Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Nov 10, 2017 9:11 am

Everyday Swedish also omits the auxiliary verb, although a lot of people cringe, myself included.

By the way, isn't "studert" and "kopiert" technically supine forms (at least after "ha") rather than participle?
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Fri Nov 10, 2017 7:15 pm

Mista wrote:
Expugnator wrote:Norwegian
When did Norwegian start replacing the infinitive with the participle on complex accents? (I bet there was a verb 'ha' early on)?

Jeg burde studert engelsk, men jeg vil heller se en film.
Translates as I should be studying English, but I'd rather watch a movie.

Kunne du kopiert dette til meg?
Could you copy this to me? (and not "Could you have copied [P.PF] this to me, which doesn't make sense).


You are right that ha is missing, and in my opinion, it would be more natural to include it, though I wouldn't characterize the omission as ungrammatical. It could be dialectal variation, I suppose. What's your source?


First sentence is from Clozemaster, second is from a Norwegianpod101 lesson.

Now from the book Råta:

Jeg har gjort ting du ville kalle grusomme
As far as I can understand, people will most likely say "Jeg har gjort ting du ville kalt grusomme" even when the present is meant. It's that supposed asynchrony that puzzles me, as with the Russian I mentioned. It keeps puzzling me but I am familiar with the usage anyway, it's just a matter of keeping practicing so as to find it absolutely normal.

jeff_lindqvist wrote:Everyday Swedish also omits the auxiliary verb, although a lot of people cringe, myself included.

By the way, isn't "studert" and "kopiert" technically supine forms (at least after "ha") rather than participle?


I'm not familiar with the supine concept from Latin, but the fact the forms coincide add up to the confusion.

==============================================
A small victory: I managed to finish the book in Spanish that was taking me so long, not managing to read at all most of the study days. Now I'm taking a refresher in the form of a book on language learning. That will help me talk about language learning in Spanish. Then I'll probably keep with non-fiction, even though I'm longing for some good fiction recommendations I got. When I'm done with some non-fiction priorities I'll probably alternate.

The early morning was also more productive. I managed to do the non-fiction reading, as I had been doing previously, and also part of the Italian.

Finally started the new Greek course by Language Transfer. It has 120 lessons, more than Assimil. That means I need to find a way to insert native materials and output practices. The author's accent in English is now thicker. Well, at least now there is a transcript.

Indonesian follows the overall Asian trend to use the same word for week (or day) and Sunday (minggu, a Spanish borrowing). I' ve seen this in Georgian and Mandarin.

Today I finally got on track and finished my tasks 1 hour later than usual. I'm getting back to my earlier rythm. I'm having 1 extra hour this week so there's not much to celebrate, except that even with this extra hour I was finishing 1 hour later. Which means I saved 2 hours today.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Nov 10, 2017 11:10 pm

Expugnator wrote:I'm not familiar with the supine concept from Latin, but the fact the forms coincide add up to the confusion.


It's interesting that most of the hits I find are related to Swedish grammar (or Latin). Anyway, in Swedish (and probably Norwegian too), a participle works like an adjective (and change according to gender and number) while a supine is a verb form. Compare "The book was written in Latin." and "I have written the book.". Identical forms, but different functions. Some verbs have identical participles (at least in a neuter form), say, "Porträttet är målat av Picasso." and "Jag har målat ett porträtt." (NOTE "Stugan är målad.")

I don't know which is more confusing - that some pairs are identical, that the term participle is used for both concepts in English, that many English verbs have identical forms for past tense and past participle ((play) - played - played) or that "supine" in English grammar refers to to+infinitive. I give up! :D
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Mista » Sat Nov 11, 2017 5:46 am

jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Expugnator wrote:I'm not familiar with the supine concept from Latin, but the fact the forms coincide add up to the confusion.


It's interesting that most of the hits I find are related to Swedish grammar (or Latin). Anyway, in Swedish (and probably Norwegian too), a participle works like an adjective (and change according to gender and number) while a supine is a verb form.


For us Norwegians, this is one of the big nightmares when learning Nynorsk. Nynorsk works like you describe there. In Bokmål, on the other hand, we only declinate participles into the plural form within a nominal phrase (ei skrevet bok - skrevne bøker).


Expugnator wrote:
Mista wrote:
Expugnator wrote:Norwegian
When did Norwegian start replacing the infinitive with the participle on complex accents? (I bet there was a verb 'ha' early on)?

Jeg burde studert engelsk, men jeg vil heller se en film.
Translates as I should be studying English, but I'd rather watch a movie.

Kunne du kopiert dette til meg?
Could you copy this to me? (and not "Could you have copied [P.PF] this to me, which doesn't make sense).


You are right that ha is missing, and in my opinion, it would be more natural to include it, though I wouldn't characterize the omission as ungrammatical. It could be dialectal variation, I suppose. What's your source?


First sentence is from Clozemaster, second is from a Norwegianpod101 lesson.

Now from the book Råta:

Jeg har gjort ting du ville kalle grusomme
As far as I can understand, people will most likely say "Jeg har gjort ting du ville kalt grusomme" even when the present is meant. It's that supposed asynchrony that puzzles me, as with the Russian I mentioned. It keeps puzzling me but I am familiar with the usage anyway, it's just a matter of keeping practicing so as to find it absolutely normal.


I think the perfect form is spreading in modal usage in general. I think you are right about this one too - I know I would say it that way (but with "ha"). I came across this wikipedia article:

https://no.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... d=17903881

Lots of interesting things there, but one thing I noticed was that I would use a 2nd conditional in some cases where the article suggests the 1st conditional. Most notably the present irrealis, which for me is identical to the past irrealis. Apart from that, the perfect form tends to be considered more polite, which is why we ask someone to "have copied". A Swedish professor of mine once expressed her bafflement at being told by someone that "det ville ha vært hyggelig å ta en kaffe sammen en gang" because she perceived this as an irrealis. Obviously, we are much more concerned with giving others enough space here in Norway than they are in Sweden. In Norway, politeness is all about keeping your distance.

On the subject of dropping "ha", I stumbled across this passage from the book "Et hummerliv" by Erik Fosnes Hansen:

Erik Fosnes Hansen wrote:Hun stusset. Hun hadde vel ventet at jeg skulle si noe sånt som at jeg skulle så gjerne ha gjort mer, eller at jeg gjorde bare det enhver livredder fra Norges Røde Kors Hjelpekorps ville gjort, eller at jeg skulle gjerne ha gjort mye mer, men min mentale forberedelse hadde allerede regnet ut at da ville samtalen ingen ende ta, for hun ville da straks si at nei, du kunne ikke gjort mer, eller alle burde ta et gjenopplivningskurs i Norges Røde Kors Hjelpekorps, eller du kunne slett ikke gjort mer, hvorpå jeg ville ha måttet gjenta at neida, jeg skulle jo ha ønsket at jeg kunne ha gjort mer, og på den måten ville vi blitt sittende og sjakre rundt min innsats, hvor mye den var verd, liksom, prute den opp og ned, og det syntes jeg ville blitt uverdig.


If you find any logic in there, let me know...

I think the reason you get those sentences without "ha" in your learning resources, is that it's very common in speech in the Oslo area. Still, I think it would be considered more educated to include it in writing.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Nov 13, 2017 8:46 pm

@jeff and @Mista, thanks for the detailed feedback. I'm more accepting of these features now!

======================
Life getting on track, girls are back home. That left me with little time during the weekend. I did the full Clozemaster on Saturday but only the main ones on Sunday. I did use some waiting time for a headstart reading on both non-fiction and Spanish. That will probably help today. Oh, and two Italian podcast episodes.

My Italian listening comprehension is still a work in progress. Italian is neither a language I've studied for long (French) or one that is pretty close to mine (Spanish - 89% vocabulary equivalence). Studying Italian allows me to evaluate to a large extent the importance of one's own linguistic background and of one's learning efforts in learning a language. Italian is supposedly easier than French; it also has an easier sound system, which makes listening more transparent. Yet my French is miles ahead of Italian in terms of receptive skills, both reading and listening. That's nothing to be ashamed of; on the contrary, that is highly motivating, because it shows there is a lot to learn even on transparent languages. Even when basic comprehension and communication are possible right away, there's still a lot to learn about the subtleties of the new culture. At least for me, that's where the most fun part comes. That is to say I've been having a lot of fun learning French and I can do the same with Italian.

On another field, my trip to Russia during the World Cup is quite likely to happen. So I booked some online classes (only to find out there are in-person in-town teachers available for the same price - have yet to try these). Judging my Russian active skills as virtually non-existent, and considering it will largely be a professional trip, I decided some classes won't hurt. Even once a day might already help, given that I'll keep doing my self-study focused on comprehension. After all, I'm giving classes myself on other languages and reinvesting some of the money won't hurt.

The first Skype class was with a Ukrainian who lives in São Paulo. Having classes in your L1 helps a lot, even if you end up paying more (italki is a real dumping to the world market, especially for bigger languages). I have trouble with cases, which comes as no surprise, but there were times when I got them right and when I made a mistake that was more of a slip of a tongue, because I knew the correct form in theory. Oh, I'm clueless with numbers, but that's my fate for all languages, because I'm a bit lazy to study them. Even with several gaps, at times I would strike a sentence with words I didn't know I had in my active vocabulary, like saying Fortaleza - опасный город or using the genitive singular correctly for 2-4.

All in all, I'm glad I could talk for 1 hour almost entirely in Russian. I have a long way before I can be worth anything as a Portuguese-Russian guide, I know much of my presence will be psycological support to the Brazilians (and I can resort to English at times, anyway). Yet I'm glad I can see a result of all of those years of struggle, even if Russian wasn't a priority until now. Russian is not even my 10th best language (well, let me check...Portuguese, English, French, Papiamento, Spanish, Norwegian, Italian, German, Georgian, Mandarin...well, I think it's actually the 10th), so if I can work as a tourist in Russian, that means all my work on it and the other languages wasn't in vain, and that it's true when people say that new worlds and new possibilites open up when one learns a foreign language.

Now I have exactly 7 months ahead. I don't plan on changing my routine other than trying my weekly class focused on travel situations. No such thing as dropping all other languages for Russian because that a) would make me sad and b) would add extra pressure on me developing greater skills in Russian which probably wouldn't be realistic because the brain needs time to adjust anyway. I'm happy with the way things are and I am willing to try harder now to actually activate the language. If I succeed, that will be a lesson learned which can then be applied to Georgian, Estonian and Modern Greek which are in similar levels.

Second class was with an italki teacher. It was ok, I already saw some improvement, but I think the class in Portuguese works better. Or maybe because it was in the morning, at home, at the desktop. The second one was during my lunch break, at the iPad+phone. Anyway, I have some vocabulary gaps to fill for which I need active repetition. Maybe working on some language islands. It's just that finding the time and mental energy for writing a paragraph seems harder than just paying and showing up for class.

The book by the Danish urbanist is going to have an entire chapter on Brasilia. Call it national shame.

To finish a rather busy Russian day, I had the best reading time ever. Now my gaps in reading are finally at the word level - I can just read with the flow and only interrupt to check one unknown word here and there. So far I'd have to keep flipping back and forth from translation to English. Now I'm actually starting to read.

The day was busier than usual also at work. In the end, it wasn't the Russian class that made the difference, but rather the workload. I still managed to finish all the tasks, though.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue Nov 14, 2017 8:36 pm

So yesterday I managed to finish the non-fiction book on Tourism and started a new one on political economy in French. Reading in French is way faster than in English, which is further evidence that extensive reading at the Cs levels really pays off - but not before that.

The Argentinian podcast has a sequence of bad-sound-quality episodes. Since the episodes are lengthy, that means over 3 hours of bad audio, spread through over a week.

Italian news: I reached a point at the story where the audiobook La luna di carta started to be transparent. So, my Italian probably isn't as decadent as I had through.

Not only Russian reading was easier today: I could make up for the extra time spent in the morning when I went to have lunch having done very little. By the time I got to Russian reading, I was on track again.

Hebrew lessons from pod101 at the absolute beginner are surprising shorts, particularly the dialogues. I'm learning bits and pieces but I'm probably starting actual learning when I finish this level (14 study days to go), because I think I can take more Hebrew a day than that.

Hebrew isn't really short of materials, but the situation is different with Indonesian, where apart from pod101 I lack some other introduction to the colloquial language. Assimil is not recommended, but it'll have to do the job.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:38 pm

Yesterday was a a public holiday and so I didn't study at all. I do have something to report: I had my first trial lesson on Georgian! It went great! I could talk in Georgian 95% of the time. The teacher was really impressed. It was at least twice as good as the Russian classes. Were we in old HTLAL, this would be the moment when I moved Georgian to "Speaks".

I still managed to do some reading - Spanish and non-fiction, which are my priorities for non-study days as they are the first ones I let go off when there's no time in normal study days. I also read the forum a lot, almost catching up at the General and the Language Logs fora.

Today I don't have the same enthusiasm as I've been feeling sick. Hope it's a short illness. It's either food poisoning or too much lactosis or both. I could only study in the morning. After lunch I could barely remain sat at the desktop, and only went as far as the Russian series.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Fri Nov 17, 2017 8:26 pm

I think I'm making a not so good use of my listening material. The ones in the morning and lunchbreak - Spanish and Italian, respectively - are played in a rather busy and noisy atmosphere. It totally contrasts with the walking home slot, which is a French novel. But then I don't always have the mental energy to play the French novel while walking home, having spent so much energy on more difficult languages.

Finish Elena Ferrante's L'Amica Geniale. The first of a series. Not picking the next one right now, though, because I want to listen-read it in Nynorsk. That's an opportunity that can't be wasted. For Italian, I'll pick the easy-cheesy 2nd volume of Scusa ma ti chiamo amore, called Cercasi Niki disperatamente. I need an easy-cheesy one for listening as an audiobook, too, because Montalbano's stories are too entangled for me to catch up as an audiobook, but Emmons has a limited portfolio so far.

Chinese Duolingo is in Beta now. I still have Hello Chinese to work on. Anyway, I think there is a limit of sentence work you can do a day. I'm having trouble sticking to Clozemaster lately.

Another book finished, but this was a quick one: Qué necesitas saber para aprender un idioma extranjero, the Spanish translation of Paul Nation's book. Now i'm finally into novels, starting with Carlos Ruiz Zafón's La Sombra del Viento. I expect fiction reading to flow more quickly than non-fiction, because when reading non-fiction I usually have to learn about stuff with a lot of information to process.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Mon Nov 20, 2017 7:57 pm

Another ordinary weekend: gathered watching material, set a good headstart to the non-fiction reading (and I hope I can finish stuff earlier today), listened to a couple of Italian podcast episodes, read the forum a lot in an attempt to catch up within a few weeks. Only Clozemaster is falling into oblivion. No mental energy for it. I have several Duolingo courses to start, but when I think Duolingo demands even more time, attention and good conditions like listening, I feel discouraged.

Going from Elena Ferrante to easy-cheesy Federico Moccia was a huge changer. Now I'm at the level I expected to have in Italian again, 1-2 unknown words per day. I have to look them up if I want to advance, and I'm also planning on leaving this temporary comfort zone right away. I just want to consolidate what I already know, focusing on activating later.

Finished my non-fiction, narrow-reading source for Russian. Reading 4 books by the same author on the same subject has been quite effective. Now I'm indulging myself fiction. In an attempt to clean up my files, I'll be picking Arthur C. Clarke's, Конец Детства. My long-term plans, though, are turning Russian into another source for listening to the audiobooks I'm really looking forward to listening to.

"Shoes" in Indonesian are a refresher cognate: sepatu. I'm falling in love with Indonesian's syntax, Saying that I should beware preffixes isn't much threatening given that they're not used in the spoken language. After all, it's supposed to be the trickest grammar point. It's like being allowed to speka Russian informally without cases, which doesn't happen. So, yes, Indonesian feels that easy.

Another book in French finished. I don't have a "French" slot anymore so I just happen to read a few non-fiction books in Frenchm like this one: Bon pour la casse, by Serge Latouche. I do have an audiobook slot which remains in use by Kathérine Pancol's final novel in a trilogy.

Now I'm going to keep the behavioral economy/self-help/forum suggestion pattern and read Refuse to Choose in English.

So I finally started fiction in Spanish, the well-known and recommended La sombra del viento. Reading contemporary fiction in Spanish is easy. I want it to revert into a better vocabulary for speaking and more fluency in forming sentences. I also want to speed up so I can read more, as in Italian: my daily quota are 10 pages for Spanish and 4 for Italian, but I want it to get so easy that I can read 3, 5 more without realizing it.
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Re: Expug's 2017 Log - It's now and forever

Postby Expugnator » Tue Nov 21, 2017 8:10 pm

In Portuguese, we say "um passarinho me contou" for a hearsay. In Papiamento I just heard "Un paharitu a bisami". Although I listen to news mostly, some informal interviews are really insightful into the colloquial language (not that it differs from the written language at all, just in some more colorful expressions).

Just for fun, this is my hitlist (those not being hit atm):

Turkish
Swahili
Esperanto
Hindi
Albanian
Aramaic
Catalan
Croatian
Czech
Finnish
Lithuanian
Latin
Persian
Romanian

The remaining ones I have in my full list but which are not mentioned above are less than a dozen, and I'm not wanderlusting for them at all. All that would make a finite list of languages I'd like to learn. Well, that's a relief. If new languages get added to the list it's just for lowered opportunity costs such as really cool resources being added up (Assimil, pod101, dubbed series) or regular contact with native speakers or a thriving learning community.

I'm aiming for active skills in one Slavic language from each subgroup: Russian, Croatian and Czech. The remaining ones I'd be happy with active skills, but from my experience with Romance languages, once the language becomes transparent you have to try hard not to get any A2ish skills after going through one or two textbooks. For example, even if I study Catalan focusing only on reading, at one point I'll have spontaneous recall of purely Catalan forms in my head. That could happen one day with Slovenian, for example, if I got down on studying it after having C1 passive skills in other Slavic languages.

The book "Refuse to Choose" is great light read. It's motivational. I can relate to the author, I have some scanner traits especially with regard to professional habits, but I also have one side that sticks to whatever habit I develop. 9 years exercising regularly and eating more healthy, 6 years studying languages regularly.

The Italian audiobook is transparent, even with a strong Sicilian accent. I'm looking forward to the next ones.

I should stop worrying about picking audiobooks for fear of not finding practical time for reading during hidden moments. I can always read further and then catch up on the audio later, especially when it's split by chapter. After all, all those languages with an alphabet are at a level high enough that allows me to quickly skim through pages to meet audio and sound. It's true that I tend to focus on desktop listening/reading for languages I'm using audiobooks, especially those I paid a lot for, like Norwegian. Yet I believe I can allow myself to be more flexible at this point. I'm referring especifically to German. I'm reading non-fiction in parallel, but since I want to improve listening so I can listen to fiction independently later, I had better resume intensive listening-reading fiction in order to advance further at this skill in order to pave my away to listening-only.

This has come to mind now that I'm done with Jan Gehl's Städte für Menschen (note to self: sometimes 90% read means that the book will end in a couple of text, as notes, bibliography and covers come next and count towards the total).

As with Spanish and general non-fiction, I'm sticking to what I already have available. Completist me wants to know what comes next in Tintenherz, despite the criticism. Let Tintenblut begin. It's going to take me long, but I expect my German to improve in the meanwhile so I can read further during some reading moments. I'm doing this effectively with my non-fiction books, so why not with fiction?

Captain Future is fun but I'm stuck at it for 2 DVDs more (over six hours, that is 50 study days). There are some ordinary American TV series and some German ones I'm looking forward to watch, but I have to admit Captain Future has been effective. There is enough repetition to allow for an overall development of listening skills. Once again, it's my own limited German vocabulary that prevents me from listening better.

After fuzzing around in the material I have, and considering even the blaspheme of going through TY Indonesian, I decided to stick to pod101 for the time being. The Lower Beginner level still has dialogues short enough to be productive at this level. I've found some cool resources but I think I can make a better use of them at an A2ish level.
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