Karmic-Dragonfly

For a long while, I struggled to figure out how to learn in the Old English class I am taking. I like the class a lot, and I'm going well, but I still struggled to figure out what I needed to do to prepare for class.

This is probably the first time I have really had to create a process for myself for learning.

Most classes have tests, etc. which force you to study a particular grammatical form or reading, but this class does not have tests. It consists of reading your parts of the chapter aloud as you are asked to each week. Then being asked questions in and responding to the questions in Old English.

There are also grammar workbooks provided for many class sessions, with selected points discussed in class, but again no tests. I am doing fine in class, but at first I struggled with exactly how to learn.

And also I wondered how to get what I wanted from the class. Actually, other than the idea of reading Beowulf faster than the 1 page an hour (oy, that was about how much time it took me when I sat down with Beowulf the first time to 'self' teach myself), I still don't completely have an idea of what I want from the class.

In the end, I settled on this process:

1. During class, I take notes on any grammar the instructor discusses, any etymology, any word meaning nuance, etc. One reason I do this is that I can later search all the notes to find that 1 particular time when she talked about, for example, which grammatical case to put after the verb 'to need.' (It's genitive by the way).
   
   
2. I take Thursdays off.
   
   
3. I read the chapter every other day other than Thursday.
   
   
4. I hand-write the answers to the questions that accompany each chapter. I find handwriting helps me remember better. And yes, I write in my books.
   
   
5. I make up additional questions for a chapter, to which I also hand-write answers.
   
   
6. Before each class, I review my handwritten answers, and transpose many of them into my Note taking app. I usually do that just before class, so my answers are fresh in mind (on mode).
   
   
7. I do the grammar workbook exercises at some point during the week.
   
   
8. And 1 other thing I do. Have you ever started something, and realized it was probably too much effort. But you had put so much effort into it that you don't want to stop? Well, that's where I am.
   
   I was used to learning in the 'grammar-translation' method of studying an ancient language. So early on, I found a site out of the UK where I could find grids of verb forms. I was used to that, and so I started copying those into a spreadsheet, printing the verbs for each chapter, and keeping them in a binder.
   
   Um, I'm up to 240 or so verbs now 🙄 -- but I hate to stop now that I have invested so much time into this. I also found a script online that presents a dialog box of all the tabs and lets me quickly change to any tab.
   

So there we are -- my time intensive study method for the class. It works for me. It's a lot more than I figured it would take when I first signed up for the classes!

***
One thing I find pretty cool is that one of the guys in the class consulted with the instructor to create a Discord chat for the class. It's turning out to be useful to practice just saying things in Old English.

For a bit, there were only 2 of us using it, but a 3rd has started to join in. And it's pretty cool and also mildly discordant to see a modern chat tool used with Old English!

Here's a screenshot with names and icons blacked out --

The second semester of the Old English class I’m taking has begun. The intro course was designed to be online, with 14 weekly 1.5 hour sessions in each semester for a total of 28 sessions total.

I have found it takes another 5 hours or so during the rest of the week to read the text, and process and understand it.

I like the course a lot. It is a story of a bear in Medieval England with the text being graduated from simpler to more complex. Sometimes we get direct quotes from Medieval lays now. Sometimes the text is slightly adapted, like the gospel reading we had recently. It is definitely more complex to read now!

In a few weeks, I’ll need to make the decision: do I continue on to the higher levels reading real texts without standardized spelling?

It's not cheap, and not really in my budget. Do I stop now, and how quickly will I lose what I have learned? I find that not using a language means it starts slipping away immediately. I was just thinking today about something and realized I couldn't immediately remember a simple word like 'to want' in Portuguese.

If I continue, where do I end up?

The first semester of Old English is finished, and I have about 3 weeks before the next semester starts. So I'm enjoying the holidays and enjoying having some free time, but I'm also catching up on some stuff. Also taking next week off from work!

For this class, I did NOT want to go back to the 'old way' of drilling grammar forms. Really, I didn't. But in the end, I do have have to drill some of it.

When I finally realized how the nouns and adjectives work, my mind just rebelled; totally rejected it, and I could barely remember any forms. The reason I had a hard time with it is that the adjectives forms are different from the noun forms but sometimes just enough the same to make it confusing. And adjectives function sort of independently from the nouns they modify.

Example: Strong masculine noun wer (man), adjective god (good):
--> Adjective and noun in Accusative singular: godne wer.
Ok. Different forms, but I can accept it.

--> With the article meaning the or that: þone godne wer.
Notice how the endings are starting to differ?

Example: Strong feminine noun cwen (queen), adjective god (good):
--> Adjective and noun in Genitive singular: godre cwene.
Starting to get different enough that I'm concerned.

--> With the article meaning the or that: þære godan cwene.
This is where my mind rejected it all. They 3 words are very different! 🙄🫨😑

So I realized I was gonna have to drill, baby, drill! I created a spreadsheet to learn from:


And today I created a spreadsheet grid where I can sort the correct forms, then type into a grid to test myself. My score is not great, but also not too bad. I have some work to do, but getting even 75% means I'm remembering a good chunk of it!

Well, there are a lot of things that I need right now. But top of mind this morning is that I would like to have a friend to talk grammar with! Specifically Old English grammar -- anybody who is a language nerd that likes to talk about this stuff would do!

It's pretty hard to find someone who enjoys grammar 🤓

Why do I need that? Well, when I figure out something and suddenly have a breakthrough in understanding, it would be really nice to have someone to share it with!

Example:

I puzzled over this sentence in the flashcards for the current class chapter:


I originally read Þām wīfe līcaþ sē mete. as "The woman likes (or enjoys) the food."

In that situation, I would have expected "the woman" to be in the nominative as the subject, and "the food" to be in the accusative as the direct object. But I noticed the articles and nouns are not in those cases.

Þām wīfe is Dative = "to the woman" or "for the woman" or "by the woman" -- some phrase like that.
sē mete is Nominative as a subject.

So after I puzzled a bit and looked up the endings to make sure, I realized regardless of the word order, I needed to read this as "The food is enjoyed by the woman." So the food is the subject, and the "by the woman" is the Dative form for that noun.

That makes perfect sense, and I am happy that I noticed the articles and nouns are not in the cases that support the way I originally read the sentence. I mean, even the fact that I noticed means that some of this material is sinking in!

Seriously though, this class is moving fast, and I'm having to spend way more time than I expected on it!

The more I think back to the group of guys I was traveling with, to the myriad of activities we did, to the friendly guides and people...the more I miss being on the trip!

Photos link

https://www.flickr.com/photos/spunkybart/albums/72177720309106210

The itinerary of the trip

1. São Miguel island in the Azores (os Açores)
   We stayed in a hotel in the capital Ponta Delgada, and then were whisked around in vans to the viewpoints around the island. You definitely have to drive to get to the overlooks.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Madeira island
   We stayed in the capital Funchal and were taken to the sites by van or jeep.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Porto
   This was the first stop on the mainland - I think a city I'd like to go back to and stay for a while to learn my way around. This stop included a day trip to Guimarães and Braga.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Nazaré
   This was a lunch stop and some time looking around the square and viewpoint.
   
   
   
5. Lisbon (Lisboa)
   Lovely city, and sadly our last location before we had to leave. The stay here included a day trip to Sintra with the Pena Palace and Cascais.
   
   
   

Knowing my habit / yearning for learning other languages and specifically Old English, a friend sent me this YT cover of a Lorde song. It's pretty cool -- and I could puzzle out some of the words.

Good news on the job front -- I'll be starting a new gig soon! So now I'll be spending the foreseeable future replenishing my savings! Sadly, this may have been the last time I could take time off to travel -- it's just an age thing, and I suspect that the next time I take time off will be to actually retire!

As usual for one of my "Sabbaticals", I'll do a summary to compare what it was like compared to previous times.

***
Walking at the park yesterday, I saw this (presumably) newly emerged dragonfly sitting on the side of a tree. At first, I didn't even realize it was a dragonfly because the wings were folded in, and he was arching his tail sharply. As I watched, he exercised his wings, and started crawling all over the tree. Here is a pic of a brief test flight. He's out of focus, but you can see his legs dangling.


Damselfly silhouette --


***
I've been reading a book called Roman Homosexuality. It's pretty dry, but I have an interest in things Roman, in Latin, and in LGBT subjects. I like to puzzle through the Latin on my own - realizing that I have forgotten most of my declensions and conjugations, and realizing that I have to look up a lot of the words.

You can see the author's translation in the picture below:


And here is my attempt. I was generally happy that my translation approximated the author's.

In the still of night, when a fair skinned boy was warmly hidden away, lying at my bosom,
My genitals were quiet, nor did my lazy old penis raise his head in a manly way.

With the pending snow and/or ice, I just put on some lentils on to slow cook. No particular recipe -- just dumped lentils, tomatoes, stock, spices and assorted other stuff into the Instapot.


Snow is preferable to ice -- ice often brings power outages. And I've put some water in pitchers in the fridge, and turned up the heat a bit just in case.


The past week was fun -- dinner or drinks with several different friends!

One night, I had dinner with my Portuguese speaking friends -- I had a good time, and for the first time, I understood most of what was said!

Of course, these friends always slow down for me, which helped. But even when they spoke slowly, I often had trouble! But this time, I understood a lot, and they even commented on that! Also, I didn't feel exhausted afterwards. In the past, I often felt exhausted because it was such hard work to follow the conversation. But I did okay this time!

The forecast lately always seems to be "cloudy with chance of storms" -- it's amazing how much rain we have been getting! It's as if my house magically moved to the tropics! Since Jan 1, the 'official' measure is that we have gotten 34+ inches of rain, 15 inches above normal! The airport here set a record yesterday of 7 inches of rain in one day, causing it to close for a few hours.

I went out to dinner with a friend the other night during one of the deluges, and the restaurant we had chosen was closing for the night because an electrical transformer had blown, and the whole area was without power. So we ended up having a nice dinner downtown. I'm really glad I bought a rain jacket this past year!

Sadly, Charlotte VI didn't make it through all this rain. This is the last picture I got of her a week or so ago --



I took the opportunity of a dry day last weekend to get back down to the river -- I miss it when I don't get down there.






I noticed some Pawpaw fruits forming, but not as many as I had expected. Like my garden flowers, I think the plants are all waterlogged!


The other night, I went out for ice cream with my Brazilian friends, and I think they noticed my Portuguese was suffering because one of them asked if I were still doing my lessons, lol!

So just night before last, I went back online and started the lessons again and was very pleased at how fast I was able to go though some of them. My comprehension is improving (which is contradictory to what I just said about my skills suffering....maybe I was just having an off night?)

I think it was a good idea to take a break from the lessons though -- gives a chance for things you have learned to 'set' into place. Instead of lessons, I've been listening to music, reading news articles in Portuguese, and listening to Instagram 'stories' from a guy in São Paulo. I was more pleased than I expected to see this message on the lesson site:



This weekend, I'll be having lunch with the family...and then it'll be getting close to the July 4th holiday -- I'd like to plan a day trip out of town, but haven't done any planning yet.

I like old Samba music...And it's good practice for me because it tends to be simple language sung slowly.


Interestingly, this singer has some serious political history, having been shunned by the student left, and arrested by the military junta and exiled...only returning to Brazil in the 70s.


This weekend was very rainy...which means -- horror movies -- Insidious, Insidious 2 and The Conjuring 2! And that inspired this selfie --


I also made a quick trip to Hollywood Cemetery in the rain --