enough to make the judges from the gathering want to hear me speak about learning methods.


The worst part was the asinine reasoning they gave you. Really embarrassing. Thankfully we still have your log.
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Carmody » Fri Apr 26, 2019 3:12 pm

You are incredibly fortunate.
Thanks so much for sharing.
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon Apr 29, 2019 2:04 pm

I have spent much of the past weekend working in my mother's garden, defrosting her fridge and baking thin Danish-style pancakes, but this time I also remembered to bring along something suitable for my goodnight reading sessions. The book I had picked was a Slovak grammar from the publishing house Lingea. I bought it last year in Bratislava, but in the meantime I had somehow forgotten that it is written in Slovak so I should probably also have brought along one of my dictionaries (a fat Slovak <-> English one from Lingea and a much more manageable one from the German publishing house Langenscheidt). With no external information source it became a test of how much Slovak I have picked up so far, and the result was .. ahem... well, let's say so-so. I could understand much of the content, but only because I know quite a bit about grammar, including Slovak grammar. I'll need at least one more source before I can begin to make my own green grammar sheets for this language.

Since I'm sitting in a library right now I'll have to wait a couple of hours before I can get hold of one of my Slovak dictionaries so you'll have to wait a couple of hours before I can post a couple of sentences in that language.

I have also visited the museum at the Castle of Koldinghus, and when I get back to my own PC later today I'll also add a photo of its multilingual goodbye message- a sight to behold.

Edit: done (vide infra)

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon Apr 29, 2019 8:19 pm

I got home, switched on my TV and my PC and went into my kitchen. When I returned 5 minutes later there was no internet connection, no connection to my old telephone and none of the TV programmes that depend on the chip on the plastic card from my TV provider. The internet connection and telephone connection got back by themselves about twenty minutes later, but I have still only a few free programs on my TV.

OK, one distraction less.

I promised to write something in Slovak, but I have changed my mind because I'm going to show you something from the Slovak grammar book, and this is a thing that doesn't require knowledge of any Slavic language - not even Slovak. As I have mentioned before there seems to be a consensus about placing the Accusative after the Genetive and Dative in German grammars and most grammars for the Slavic languages. This doesn't do any harm in German (contrary to the thoroughly idiotic way of referring to the cases by number), but it goes against all logic in the Slavic languages, and I can demonstrate why with a couple of images. They show you an adjective in the three genders and two numbers and sic cases, first as it is done in the traditional way and then one step in the direction of a more logical setup. The new order even makes the feminine singular -ej's come one after the other.

This is of course not the only possible change: In the plural it seems that the locative would be better placed before the dative than after it, but let's take one step at a time.

The example shows the inflection of an adjective, but the same would be obvious if I had used nouns. Actually there is a cross-Slavic rule that stipulates that animate masculine nouns use the genitive singular for their accusative and inanimate the nominative (with a few complications, like in Polish where human males have their own form and Bulgarian that has totally killed off its old case system), and there is a cross-Indoeuropean rule that Nominates and Accusatives share the same endings. To this day I don't understand why the grammarians of the Slavic languages have chosen to adhere to a German ordering that is so obviously wrong when applied to the Slavic languages:

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This illustrates why I prefer to use my own layouts instead of just following the one of the first the best grammar that lands on my table. That being said, the grammar from Lingea seems to be a solid and logically structured book which I definitely will continue to use - though maybe somewhat more diligently once I have learnt to understand it.
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby PfifltriggPi » Tue Apr 30, 2019 1:18 pm

Iversen wrote:To this day I don't understand why the grammarians of the Slavic languages have chosen to adhere to a German ordering that is so obviously wrong when applied to the Slavic languages:


I would imagine it is for the same reason many people and people groups continue to do inefficient things. Because that was how they learned and the effort to change it as a general practice outweighs the resulting benefit.
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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Wed May 01, 2019 11:40 pm

My current burst of wordlist activity actually started yesterday, where I supplemented some of the wordlists I made a couple of weeks ago with one new triple-column, and I have just finished adding new columns to the rest. When I did the first round of lists I made three triple-columns of around 30 words each for each language, and I made lists for 28 languages. This time I chose only to add one new triple-column to each sheet because I remember witrh trepidation the time it took to do the repetitions last time. One list instead of three - that means that I can finish the repetitions in one or two days.

As for the tourism thing, we have in my town a museum named Overtaci after an artistically gifted inmate in the local psychiatric hospital. The museum was located in the psychiatric hospital, but now all public hospitals in the area are being transferred to one location, including the psychiatric services, and the museum therefore became homeless. However it has found a temporary home near the university, and from there it will move to a more permanent location within a couple of years. So today I went to see it as its interim location, and that was quite fun. Afterwards I visited the three museums in the campus area, and that was also quite fun even though I have visited them several times in recent times. And now the linguistical partt of the excursion: in the bus back home I sat near some medical students who apparently were preparing for an exam where they had to know all the Graeco-Latin names of bones and holes and god knows what in the human body, and hearing all that Latin made my head spin in Latin so that I could continue to think in Latin even after I left the bus.

LA: Dicitur lingva medicorum Latina esse, sed romani graecos quam medicos conducebant et quamobrem morbi multi graecae sermone nominantur ("-itis" terminatio graeca est). Romani tamen osses bene sciebant quia post ludes gladiatorium semper corpora humana restabant cum osses ab caroni in omnes partes eminentes (populus crudelis ac barbarus erat!). Et adhuc studentes hodierni nomina ossium in lingva latina scire debeunt.

GER: Ich besuchte auch das Studentenhaus und die Buchhandlung drinne, aber es war wahrhaftig traurig und fast gruselig die jämmerliche Leiche davon zu sehen: ausser 3 oder 4 Bücher über Hindi und ein einziges Sanskrit-Buch (vermutlich für die Theologen) waren nur Englisch und Deutsch mit Wörterbüchern und andere Lehrmittel vertreten. Kein Spur von Slawischen oder Romanischen oder Orientalische Sprachen. Diese Schande deutet an, daß der Sprachunterricht an meiner eigenen alten Universität noch weiter unter das Tiefkellerniveau gekrochen ist, als ich befürchtet hatte - und dies alles nur weil die ungebildete Leute, die unser Land regieren, nichts von breit fundierten Sprachkenntnissen halten. Wenn die Leitungsgremien aber ihre Pflichten so gründlich vernachlässigen, wird es umso wichtiger, daß diejenige, die sich noch für andere Sprachen interessieren, sich lernen sich ohne Hilfe vom offiziellen Bildungssystems diese Sprachen zu lernen. Vom Staat kriegen sie offensichtlig keine Unterstützung.

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Thu May 02, 2019 10:14 pm

I have now done the repetitions of all my additions to the 28 wordlists, except the nine for various Germanic languages - I'll take those tomorrow. It is actually quite fun to look at words from so many languages, and even in those I know best it is possible to find interesting new words. For instance I saw the word "omophagie" in my French dictionary. It means "eating raw meat", and I have checked in wikipedia whether the dictionary is correct, but it seems that it is ...

FR: Wiktionaire soutient que

L’origine de l’omophagie paraît être dans les sacrifices humains que l’on aurait offerts primitivement à Dionysos ou, d’après des théories récentes, dans un rite très ancien qui consistait à dépecer une victime sacrée et à s’assimiler son caractère divin en dévorant sa chair crue. (Dictionnaire des Antiquités Grecques et Romaines de Daremberg et Saglio)

... et le mot serait ensuite appliqué pour décrire les habitudes culinaires d'autres groupes qui ont pratiqué la consommation de chair non-cuite - même d'origine non humaine. Pourtant ceux qui aujourd'hui défendent l'idée de "raw food" sont généralement aussi des végétariens, et donc ils ne mangent pas de viande du tout, n'importe de quelle source. Les vrais omophages contemporains sont les gourmands français, puisque j'ai observé que les français en général préfèrent leurs steaks à l'étât 'bleue' - de manière que personnes comme moi doivent préciser qu'on voudrait son steak 'bien cuit' - sinon on nous servira quelque chose qui ressemble une tranchée de vache vive mise sur une assiette avec trois pois verts.

EN: I may continue to make additions to my 28 wordlists later, and there are words enough to keep me occupied in all languages - with one possible exception: the list of New Norwegian words in my Norwegian dictionary is so short that I may end up having used all the interesting items, and then I have to make do with the words in the much larger Bookmål'ish section which aren't used in exactly the same form in Danish. My preferred Low German dictionary is also fairly limited, but I have another one with more words, which however represent another dialect within the language than the one I try to keep alive.

When I had finished the first 19 repetitions I grabbed the first the best text on the notestand with my current assortment of bilingual texts, and it turned out to be in Serbian (except one misplaced page in Bulgarian), and the theme of the text which I studied was taken from the home page of the Museum of Natural History in Belgrade. And I have one serious grievance with that museum, namely that I didn't know it was there so I haven't visited it. It is situated not fra from the Tesla Museum, so it isn't the location that has hindered me from going there.

SER: Међутим, посетио сам мали павиљон на комплексу Калемегдан, павиљон са природно-историјским збиркама, па сам, када сам први пут видео текст, веровао да се он односи на павиљон - али не, постоји прави музеј природне историје у Београду. , а сада морам поново да посетим град да га видим. Грдобина мркуља испод се налази павиљон.

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Fri May 03, 2019 6:22 pm

I have now finished the repetitions of the last nine wordlist additions as planned, and I have continued studying the excerpts from the homepage of the Natural History Museum of Belgrade. The good thing about such sources is that many of the rarest words are known from other languages and also that I know the subject quite well. You can of course debate whether I really need to know what graptolites are called in Serbian, but if I visit the museum sometime in the future knowledge of such words may be very useful - and then it is totally irrelevant that they figure near the bottom of any frequency list.

Right now I'm in the middle of a text in Slovak about amateur astronomers who observe variable stars. It is not something I feel tempted to do - in my opinion small dots in the sky are boring and only become interesting once they have been blown up and/or put in a relevant theoretical context, but reading about astronomy doesn't imply that I have to stand out there in the cold dark night with a telescope. Similarly I don't mind looking at fossils, but I prefer that somebody else find them for me and put them into a museum with an explanation.

SER: На слици испод налазе се два створења која наликују медузама, али морају замислити граптолите. На дну десно су два трилобита.

GR: Η ανάγνωση καλήνηχτα μου είναι τώρα η βασική ελληνική γραμματική του Routledge. Απέρριψα η γραμματική τουΤριανταφυλλίδου επειδή δεν μου έμαθε τα σημαντικά πράγματα σε σαφή και συνοπτικό τρόπο.

Besides I have just listened to a couple of Youtube videos in the Jersey Norman (Jèrriais), which was mentioned in the general nerdiness thread. The video by monsieur Vâutchi has become almost comprehensible already after just three repetitions, so now I have corrected my latest message in that thread - now I DO know a little bit about the language, and it is not scary at all - just great fun to listen to. Just as Québecqois this variant can be used as a welcome antidote to standard hexagonal French.

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Sat May 04, 2019 9:17 am

GRÆ: Χθες άκουσα μερικά βιντεο πέρα από μια παλιομοδίτικη ελληνική διάλεκτο, τον Τζακονιακό, που υποτίθεται ότι κατέβηκε απευθείας από τη διάλεκτο των Σπαρτιατών, η οποία είχε αρχαϊκά χαρακτηριστικά από το Δωρικό. Υποστηρίχθηκε ότι όταν οι ελληνικές διαλέκτριες μίχθηκαν και ονομάζονταν 'Kοινή', αυτή η διάλεκτος δεν συμπεριλήφθηκε στο μίγμα. Μια λεπτομέρεια: το ίδιο το όνομα της Σπάρτης ήταν το SpartA στη διάλεκτο των Σπαρτιατών, αλλά τώρα όλοι μιλάνε για τον Σπάρτη - την εκδίκηση των Αθηναίων στη Σπάρτη! Άλλα βίντεο και στίχοι αναφέρουν παλιομοδίτικες διαλέκτους που έχουν επιβιώσει στη Μικρά Ασία. Πόσο καιρό θα επιβιώσουν αυτές;

I have made a new Greek text collection to replace the old one about dark energy and other kosmological topics. This one is all about Greek dialects, and it starts out with the Greek Wikipedia article about the Doric dialect, which was widely spread in Greece during the Antiquity. Actually the Dorians were a fairly rough bunch of invaders from the North, and their dialect was one among those mentioned by Homer himself - and their simplistic chapiters also showed this. There may be scattered traces of the Doric dialect even in Modern Greek, but when Koiné was formed as a mixture of Ancient Greek dialects the main influence came from Athens, and there the dialect spoken was based on the Ionian. I haven't studied Ancient Greek so I can't follow all the arguments, but the article itself isn't hard to understand. The other two articles are about Greek speaking pockets in Southern Italy and about the kind of Greek spoken on Cyprus - and about how close it is to the mainstream Greek spoken stin Ellada itself. Some (Cypriots) see it as an independent language, and some (Greeks) get very upset when they hear this - but honestly, we all know that the dividing line between languages and dialects is more a question of politics than of linguistics, so from my standpoint the main focus should be on keeping the diversity alive, i.e. in this case accept that there are different variants at all, even of a language like Greek.

I also needed a new bilingual text collection for Slovak, and the one I have made is focused on museums in Western Slovakia - which is logical since I won't be spending much time at the Gathering venue this time.

When I make such collections they typically consist of 3-4 pages in Word filled with two-column tables, in which the target language is shown to the left and some other language (the translation) to the right. And I may also have a bit of fun using different languages for the translations. For instance the three translations in the Greek collection are in French, Swedish and Afrikaans respectively. It is not necessary that I understand everything in the translations, although they logically should be in languages I read more fluently than the language of the original texts. It is also not necessary that they are totally errorfree as long as they follow the original texts closely - the reason is of course that I only use the translations to suggest possible translations when I have got stuck somewhere, and at that point I can judge whether I believe the proposed translation or I have to consult a dictionary. In any case, when I copy the texts I write new words with their translations into the right margin on my folded A4 sheet (always the same format)... but I don't necessarily trust the translations I put there, nor do I trust that I have guessed the correct form of the infinitive or nominative singular or whatever. I'll check dubious items once more when I include them in a wordlist.

Until now I have mixed wordlists based on texts with wordlists based directly on dictionaries, but since I made my 28 language spree of wordlists I have changed my mind. The repetition of a text based wordlist may be in the form of a simplified list, but I can also just read through the original text once more to see whether I really understand everything now. With dictionary based wordlists I don't have that possibility. Besides the words from a dictionary will all come in approximately alphabetical order and fill out a specific number of triple columns, making the lists look rather neat, whereas the number of items on a text based list is variable. So from now on I'll keep the two kinds of wordlists separate - and I'll once in a while make a complete round of all 28 languages again (and maybe add a few more to the soup).

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Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

Postby Iversen » Mon May 06, 2019 10:40 am

The first part below was actually written because I misread the title line of another thread - but then I though that I just as well could reuse it here.

I don't try to get involved in conversations from the beginning, so once I do so I can already more or less formulate myself in relatively comprehensible sentences - and then they can hear that I'm foreigner, but they almost never comment on my pronunciation (or correct my grammatical errors). I remember that long ago where my Portuguese still was relatively new some kids said that I speak in a weird way - but since then I have been visiting several lusophoe countries without a single comment on my pronunciation. The problem is more like understanding what the natives say, because I don't feel that they make many concessions to my status as a learner - which is prefect because I prefer listening to natural, but clear speech. But some natives can be difficult to follow. Do I then comment on THEIR pronunciation? Of course not ...

The one time where I got a clear reaction to my speech was in Catalunya, shortly after the death of you know who. I was standing in a long queue at the Montserrat monastery, waiting to buy a couple of Catalan newspapers (Punt and Avui). When it was my turn the lady said something like "but they are in Spanish" (in Spanish or Catalan, I don't remember), and I answered "Es per això" (it is therefore). And then she totally ignored the people behind me and asked how and where and why I had learned Catalan - and that conversation was definitely in Catalan. However she didn't comment on my level, and that suits me fine.

Speaking of Catalan, on my first trip to Costa Brava I also visited Barcelona, and I was sitting on a row of benches with the old folks (mostly elderly ladies), watching sardana dancing in front of the cathedral. Somebody must have asked whether I knew any Catalan and I apparently answered in Catalan because I could hear all the way down to the other end of the row of elderlies "he says he doesn't speak Catalan, but he said it in Catalan".

Both episodes happened long ago before my 25 year long hiatus in language learning, and during that period I also forgot to speak Catalan. But now I have relearned it, and I have visited not only Catalunya proper, but also the province of Valencia and Mallorca, and the only place where I really struggled was on Mallorca, where I spoke in Catalan to the owner of my hotel and his son (it was a small hotel). And the Mallorquí dialect was not something I had prepared for. Among other things the Mallorquí speakers don't use definite article with l's - in their dialect it is s'es. But at least they were polite enough not to comment on my pronunciation.

End of part one.

F0314a04_Sardana_Barcelona.jpg


Since my last rant I have been studying a number of texts, done some wordlist repetitions and read some texts from the Low German Wikipedia extensively. I have mostly been listening to composers from Händel (placed at the end of the H in my system because the Umlaut - and yes, I know how he is spelled in English) through Ibert and myself to Janáček. I did turn on the sound of my TV for a few programs, ...

GER: .. einschließlich einer Sendung im deutschen Fernsehen, in der Herr Plaume (vom Quiz "Wer weiß doch so was") Personen besuchte, die zwei Dinge gemeinsam hätten, nämlich daß sie mindestens 100 Jahre alt waren und noch nicht zu altersgeschwächt um mit ihm zu plaudern. Es war ganz unterhaltsam, aber meine Gedanken gelten jetzt eher diejenige, die sich dem 100. Lebensjahr nähern und nicht so gesund und putzmunter sind wie die Leute, die Mr. Plaume besuchte. Wir werden älter und älter, aber immer mehr Jahre werden wir uns dann auch in einem erbärmlichen Zustand befinden, und es wird immer weniger junge Leute geben, die uns warten können (oder mögen). Die Lösung wird wahrscheinlich der Einsatz von Robotern sein. Das heißt: Wenn ich in 10-15 Jahren in meinem selbstschaukelnden Schaukelstuhl sitze und "Scheisse" sage, kommt ein Roboter und zieht mich zur Toilette.

EN: And now I had actually planned to review my texts from yesterday, but this message is already long enough so you'll get that later.
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