Sahmilat's Languages Log

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Sahmilat
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Re: Sahmilat's Languages Log [DEU, LAT, GRK]

Postby Sahmilat » Thu Jun 13, 2019 10:26 pm

I'm pretty burnt out on Latin and German after doing very little else for 6-8 years now and I think I might put them on hold for a bit. I am just too tired to read literature and I've passed the wonder of learning new grammar and vocabulary and it's been a bit of a drag lately to just work on my own. When I return to school I'll be able to put them more in use and it might be more fun again.

So that leaves me with French and Attic Greek.

For French right now I'm doing a lesson of Assimil every day and reading Methode Nature one day and doing the exercises the next day. This way I'm not rushing myself too much. Methode Nature has been ramping up very fast, and I noticed that there isn't any real explanation of the new grammar introduced in each chapter like there is in LLPSI. As a result, I'm left kind of guessing. I think the last chapter I read (18) introduced the subjunctive, but because it is never made explicit I'm not entirely sure. This natural method is pretty new to me (I didn't originally learn Latin with LLPSI, I just used it recently to review and consolidate my reading skills) and I'm having trouble understanding verb tenses right now, but I think as I read more it'll get better. After I finish the book I'm going to get one of those CLE Progressive grammaire books probably for intermediate level so that I can have a more systematic understanding. I'm trying something new here cause I learned both Latin and Ancient Greek with an explicit grammatical system, but I think putting off grammar and learning it later in the TL may pay off in the end.

In a related vein, I'm trying to improve my reading fluency in Attic Greek. I feel like I've pretty much mastered the syntax with a few exceptions, and my understanding of verb morphology is pretty solid (although this is probably the hardest part of learning Greek). I just need to work on my vocabulary and try to read. I've kind of hit a motivation wall for JACT, but I think I should be able to just sit down and read the next few chapters across the coming week. I found a book of medieval Greek hoping that it would be easy like most medieval Latin is, but I did not find that to be the case. I'll keep looking for easier Greek stuff, because I don't think I'll be ready for, for example, Attic tragedy as soon as I finish JACT. Once I finish the book, which will hopefully be by like mid July (?) I will try to read one of the supposedly relatively easy authors like Lysias or Lucian. In the fall I'm going to be the only advanced Greek student at my uni so I get to pick what my professor and I read. I think by that point I might be ready to read some Plato, so I'm thinking of picking the Phaedrus because rhetorical theory interests me and my professor wrote the Cambridge green/yellow commentary on that dialogue, so I'm sure he has a lot to say about it (if he's not already tired of that particular work).

Somewhat reluctantly and perhaps ill-advisedly I have returned to reading some Sanskrit textbooks. I cannot resist the siren song of this language with its grammar that seems in some ways even more complex than Ancient Greek's. I'm still working on reading/writing Devanagari quickly and I'm learning some Sandhi rules with Goldman's Devavanipravesika. I think I'll stick with this textbook til the end and then, if my French is by that point up to the task, use Assimil. I may work through another textbook too, like Maurer or Coulson, because it'll give me more vocabulary and I can't imagine reviewing the harder parts of grammar will be a waste of time. I have a copy of Macdonnell's student grammar on the way for reference.

Regarding sandhi:
Goldman kind of throws all external and internal sandhi rules at you all together near the beginning of the textbook (in chapter 3 after pronunciation + devanagari chapters) with a ton of exceptions that I don't imagine come up all that often. Trying to understand this all at once is probably a mistake and it's the hardest thing I've done in language learning so far. Here's an example of something I'm struggling with:

the letter ए (e) when followed by another vowel is broken down into its component parts, as it is a संपुक्त​ (complex) vowel. It is made up of अ (a) and इ (i). Because it is followed by a vowel and vowel hiatus is to be avoided, the vowel इ is replaced by the semivowel य् (y), which should yield अय् before the first vowel of the next word/morpheme. So far this is the same way the other three संपुक्त vowels act in sandhi. However, the vowel ए is an exception among these. In external sandhi, this result of अय् never actually occurs. If the second vowel is अ, then the अ is elided and the original ए remains, meaning the first word ends in ए and the second word starts with ऽ (transliterated as '). If the second vowel isn't अ, then the य् is lost, leaving the first word ending in अ and the second word starting with its original vowel. In internal sandhi, if the second vowel isn't अ then the य् is lost, and only if the second vowel in internal sandhi is अ do we get the full अय as the result.

I don't expect that to be decipherable to anyone here, even people who know Sanskrit, but I just wanted to type it out to show how much trouble this book is giving me even from the beginning and to make sure I understand all the different cases myself.

The real reason I'm using Devavanipravesika is because it has grammatical terms in Sanskrit rather than using Latin-derived terms. I think this is a major advantage over other textbooks that were made in the classical philological tradition.

whew. that's enough sanskrit for today
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jonm
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Re: Sahmilat's Languages Log [DEU, LAT, GRK, etc]

Postby jonm » Fri Jun 14, 2019 12:53 am

Sahmilat wrote:Somewhat reluctantly and perhaps ill-advisedly I have returned to reading some Sanskrit textbooks. I cannot resist the siren song of this language with its grammar that seems in some ways even more complex than Ancient Greek's. I'm still working on reading/writing Devanagari quickly and I'm learning some Sandhi rules with Goldman's Devavanipravesika. I think I'll stick with this textbook til the end and then, if my French is by that point up to the task, use Assimil. I may work through another textbook too, like Maurer or Coulson, because it'll give me more vocabulary and I can't imagine reviewing the harder parts of grammar will be a waste of time. I have a copy of Macdonnell's student grammar on the way for reference.

Hi Sahmilat, that's exciting news! I also find the complexity of Sanskrit's grammar and phonology very intriguing. And it would be so cool to know Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit and be able to appreciate them in relation to one another, and perhaps have some sense of the ancestral language. Incidentally, in case it's not on your radar already, I find Fortson's Indo-European Language and Culture to be a fascinating read.

Thanks for mentioning Goldman's Devavanipravesika. Looking forward to checking it out. That does seem like an advantage to use Sanskrit linguistic terms instead of Latin ones, especially since the ancient Sanskrit grammarians were so advanced and precise. (One of my long-term aspirations is to be able to read Pāṇini in the original...)

It sounds like you may be all set for resources, but in case you need any more, there's also the Cambridge Introduction to Sanskit by A.M. Ruppel, which seems quite solid based on the first several chapters.

I can highly recommend the Assimil course. I've only done the first fourteen lessons, but so far it's very well-paced (especially in comparison to Assimil Hindi, which I find good but quite dense). The dialogues are colorful and evocative. And as usual, the audio is excellent, and I've found it very helpful for my pronunciation. There's a bit of variation among the speakers, for example in the way they pronounce the visarga, but I gather from Ruppel (p. 13) that both of the pronunciations they use are correct, so it's nice to have them both as possible models. Anyway, to my ear, all the speakers have very good pronunciation, and their voice acting has lots of personality. There's a video in French about the making of the course here. For what it's worth, my French is around B1, and I find I'm able to use this and other French-base Assimil courses without difficulty. Occasionally I'll have to look up a word I don't know, and I end up learning some new French in the bargain. Anyway, with the progress you're making in French, I imagine it won't be long before that's an option.
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Re: Sahmilat's Languages Log [DEU, LAT, GRK, etc]

Postby Sahmilat » Sat Jun 15, 2019 3:07 am

jonm wrote:Hi Sahmilat, that's exciting news! I also find the complexity of Sanskrit's grammar and phonology very intriguing. And it would be so cool to know Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit and be able to appreciate them in relation to one another, and perhaps have some sense of the ancestral language. Incidentally, in case it's not on your radar already, I find Fortson's Indo-European Language and Culture to be a fascinating read.

Thanks for mentioning Goldman's Devavanipravesika. Looking forward to checking it out. That does seem like an advantage to use Sanskrit linguistic terms instead of Latin ones, especially since the ancient Sanskrit grammarians were so advanced and precise. (One of my long-term aspirations is to be able to read Pāṇini in the original...)


Thanks for the rec on the Indo-European book! I'm probably going to check out some comparative grammars and books about the culture when I get back to college and have easier access to an academic library.

I'm not entirely sure that Devavanipravesika is the best book out there, but it seems that Sanskrit is not a language blessed with very good English-base textbooks. It's taking me a couple of days for each chapter and they introduce a ton. I glanced through the next chapter, chapter 4, and it introduces all parts of speech, the ideas of case, number, gender, person, tense, voice, and mood, as well as several paradigms. I already have the background knowledge from other languages but it's probably going to take me a couple of days to work through the chapter anyways. There's a reading at the end, but it's pretty short. I think after I finish this textbook (or just get bored of it) I'll do the readings in Maurer, which from my understanding are more extensive. After that it's just a matter of finding chrestomathies (fancy new word I learned yesterday) to practice reading as extensively as is possible for a dead language with limited resources. There seem to be a lot of old ones made by German philologists, so I should be able to find a few of those and understand the notes and glosses. Obviously I'll need to use Lanman too. I dream of someday writing Lingua Sanscrita Per Se Illustrata, but it's safe to say I'm a long way away from that.

Also it would be really cool to read Panini, he's probably the most important figure in the history of linguistics and should be more widely read in general. Part of why I want to learn Sanskrit is to escape from the eurocentricism I've forced myself into by studying German and Latin etc.

I can highly recommend the Assimil course. I've only done the first fourteen lessons, but so far it's very well-paced (especially in comparison to Assimil Hindi, which I find good but quite dense). The dialogues are colorful and evocative. And as usual, the audio is excellent, and I've found it very helpful for my pronunciation. There's a bit of variation among the speakers, for example in the way they pronounce the visarga, but I gather from Ruppel (p. 13) that both of the pronunciations they use are correct, so it's nice to have them both as possible models. Anyway, to my ear, all the speakers have very good pronunciation, and their voice acting has lots of personality. There's a video in French about the making of the course here. For what it's worth, my French is around B1, and I find I'm able to use this and other French-base Assimil courses without difficulty. Occasionally I'll have to look up a word I don't know, and I end up learning some new French in the bargain. Anyway, with the progress you're making in French, I imagine it won't be long before that's an option.


All good to hear! I think I'll start on it once I've finished this French textbook. It's extremely long (1000+ pages) and I hope that I'll be around B1 by the time I finish it. Sounds like that should be plenty to use Assimil Le Sanskrit.

Speaking of French, I did some more reading today. I want to introduce some native audio into my routine (I don't feel like the slow assimil recordings are sufficient). Yesterday I watched some Peppa Pig and was able to pick out words here and there, but I was far from understanding everything. I think I'll continue doing that occasionally so that I am just more used to how the language sounds as it is actually spoken.

For Greek, I read section 11 of JACT, which is an adaptation of scenes from Aristophanes' Acharnians. This one wasn't quite as funny as some of the others (I really liked the trial from Wasps), but it's still good stuff and great reading practice. I think this textbook is excellent as a reader after you have completed another textbook, but I feel like it has too steep of a curve to do from the beginning of your learning journey without getting really hung up on translating and decoding.
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Re: Sahmilat's Languages Log [DEU, LAT, GRK, etc]

Postby jonm » Mon Jun 17, 2019 7:25 pm

Sahmilat wrote:Thanks for the rec on the Indo-European book! I'm probably going to check out some comparative grammars and books about the culture when I get back to college and have easier access to an academic library.

I should note, by the way, that despite the title, it's way more focused on language than culture. It's basically a survey of Indo-European languages and their features and how they evolved, with a chapter for each branch (one can skip around).

I'm not entirely sure that Devavanipravesika is the best book out there, but it seems that Sanskrit is not a language blessed with very good English-base textbooks. It's taking me a couple of days for each chapter and they introduce a ton. I glanced through the next chapter, chapter 4, and it introduces all parts of speech, the ideas of case, number, gender, person, tense, voice, and mood, as well as several paradigms. I already have the background knowledge from other languages but it's probably going to take me a couple of days to work through the chapter anyways.

I admire your ability to go straight at the grammar. I tend to take a less direct approach, whether through Assimil or the Nature Method or extensive reading, but that has the downside of taking longer.

There's a reading at the end, but it's pretty short. I think after I finish this textbook (or just get bored of it) I'll do the readings in Maurer, which from my understanding are more extensive. After that it's just a matter of finding chrestomathies (fancy new word I learned yesterday) to practice reading as extensively as is possible for a dead language with limited resources. There seem to be a lot of old ones made by German philologists, so I should be able to find a few of those and understand the notes and glosses. Obviously I'll need to use Lanman too. I dream of someday writing Lingua Sanscrita Per Se Illustrata, but it's safe to say I'm a long way away from that.

I had the exact same thought! :D I found myself wishing there was an Ørberg-style book for Sanskrit, and then I thought, maybe I should get good at Sanskrit and write one. I wonder why there isn't any reading material for students of Sanskrit that isn't drawn from ancient texts. Is it because it's a liturgical language? But then, so is Latin, and both languages were used for all kinds of writings, including more secular ones.

Also it would be really cool to read Panini, he's probably the most important figure in the history of linguistics and should be more widely read in general. Part of why I want to learn Sanskrit is to escape from the eurocentricism I've forced myself into by studying German and Latin etc.

Same here. I'd really like to learn languages from around the world, both classical (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese) and modern. At the same time, I like learning related languages and seeing how languages evolve and branch out. One thing I'm enjoying about studying Latin and Sanskrit concurrently is that I can see their kinship in the grammar and phonology and some of the vocabulary, and at the same time I get to explore two different cultural and geographical spheres.

All good to hear! I think I'll start on it once I've finished this French textbook. It's extremely long (1000+ pages) and I hope that I'll be around B1 by the time I finish it. Sounds like that should be plenty to use Assimil Le Sanskrit.

Well, if it's any guide (or inspiration), indeclinable made Le Français par la Méthode Nature a key part of his French study (along with other resources and lots of listening) and passed the B2 exam after getting up to chapter 24.

By the way, you've inspired me to use the book as well. I've done the first 11 chapters, reading and doing the exercises out loud. I've been slowly learning French for years, so I already know most of the vocabulary introduced so far, but it's been great for reinforcing grammar that I probably only ever half-learned and don't truly have at my disposal. I really like these Nature Method books. Hope to use the Italian one someday as well.
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Sahmilat
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Re: Sahmilat's Languages Log [DEU, LAT, GRK, etc]

Postby Sahmilat » Wed Jun 19, 2019 12:51 am

Sanskrit: I spent a couple of days on chapter 4 of Devavanipravesika, did the exercises and realized there is no answer key. I considered switching to another textbook, but I think I'll just keep using this until I feel comfortable enough in my French to use Assimil. I also received an extremely cute copy of Macdonnell's Sanskrit Grammar for Students that I'm going to use for leisure reading :). Its organization is very western-philological, but I think I'll survive the persons being organized first-second-third instead of the Indian way.

French: Assimil is alright but I am much preferring Methode Nature. The grading is just better. I sometimes have trouble finding the answers to the exercises in the text so it seems that I am not understanding everything on first readthrough. Rereading would probably be a good idea though. I also listened to some Peppa Pig and understood a little, and watched Breathless with English subtitles and understood almost nothing. We'll get there. I'm considering testing in to intermediate French next semester at the end of the summer depending on how much progress I make on my own. I'm just worried my speaking will lag behind too much.

Greek: I've been spending a little less time on Greek than on the new languages, but I am now on chapter 14 (?) of JACT. Fortunately I have stockpiled a ton of Greek texts for after I finish because I obsessively buy books in other languages.

jonm wrote:I admire your ability to go straight at the grammar. I tend to take a less direct approach, whether through Assimil or the Nature Method or extensive reading, but that has the downside of taking longer.

I certainly would rather be using a CI based approach like Assimil or the Nature Method if I could at this point, but I was pretty successful at learning at least some Latin using an essentially grammar-based method so I figure it might work out okayish for Sanskrit too. I think grammar-heavy approaches just work for some people and not for others.

Well, if it's any guide (or inspiration), indeclinable made Le Français par la Méthode Nature a key part of his French study (along with other resources and lots of listening) and passed the B2 exam after getting up to chapter 24.


I'll start thinking about B2 when I can understand Peppa Pig :D
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Re: Sahmilat's Languages Log (Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit etc.)

Postby Sahmilat » Mon Jun 24, 2019 2:33 am

Week of June 17th
Sanskrit 5 hours 20 minutes
French 7 hours 5 minutes
Greek 3 hour 45 minutes
Total 16 hours 10 minutes

My study time wasn't very consistent, especially the last two days I did almost nothing. However, averaging an hour a day for French, a little less than that for Sanskrit, and about 30 minutes a day for Greek is not bad.

Sanskrit: I used Devavanipravesika most of this week. I went to the library yesterday and got a book called Conversational Sanskrit, which is 50 lessons introducing grammar gradually through dialogues. I think it looks really promising, although I've only done the first lesson so far. Unfortunately, it is in a nonstandard transliteration scheme. I think I can look past that and I will probably replace Devavanipravesika's Grammar-Translation methodology with this conversational curriculum, although I have no one to talk to. I'm not super happy about resource-hopping, but I wasn't ever sure I wanted to work all the way through Devavanipravesika. If I want to check some grammar tables I can just use MacDonell. Once I feel confident in my French I'll start on Assimil.

French: I was able to do a lesson of Assimil every day and read Methode Nature every day but one. The grammar of Methode Nature is still well ahead of Assimil, but Assimil is still providing me with manageable short lessons that I can do when I don't feel like committing to a full chapter of Methode Nature at once, and it has audio. I'm trying to read aloud as much as I can stand it. I've tried doing some self-talk and it's not too bad. The biggest problem is still listening, because the Assimil audio is pretty slow and artificial. Looks like it's more Peppa Pig drilling for me.

Greek: I spent the least time on Greek, unfortunately. Maybe because I've been learning it for almost two years it's losing its glamour. That's no good. I am three sections (hopefully three days?) away from the end of JACT (I'm skipping the Homer section because I'm not particularly interested in Homeric Greek). I think I'll stick with JACT materials for a bit afterwards, starting with The Intellectual Revolution which contains large annotated extracts from Euripides' Medea (which I've read in English), Thucydides, and various dialogues of Plato.
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Re: Sahmilat's Languages Log (Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit etc.)

Postby Sahmilat » Mon Jul 01, 2019 4:43 pm

Week of 6/24
Sanskrit 1 hour 15 minutes
French 1 hour 10 minutes
Greek 2 hours 45 minutes
Total 5 hours 10 minutes

Eek. This week I was really busy with personal stuff and didn't study at all most days.

Sanskrit: I'm having some trouble getting off the ground with Conversational Sanskrit. I just can't seem to get the vocabulary into my head, even using cloze deletions on Anki. When I get back to it I guess I'll just keep trying. I did peek at Assimil and decided I need some more time with French before I move on to that.

French: Just a couple more chapters of Assimil and one of Methode Nature. I got a book of parallel short stories. I don't know when I'll start it, but I like having books. It'll probably be a while, but I feel like parallel texts can be used with benefit at almost any level of study.

Greek: Spent more time on Greek this week compared to my other languages. Finished JACT, decided that Euripides was not for me right now. I have some selections of Herodotus, the complete works of Aeschylus, Morice's Greek Stories, and another anthology by JACT, but honestly I might just end up reading on Perseus. The new Scaife viewer is really nice, make sure to check it out.
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Re: Sahmilat's Languages Log (Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit etc.)

Postby Sahmilat » Mon Jul 08, 2019 12:09 am

Week of 7/1
Sanskrit 55 mins
French 2 hour 5 mins
Greek 3 hour 45 mins
Total 6 hours 45 mins

Another generally unproductive week for language learning. I just don't have the energy I want for it right now.

Sanskrit: It looks like my dibble-dabbling in Sanskrit is gradually coming to an end for now. I did almost nothing this week for it. I definitely had fun looking at resources and writing a couple of posts on it, but I think it's not in the cards for me to really dive into it right now. Someday though, I promise.

French: I'm more dissatisfied with my lack of work on French because I actually want to commit to making a lot of progress this summer. Ideally I will be able to test into an intermediate class at the beginning of next semester. I've had some success reading short things so far (today I read some reviews of old Latin textbooks in French) but it's just going to be a matter of getting disciplined about doing a good amount every single day.

Greek: I've experienced a bit of a resurgence in my interest in Greek lately, and I spent a good amount of time almost every day on reading. Read a bit of Herodotus, then some of the glossed selections from the JACT anthology I have. Focused on Attic prose. I think I will do some parallel reading on Perseus next, but I'm not really committed to anything. I enjoyed the bits of Demosthenes that I read, so I might start there.

I spent a lot of time the last couple of days reading German webpages, mainly the pages of different departments at a few German universities looking forward to the time when I will apply for my master's. I've especially been trying to learn what the curriculum requirements are for teaching Latin in Germany to see if there is any space for a Gymnasium teacher to teach Active Latin, because that's what I'd like to do. All this has reminded me that it's important that I continue to develop my German if I want to study and live there within the next few years, so I think I'm going to start doing focused study of the language again and track my hours starting with this week. I have a collection of a few dual-language readers. I think I'll start with the first Penguin German Short Stories collection, then order the other two and once I get through those, move on to the parallel poetry readers I have (The Penguin Book of German Verse and Dover's Introduction to German Poetry).
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Re: Sahmilat's Languages Log

Postby Sahmilat » Mon Jul 15, 2019 7:58 pm

Week of 7/8
German 4 hours 10 mins
French 4 hour 5 mins
Greek 1 hour 30 mins
Total 9 hours 45 mins

This week was pretty good. I averaged over an hour a day, though it wasn't consistent, and I think an hour a day if you're tracking three languages is less than optimal. Still better than the two weeks before though.

German: For the first few days of the week I got most of my time (1 hr 50 mins on Monday!) from reading university webpages. I investigated the classical studies and Indo-European studies masters programs at Leipzig, Humbolt, FU Berlin, LMU Munich, Heidelberg, Vienna, and Zürich. It was fun but I had a hard time drawing any conclusions. It looks like LMU Munich probably has the best classics program. I'm also interested in the Digital Humanities program at Leipzig, but I would need a background in computer science (Informatik) which I Do Not have. The rest of the week I spent reading some short stories from the Penguin collection. I read Die Blasse Anna by Heinrich Böll, which was a very nostalgic-feeling story about a man after his return from WWII. Then there was Ilse Aichinger's extremely confusing but impressive Spiegelgeschichte, a story told in reverse about the death and life of a young woman. It wasn't the case that you could simply read all of the sentences in reverse order and the story would make sense; the narrator talks about bringing people back to life and about the importance of memory. The whole story was hard to understand so I had to read it more than once, but rereading is good for acquisition anyways. The third and last story I read last week was Die Hostie by Hans Bender, about a man who finds a lost host box. I could understand the language well enough but the significance of the story itself escaped me, so I might revisit it in the future. Overall I found this a good week for German studying.

French: I read a couple of chapters of Methode Nature and started using Assimil again. I watched some Peppa Pig, I read a short story from the Penguin collection, Alain Robbe-Grillet's La Plage, which required constant reference to the parallel English, but I still felt like I was genuinely reading real literature in French. Last night I also watched the first episode of French in Action. I think this is probably going to be my gateway into listening comprehension if the gradation is right. I might need to trim down the variety of resources I'm using for now just for the sake of simplicity, but I'm having fun and I feel like I'm making progress, which are the two most important things to me.

Greek: This was the real low part of the week. I only read any Greek on two days of the week. I'm about 2/5 of the way through Lysias 1, Ὑπὲρ τοῦ Ἐρατοσθένους Φόνου Ἀπολογία. The going isn't too bad, I'm just having a hard time motivating myself to do Greek compared to German and French. I think I might introduce some listening into my routine, probably the podcast ὁ διὰ νυκτὸς διάλογος. Hopefully that helps some.
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Re: Sahmilat's Languages Log

Postby Sahmilat » Mon Jul 22, 2019 6:22 pm

Week of 7/15
German 1 hour 20 mins
French 2 hours
Greek 1 hour 50 mins
Total 5 hours 10 mins

Bad week, bad week. It started out really well but I totally ran out of steam by Thursday and barely studied at all. Still, this is what I did.

German: I finished Penguin German Short Stories 1. I think next I will take a break from parallel texts for German and read some annotated anthologies that I have, probably starting with this book I just checked out from the library Gruppe 47: Ein Querschnitt so that I can familiarize myself with some more recent authors. Sticking to short stories for now, may at some point in the future move on to full-length novels.

French: I did a couple of chapters of Assimil and I think one chapter of Methode Nature. I also watched an episode of French in Action. I think I will continue with these three resources, which seem like a good balance. Didn't find anything interesting at the library.

Greek: I kind of gave up on Lysias for now because I'm struggling to read him fluently and instead read some of the extremely easy A Greek Boy At Home by Rouse. I also listened to some of ὁ διὰ νυκτὸς διάλογος. The first two episodes were easy to understand but the third episode, which had more religious vocabulary, was harder for me. I found a book at the library called Neohellenica from the 1800s that has a series of parallel dialogues (like Assimil but longer and obviously without audio) of Katharevousa and English. It's neither Ancient Greek nor real Modern Greek, but I skimmed the first page and was able to understand almost everything without the help of the translation. I think that reading some of it will probably help me with my AG vocabulary, because of how conservative the lexicon of Katharevousa is. Probably won't teach me any MG though...

I've also been doing more Latin (checked out a couple of I Tatti books at the library) but haven't been keeping track of the time I spend on it, so I figure I might as well start tracking it and it might make me look better as far as total study time :d. More updates on that next week, I suppose.
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