Since we're now almost halfway through January, this is my interim report for this month.
I came up with an exercise which I call "rotation";
Indo-European Online contains ten lesson texts for each ancient language it treats, none of which is specially paraphrased for the sake of learner facility. (In fact, they're not even graded in terms of difficulty.) I went through one lesson per day in six of these languages: Latin, Gothic, Old French, Old English, NT Greek and Classical Greek in this particular order and I have finished working through these sixty texts once without paying too much attention on the grammar sections. Gothic and Old English are parts of my "Gothic" track, and I included Latin and Old French for the sake of retention. Two Greeks have been added as well as I am sensing a greater need for some reading knowledge of the Greek New Testament for the Gothic studies. None of these languages are completely new to me, except that I have never studied Classical Greek
per se and these texts with extensive glossaries allow me a very fine-combing of the chosen samples. I'll be doing this once a month, though I may add or drop one or two from the rotation list.
More specifically, individual language-wise:
Gothic: I haven't spent as much time with Lambdin itself as I first planned to. Although Lambdin is such a wonderful resource, it's printed in the paper too large and it's quite hard to move around reading this text. I'm constantly reviewing 『고트어』("The Gothic Language"), a compact Gothic grammar in Korean that I acquired before. My copy is autographed by one of its authors.
English: Finally had
Word-Hoard shipped. As with any dead languages, vocabulary is the most difficult part of it since it is practically impossible to find an immersion environment, OE being no exception. This is an extremely well-planned and well-written vocabulary guide, a frequency list with detailed etymological notes. Combined with
Klaeber's Beowulf and Beowulf audiobook, my understanding of the language of
Beowulf is slowly growing. Also read the chapters Bede to Alfred in
Old and Middle English: An Anthology and working through
Havelok the Dane, while translating some excerpts on my blog. (in Korean)
Manchu: Working through
Old Manchu Documents at a leisurely pace. I'm recognising some general features and mechanism of the language.
Classical Japanese: I acquired another anthology, 『日本古典文學精解(Refined Anthology of Classical Japanese Literature, henceforth
Refined Anthology)』 in conjuction with 『日本古典文學選(Selections of Classical Japanese Literature, henceforth
Selections)』. I changed my plans to start tackling the Genji at this point; I'm working through both anthologies focusing mostly on the Nara-period.
BGM:
霊知の太陽信仰 ~ Nuclear Fusion by 彩音 ~xi-on~