2017 blog - księżyc

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2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-01-02, 18:10

So, as per usual, things trailed off for a bit last year, but shit happens. But then again, working on a thesis paper will do that. Plus the holidays hit, and well, here we are.
I can't say that things have changed terribly in my plan for this year either. My main focus will be on the following languages and resources:


Hebrew (Biblical) - I'll keep plugging away on Kittel's text. I'm currently on lesson 6, and I've put the words through lesson 10 (in other words the first 100 words in the glossary) into Anki. My plan is to complete at least 3 lessons a week. They're relatively short, so that shouldn't be a problem. I'll also get Anki back up to par, and go from there. Hopefully this year I'll also get into some Modern Hebrew too.

Japanese - I'm going to work on the first lesson of Banno, et al. today for a bit. I plan to do at least 1 lesson a week (though two would be better :lol: ).

German - For a while I was wondering what text to use. I really like the approach to Living German by Buckley & Coggle, but hate the fact that it's non-native audio. i also like Assimil a lot, but am still worried about my skill at recall, as was the problem when i tried it for French. But then it dawned on me, why choose one? I'll use them both. I'll use Buckley as my main text, and, let's say once a week, do at least one dialogue out of Assimil. Then, when I'm done with Buckley, I'll keep going with Assimil. Or so is my plan ATM. I'll probably do the same for a lot of the languages I have Assimil course for. I do find, after my experience with learning both Greek and Hebrew that Anki and grammar textbooks do work well for me.

And, because I always have a hard time deciding which of my heritage languages to learn first, I'll be adding on Polish and Irish as well, as "lesser focuses". I'll try to work on at least one lesson every two weeks for these two, but if i can't i can't. I won't sweat it, I'll just do my best not to stagnate them, and maintain them when I can't work on them.

Polish - I'll use Swan's wonderful text First-Year Polish, along with the self-study workbooks from the U of Ohio.

Irish - As I've always longed to learn Munster Irish (because of family connections to county Cork), I'll be using Teach Yourself Irish by Dillion and Ó Cróinín, and the audio freely available online. (Well, so is the book now too, but I have a paperback copy.)

I'll also make an effort to post things of interest (to me at least) in this thread too. I'd hate to have it go silent for a while again. I can't promise weekly updates this time, but I'll try to monthly and see how that goes.

So far, I've put vocab into Anki for Hebrew, Irish, and Hebrew. I'll finish up with inputting Japanese and German in there today, and start actually learning Japanese and maybe something else too, if time allows.

I was going to post a little blurb about my future goals for later this year, but let's just see how this goes for a month or two first.
Last edited by księżycowy on 2017-03-24, 20:13, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby dEhiN » 2017-01-02, 23:18

Hey księżyc, welcome back and hope your thesis is going well. I was actually briefly considering learning Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek at one point for the new year (mainly to do my own research into one of the divisive issues facing the Christian Church, instead of relying upon various other scholarly interpretations).

Anyway, that's cool that you're adding German to the mix, as well as a bit of Polish and Irish. If you have Skype and have time, I can add you to the UL Skype group. There's a guy on there (old member on here who isn't active anymore) who is a native Polish speaker. I think...or he's just fluent. Either way, you could always practice with him and ask him questions and stuff.

I remember signing up for this Irish resource online called Bitesize Irish Gaelic. I never bought a subscription, but I do get their weekly emails with Irish learning tidbits.

By the way, what happened to French and Koine Greek?
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-01-02, 23:58

Well, I still plan on refreshing some French and Classical/Biblical Greek. I just need a break from French, and my thesis is on the book of Joshua, so it's better to regain my Hebrew first. I'll circle back to them eventually. :wink:

Oh, and I do have Skype, but I rarely (if ever) use it.

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-01-13, 14:29

As the beginning stages are usually the most critical, I figure I'll post updated as close to weekly as I can for a month or two.

I'm attempting to figure out my schedule for juggling all these languages. By that I don't mean I'm having a hard time working on all of them, just working on making the time everyday for some of them. It is working so far though. I've been going through my Anki decks for most of them every other day. Hebrew has been as close to daily as I can manage.

I haven't met my first weeks goal of reaching one lesson completed in Japanese or German, nor have I completed 2-3 in Hebrew. I'm not to worried about it. It's more important that I'm doing something in them. It'll come together, once I get into doing language study again. :P

I've also decided I want to give 「みんなの日本語」 (Minna no Nihongo) a try as my main text. I can't pass up the opportunity to use a text that is shaping up to be a great challenge for me. It feels like the perfect balance between Assimil and Genki. I've also invested in the comprehensive grammar by Routledge.

I'm also very tempted to add the pronunciation (whether in the author's system from TYI, or IPA) for my Irish Anki deck.

More to come.

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-01-24, 17:44

Well, not much to report this time. I've been a little busy with other matters, and thus have not exactly progressed too much further in any of my textbooks.

I have been keeping up with my Anki decks for everything expect Japanese and Irish pretty well though. I'll start those two this week in addition to keeping up well enough with the others.

On a side note, I find myself gravitating towards Polish. 8-)

Japanese
Completed: -/TBA

Hebrew
Completed: 7/TBA

German
Completed: 1/TBA

Irish
Completed: -/TBA

Polish
Completed: -/TBA

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-02-12, 14:09

Thanks to dEhiN's post here, I'm reminded of how I used to run this TAC stuff. I should really get back to doing it that way. So that's exactly what I'm going to do! :D

Goals for Weeks 2/12-2/25*
    Japanese
  • Complete Lessons 1-8 of Reading Japanese by Jorden & Chaplin**
  • Read Units 1-4 and do exercises from Unit's 3 &4 in Basic Japanese by Hamano & Tsujioka
  • Complete Lessons 1-3 of the main text of Minna no Nihongo by 3A

    Hebrew
  • Complete Lessons 8-15 in Biblical Hebrew by Kittel, et al.

    German
  • Complete Lessons 1-5 in Living German by Knight

    Polish
  • Complete Lessons 1-3 in First Year Polish by Swan, and accompanying workbook #1
  • Complete Units 1 & 2 in Basic Polish [First Edition] by Bielc

    Irish
  • Complete Lessons 1-3 in Teach Yourself Irish by Dillon and Ó Cróinín
  • Complete Unit 2 in Basic Irish by Stenson***

*I've decided to take on bi-weekly goals instead of doing weekly goals. We'll see how the first two week period goes, and adjust from there.


**I need to remind myself that where as I can read hiragana pretty efficiently, I still need to go over their proper stroke order. Katakana definitely needs work. So it'd be good to go over the kana lessons in Jorden & Chaplin

***I'm mainly focusing on Munster Irish and the older literary Irish (which means Dillon & Ó Cróinín) but I figure it can't hurt to add some Standard/CO in there every now and again. I also have Ó Sé's Munster grammar, but as that's written in Irish, I can't quite access it yet. :P
I'm skipping Unit 1 in
Basic Irish, as the pronunciation given is based on Connacht Irish, and not Munster. I mean, I want to get into some Connacht Irish, just not yet. One dialect at a time.
Last edited by księżycowy on 2017-02-14, 16:33, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby dEhiN » 2017-02-12, 21:50

księżycowy wrote:Thanks to dEhiN's post here, I'm reminded of how I used to run this TAC stuff. I should really get back to doing it that way. So that's exactly what I'm going to do! :D

I'm glad my post was helpful! I actually have tried to use your methodology in past TACs, and find, for myself, it's a good approach to help me consistently work through a resource like a book.

***I'm mainly focusing on Munster Irish and the older literary Irish (which means Dillon & Ó Cróinín) but I figure it can't heart to add some Standard/CO in there every now and again. I also have Ó Sé's Munster grammar, but as that's written in Irish, I can't quite access it yet. :P
I'm skipping Unit 1 in
Basic Irish, as the pronunciation given is based on Connacht Irish, and not Munster. I mean, I want to get into some Connacht Irish, just not yet. One dialect at a time.

What's Standard/CO? I was thinking Cork Irish, but then couldn't figure out what the O stood for. Also, are the dialects that different in pronunciation?
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-02-12, 23:26

An Caighdeán Oifigiúil = CO. Seeing as the abbreviation is based off the Irish name, it's no wonder you couldn't guess it. :P It's the official "neutral"* form of Irish, rather then the dialectal forms.

The difference between the dialect of Cois Fharraige (which itself is a form of the Connacht dialect) is quite a bit different from Munster. Having looked into it before in Ó Siadhail's textbook Learning Irish, it does not preserve the pronunciation of consonants [mainly the lenied forms, like dh, th, mh, etc.], particularly in middle position, where Munster would preserve them.

One of my favorite examples from Ó Siadhail (and there are many) is:
gnóthaigh /gru:/ - win, gain
I can't find the same word in Munster, but a similarly spelled word is:
gnáthbhéile /gnɑ:-vʹe:lʹi/ - ordinary meal

And, as we can also see, vocabulary is different in places in the dialects. The equivalent of the verbal noun "win, gain" in Munster Irish would be formed from baint (which also means "cut"). And this doesn't even speak to grammar differences between the dialects.

Of course all of this is to be understood as exceptions rather than the rules. All dialects ultimately stem from the same language, and represent the same language at heart.

If nothing else, it makes me very cautious to dive into anything up Munster until I've gotten a good grounding in the dialects. I'm even cautious of the CO.

Having said all that though, I'd ultimately like to learn all three dialects as well as I can (B2-C1, if I can get that far). And surely I'll pick up some CO. I'm more invested in the dialects that CO, but I'd be able to deal with it as nessicary from dealing with the dialects. That's my plan anyway.

*It's very debatable how neutral this form of Irish actually is, let alone authentic. I'll leave it at that, as I wish to not get caught up in the debate.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby dEhiN » 2017-02-13, 6:51

Wow, and I thought Irish was complicated enough due to its orthography-phonology relationship!

By the way, I think the word is lenited, not lenied. At least WIktionary says that the past tense form of the verb to lenite is lenited. But then the adjectival form of lenition is lenis.
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-02-13, 9:20

Yeah, I never know which form of "lenition" to use other than "lenition." :P

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby dEhiN » 2017-02-13, 9:36

I think I first saw lenis and lenited in different academic papers, which is how I know of those words. Fortis on the other hand...I have no clue what the adjectival or past tense form would be!
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby kevin » 2017-02-14, 10:27

księżycowy wrote:An Caighdeán Oifigiúil = CO. Seeing as the abbreviation is based off the Irish name, it's no wonder you couldn't guess it. :P It's the official "neutral"* form of Irish, rather then the dialectal forms.

Important to mention, it's only a written standard (because it's meant for official documents), it doesn't say anything about pronunciation. So you always take the pronunciation from some dialect. And the Caighdeán allows for some variation that could make a text look a bit more like one dialect or another, depending on your choice.

One of my favorite examples from Ó Siadhail (and there are many) is:
gnóthaigh /gru:/ - win, gain
I can't find the same word in Munster

I'm not an expert for Munster, but I would expect /gno:hig/ there (and /grohi/ in Ulster). Teanglann.ie seems to confirm.

I don't actually think the dialects in Irish are that bad. The German ones are probably much worse, except that nobody tries to learn them. Many of the sound changes are completely regular, I think including your example. There are exceptions, of course, and there are lexical differences, but I think it's managable. The grammar isn't that different either, mostly the use of synthetic vs. analytic forms in different cases and a different distribution of lenition and eclipsis in some cases.

*It's very debatable how neutral this form of Irish actually is, let alone authentic. I'll leave it at that, as I wish to not get caught up in the debate.

Probably as authentic as other standard languages that didn't start out as a local dialect of a certain place, but as some kind of mixture. Do you consider Standard German neutral and authentic?

dEhiN wrote:Wow, and I thought Irish was complicated enough due to its orthography-phonology relationship!

The orthography is alright and covers many dialectal differences, it just takes some getting used to (that I could guess the pronunciations for the other two dialects is proof that it's working). If you "simplify" the spelling of a word for one dialect, you would probably destroy it for another one. And in the end, it's not really worse than something like French.

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-02-14, 10:44

Thanks for the additional info on the CO.


And as far as the authenticity of CO, I was more or less expressing that there has been a debate since it's relatively recent creation, no that I think of it as a "lesser" form of Irish. As I stated before, I don't really want to get into the debate, but I will say that while I do have a slight preference for the dialects, that in no way should be read as "down with CO" or the like. The CO is a useful tool in Irish linguistics, and can be likened to Standard German, or Standard English. It's useful and helpful to have a standard. :)

As far as my personal feelings on a standard language being authentic/neutral? I'm not a native speaker, so I tend to butt out on that sort of thing.

There is one thing which make the Irish case different that many other standard languages: Most standard languages are based on one prestigious dialect (like English, German, French, Japanese, Chinese, etc), where as Irish is based on a blending of all three major dialect groups, to varying degrees of influence. I guess that's why I bothered to even bring it up at all. It's an interesting situation.
[EDIT: I had mentioned something about it's recent creation too (1950's) but the Irish language itself has literary traces that go back to Old Irish, same as Standard German which goes back to Old High German. What's interesting about Irish is more so the older literary language was, at least until the CO took over based in Munster, as pointed out in TY Irish and by the guy at the Cork Irish blog. (I don't agree with everything he says on his blog, by the way) What can be said from this is that the change from a prestigious literary dialect (Munster) to the CO would be different, and artificial in relation to the change in say, pre-WWII German to modern German. I make no judgement one way or another myself, because again I'm not a native speaker, nor an Irishman. I simply make note of one interesting fact in the history of the Irish language.]

Wow, I said a lot more than I intended. :P

As a side note, I'm very interested in learning a German dialect two as well, once my Standard German is good enough to access some materials for them. :P
Last edited by księżycowy on 2017-02-14, 14:31, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby kevin » 2017-02-14, 14:03

księżycowy wrote:Most standard languages are based on one prestigious dialect (like English, German, French, Japanese, Chinese, etc), where as Irish is based on a blending of all three major dialect groups, to varying degrees of influence. I guess that's why I bothered to even bring it up at all. It's an interesting situation.

German isn't really based on one prestigious dialect, it's just that these things happened quite a while ago there and the standard has meanwhile completely superseded the dialects in some areas.

Essentially what happened is that in the North, they gave up their local dialects in favour of a more prestigious Southern written language, but didn't really know how things were pronounced in the South, so they used some kind of spelling pronunciation, except with a different interpretation of the spelling. And then this pronunciation ended up becoming the standard, so it matches neither the original Northern dialects nor the Southern ones.

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-02-14, 14:26

It seems it is based on one prestigious dialect historically, no? At least that's what I got from your reply.

IpseDixit

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby IpseDixit » 2017-02-14, 14:30

księżycowy wrote:There is one thing which make the Irish case different that many other standard languages: Most standard languages are based on one prestigious dialect (like English, German, French, Japanese, Chinese, etc), where as Irish is based on a blending of all three major dialect groups, to varying degrees of influence. I guess that's why I bothered to even bring it up at all. It's an interesting situation.


It seems to be a pretty common thing among minority languages (at least in Europe).

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-02-14, 14:33

I can't speak to any other minority languages in Europe. I was speaking in relation to the other, major, European languages I know (of).

IpseDixit

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby IpseDixit » 2017-02-14, 14:59

How successful is this standard variety btw? In the other languages that I know have adopted the same policy (i.e: Ladin, Romansh, Sardinian, Basque) it seems that their "conlang standard" never really took hold (although I think that these standards are more recent than the Irish one is).

Maybe I'm too pessimist, but I've come to the conclusion that as long as you don't have a state which is really interested in making language X the primary language of the country, any attempt of standardization is a waste of time and energy.

Ok, I'll stop the derailment of your thread here.

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Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby linguoboy » 2017-02-14, 15:25

What, y'all were having an Irish discussion party and no one called me? *pus*

dEhiN wrote:Also, are the dialects that different in pronunciation?

Not more than the major dialects of English, I would say.

księżycowy wrote:One of my favorite examples from Ó Siadhail (and there are many) is:
gnóthaigh /gru:/ - win, gain
I can't find the same word in Munster, but a similarly spelled word is:
gnáthbhéile /gnɑ:-vʹe:lʹi/ - ordinary meal

A closer parallel would be gnáthaigh, genitive singular masculine of gnáthach "usual". The CO spelling, gnách, reflects a dialect like Cois Fhairrge where medial /h/ is deleted. The Munster pronunciation is [ˈgnɑːhɪɟ].

kevin wrote:I'm not an expert for Munster, but I would expect /gno:hig/ there (and /grohi/ in Ulster).

/gno:higˊ/ (Der Strich ist nicht unwichitig!) I would also indicate stress placement here, since even though it's predictable, speakers of other varieties won't know the rules.

księżycowy wrote:And, as we can also see, vocabulary is different in places in the dialects. The equivalent of the verbal noun "win, gain" in Munster Irish would be formed from baint (which also means "cut"). And this doesn't even speak to grammar differences between the dialects.

This is just an impression (and may be based in part on using older sources for the latter), but I feel Connacht coins new verbs more readily than Munster.

IpseDixit wrote:How successful is this standard variety btw? In the other languages that I know have adopted the same policy (i.e: Ladin, Romansh, Sardinian, Basque) it seems that their "conlang standard" never really took hold (although I think that these standards are more recent than the Irish one is).

Among native speakers? Not very. They prefer their own dialects for the most part. But the vast majority of speakers (95% of the total or more) are L2 speakers for whom the standard variety is the only one they know.

(An Caighdeán Oifigiúil isn't much older than Euskara Batua, having first been promulgated in the 50s. It drew heavily from the previous Cork literary standard, though. Now that I think of it, there are other parallels as well: Lapurdian had a status as a literary language similar to that of Cork, but the standard was based heavily on a more central dialect, Gipuzkoan, just as CO is most similar to Connacht, the middle of the three dialect areas of Ireland.)
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

księżycowy

Re: 2016-2017 blog - księżyc

Postby księżycowy » 2017-02-14, 15:48

I was actually waiting for you to show up, linguoboy. :P

You're much more knowledgeable on this then I am, that's for sure. Thanks as always.

And by the way, guys, don't worry about derailing my thread. I like the attention. :twisted:


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