Yes, I have found it very useful to follow the Ukrainian You Tube videos I am subscribed to.

I did complete the Duolingo Ukrainian course in just under 300 days last year so I can recognise a few phrases, but, for me, it's not an ideal way to learn the general language. There is no real explanation of grammar and quite a few of the sentences it comes up with are weird, to say the least. I'm not sure how often I am going to want to say "This is a strange flower that grows on a tree", for instance. There seems to be a paucity of standard meaningful phrases you might need to use in conversation.

I am now starting to continue my learning process in a more structured way via text books. It is very similar to Latin grammatically, and I am also going back to refresh my schoolgirl 'O' Level Latin, partly to help with the Ukrainian, but also to be able to understand some of the older sources as I scramble through my family tree.

So there is a mix of the modern way of doing things, which can also include translation apps, and the old-fashioned way. Keeps the old grey cells ticking over, at least. I actually impress myself with how much of the schoolgirl French I learned has stuck in the brain. Typically for me, I only got a B grade in the living useful language, and an A grade in the 'dead' one. But listening to spoken French, and /or reading written French I can still get the gist, even if I can't do a full translation.

Thanks for the link, Paul. As you say, an interesting piece.

pberk wrote:

I don't understand the French

YouTube’s auto-translated closed captions (CC) aren’t too bad. By default they’re at the bottom of the video, so they obscure the French subtitles that are included in this one, but you can simply drag them to another part of the screen if you want to be able to see both.

To enable CC, click on the icon to the left of the Settings cog in the control console. When you click on the Settings cog itself you should find that Subtitles/CC is set to ‘French (auto-generated)’. Click on that option to display a menu where you can change it to ‘Auto-translate’, and then scroll down the list that pops up until you find English.

Thank you both, Here's another little Lip Sync I did for a bit of fun. Many years ago I did an Old Time Music Hall, I did an act Impersonating the old music hall artist Gus Elen, the show was recorded, a few years ago I downloaded an old film of Gus Elen and had a go at trying to Lip Sync the old audio recording to the 1930's film.

It's not very good as the phrasing was difficult to match, but I got the speed right adjusting the film and the audio tape, but keeping the tone of the voice right.

Just to point out, this was under my stage name, Alan Clark

           https://youtu.be/uhBFX0mdD6E

Our hot sticky weather continues.

A recent visit to an historic home, Highwic.  Well historic for NZ but fairly modern for those of you with older histories.

https://vimeo.com/916153261  or  https://youtu.be/RovAiHXAnSo

The Devon connection is interesting for me as my mother was born in Devon at "Up Exe Rowe R.D".  She was only there briefly as her family moved to London.

pberk wrote:

Yipes.  I first used a Sony PortaPak in about 1967 while a grad student at UCLA.    Talk about analogue.  There was no way to edit that stuff. It was 1/2" I think but later on it was 1" .. Not sure. But it was helical scan so you couldn't physically edited the tape as it generated a horrible roll bar as the helican scan caught up.  But it did give us a "cheap" way to shoot.  It was B&W but it was sound and picture.  We learned to do "optical transfer add-on edits" in our TV studio which had a 2" broadcast standard VCR.  I shot something like 30 hours on a particular documentary, did the laborious "add-on"editing in the studio and the show aired on our local PBS station.  Nifty.

That's very interesting, thank you, my first days with film was cut and splice with film cement, the same with my early audio tape recording

My brothers Wife's Brother was a film editor, started with Gainsborough Studios, went on to edit the Hammer Horror films, his name was James Needs.

William wrote:

350 gsm paper (like thin card)

I regard 350 gsm as quite thick! Many consumer-grade printers won’t handle anything heavier than 200 gsm or so, even if the paper path is a straight one.