Language Learners' Library

The second part is harder. Of the bits I could read, here’s what I had different.

p…scripta: I was guessing a badly written praescripta. Some abbreviation for prius might also fit.
nequisi: nequivi
dat. : data would make sense and seems possible.
acusatius: accuratius
ext…i, so ipsu[m] o[?] occidisse: extorsi se ipsu(m) o[?] occidisse

Catholic. The entry is from the late 17th or early 18th century (I forgot to save that info, sorry!). We should keep in mind that we don’t know how good the writer’s Latin really was. I also don’t know if part of the vocabulary and grammar was maybe some special “German Church Latin” that’s somewhat different from “original” Latin.

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New developments in the Schmitt case! I looked up that mysterious o before occidisse in Hoepli-Cappelli, Dizionario di Abbreviature, and o with a hat on it can mean non, which is really the only thing that would fit here. In other words the postscript is saying that it turns out he didn’t kill himself.

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Good finding! One can always count on good ol’ Cappelli. I did some changes to my transcript according to this and your other corrections, which, of course, are very justified.

I’m also wondering if 4vero and 7vero are shorthands, like one can write 7ember for September and 8vo for octavo.
I think pra’ might be prae, if your reading of praescripta is correct. Whatever praeviâ means.

I think it also says in the second part about the famulus, that he was talking about the gun and nesciens, i.e. without knowing shot it.

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Looking again I think that et exactius comes after accuratius. My earlier paraphrase had been based on reading et diutius.

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If it’s praevia, one could take it with conditione and understand “in the afore mentioned state”, although that probably wouldn’t be a Latin that Cicero would understand.

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It’s an example sentence: meant to set an example :wink:

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Poor Yamamoto: all that hard work and they give the credit to Yamada.

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These people usually have immediate contact with what they are trying to learn and they learn it full-time during the day. They also allow for many mistakes, more mistakes than the average learner is allowed to do. Would you ever say that ‘‘as long as you can place the stones with at least one liberty you are ok, no need to learn all those pesky rules about eyes, ko, ladders and corners’’? I don’t think so. Same goes for languages. (Silly syntax follows) ‘‘You speak ever you put the rock with the one liberty and you nice?’’ (This kind of sentence is supposed to be acceptable as far as those internet gurus are concerned)

If you needed to learn for some specific reason (job, exams, Go tournaments) you’d have learnt your material already. You can try giving yourself a goal, e.g. an exam or a competition.

My advice, however, would be to keep doing what you are doing, because you’re obviously doing it for fun and deadlines don’t matter.

Edit:
On second thoughts, don’t take my advice. The exam system for HSK has changed since July 2021, it was all over the internet for a very long time and I only realised it just a few minutes ago. My advice leads to no progress. :frowning_face: :frowning_face: :frowning_face: :frowning_face:

Nah, that’s people trying to sell you something. There’s no shortcut to learning a hard skill, except for putting a lot of time and dedication into it. Of course there’s things that make it easier, like teachers, focus, repetition, etc., but in the end it will just take years and years of work (especially at a leisurely pace) to become really good at something.

People who get good at something quickly just have put a lot of effort into it. You can get fluent in a language in a year, but that means you’ll have to completely immerse yourself in it for the majority of your time. Most people simply don’t have time for that.

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Veritasium had a nice video on that: success may be based on hard work… or something else! :smile:

So hard work isn’t necessarily involving success, since misfortune or other issues may have influence on it.

Throwing blame at those who aren’t successful isn’t just fair.

Cho Chikun’s voice soothes my wary spirit.

Omicron /ˈɒmɪkrɒn, oʊˈmaɪkrɒn/[1] (uppercase Ο , lowercase ο , literally ‘small o’: όμικρον < ὂ μικρόν - ò mikrón , micron meaning ‘small’ in contrast to omega ) is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 70. This letter is derived from the Phoenician letter ayin Phoenician ayin.svg. In classical Greek, omicron represented the sound [o] in contrast to omega [ɔː] and ου [oː]. In modern Greek, omicron represents the mid back rounded vowel /o̞/ , the same sound as omega. Letters that arose from omicron include Roman O and Cyrillic O.

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ΟωΟ, what’s this?

om

For the variant of the virus causing COVID-19, see SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. For other uses, see Omicron (disambiguation).

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Sounds like a great thing for people with hearing problems, but why is it presented as a language learning device…?

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It probably belongs in the “learn a language under 5 seconds” movement?

The only possible use I can think of is helping with intonation and accents. eg how to pronounce g gh gg gue in various situations. I admit I didn’t really check their published findings.

So today I passed by a shop or something that had these fancy letters on its sign:

LEHΠΕΓ

Took my a while to figure out it meant “Lehner” in faux Greek/Cyrillic.

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I’m going to read that, sounds exactly like what I like (and I also don’t know why I keep watching / reading things that make me feel bad).

If you love this kind of stuff, I highly recommend reading some of Asano Inio’s manga (which I incidentally have been reading in the pursuit of my own Japanese knowledge). His stories aren’t thrillers or about crime, but the description you gave is like I read a description of his manga. I especially recommend Oyasumi Punpun, which I consider one of the best things I’ve ever experienced, be it manga, comics, literature or movies; it had an impact like a bomb-shell on me. Don’t read it if you suffer from depression, though.

It’s great for learning the language too, but Oyasumi Punpun is pretty literary, containing a lot of text in between conversations. Perhaps some of his other works are more conversationally oriented.

The drawing style is great too, by the way.

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