I read old books - Pfifltrigg Pi

[PfifltriggPi]

I am considering getting the Parlons books for Catalan, Ukrainian and/or Modern Greek. If anyone has any experience with those in particular or the series in general, I would be very much obliged to hear your thoughts.

Français :

J'ai poursuivi ma lecture de "La vendetta" J'ai lu plus qu'une moitié de l'histoire. J'aime beaucoup le style de Balzac, et cette histoire n'est point une exception. Je crois que j'approche l'apogée et l'intrigue est beaucoup plus complexe qu'elle semblait.

Lingua latina :

Bibliam meam legere pergo hodie. Epistulam Sancti Pauli ad Galatas terminavi. Credo quod nunc bene nosco dictionem Pauli, et michi non est difficile legere apud eum.

Ukrainian :

I am still waiting for my grammar book.

[iguanamon]

I am familiar with Parlons Catalan. First of all, it uses a lot of French. The first 75 pages are like a long article describing Catalan. The dialogs are paragraphs divided into topics with French going first and Catalan after:

Nourriture :
Tu n'as p as faim ? soif ? No tens gana ? set ? - Allons déjeuner/goüter/dîner Anem a dinar/berenar/sopar - Dites-moi, s'il vous plaît, à quelles heures servez-vous le petit déjeuner ? Digueu, si us plau, a quines hores serviu l'esmorzar ? Garçon, apportez-nous des tranches de pain/des petits pains Cambrer, porteu-nos unes llesques de pa/uns panets

In short, it is more of a long 255 page (75 pages of which contains a bilingual glossary) encyclopedia article than it is a course- "a description of Catalan in French- a lot of French". The rest of the book covers various topics including architecture, cuisine, culture, literature, poetry. The book has some samples of literature and poetry with French translations. If this is what you are looking for, go for it! If a course is what you are expecting, give it a miss. Here's an example of what you'll find there:

Le Roussillon
Cette terre traditionnellement catalanophone, régulièrement évoquée dans ce qui précède, n'a pas bénéficié de la diffusion culturelle que l 'autonomie assure au "sud': si bien que chiffres et statistiques la concernant, ne pouvant provenir d'une "région'' administrative qui la mêle au Languedoc, nous ont été, sous les espèces d'une "Carte d'identité'' publiée en 1994 (recensement de 1990), aimablement fournis par le Conseil Général des Pyrénées Orientales, département à peu de chose près idenitifiable à la ''catalanité'' française.
Le département - arrondissements de Perpignan, Céret et Prades - comptait en 1990 près de 365 000 habitants (dont 7,1 % d'étrangers) ; la tendance à la baisse démographique se trouve mal compensée par...

... You get the drift. This is what the book is like, except more of it. To me it's more like a very long, book length wikipedia article for people who want to learn about languages rather than for people who actually want to learn a language like Catalan. Maybe the other languages Parlons covers are different? I don't know.

[guyome]

I second what iguanamon wrote.
I've perused two Parlons books (Quechua and Provençal) and they had more or less the same approach: lots of historical/cultural content and lots about the language itself but not organised in a way that you could really use the book as a course. For instance, I remember checking the Quechua book once in a while, mainly to get basic information about some prefix when the course I was using failed me.

[PfifltriggPi]

Thank you to the persons above for answering my questions. I think I will give them a try : the literary texts seem interesting and the cultural information is certainly important in trying to develop polyliteracy. Another friend of mine said he has used several and that he found himself able to get good information out of them, so I shall see for myself. Good Ukrainian resources do not exactly fall in one's lap.

Lingua latina :

Lecturam terminavi omnis Eclogae primae Vergilii hodie! Facilior erat quam putabam. Carmina Vergilii michi placent et haec non erat exceptio. Non longa est et thema est tristis, sed carmen pulchrum est. Credo quod Eclogam secundam deinceps legam, etsi non legetur ab classe, quia volo melior cognoscere opera Vergilii.

[guyome]

You're welcome, PfifltriggPi. Keep us updated on how useful you find the Parlons book!

The first eclogue is great. I don't read much poetry (in any language) but that and Aeneid 2 are among my favorite pieces.

Just wanted to draw your attention to

quia volo melior cognoscere opera Vergilii.

Here you need to use an adverb, melius (which, incidentally, looks the same as the nominative neuter). Melior being the nominative form of a fem./masc. adjective, the sentence reads like "I, a better person, want to...".
In the other sentence (Facilior erat quam putabam), you can also use facilius if you mean "it [=the whole reading process] was easier" but facilior is ok too if you mean "it [=the ecloga, feminine] was easier...".

I have never been able to stick to a Latin writing routine, so it's good to see you doing better here!

[PfifltriggPi]

I often find that I still get a bit turned around with all the adjectival and adverbial suffixes, especially when I am not paying as much attention as I ought.

I had both my French lit class as well as my Latin class today, but nothing much happened in either of them. The pace at which my Latin class is going is incredibly slow, and it is starting to annoy me. I was also informed that I will be meeting with my Greek "supervisor" on Thursday, so I shall spend tomorrow reviewing grammar to prepare for that. To make matters worse, my Ukrainian keyboard stickers have started to come unglued and move around, so I shall have to figure out how to fix that shortly. On a happier note, two books for my French class arrived today : Le rouge et le noir de Stendhal et une collection des novelles de Balzac qui contient Le colonel Chabert, El verdugo, Adieu et Le réquisitionnaire. Dans mon cours nous n'allons lire que Le colonel Chabert mais moi, qui aime beaucoup Balzac, voulait avour une excuse pour achetter davantage de ses oeuvres, et je vais lire tout ce livre.

Edit : Goodness, that code switch was totally unintentional, I assure you. I suppose I shall leave it though. It seems to be happening more and more. I am not sure if that is a good thing or not.

Edit II : Apparently this is my 250th post here.

[PfifltriggPi]

Français :

Nous avons terminé La vendetta aujourd'hui dans mon cours de littérature. C'était magnifique. D'après moi, Honoré de Balzac est le grand maître de la langue française. On va lire Le colonel Chaubert prochain et je ferai un présentation là-dessous.

Ukrainian :

My Routledge grammar finally arrived today although I have yet to look at it, as I spent all morning running around doing various errands. To be quite honest, I expected a somewhat larger book given how much it cost, but oh well. It does seem comprehensive, which is good.

[PfifltriggPi]

Ukrainian :

I read the introduction to my grammar today. It discussed the history of the language and the sources of its lexicon. This was actually quite interesting as I was unaware how much of Ukrainian words came from Polish. I am now somewhat interested in learning Polish.

French : I started reading Le colonel Chabert, and working on my presentation on it for my lit class Tuesday. I very much like the book. I also had my other French class today, and apparently we are doing another language exchange. I am not sure how I feel about that.

[PfifltriggPi]

I spent most of the morning doing homework for my other non-language classes and most of the afternoon trying to figure out how video editing and submitting things on YouTube works, so I did not do too much reading or studying.

Ukrainian :

I read chapter 1 of my grammar today, which dealt with orthography and pronunciation. I thought I mostly understood how Ukrainian phonology worked, but apparently it is much more complicated than I thought. This chapter also discussed the numerous spelling and pronunciation which take place when verbs and nouns are inflected. And there are a lot of them. About 6 pages, just listing various spelling changes. All of which have to be learned in order both to properly speak and write as well as to be able to turn an unknown word one finds into a form one can find in the dictionary. This will be fun...

[PfifltriggPi]

Ukrainian :
I started reading chapter 2 in my grammar, which discusses noun inflections : the first section discussed feminine nouns. It has been quite helpful to see everything systematically laid out all the various paradigms, and, honestly, it seems like learning the noun grammar will be less difficult than I imagined it would be.

Français :
J'avais mon cours de littérature française aujourd'hui. J'ai fait une présentation sur la première partie de du Colonel Chaubert. Je crois que c'était bien, mais on verra. Je vais terminer de le lire demain.

Latina :
Eclogam secundam lexi hodie. Quoquo non valde difficilis erat, quid michi placet.