TAC 2010 - Karavinka

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Karavinka
Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-04-19, 13:11

By the way, is TAC dying now? Come on, folks, it's not even been halfway through!

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Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby ''' » 2010-04-20, 7:36

Apparently when HTLAL did it first time only one person made it to the end
26/♂/hetero/Hu/★☭/PRESCRIPTIVIST
(en)(hu) - native
(de)(fr)(fa) - intermediate

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-04-28, 6:10

As of the end of April:

The remainder of April was dedicated largely to Middle Korean and Manchu as I needed some break from English. (Though I kept on reading Beowulf from time to time)

I managed to read several books printed in Middle Korean either in woodblock prints or premodern typesets, similar to the scanned page posted on the previous thread. Well, although I wasn't interested in paleography per se, I didn't really have any option as many books are still presented in scanned pages and the modern typed editions are either expensive or unavailable for less commonly studied books. It turned out to be an interesting experience on its own, and now I read them with relative ease. (Manuscripts are still somewhat of a nuisance with the extensive cursive - Korean cursive is much more fluent when it is written vertically, as it was the norm.)

And this leads to Manchu. After having learned to read the script (which wasn't easy, there are many graphemes that represent different sounds that look identical), I'm beginning to study the language per se using Nogeoldae. There is a long out-of-print scanned reprint of Cheongeo Nogeoldae which I obtained from a library and had the scan portions re-scanned and bound at a local printing shop. (As far as I know, there is no modern edition with Romanised Manchu in print) The layout looks like this:

Image
(N.B. This image comes from the Mongolian edition, not Manchu but the layout is essentially the same as Manchu and Mongolian share the same script; I couldn't find a scanned page for Manchu edition.)

There is the main Manchu text in Manchu script with Middle Korean phonetic renditions alongside with it, which are supposed to be read as if Middle Korean. The transcribes had much more flexibility back then than nowadays and it generally reflects the phonetics fairly well - they aren't afraid of forming the syllables in ways that are not found in any normal Korean texts, e.g. the above scan (though it's Mongolian) shows ㅜ /u/ and ㅏ /a/ conbination to denote a diphthong that doesn't exist in Korean and indeed I cannot type this combination with keyboard. Then it is followed by Middle Korean translation of the Manchu text.

Nogeoldae, first developed in Goryeo dynasty period to train the vernacular Chinese interpreters (as opposed to the literary Chinese) follow a storyline of a Korean merchant traveling to Beijing (then Dadu, and "Gemun Hecen" in Manchu) while conversing with various people on various topics. The book was then updated every couple of centuries and became available in Mongolian, Manchu and Japanese as well (although Japanese edition is now lost). The range of the topics is broad enough that it was recorded that a study of this text allowed the interpreters to freely converse with the Manchus ("study" means rote memorisation of the whole book by heart). While not the only text, it was the most popular Manchu study text in Korea. So, that's for the book I finally got my hands on after the long hunt... wish me luck.

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-04-30, 12:50

I more or less finished working through『満州語入門20講Introduction to Manchu in 20 Lessons』, a Japanese textbook for Manchu; although the book is far from complete in its coverage, it serves as a good introduction that allows the reader to quickly grasp the big picture. The verbal forms, which could have been dead confusing had I relied on a Western source, make good sense in direct comparison with Japanese which bears many structural similarities. Still, I have by no means mastered the contents in this book as I didn't terribly bother to memorise the core vocabulary, but I figured that this is sufficient for now as I can start analyzing the Manchu texts with the facing translations either to Chinese, Korean or Middle Korean. ;)

While I browsed through『満州語文語入門Introduction to Literary Manchu』, I don't think that this will be my main textbook for now. I think it will be more useful as a reference after I read more sentences and acquire more passive vocabulary, and I'll have to buy this one since the library that I checked these two books out won't let me extend them anymore.

While I'm using more Korean facing/interlinear translations for the study of this language for the sake of obtainability, Japanese references are certainly superior in many respect. It's kind of regrettable that my Mandarin is not quite sufficient to use the modern Chinese sources.

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-05-11, 6:53

I'm making one last stab at Gothic. (Well, maybe not the last, but last for this year at least) Here are some areas where I felt my skills to be deficient:

* While I recognise the grammatical forms, I cannot produce them.
* My active vocabulary is rather small
* Certain Gothic words without immediately recognisable cognacy continue to challenge me.
* My Greek is not sufficient to make full use of the Greek-Gothic Die Gotische Bibel.

Parsing a sentence and making sense out of it is one thing, getting down to analyse it as to get the nuances of Wulfila's Gothic as opposed to Greek is another. However, I felt that the latter wouldn't be readily possible without knowing Greek better, so what I am left to do for Gothic per se before getting back at Greek is to build a larger vocabulary base.

So, this is what I started. I came up with the list of Gothic words and recorded them myself, in a rather rapid succession of the Gothic and English equivalent. I recorded 100 words at a time, and reading the 100 words in Gothic and English takes 4 to 5 minutes, giving me a chance to play it repeatedly for easier reviews as I study the list itself. And in doing so, I included the words that I could recognise out of cognacy but couldn't recall as well, so some rather obviously basic words as well. So far, I made a list of about 1000 words, with a plan to go about 2000, by the time which I think I would be on good ground to work on the structure, not the vocabulary of the language. (I might be wrong in my estimates)

And of course, my Gothic pronunciation may not be on par with the scholarly standard, and I do find my articulation to be of quality less than desirable. Well, but I don't think it's too much of a problem since it's a dead language and it's a common practice of the Academia to discuss the phonology of dead languages without ever articulating them.

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-05-17, 5:53

Having spent some time hunting down the Manchu texts, I managed to secure a small selection of Manchu literature. Some of these are from the old Joseon Dynasty Bureau of Interpreters to train Manchu language interpreters, the others original Manchu literature. The Bureau texts were somewhat easier to obtain as they were reprinted in Korea, the Nogeoldae in 90s and the others in 50s. (Out of print for a long time indeed, I had to make copies out of the library book) Now, they are all "crutches" in a way that they contain facing interlinear translations into either Middle, Late Middle or Modern Korean.

I'm still hunting for more texts, particularly the Veritable Records and Tanggu Meyen, but here's what I came to secure so far. I hope they may be of interest to those keen on the arcane knowledge. ;) And well, given that few people bother to read Manchu nowadays, finding the hard-to-find texts itself is worth mentioning.

Bureau of Interpreters (These don't carry Manchu titles)
* 『小兒論』(Discourses of a Small Child)
* 『八歲兒』(Eight-years Old Child) - these two books are fairly short works to train the basics of Manchu. Both contain stories of a genius kid who answers difficult questions and are rewarded for their genius. They were legacy texts from the old Jurchen department of the Bureau as it was reformed to Manchu, and I heard these tales have parallels in other Tungusic folktales such as among the Evenki, but I haven't had a chance to verify it. Woodcut print facsimile.
* 『淸語老乞大』(Mr. Cathayan or "Chinese Native") - a phrasebook discussed at some length above. Woodcut print facsimile.
* 『三譯總解』(The Romance of Three Kingdoms) - a selection of the enormously popular Chinese novel into Manchu by Kicungge, paralleled with Middle Korean in order to be used as a reader. I have two copies, one in the modern Romanised edition, the other in the original woodcut facsimile. These four books are quite jokingly referred as 淸學四書 "Four Books of Qing Studies", an apparent pun on the "Four Books" of Confucian Canon.

* 『同文類解』(Thematic Exegesis of Languages Combined) - Chinese, Middle Korean and Manchu dictionary in thematic categories. This is less of a dictionary as it's difficult to find an entry in the thematic groupings (rather than alphabetical) but more of a wordlist that the interpreters might have used to fill in his vocabulary in specific areas. Woodcut print facsimile, and the Manchu words appear only as transcription into Korean script. These five books complete the Manchu curriculum of the Bureau.

Histories
* 『大遼國史Dailiyoo gurun i suduri bithe』(History of the Khitan Empire) - The Emperor Qianlong ordered the histories of three nomadic empires who conquered over China, that is: Khitan Liao, Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan. This is the Khitan Liao, apparently composed as a separate work from the Chinese official history. Romanised and interlinear with Modern Korean, no Manchu script.
* 『舊滿洲檔Ejehe dangse』 (Old Manchu Records) - the early pre-Qing times of Nurhaci and his people. Romanised and interlinear with Modern Korean, no Manchu script.

Other
* Nishan saman i bithe (The Nissan Shamaness) - somewhat later Manchu tale of a powerful Shamaness. Romanised and interlinear with Modern Korean, with the manuscript facsimile as the appendix.

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-05-22, 7:33

I'm working on getting the Gothic grammar down into my brain by memorising sentences and trying to translate mentally into Gothic when possible (the major restriction is of course the vocabulary). Along the way, I ordered two more books:

* An Introduction to the Gothic Language by Bennett. Lambdin's book with the same title is very well-organised except one thing: Lambdin doesn't bother marking the diacritics commonplace in Gothic primers. Well, Die Gotische Bibel doesn't have any diacritics either and Lambdin doesn't include them because he doesn't deem it evident that Gothic made that three-way distinctions using same graphs in Gothic: while I don't want to challenge either side of the argument but I want to keep my phonetics consistent, and decided to use Bennett along with it. Also, I want some more exercises.

* From Old English to Standard English by Freeborn. I actually used this book last year from the library and wanted to get back to this book. It's a history of English taught with the actual source texts, oftentimes with the facsimile of manuscript or early prints as well. Unlike other histories of English, Freeborn's book treats each dialect variants independently as they surge out of the manuscripts, which is particularly helpful with Middle English.

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-06-06, 17:59

I'm almost halfway through and after some reflections, I decided to take down some of the languages from my TAC list, leaving only Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, Middle Korean, Manchu and Classical Japanese.

Among these, I might daresay that I already achieved my goal with Middle English and Middle Korean, since I am at a point where I can more or less freely read these languages, with occasional want for the more obscure vocabulary. The extant texts in Middle Korean show very little dialectal variations and this made it easier to learn to read the texts, while Middle English was much more problematic. I am chiefly concerned with the Southern (London) and Northern dialects, without paying too much attention on Kentish or West Midlands - that is to say, when I read parts of Kentish Agenbyte of Inwit or West Midlands Pearl, my comprehension rate is somewhat lesser than Chaucer or other Northumbrian texts. I made the adjustments on my profile page with giving three stars to these two medieval languages, indicating I can read the extant texts with ease. Worin Cheongangjigok (The Song of the Moon Shining over Thousand Rivers) and the works of Geoffrey Chaucer are the exemplary texts of the two Medieval languages that I treated, as the "standard" from which to work on other dialects.

That leaves Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Manchu and Classical Japanese to work on for the remainder of the year.

I'm struggling with Gothic as I became quite dissatisfied with the passivity of my skills, and I decided to turn it into a more active one so I can write some new Gothic on my own. Now I have two Gothic books to work on by Bennett and Lambdin, both having the same title An Introduction to the Gothic Language. While Lambdin is more exhaustive and provides more practice sentences and exercises, Bennett provides more continuous narratives from the extant Gothic texts themselves, and I think the two books complement each other fairly well. Lambdin's glossary itself is what makes the book worth buying as it contains the words not only of the textbook but of the entire extant Gothic corpus. The issue with trying to write something in Gothic is oftentimes the vocabulary, what I try is to re-tell some of the Gospel stories or other ancient stories such as Beowulf or Egil into simple prose narratives. (Though I'm not posting any as I'm still concerned about the possible mistakes.) Why am I doing this? Well, I want this skill so my Gothic can serve as a point of reference in regarding all other Old Germanic languages, as well as a link to the broader Indo-European.

Anglo-Saxon is an important language to me as it is the link between historical English linguistics and the Germanic comparative, but I didn't spend a terrible amount of time working on the grammatical exercises as I did with Gothic, for I was concerned with the possible confusion that I may make. Still, with its better-preserved corpus with diverse literary texts, I still read this language from time to time, sometimes with bilingual texts and sometimes just on its own. When I read Beowulf, I miss a great deal of its subtleties, but I can follow the narrative. Reading prose is (of course) much easier than verse. Old and Middle English c. 890-1450 An Anthology is a good source of texts and one can literally swim back and forth between Old and Middle Englilsh, with the intermediate stages such as Peterborough Chronicle addenda, Ancrene Wisse and Ormulum. Freeborn's From Old to Standard English is another book worthy of recommendation, though it is somewhat short in the Old English parts.

And the sweet Manchu. Manchu has a very straightforward grammar with little anomalities and it's agglutinating, which makes it even intuitive to me. The main problem lies in the vocabulary in my case and I'm reading various texts from time to time to develop more passive vocabulary and strengthen my grammar, though I have to admit I slacked off with Manchu for about two weeks.

Classical Japanese - I definately will get back at this, but I'm planning it after working through the Gothic grammatical exercises.

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-06-11, 7:49

子曰:「學而時習之,不亦說乎?有朋自遠方來,不亦樂乎?人不知而不慍,不亦君子乎?」

Qaþuþ-þan sa Laisareis, Siponjan jah taihwan ina in mela, ni freiþs ist? Frijondeis qimun us landa fairra, ni audags ist? Mans ni ufhausjand imma iþ ni modags ist, ni soþs laisareis ist?

Then quoth the Master, To be a disciple and practice it in times, isn't it pleasant? Friends come from the distant land, isn't it joyful? Men understand him not but he is not angry, isn't he a true Teacher?

-- Analects of Wullfila, I:1 :wink:

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-06-23, 7:08

I recently acquired Richmond Lattimore's The New Testament. Lattimore's translation is one of the most literal and faithful to the Greek original, but it is still surprisingly readable. Being a classical scholar of Greek, his translation of the New Testament reads as Greek literature should read. With this translation as a reference at hand, I'm reading more from the New Testament both in Greek and Gothic. My major problem still lies in the vocabulary but: if you already know what is being said, it becomes easier to acquire the vocabulary treated therein.

In conjunction with the Greek-Gothic bilingual Die Gotische Bibel, I'm also reading from Reader's Greek New Testament from Zondervan and using Metzger's Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek - I highly recommend both. Zondervan's Reader's GNT has gloss for all uncommon words appearing 30 times or less, and Metzger has a frequency list down to the words appear 10-times or more. Study Metzger and read your GNT; you don't need a lexicon anymore.

So, while studying Gothic and Greek grammar and vocabulary on one hand, I also read the texts themselves; I read a chapter in Lattimore and then read Gothic and Greek. I'll see when I'll be able to wean myself from translations altogether (I think it may take some time)

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-06-29, 0:26

End of June:

I've been making a considerable amount of progress in Koine Greek. Well, I didn't include Greek in my TAC list in the first place but I've been learning it anyways so I thought why not include it officially at the halfway point. Also, I'll add Latin for a similar reason as well.

I've been able to learn quite thoroughly the high frequecy vocabulary and I got fairly familiar with the grammar, though still I'm confused with one point or another. When I read A Reader's Greek New Testament, the footnotes for the low-frequency vocabulary are generally sufficient for me to understand the contents. My increased understanding of Greek allows me to make a better use of Die gotische Bibel, with which I can read back and forth between Greek and Gothic. My previous knowledge of the contents allows me quite a room to guess the meanings of the unknown words but I am quite lost when I encounter it in another context where I didn't expect the word. My passive vocabulary might be slowly increasing but I still need more conscious treatment regarding the vocab.

I added another powerful tool to my study : Bibleworks 8. Basically, it's a software designed to help you working through the original texts of the Bible. As I read a Greek text - both NT and LXX - the only thing I need to do is to move the cursor above the unfamiliar word and the program gives the analysis of the word: for example, subjunctive aorist third person plural. Unfortunately, Bibleworks (as of now) doesn't include Gothic in its database. A user-custom database for the Gospel of Mark is available, but it doesn't contain the analysis function. It's still useful if I want to compare the Gothic Mark with other versions, but wulfila.be or Die gotische Bibel would suffice just as well. Moreover, my reading knowledge of Gothic is almost there.

Although it gives me a false illusion that I'm making much progress in Ancient Greek per se, I'm quickly lost with the first sentence of Plato. (Same can be said of Latin as well, though to a lesser degree: I read the Vulgate quite confidently, but Cicero's orations are still too slow and confusing.)

That leaves: Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Manchu, Classical Japanese and Biblical Greek and Latin for the remainder of the year. I can pretty much safely say that I'm reading Middle English or Middle Korean to my satisfaction to an extent, so I'll focus on the other ones for now.

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-10-30, 16:44

Okay, I have to explain my absence. I changed my job and it took me some time to get used to it. I paid much less attention to the languages in the mean time, but I did not neglect them altogether.

I quickly dropped Koine Greek and Latin that I (somewhat hastily) added last time.

I think I can safely say I'm "done" with Gothic for my purpose for this year, all I need to do more is to read still more Bible in Gothic until I feel more natural. I'd say my comprehension rate is above 85% by now, I use dictionary less and less. This is partly due to the fact that I more or less know the contents anyways.

I'm not done with Manchu and Classical Japanese. I'm working more with the actual texts than grammars in these languages, though I'll soon do a grammar recap to get the fine points. I'm slowly digitizing some Manchu texts by copious transcription and typing as well, some of which (I hope) may appear before the end of this year.

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-11-06, 21:13

As I mentioned in the last comment, I'm working on transcribing some Manchu texts that I hope will start publishing sometime next year. Currently I'm working on Ilan gurun i bithe or Manchu translation of a classic Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in a 10-chapter excerpted version published in 1680 in Korea, based on later 18th century printed edition. The plan is to continue with Dailiyoo gurun i suduri bithe, or History of the Khitan Empire. I thought I might share the first part of it here - the progress overall is at about 30 percent, I would say, but the proofreading may take long. (Oh, who invented this alphabet? Oh, well, it was Nurhaci.)




--------------
Ilan gurun i bithe 1
三譯總解第一
ilan: three
gurun: country, kingdom
i: genitive particle
bithe: book

Fung I Ting de Lioi Bu Diyocan i baru efihe
鳳儀亭呂布戱貂蟬
Fung I Ting: name of a gazebo
de: locative particle
Lioi Bu: personal name
Diyocan: personal name
baru: towards
efihe: have flirted

Wang Yun ebšeme ilubufi hendume “uba gisurere ba waka mini emgi elben i boode genefi turgun be gisureki.”

Wang Yun hurriedly stopped him, saying "this is not a place to talk. Let's go to my humble place with me and talk about the matter."

Wang Yun: personal name
ebšeme: hurriedly
ilibufi: has stopped
hendume: saying
uba: here
gisurere: saying
ba: place
waka; is not
mini: with me
emgi: together
elben i boo: humble house
de: locative particle, here "to"
genefi: to go (genembi), subjunctive
turgun: thing
be: object particle
gisureki: let us speak

Lioi Bu uthai Wang Yun be dahame Wang Yun i boode genefi morin ci ebuhe manggi (1:1a)
Lioi Bu immediately followed Wang Yun and went to Wang Yun's place. After he descended from his horse

uthai: immediately
dahame: following
boo: house
morin: horse
ci: ablative particle, from
ebuhe: has descended
manggi: after

Wang Yun Lioi Bu be amargi boode dosimbuha
Wang Yun took Lioi Bu to the back of his house

amargi: back
amargi boo: back room, building
dosimbuha: has taken

Wang Yun hendume “jiangjiyūn ai turgunde mini sakda niyalma be wakalambi?”
Wang Yun saying, "general, why do you wrong me, an old man?"

jiyangjiyun: general (from Chinese)
ai: what
turgun: matter
mini: me
sakda: old
niyalma: man
wakalambi: to wrong

Lioi Bu hendume “niyalma minde alanjime simbe emu sargan jui be sejen de tebufi cenghiyang ni boode (1:1b) benehe sembi tere Diyocan waka oci we?”
Lioi Bu saying, "a man has told me that you sent your daughter to the magistrate's house, carrying her on a chariot, if it is not Diyocan, then who is it?"

minde: to me
alanjime: has notified
simbe: to you
emu: one
sargan: woman
jui: child
sejen: chariot
tebufi: carried
cenghiyang: magistrate
ni: genitive particle (same as i, it becomes ni after -ng or vowel)
benehe: has sent
sembi: to be so
tere: that
waka: not
oci: to be
we: who


For those who are interested, Lioi Bu (Lü Bu) is the most formidable warrior of the period, who is aligned with Dungdzo (Dong Zhuo), the "magistrate" who wields an absolute power over the emperor. Both men are known for their greed, so loyal Wang Yun plans to put the two men at odds by staging a double marriage contract with them - Lioi Bu and Dungdzo both think Diyocan (Dao Chan) is meant to be his wife, and Lioi Bu thinks Dungdzo robbed him of his wife and Dungdzo thinks Lioi Bu is flirting his girl. Ultimately, Lioi Bu kills Dungdzo.

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-11-08, 2:46

At the beginning of this year, I set two tracks of language studies:

Consisting primarily of Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Middle English in the first two quarters and Norse in the second. My goals are mainly to read the extant texts.

I never got to Norse, but I can say that I have more or less fulfilled my goals with Gothic and Middle English. Most of the improvements were in Gothic, I have been reading Middle English for a long time already but I have scrutinized and translated a sizable chunk of Middle English in the earlier half of the year, which allowed me to grasp finer points of the language. I have learned much more Anglo-Saxon than I did as well and I can somehow manage the prose texts in Anglo-Saxon, but poetry is still somewhat beyond my reach.

Another improvement was made in German. In fact, my summer months up to September were mostly spent with reading Modern German and I worked with Routledge Basic and Intermediate German, German for Reading Knowledge, and a handful of readers printed in Korea. After that, I reviewed the Gothic that I learned and and the two barbarian languages somewhat complemented each other.

Consisting of Classical Chinese, Classical Japanese, Middle Korean, Manchu and Ainu.

Again, I never got to Classical Chinese. I did a quick review of Classical Japanese grammar but didn't read too much texts; the major gain this year on this track were Middle Korean and Manchu, where my knowledge was close to zero at the beginning. True, I had a lot of leverage with Middle Korean due to my Modern Korean background. Reading facsimiles was not an easy task, but still very fun - though I am yet familiar with manuscripts, which are written in vertical cursive. (!) I'm pleased with the amount of Manchu that I have learned and it was the single-most important gain this year. As for Ainu, I had occasional jabs now and then but it wasn't very systematic - at best, I tried to maintain what I knew, not to learn new things.

So, for the remainder of the year:

* More Gothic. Rather than reading isolated passages and excerpts, the plan is to finish reading the extant Biblical Gothic corpus from Matthew to Philemon (where the fragments end).
* More Manchu. I need more vocabulary and reading practice of the Manchu script, which I can read but somewhat slowly. Also, I'd like to develop a better penmanship.
* And finally fulfill my initial self-promise of Ainu. The textbook is 『カムイユカラでアイヌ語を学ぶ』(Learning Ainu from Kamui Yukar, in Japanese) - a textbook that teaches Ainu folk songs and move to recitations of epic poetry, the Kamui Yukar.


ps. folks, it's still 2010.

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Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby ''' » 2010-11-08, 5:29

we know, we're just prepping for 2011. It's all exciting and stuff. Rest assured that I am still following the 2010 TAC and the contest wont end till new years eve
26/♂/hetero/Hu/★☭/PRESCRIPTIVIST
(en)(hu) - native
(de)(fr)(fa) - intermediate

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-11-09, 16:46

『カムイユカラでアイヌ語を学ぶ』(Learning Ainu from Kamui Yukar)

Okay, I want to make a few remarks about this remarkable (bad pun) textbook. There are other "sing and learn" types of books where they teach you how to sing a few childish songs (or sometimes popular music, for more intermediate level learners) but they don't teach you how to translate an epic. Much less to sing it.

Learning Ainu from Kamui Yukar takes a very direct approach to this. In the first lesson, it begins with songs that are one or two lines long - maybe they should be more properly called "spells" rather than "songs", such as asking a dirty water to sink, bitter herb to sweeten, etc. The songs get longer as the lessons proceed and take a more magical / ritualistic natures, such as helping out the sun in case of eclipse, threatening to punish a mythical giant fish for causing earthquake, helping for protection in case of boat trip, etc. And two old Ainu ladies recorded all these things sun on the accompanying CD - which makes it a great resource to memorize words, sentences and a various genres of oral "literature"! Even a one-liner spell gets a paragraphs-long explanations to give you proper backgrounds. Basically, it's an initiation to the Ainu oral culture.

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-11-10, 6:16

Gothic Bible:
Finished reading Matthew and John. Next: Luke

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-11-14, 13:26

Image

Yet another Sunday evening spent like this...

Is there anyone who'd like to take notes in landscape? ;)

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Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby ''' » 2010-11-14, 13:37

dear god teach me. that is sexy.
26/♂/hetero/Hu/★☭/PRESCRIPTIVIST
(en)(hu) - native
(de)(fr)(fa) - intermediate

Karavinka

Re: TAC 2010 - Karavinka

Postby Karavinka » 2010-11-19, 10:06

I just found a book titled "History of the Daur (or Dagur)" which (reputedly) contains texts in Daur and Manchu - and yes, I ordered it immediately.B I'm really amazed how a book like this, printed in 1989, could still be in print in country like South Korea. I bought it for Manchu, but come to think of it, I know there is a monograph on Daur and Evenki (in single volume) still in print...

But while I'm really overjoyed with this finding, it could be the case that the online retailer somehow failed to update its availability. That was the case just a few days ago when they told me they couldn't find a book I wanted to order...


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