Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Iversen’s Multiconfused Log (see p.1!)

  Tags: Multilingual
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
3959 messages over 495 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 183 ... 494 495 Next >>


Fasulye
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2012
Moderator
Germany
fasulyespolyglotblog
Joined 5597 days ago

5460 posts - 6006 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto
Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1457 of 3959
01 November 2009 at 3:31pm | IP Logged 
Your Summary of October 2009

1. 19 October 2009

I could understand SOME POSTS in the Danish thread, not the WHOLE Danish thread with my two lessons of Danish so far.

2. 22 October 2009

This sentence is double:

"Fasulye (ESP): Has been to a meeting in Düsseldorf with some other Esperanto 'samideojn'. She won't confuse Danish and Turkish."

And it should be corrected: These Esperantists are called "samideanoj".

So just delete one of the two identical sentences.

Fasulye

Thanks for the corrections, Iversen!




Edited by Fasulye on 01 November 2009 at 4:43pm

1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1458 of 3959
01 November 2009 at 3:49pm | IP Logged 

done

Hobbema wrote:
(...) For wonderful American compositions based (in part) on traditional American songs in English, listen to Copland's "Appalachian Spring", "The Tender Land", or "Rodeo". If you are into anything contemporary Charles Ives' "Three Places in New England" will do, but his stuff is pretty dissonant.

American English tunes with American English phrasing into orchestral music. Good stuff.


During the time where I didn'¨t study languages I had plenty of time for other interests, and one of them was classical music. I listened to it, I played and I even wrote it ... so it can't come as a surprise that I also collected it. My main collection was established in 1991-92, and it comprises 678 music cassettes with 90 or 100 minutes duration each. It takes years to listen through all that, so I have just bought a small number of CDs since then.

I have of course tried also to get a fair representation of 'classical' composers from the States, so not only Copland and Ives, but also people like Piston, Harris and Hanson are represented (but not Glass, - he makes me fall asleep). But you don't hear much of that music in Denmark, - which is surprising when you consider the impact of American jazz, rock and whatever else here.

As I see it there are several sources of inspiration for American 'classical' music: popular cowboy tunes, gospels, jazz (through Scott Joplin and Gershwin) .. and not least European late romantic music. The big film composers from Newman, Steiner and Korngold til John Towner Williams stand on the shoulders of people like Liszt, Wagner and Richard Strauß - in fact Korngold was a fugitive from Austria and deeply steeped into that romantic tradition. But for me the quintessential American classical music is something like Copland's third symphony, which basically is a spruced-up version of a lonely cowboy sitting at the campfire and blowing in his old and trusty mouth organ.


Edited by Iversen on 01 November 2009 at 3:57pm

1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1459 of 3959
01 November 2009 at 11:01pm | IP Logged 
FR: Aujourd'hui, j'ai scanné 140 photographies d'un voyage dans la Vallée de la Loire en France que nous (ma mère, ma sœur et moi-même) ont fait en 2006. Incroyablement, ce fut une tournée couronnée de succès où nous avons vu deux châteaux en moyenne par jour (plus musées, zoos, supermarchés et autres attractions). Mais maintenant elle a obtenu un petit ordinateur portable ('notebook'), et ainsi voudrait-elle bien pouvoir regarder toutes ses photos sur l'écran.

SW: Medan jag satt där och fyllde bilder i scannern, kunde jag endda se tv, och här så jag även en sändning på svenska TV: "Jag älskar språk". Vi följde i spåren av en svenskt rappare från Uruguay, som besökte sin gamla skola, kollegor och sin gamla mor fra Uruguay, som uttalte "Castellano" som "Casteshano". Men annars var hon en klok gammal dam som en gång längesedan hade sett till att sonen sin fikk lärt sig bra svenska.

GE: Und ab zwanzig Uhr sah ich dann eine Sendung im ZDF über Erzbischof Willigis, der den Bau der ersten großen Kathedrale in Mainz begonnen hat. Dreißig Jahre hat es gedauert, bis das immense Gebäude fertig war - am 28. Oktober 1009. Und dann wurde es ihm mitgeteilt, daß es brannte! Der Dom ist fast gänzlich niedergebrannt, aber wurde natürlich wiederaufgebaut. Das hat aber der Willigis nicht miterlebt, - er starb in 1011 und wurde in der viel bescheidenere Sankt Stephanskirche beigesetzt.

----------

I have spent several hourse today scanning my mother's photographs from a travel to the Loire Valley in France which she, my younger sister and myself undertook in 2006. Now she has however got a notebook computer, and of course she would very much like to have all her pictures transferred to it. This is just the beginning..

At least I can watch TV (and eat) while putting photos into the scanner. First I saw a program from Sweden about bilinguales. We followed an Uruguayan-Swedish rap singer who visited his old school, some collegues and his old mom from Uruguay, who pronounced "castellano" as "casteshano". Otherwise a wise old lady, who made sure that her son learnt to speak excellent Swedish by taking him out of the Spanish class.

After that I watched a program (Terra X) about archbishop Willigis, who let build the first cathedral at Mainz ("Die goldene Stadt", as the Germans say). The building process took 30 years (which actually was quite fast in those days), and it was finished October 28 1009. However poor Willigis had hardly joined his canons to celebrate before he got the ominous message that the church had caught fire. It burnt down, but of course it was rebuilt - though too late for poor Willigis, who died in 1011. He lies buried in the neighbouring St.Stephans church.


Edited by Iversen on 01 November 2009 at 11:10pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Hobbema
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5491 days ago

541 posts - 575 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Portuguese, French, Dutch

 
 Message 1460 of 3959
02 November 2009 at 3:57pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:


As I see it there are several sources of inspiration for American 'classical' music: popular cowboy tunes, gospels, jazz (through Scott Joplin and Gershwin) .. and not least European late romantic music. The big film composers from Newman, Steiner and Korngold til John Towner Williams stand on the shoulders of people like Liszt, Wagner and Richard Strauß - in fact Korngold was a fugitive from Austria and deeply steeped into that romantic tradition. But for me the quintessential American classical music is something like Copland's third symphony, which basically is a spruced-up version of a lonely cowboy sitting at the campfire and blowing in his old and trusty mouth organ.


You have a good understanding of the roots of American orchestral music! And I have to say that I don’t have very many discussions with anyone, European or American, that involve both Roy Harris and Walter Piston.

There are many classical music “purists” who have a disdain for American orchestral music, I suspect partly because we are a relatively new country over here and there are those who feel that anything less than 100 years old can’t be that good; also partly because the quality standard and tradition have always been European, (including Russia, I would say).   And I myself truly believe there could never be another Beethoven.

But would you agree that the sources of inspiration as you have listed above are exactly the same for traditional and contemporary European orchestral music? Folk tunes, religious traditions and music, the music of ethnic groups, and the work of those who have gone before; the sources are common regardless of geography.   And your earlier hypothesis that language and speech patterns influence style very much makes sense, with these differences and those many different inspirations producing a fantastic diversity in styles of orchestral music around the globe.

As to what what is good or what has value, Charles Darwin can explain what lasts and what doesn’t. After all, J.S. Bach is still with us: I suspect many of our current film composers won’t last 20 years.

Some time I would be very interested to hear about what musical instrument you played and what prompted you to want to write music. I myself am an amateur musician and still play with various groups in the community, and while I love it I am still keeping my engineer job because as a musician I probably have more enthusiasm than talent.

1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1461 of 3959
02 November 2009 at 5:07pm | IP Logged 
I would say that American classical music started late (Virgil Thomson didn't really sound American) and it soon drowned in other kinds of music: first jazz, then swashbuckling romantic film music and from the 50s rock and other kinds of popular music with only sporadic influences from classical music. In fact I don't think that the composers I mentioned are seen as inferior, they are just so unfamiliar that they are seen as experiments every time they are put on a concert program. It is much safer just to play Beethoven once more. This stands in total contrast to the succes of hollywood films, TV soaps and popular music (rock, rap etc.) which definitely have brought the English language out to the whole world. German, Russian, French and Italian music dominate the classical concert programs while English and American music are relatively rare there, but I daresay that Anglophone popular music has taken revenge.

I took recorder lessons from I was around 8, dropped it for the violin a year later, then added the cello from I was around 13-14 years orld, and finally I bought a piano in the 80s and started to hammer away. I started to compose (urged by my violin teacher) around age 10, then stopped when I was something like 22 (because I found the course of contempory 'composition' music disgusting). Then I took up composing again in the 80s because I played with some people that were genuinely interested in playing my works. However I stopped abruptly both playing and composing in the 90s because the narrowminded classical amateurs I happened to be playing with at the time wouldn't even try to play my music (maybe I wasn't dead enough), and since then I have only been listening to music (which I would compare to being a mere lurker here). I don't think I'll ever start again, even if I found some sympathetic persons - I have other interests now.


Edited by Iversen on 02 November 2009 at 5:15pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Hobbema
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5491 days ago

541 posts - 575 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Portuguese, French, Dutch

 
 Message 1462 of 3959
03 November 2009 at 3:12pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
....In fact I don't think that the composers I mentioned are seen as inferior, they are just so unfamiliar that they are seen as experiments every time they are put on a concert program. It is much safer just to play Beethoven once more....

I took recorder lessons from I was around 8, dropped it for the violin a year later, then added the cello from I was around 13-14 years orld, and finally I bought a piano in the 80s and started to hammer away. I started to compose (urged by my violin teacher) around age 10, then stopped when I was something like 22 (because I found the course of contempory 'composition' music disgusting).....I don't think I'll ever start again, even if I found some sympathetic persons - I have other interests now.


How and what music is performed is subject to the same narrow-mindedness seen everywhere in the rest of the world, I guess. Your experience was unfortunate, but listening has its own joys, and with your background I would think you would have an even deeper appreciation and understanding than you otherwise would without that history.

There’s a book called “Piano Lessons” by Noah Adams of our National Public Radio. He bought a piano and started taking lessons at the age of 50 just for the sheer joy of it. It’s clear from the book that virtuosity was never even a goal for him, but maybe the thing to remember is to not worry about being the best at something, but to enjoy what you’re doing. Coincidentally, that book was part of my inspiration for starting to learn a new language in my 40s.

I was interested in another comment you made about the public’s lack of interest of lesser known composers due to unfamiliarity. We have plenty of that too, and the (what I could call “mainstream” listener) has little tolerance for anything contemporary.   It’s a stereotype I suppose, but many people here perceive the European audience as being more sophisticated and cultured.

By the way, I saw reference in a recent post about difficulties of using word lists for left-handers. Isn’t the method just a matter of folding your paper so you line up your list of words with an empty column on the page, and then either doing the forward or reverse translation from memory? And then refolding every time to line up a new column? I believe you had said the method could be adapted for a left-hander, I don’t understand what difference it would make, so maybe there’s something in the technique I’m missing – any clarification you could give would be appreciated.

1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1463 of 3959
04 November 2009 at 12:09am | IP Logged 
I think that the music played at concerts obeys Zipf's law, i.e. the same law that governs word frequencies and number of postings in a language forum: a small number of very frequent items dominate, and from there the frequencies slope down hastily downwards to the great majority which leave no or close to no fingerprint in the statistiques. The big difference is that you don't have to be a genius to write a lot of posts, while it helps if you want to be one of the immortals among classical composers. My reaction to that is to search for the less played composers, including the lost generation of American composers. By the way I have in my collection a very dissonant and short piece called Sunthreader by a certain Carl Ruggles, who only published four pieces in his whole life. His wife must have been either a very rich or a very industrious, but in any case far too patient woman. What a slacker!

When I write about word lists I generally assume that the 'first-round' columns are to the left and the repetition columns are to the right. This is practical for righthanded people because they then have a free left hand to cover things. on the other hand lefthanded persons should probably have the repetition columns to the left. Thingsd become more complicated when we speak about the subcolumns (three in each first round column and two in each repetition column. Even lefthanders have to write Latin letters from the left to the right, and therefore you have to know exactly where to start each word. If you allow so much space that you can follow draw thin vertical guiding lines then it is feasible to invert the order - but I use the available space to the last millimeter, so I have to start from a border line and use the space as frugally as possible.

FR: Ma lecture d'autobus-retournant-de-mon-boulot pour cette semaine est un peu risqué: "Parlons Géorgien" d'Irène Assatuiani et Michel Malherbe. Le risque c'est évidemment qu'il pourrait m'induire à étudier plus sérieusement cette language exotique et rarement étudié. Mais je vais me borner a reapprende l'alphabet (que je savait déchiffrer quand j'ai visité la Géorgie en 2000) et de me noter quelques particularités dans la grammaire. Par example on a 7 cas des substantifs (dont un 'narratif'), et on emploit des flexives à la fin des mots. Mais pour compliquer les choses on n'a pas de préposittions, mais plutôt des postpositions qui son't attachées aux substantifs après la désinence proprement dite.

Je n'ais pas encore lu les chapitres sur la flexion verbale, mais j'ai tout de même fait quelques observations un peu inquiétantes. Par example "dans un certain nombre de cas, les verbes peuvent prendre un suffixe qui n'apporte aucune signification particulière et qu'on applle indicateur thématique." (p.67). Un petit truc qui bouge à son gré sans ajouter rien à la signification? Pas facile à apprendre! Même les noms des lieux sont un peu vexants: le pays s'appelle la Géorgie en français, un mot qui lui fut donné par les Iraniens ('gorg' dans leur language signifiait 'loup). Mais en Russe le nom es Грузия (Grusia), et le nom de la langue en Kartuli est (ქართული), ses habitants s'appellent des Kartvelebi (ქართველები), et le pays s'appelle Sakartvelo (საქართველო). Et ils aiment les groupe de consonnes: en Mtskheta (მცხეთა) there is for instance an old church called Svetitskhoveli, the living pillar( სვეტიცხოვლის საკათედრო ტაძარი, svet'icxovlis sak'atedro t'adzari - named after a fable involving the holy Nino, whose name is at least easy to pronounce)


Edited by Iversen on 30 November 2009 at 10:24am

1 person has voted this message useful



tommus
Senior Member
CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5616 days ago

979 posts - 1688 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish

 
 Message 1464 of 3959
04 November 2009 at 2:59am | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
This is practical for righthanded people because they than have a free left hand to cover things.

In Dutch, as you probably know, the word "dan" means both "then" and "than". I'm guessing but I suppose it is the same in Danish?



1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 3959 messages over 495 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 470 471 472 473 474 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484 485 486 487 488 489 490 491 492 493 494 495  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.6406 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.