Zachód słońca z okna mojego biura.

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Tak właśnie wyglądało w czwartek.

Gay Rights March Warsaw 2010 – surprise surprise!

I had to go into work at the weekend and one of the things that that old office had about it is that whenever you were there on a Saturday there’d be something going on. Recently I filmed the Bikers’ Critical Mass from the same window on a VAT quarter when I had to be there on a Saturday.

Anyway, I put this video together both in the commentary and in the labelling on YouTube claiming that tyhis was the Gay Rights March in Warsaw.  Well it’s been up for months and nobody has said anything, although of course it may be that someone has twigged and just kept stum about it.

Does this look or sound like the Gay March? What it was in fact was the anti-gay march. They were coming out of the forest there and congregating and getting ready to confront the main march – which indeed they did as you can see from news reports the same day.

Interesting is what they are shouting “Polska dla Polakow” – Poland for the Poles. I think these people need to focus on one thing at a time: either they should be making a protest march protesting at the fact that some people are gay, or they should be making a protest march that 1 million of their compatriots don’t live in Poland but somewhere else in the EU, and urging society to make jobs so that these people can come back. I think mixing the two “wateks” just shows a certain confusion of thinking on their part.

So here we have it – stay subbed to Huliganov TV! Here’s where you get the real back story to the videos that go up on Usenetposts channel on YouTube!

Reakcje na metode goldlist na forumie Spolecznosci GRMG

Gold List

#1 Mikulew


Postów: 408
Dołączył: 21-luty 09
Płeć:Mężczyzna
LocationTarnów
Napisany 15 luty 2011 – 21:04

Słyszeliście o tej metodzie zwana Gold List? Metoda została stworzony przez David J. James który potrafi mówić w 20 językach! Rozmowa z nim w DzieńDobry w TVN

Najpierw oglądnąłem ten film który podałem powyżej i zachwyciłem się nim niedowierzając, że ktoś jest w stanie komunikatywnie rozmawiać dwudziestoma językami!
Znalazłem go na youtube (ma ponad 1000 filmów na youtube w różnych językach) i znalazłem filmy jak mówi po Polsku – jestem zaskoczony jak on jest w stanie mówić po polsku – jakbym nie wiedział, że jest z Anglii pomyślałbym, że to rodowity Polak! I wtedy znalazłem ten film
Metodologia Gold List #1 – Pochodzenie i Dlaczego To Dziala


Metodologia Gold List #2 – Jak To Dziala w Praktyce
(nie wiem czemu, może tak jest tylko u mnie, jak kliknie się w ten link zaczyna się od 24 minuty więc trzeba przewinąć na sam początek)
Ten post był edytowany przez Mikulew dnia: 15 luty 2011 – 21:08
Życie jest po to żeby żyć, a nie da się żyć bez osiągania. Nie żyje się po to żeby osiągać. Żyje się po to żeby żyć i żyjąc osiągamy.
Continue reading “Reakcje na metode goldlist na forumie Spolecznosci GRMG” →

Answers to Krzysztof on layout of Goldlist books.

Snail shell
As it goes around the cycle, it gets less and less. The outer cycle is like bronze, the middle like silver, the inner like gold.

One Polish viewer, Krzysztof, asked me the following questions about the Goldlist over in Youtube, and agreed that I could answer in English and over here so that more readers can benefit. I haven’t translated the questions, as the questions will be obvious from the answers.

Witam.

Chciałbym zadać kilka pytań o Gold List, otóż mam taki który ma 40 lini jednak gdy piszę 25 słów pod sobą to jest to mało czytelne, czy nie mogło to by być 20 słów ?

If you have large handwriting, and go over the lines, you may need to look for another book with larger lines, but these ones frequently don’t make up 40 lines per page. In such cases instead of having 25 lines in the headlist, you might need to reduce it to 20. 100 is easily divided by 20, so dividing the headlist up into 20s instead of 25s is a very valid alternative method.

Even for people who can easily fit in 25 in the headlist, limiting to 20 allows the goldlist book to take an alternative form which may appeal to some people: 20 for Headlist in the top left, then D1 (1st distillation) on the top right has maybe 14 words of the 20, in the middle right you have D2 with let’s say 10 words, and D3 on the bottom right with say 7 words. You would then be coming back up the left hand side with D4 on the bottom left on about 5, and have D5 on the left in the middle with maybe 3, and just take maybe 2 forward to the next book, if by that stage you even wanted a second book. I’d see it as a perfectly viable alternative.

Czy dobrze zrozumiałem, iż nie mam się tego uczyć, czy może warto to przeczytać kilka razy po napisaniu ?
Ciężko mi uwierzyć, że po przepisaniu 25 słów w języku niemieckim zapamiętam je.

You won’t have learned them all, only about 30% will have stuck. But you won’t know which really have stuck unless you leave it lie for two weeks at least at each stage. If you want to read your page out loud once, after writing it, that’s not likely to be a problem, but for pleasure. Repetition is what starts to feel like forced learning – you switch on your conscious memorizing and the unconscious one turns off – they don’t both work at once, you see. And the unconscious memory is the one that samples effortlessly a certain percentage of all you see when you are not actively trying to memorize, direct to the long-term memory.

Jednak to pan się zna, więc proszę o radę.
Te słowa mam pisać pod sobą, czy w jednej linijce można napisać

I would write them one at a time in the headlist. Condensing gradually into phrases or fictional book titles is fine in later distillations, and helps the memory process.

Po co są następne zeszyty brązowe, czy tam trzeba robić kolejne słowa z danego języka czy kolejne destylacje ?
Jednak pan mówił, że na kolejne destylacje jest zeszyt srebrny.

The second bronze book keeps going with the headlist and distillations 1-3 when you have run out of space in the first one. The silver book can be a lot thinner and contains distillations 4-7.

A Question about the Russian Future by Shannon

IMG_2070

One viewer on the youtube channel, a lady called Shannon, wrote to me the following question:

Hello,

Could you please tell me the English equivalent for the Russian simple and compound future tense.

I think I’ve understood both past tenses, but the future tense is something I’m still struggling to get my head around.

Regards,
Shannon

The problem is that they are not really tenses, they are aspects of a single future tense.

Now in English we have aspects, but we don’t always use a verb to show the aspects, sometimes we use other words in the sentence.

Let’s take the example of “yest’/s’yest”. If I say in Russian “Ya s’yem ves’ …” then the expected word afterwards might be “tort” – I will eat the whole cake.

If a Russian says “Ya budu yest’ ves’…” then the rest of the sentence that suggests itself is “den’ ” – I will eat all day.

In this case in English if you can replace “eat” with “eat up” then you know that it’s a perfective aspect. In English it’s not incorrect to say “I will eat the whole cake”, or you can also stress the perfective nature of that action (although it won’t have a very perfecting effect on the figure) by saying “I will eat the cake up”.

Contrast that with the second sentence. “I will eat all day”. You can’t say “I will eat up all day”, it becomes meaningless. You can, of course say something like “All day long tomorrow, I’ll be eating up my fussy children’s left-overs” – in Russian this repetitive future performance of a perfective action would call for bringing in the iterative suffix. “Budu doyedyvat’ “sounds a little clumsy but would give that kind of meaning. The “yv” part of that verb being the iterative suffix.

So in the case of a sentence where in English we could use a simple verb or a phrasal verb, especially a phrasal verb where the sense involves finishing something (eat up, do in, beat up, bring in, etc) we can get a good idea of whether to use a perfective or imperfective future aspect in Russian by asking us where the phrasal verb is just as good if not better than the simple verb, as in the above “eat the cake up”

What about cases where you don’t have a phrasal verb indicating completion to hand? Well, sometimes there are aspectival pairs in English that we don’t even realise are aspectival pairs because this is almost subliminal in our language and not explicit as in Slavonic. So I could give you two sentences:

1. I will fish all day tomorrow

2. I will catch many fish tomorrow.

Which is future imperfective? That’s right, the first. Budu lovit ryby ves’ den’ zavtra. The second is perfective. Tomorrow I will not just fish I will catch many fish. Poymu mnogo ryb, zavtra.

how about this one:

1. He will speak to me about the changes this afternoon.

2. He will tell me about the changes this afternoon.

In which of these am I expressing subliminally that I’m not necessarily expecting complete information? That’s right, the first. In the second, I expect the transmission of complete facts, not just blah-blah. So speak and tell are an aspectival pair.

And sure enough, you find the same in govorit’/skazat’ in Russian. You never hear “on budet skazat” – the closest is if you make it iterative “on budet skazyvat mne raznye veshchi” He will be telling me various things. He will, in other word, repeatedly perform the perfective action of transferring orally various complete pieces of information. He will speak to me about the changes – on budet govorit’ so mnoy o peremenakh means that I’m focussing menatlly on the fact that he is going through the motions of informing me, regardless of whether any actual units of meaningful information, any ‘whole story’ is transferred to me in the process. “On skazhet mne o peremenakh posle obeda” on the other hand means that I’m expecting to hear the whole caboodle from him after lunch.

One of the best ways to understand this is by looking at what we mean in English when we differentiate “until” and “by”. Most languages have a single word for this pair, and in Slavic it’s aspect which gives away which one is needed. Russians and Poles say “do”, German’s have “bis”, but we have two words and we can’t understand why foreigners are always muddling up “until” and “by”.

So you’ll hear Slavs saying “I need you to write the report until Thursday”. At this, you might say “what happens after that, then, does someone else take over?” This sentence in English contains no markers that getting it done before then is required – on the contrary the marker in “until” rather means just keep on going up to a certain time point, and finishing doesn’t enter into it.

So Thursday comes and you are asked for the report, and you hand in a huge 100 page opus and immediately the boss asks “Where’s the Executive Summary?” And so you say “There’s no Executive Summary – how can there be one if the report isn’t finished?” “But I asked you to write the report until Thursday!” “I did! I was writing it all the time, only taking short breaks for food and sleep. That’s why the thing is 100 pages long. but you didn’t tell me it had to be done BY Thursday!”

The boss doesn’t understand this, as to him “until” and “by” are synonyms and not markers of aspect, and promptly sacks the Employee for over-correct use of English.

So you can see from this example that if he had really meant “until”, in Russian he would have used a future imperfective. “Budete pisat’ …” For the meaning “by” he would have used a Russian future perfective “Napishite”.

I hope that helps you get a grip on the idea. If it has, then that is a milestone on your journey towards knowing Russian.