Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[javier_getafe]

un video musical puro puro

"Puro y duro".

As always, a deliciously interesting account of your daily life .

"Puro y duro". No estoy seguro de que esto suene exactamente correcto en este contexto.

[javier_getafe]

And now back to English, because I want to raise a question: how do you stick to thinking in a weak language when your brain desperately want to push you back to lazy thinking in your own language?
[...]
But yesterday evening I also did another thing: while reading the Danish subtitles on my TV I tried to translate them on the fly. And of course I couldn't deliver a perfect Greek translation, but just the fact that I could attach myself to a streaming external source with a limited amount of information meant that I didn't have to invent new topics myself all the time. And this could also serve as a way of keeping track of your level in a new level: if you can translate a stream of subtitles in your own language on the fly then your speed - if not precision - of thinking in the foreign language is at the level where it should be.

I'm not completely sure about this method of yours. So, you watch an english program with danish subtitles and then you try to simultaneously translate it to greek. Is that how it works?

[Iversen]

Well, I might be listening to a program in English and then I would try to think along in for instance Greek. Or if I have turned the sound off and just read the subtitles then I would try to translate those on the fly into a target language - but of course the result would be a disaster. The point is not to deliver a 'good' translation, but just to train my ability to think at the speed I would need to interact with native speakers later.

I have used a similar trick during travels where I still don't speak the local language fluently - then I translate in my mind the things I hear the other person say in an irrelevant language and during the pauses I also try to come up with local versions of my own answers. I have for instance done this with Icelandic during my first trip there, where I was at a stage where I could read Old Norse prose and knew a fair amount of Modern Icelandic, but not enough to push my own barbaric Icelandic unto those poor innocent local people. Since then I have been there twice where I have tried not to speak Danish or English to any native speaker, and I may not have done admirably well, but better than if I had tried during my first trip.

As far I remember I did the translate-on-the-fly thing first time many years ago where I was lying on a hotel bed in Barcelona, watching a program in Castillian, which I then tried to translate to Catalan. The advantage here was of course that I had been listening to and reading Catalan all day long, so it was just a matter of somehow carrying on the stream. And even though it may seem preposterous you can tell you brain to listen to Spanish and 'hear' Catalan in your mind.

As for "puro y duro": I originally wrote "puro" twice to indicate that I meant 'with no concessions or exceptions'. I'll leave it to ye native Hispanophones to come up with a workable solution.


Apart from that: I have been on a family visit, where jam cooking and wall plastering took more time that studying, but I still managed to do wordlists with some 400 French words, using a dictionary printed before the second world war.

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[Dagane]

As for "puro y duro": I originally wrote "puro" twice to indicate that I meant 'with no concessions or exceptions'. I'll leave it to ye native Hispanophones to come up with a workable solution.

That's what I thought and I would do use it in this context. "Puro y duro " means "que no está mezclado con otras cosas" and "que es sólo y exclusivamente lo que se expresa" (Reverso.net).

[Iversen]

This weekend I have spent more time on music than on language learning, but not to the total exclusion of the latter. For instance I restudied a text in Albanian about the bronze age - I have not done much about this language for some time, and to get a soft start it is a good idea first to reuse something you have worked on earlier, and then proceed to new stuff.

I have also been to the language café at the library, and in one way it was a sad downturn compared to last time, where we were half a dozen participants. On the other the one person who did turn up today turned out to be a Spanish exchange student from Barcelona, and since there weren't anybody else around we ended up speaking in Catalan for one and a half hour (until her 'landlady' or whatever you call it came to fetch her)

CAT: I varem tractar molts temes, en gran part històrics. En primer lloc, però, jo vaig aprendre un fet, a saber que evidentment no hi ha res que correspongui exactament a la paraula danèsa de 'Gymnasium' ('High school' en anglès americá, 'lycée' en francès). Per tant, quan la senyora va referir a la seva escola com a "l'Institut", jo vaig quedar lleugerament desconcertat. Però en general ens enteníem bé. I li vaig dir que tothom pot demanar llibres a la biblioteca estatal a través de la biblioteca principal, com per exemple les obres de Ramon Llull en català antic (que en fet es relativament comprensible). D'acord, potser hauríeu de visitar una de les biblioteques pròpies de la universitat en persona, però de vegades també podeu demanar prestat dels seus llibres a través la biblioteca principal. I sembla que no hi ha molta demanda de Rámon Llull en aquests dies, així que valia la pena provar-ho. També vam parlar de la situació politica de Catalunya a l’edat medievala: probablement no van ensenyar molta història a la seva escola ... sembla que res abans dels Reyes Catolicos. Jo tinc un llibre a casa sobre el tema en català i l’he llegit, però no-m recordava avui tots els detalls de les intrigues dinàstiques pre-Ferrán-Isabela. I potser això era prou bo... és una història molt llarga i molt complicada (i en alguns llocs molt trista també)

F3825a02_Ramón_Llull_Hist-Museum_Barcelona.jpg

[Iversen]

The Danish copyright organization for composers, Koda, has a fight running with Youtube. The agreement between them ran out aug.1 2020, and now the Danish organization claims that Youtube demanded a 70% cut in the already minimal payment the composers get , while Youtube claims that they have offered a better deal then the old one ... so one part must be clearly be lying. But since Koda wouldn't accept the 70% cut Youtube has now blocked music by Danish composers while they wait for the Danish organization to give up - albeit only in Denmark. My interest in Danish songs is zero, and I mainly listen to instrumental music that is more than 70 years old, but the last couple of days I have discovered that lots of music that is totally unrelated to Denmark has also been blocked in my country.

Youtube has been my main source for listening to music outside the commonstream so for me this second line of attack would be a more serious problem than not being able to listen to contemporary Danish songs, and to boot it isn't certain that the blocked items would be accessible again even if a deal is struck concerning the music composed by Koda members (but so far I haven't heard about horses' heads in people's beds so that could also take some time). Unless the EU gets actively involved then Youtube can more or less get away with doing whatever it wants to do.

So far I haven't seen this second weapon applied to non-musical videos, but while I was checking that I happened to run into a lecture in English about the excentric English physicist Dirac, who was famous for saying absolutely nothing if he could avoid it. That took more than an hour, and then I listened to some more lectures about physics in English until it struck me that this wasn't what I was investigating. Then I made some searches for videos about elephants and related critters (proboscideans) in Spanish and Portuguese and actually found some, but then I got caught up in the avalanche of really rotten, but entertaining stuff in Brazilian Portuguese about claimed wonders of the world ..

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PORT: Fora isso, tudo começou de forma razoavelmente sóbria com um vídeo espanhol e outro no português brasileiro sobre as diferenças entre mastodontes e mamutes. Se você os tivesse visto juntos (o que era possível até 50.000 anos atrás), vôcé teria visto que os mastodontes eram mais achatados no pescoço e ombros do que os mamutes, mas a diferença real era que os mastodontes tinham dentes com cúspides, enquanto os mamutes tinham dentes com sulcos como em uma tábua de lavar - e, portanto, devem ter-se alimentado de diferentes tipos de plantas.

A propósito, os animais probóscides são um grupo interessante: houve membros com dentes curvados para abaixo, com dentes semelhantes a uma pá chata na boca inferior, outros com presas chatas na boca superior e mandíbula inferior alongada e alguns com quatro defesas. Teria sido divertido tê-los ao vivo hoje, mas infelizmente as criaturas mais estranhas estão extintas. Aliás, há uma armadilha terminológica na nomenclatura dos probóscidas: há um gênero chamado 'mammutus' - mas não continha o animal que chamamos 'mamute' (Mammuthus). Em vez disso, o gênero 'mammutus' (sem 'h') abriga sômente mastodontes, - entenda quem pode...

Também vi um vídeo sobre 10 espécies extintas que alguns acham que podem ser recriadas, mas acabei no 'RefúgioMental', e daí vieram os vídeos bem esquisitos - como histórias de pessoas que não dormiam depois 50 anos e sobre um monge índio que manteve seu braço estendido até agora parece um galho morto. Mas nenhum deles estavam bloqueado "no meu país".

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GER: PS: Ich sitze gerade und schaue mir das englische Quiz "Poimtless" an (mit ausgeschalteter Audio, aber mit Untertiteln), und im Finale hat ein Paar gerade den Bonus gewonnen - sie könnten unter anderem (möglichst unbekannte) deutsche Teilstaaten vorschlagen, und von 100 Engländern in der Referenzgruppe hatte NIEMAND von Schleswig-Holstein, Sachsen-Anhalt oder Thüringen gehört. Dies ist vielleicht ein Bißchen peinlich obwohl nicht unerwartet, aber ich erinnere mich immer noch daran, daß nur 13 von 100 von Angela Merkel gehört hatten. Ach du meine Güte...Aber vielleicht haben auch nicht mehr als 13 von 100 Deutschen von Boris Johnson gehört.

[Iversen]

After I wrote the message above (wherein the proboscids are cursorily mentioned) I continued to read about the topic in different languages. Method: I used the overview in the English Wikipedia article, clicked into articles about different genera and species and from each article there into the corresponding article in another language. At the time I didn't print anything out, but yesterday I decided that it might be a worthy subject for a text collection in Greek - but I then found out that the Greek Wikipedia isn't exactly a cornupia of proboscidean information (even though the word for trunk, προβοσκίς, originally came from Greek). So instead I printed out some articles from other Greek sources.

P1605b03 _ Goethes elefant, Kassel.jpg

GR: Το πρώτο άρθρο προήλθε από έναν ιστότοπο με το όνομα greelane.com, και αναφέρεται για τη διαδικασία όπου οι σύγχρονοι αφρικανικοί ελέφαντες χάνουν σταδιακά τους χαυλιόδοντές τους, επειδή οι λαθροθήρες σκοτώνουν κατά προτίμηση άτομα με μεγάλους χαυλιόδοντες. Ένα άλλο άρθρο (από το iefimerida.gr) ανέφερε για την εξαφάνιση του μαμούθ. Φαίνεται ότι τα τελευταία δείγματα (έξω από το νησί της Ρωσίας Остров Врангеля) ήταν άρρωστα λόγω υποσιτισμού - και τότε αυτό θα ήταν η αιτία θανάτου τους. Αλλά είχαν επιβιώσει από αρκετούς παγετώνες, γιατί λοιπόν εκείνος που συμμετείχαν οι κυνηγοί ανθρώπου ήταν αυτός που δεν επέζησε. Η ανθρωπότητα δεν είναι απολυμένη!

RU: Поскольку последние мамонты на русском острове Врангеля появились всего около 6000 лет назад, было логично также составить сборник русских текстов для изучения. Он не содержит особенно много информации о последних карликовых мамонтах, как не в статье об острове, но в русской Википедии есть еще одна красивая деталь, а именно список российских музеев со скелетами мамонтов.

INDO: Tapi bagaimana dengan mastodont? Sebenarnya saya menemukan artikel yang cukup luas tentang mereka di Wikipedia bahasa Indonesia dan artikel lebih pendek tentang mamot.

F5214a03 _ Mammuthus meridionalis & primigenius _ Paris.jpg

CA: Pel que fa a la resta de tipus de probòcids, que són menys coneguts públicament que el mamut i el mastodont, he trobat algunes breus descripcions a la Viquipèdia en castellà. Però per complementar-ho, també vaig fer una impressió en català d’un article sobre la caça de mamuts per part dels humans - que aparentment va començar ja amb l’Homo Erectus. També suggereix que malalties provocades pels humans han afectat els animals probòscides, però el mecanisme és difícil a veure: qui dorm a migdia amb un mamut?

F3824a04 _ Mamut en el Parc de la Ciutadela, Barcelona.jpg

SW: Jag har ingen särskild anledning att skriva det följande på svenska - förutom att det är länge sedan jag har använt detta språk. Och emnet är vad jag lärte som barn. När jag började studera paleontologi (i en ålder av åtta eller nio år) var den äldsta förfadern till elefanterne känd som Moeritherium - ett djur med storlek och utseende tillsvarande en gris som bodde i vassumpar på Sinaihalvön under Eocen-perioden för ungefär 30-35 miljoner år sedan. Men sedan dess har ännu äldre släktingar från Paleocen hittats, med Eritherium som den äldsta. Ingen av dessa hade betar. Men nya arter växer ständigt upp, och en annan barndomsutbildning har också blivit föråldrad. Jag läste då att det största däggdjuret på landet någonsin hette Baluchiterium (en mycket stor noshörning utan noshorn). Senare läste jag att det nu hette Indricotherium och ännu senare att namnet nu var Paraceratherium - regeln är att det äldsta namnet vinner. Men i förgår läste jag att det förmodligen fanns ett ännu större landdäggdjur, nämligen en art av skogselefant som bodde i Eurasien strax före istiden, Palaeoloxodon namadicus, som enligt beräkningarna kunde väga upp till 22 ton. En vuxen afrikansk elefant kan nå 6 ton - och mammuten var inte större. På det sättet kommer ett stackars människe jo aldrig att slutföra studierna ...

Palaeoloxodon namadicus _ LARRAMENDI.jpg

EN: ... and now I wonder: why do all the critters on the pictures above - including the infamous murder ape on the last one - face left??

[Iversen]

I woke up this morning from a long in Spanish. I tend to have dreams that are sightseing more than human interaction, so I don't always communicate with anybody in person, but here it did happen. I was in a town at the sea, because there was a harbour, and near that there was a hexagonal square with trees, and even further back a park with a mansion of sorts. This was the first part, and I have forgotten what actually happened there. In the second part I was in a room somewhere with a bunch of other persons, including one guy they referred to as "el presidente" (which would suggest a place in Latin America, but not a specific country). He put on an uniform jacket, and I noticed how small it - and he - were, which reminded me of the armor and uniforms in some museums that had belonged to perfectly normal people from past centuries. For some reason he and I went back the the hexagonal square and from there into a commercial area - and then I woke up. He said something in Spanish along the way, and I responded - but I'm not terribly talkative in my dreams. And we left the other, less important persons behind in the original room to chat among themselves.

SCO: in this very moment ah'm watchin and listening tae a TV program about Billy Connolly. When ah first aborded the Laeland Scots leid ah listened tae a lot of his things on Youtube, but since then ah've haurdly seen onything with him. Now he's got Parkinson and his hair have turned white, but na fallen off yet. Howiver he sounded less Scots than ah had mynded - the tuinie is thare, but the wirds coud all be unnerstuided by ony Southener or furriner. ... Hey, now it's anither show. In this ane he's traversing the States searchin for fowk with thare ruits in Scotland. He starts in Plymouth MA, whaire a bunch of thieves (in his awn wirds) landed mony years aby.

EN: Yesterday I spend most of the evening working on my poor ailing Albanian. I first copied/studied parts of my archeological text collection, but found that the language seemed more recalcitrant than I had expected. I diagnosed the problem to my minimal vocabulary, and then I made one wordlist with around 80 words from the text and another with around 100 directly from my Taschenwörterbuch from Buske (with some references to my larger Fjalor from EDFA), and I intend to continue this work today as soon as I have finished posting this message.

AL: Tani gjuha ime shqipe nuk është mjaft e mirë për një letër më të gjatë, por tani është përsëri në lëvizje. Imazhi më poshtë tregon blerjet nga aeroporti i Nënë Terezës.

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EN: .. and later today I'll take the trip to the library to see whether anyone turns up for the weekly language café, but I've stopped being optimistic. In the meantime Billy Connolly has reached New York (after a wee fishing town and the completely commercialized witch capital Salem). His last stop is the 'hospital' outside New York where newcomers with tuberculosis were left to die.

Billy Connolly on TV.jpg

[Iversen]

The language café yesterday turned to be a complete fiasco - I waited 20 minutes where nobody else came to participate, and then I gave up and left. It was a splendid idea and could have been very useful also for other language learners, but apparently nobody else tried to make it function, and I can't change that. And of course that makes it even less relevant for me to care about my spoken languages.

Yesterday I put no less than 600 Albanian words into wordlists, and now I just have to do the repetitions. However I think that it will be necessary to memorize several thousand new words if the goal is to be able to read fluently (with the help of a dictionary), and that will of course take some time since I also have to work on other languages. Right now I can construct sentences with the help of my two dictionaries and my green sheets, but I want to make written Albanian an active language. As for the spoken variant ... well, that's less relevant.

EO: Mi ankaŭ legis plurajn malnovajn numerojn de la revuo Esperanto hieraŭ. Ĝi min ne tre ekscitigas, kaj tiel bonege taŭgas kiel bonnokta legado.

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GER: Im Moment sehe ich übrigens NDR, und es wird dort berichtet, daß die schönen Buchsbaumpflanzen in den Herrenhausen-Gärten in Hannover von einem bösen Pilz ausgerottet werden, der gedeiht, wenn die Temperatur über 25 ° C steigt (es sei denn, daß das Wetter nicht extrem dürr sei - Pilzen mögen Wasser). Und das Pilz bekommt Hilfe von einer gierigen Schmetterlingsraupe, die seine kulinarische Reise in Süd-Deutschland im Jahr 2006 begann und seitdem seinen Weg durch alle Parks und Gärten mit Buchsbom Nordwärts frißt.

[Iversen]

Some time ago I mentioned a text about a fellah that plowed through Siberian bogs and woods to get to the epicentre of the Tunguska event (where something explosive exploded in a faraway part of Siberia without leaving a crater), and I left him dangling in the air, whining about the lack of suitable roads and the climate in general - actually whining about anything on the planet in general. OK I could now write more about that, but since I just wrote a post of Siberian proportions about my green sheets I'll be lazy and just show the triplelingual original text and my copy of it - as usual made in an attempt to slow myself down to the pace where I actually notice the details. Normally I just have the original and one translation (into a language which I just have to know better than the one of the original), but here I have apparently first made an interspersed verson and then added the column to the right. I haven't done that for a long time, so the specimen must derive from the period where I just had started to study Polish and knew a little bit of Russian, but not enough to dispense with the translation into an understandable language.

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Apart from that, I had an actual worthwhile speaking experience yesterday - surprise,surprise..

In the local advertisement paper that comes for free each week I had seen a reference to a blabla language exchange that was to take place yesterday from 19 to 22 in the main library. Given the dismal turnout for the official Language café Monday I wasn't optimistic, but still went to the library to see if anything happened. And at first nothing much seemed to be happening, with just two persons waiting at the entrance and three men talking in English at a table marked 'blabla'. But I noticed that the two persons at the entrance spoke in German, and I joined them. Them after a half hour or so some more people entered, and we could establish two groups, one speaking in English and Danish (because some of the people who came really wanted to train their Danish, but also spoke English), and of course I joined the German speaking group. Later we found out that three persons were able to speak Italian (one of them a man from Southern India, the other a native Italian) and then we formed an Italophone group. Even later we found out that we all also spoke Spanish (more or less well), and a lady from the other group had mentioned that she also spoke Spanish so we shanghaied her and formed a four person Hispanophone group, which lasted until closing time at 22.

This is the way the language café could have functioned, but it clearly doesn't for the time being. The 'blabla' people had only had one meeting before, in a bar somewhere downtown, but they apparently communicated through Facebook. Which is a problem for me since I haven't surrendered yet to the vile evil Moloch (called "fjæsbog" in Danish, which better renders my attitude to the thing) - and they talked about maybe to have their next get-together in another bar in two weeks, which doesn't appeal to me. But if they only announce it in Fjæsbog then I won't even hear about it. So this may have been a one-off experience, but still a pleasurable experience. By the way, the lady we shanghaied was a native Slovak, but my spoken Slovak isn't at a level where I would try to use it so I couldn't go on to exploit that opportunity.