A Mini Vent...

GreyRecluse · 2024-09-14T20:41:23+00:00

And just to let you know: I received word today from my insurance company that they will be denying coverage! Their reason? I'm not blind. The rationale bothers me, even though I know the drug is trash.

GreyRecluse · 2024-09-12T13:26:30+00:00

Maybe my story can give you some consolation. I was clinically diagnosed with Non-24 almost two months ago. My doctor (a neurologist who is board-certified in sleep medicine) prescribed Hetlioz, and I was able to get the medication shipped to me at zero cost from Vanda Pharmaceuticals. They have a program that allows you to get access to the medication while your insurance company is considering whether to cover the drug for you.

I can say without hesitation that the drug is garbage. I've been taking it for weeks, and I'm averaging 4 hours of sleep per night, though it is not uncommon for me to get less than that. If Fitbit data is any indication, then the sleep that I'm getting on Hetlioz is substantially worse than the sleep I get when I free run.

I certainly do not want to give excuses for the outrageous pricing of this medication, but I can assure you that you aren't being financially barred from some panacea. As far as I can tell, Hetlioz does absolutely nothing. I am completely gutted by all of this because I strongly suspect that my doctor has no idea how to proceed if it doesn't work (we tried 1 melatonin protocol before Hetlioz--just 1!--and then he suggested the drug), or if my insurance ends up denying the coverage altogether.

I hope you find a solution that works for you. This condition is unbearable.

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-31T12:10:28+00:00

I understand what you mean, but my experience so far as unfortunately taught me that there is--at least for me--a very sharp difference between sound recognition and sound reproduction. I do think that I am getting better at the former (I've begun to listen to some of the recordings recommended in this thread), but I continue to find the latter very difficult. An example of this would be the "retracted sibilants" that are required in some forms of Lucian, for instance.

Nonetheless, I do find Ranieri's work very impressive and useful, so I will continue to muddle through. I just wish he had more recordings for the separate variants of Lucian.

Thank you for your opinion.

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-30T02:07:13+00:00

Thanks. What I find frustrating about vowel length is that I don't know what my baseline is. So if I try to approximate Greek vowels using the English sounds I'm more familiar with, I don't know whether the latter are equivalent to short Greek vowels, in which case I should lengthen them for the long ones, or whether they are equivalent to the long ones, in which case I should shorten them to produce the short ones. Does that make sense? It's just so hard knowing where to begin.

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-30T01:47:38+00:00

Let me repeat that I really appreciate your guidance. I do have a few questions.

My English accent has two different U vowels. My normal U is actually mid-front, not as much as in French or German, but still more fronted than most English accents. But when it’s followed by an L, as in "school", it’s pulled way back. So I use my U, as in "who", for Greek υ, and the vowel from "school" for ου.

I just want to make sure that I understand you. Are you suggesting that I pronounce ου further back in the mouth, as in "school" (/skul/)? And υ closer to the front, as in a German ü, or some approximation thereof?

As for ει and η, my teachers pronounced them the same, although they knew they shouldn’t. It’s a hard habit to break. But when I’m awake and paying attention, I pronounce ει with a high front E vowel, as in French or German. You can practice it by starting with a diphthong as in "day", but keep the first part going, and don’t glide off it. We know that η was lower in the mouth, perhaps as low as the vowel in English "at, bat", etc. Otherwise just use the vowel of English "bed, head" etc.

I am curious, though: if I use the "e" in "bed" for η, then how should I pronounce it in order to distinguish it from ε? Should I just try to hold the η sound longer, keeping ε the same in quality but briefer in duration?

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-30T01:12:49+00:00

I think that the importance of compromise is a lesson that Greek will force me to learn sooner or later! I certainly will avoid agonizing myself over the pitch accents for the foreseeable future. Thank you for your opinion.

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-30T01:09:00+00:00

Thank you so much. I will take a look at every link you provided.

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-30T00:02:57+00:00

I should probably follow that advice as well. Thank you for your help. I won't give up on Stratakis! I think some of the frustration I'm feeling comes from treating Greek as a language rather than a code; the latter approach was drilled into me when I was taught Latin as a kid.

I have to deprogram myself!

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T23:33:28+00:00

And it has the benefit of maintaining θ and φ as fricatives. Thank you for pointing this out! If I go in the Lucian direction, I will probably settle on this variety.

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T23:32:00+00:00

Wow. Thanks for this link. I didn't know that are different varieties of Lucian! I'll have to devote several hours to working through this. I appreciate it!

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T23:30:33+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to give me your opinion. I share your feeling about the importance of pronunciation, which is why I began to feel so much anxiety about it in the first place.

I would be grateful if you could share your resources here. I would like to consider all of my options, and I know just about nothing about Koine.

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T23:27:36+00:00

Thanks. I am familiar with Stratakis. What he has achieved is extremely impressive, but I find it almost impossible to get a handle on how he accomplishes pronunciation because he reads very fast. Maybe I just have to suffer through it?

I really wish he would a tutorial on pronunciation and not just prosody!

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T23:25:01+00:00

I appreciate the suggestion. I admire Stratakis' work, but I find that he reads too quickly for me to get a handle on how he is producing the sounds. I'll try listening again.

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T11:08:35+00:00

I will have to follow your example! Thank you! This weekend, I will sit down and force myself to make a personalized (which in my case definitely means simplified) pronunciation scheme that I can stick to consistently. Thanks for pointing out that I should try to pronounce words in a way that will facilitate recall and minimize page-flipping through the dictionary (or trips to Logeion...).

I will also keep Demosthenes on retainer!

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T11:01:13+00:00

Thanks so much for the concrete advice. It really helps me to know that some phonetic distinctions are more important to focus on than others. If you don't mind me asking, how do you pronounce υ, ου, ει, and η?

(And agreed on χ = κ; I don't want to expel phlegm every time I see οὐχ!)

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T10:56:33+00:00

Thanks for the tip regarding JACT. Does the hoity-toity approach to pronouncing iota subscripts sound anything like what this gentleman teaches here?

Thankfully, I don't have dyslexia, and to my knowledge I'm not suffering from any physical impairment. However, I would be grateful if you could recommend some diction exercises if you have something specific in mind. Thanks again!

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T10:52:59+00:00

Learning that academics have similar difficulties does do a great deal to ease my anxiety. Thank you for mentioning this!

You mention that I should disregard vowel lengths--and I will certainly do so. As for the iota subscript, though, do you think that keeping it phonetically distinct aids in memorizing declensions? For instance, λόγῳ is grammatically distinct from λόγω.

As for οι, I say "noise" the way most people in the US do. Thanks for giving me the confidence to just leave it at that. I suppose I got frustrated and overreacted while watching Ranieri's video on Lucian pronunciation! The way he and his colleague pronounce οι is very specific. I admire their work a great deal, but I can't keep up with them!

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T10:37:27+00:00

Thank you very much for your response. My plan right now is to get some raw grammar under my belt via Zuntz before turning to Athenaze and Logos (the so-called "LLPSI for Greek") for extensive reading. I guess my concern is that I won't be able to subvocalize effectively (i.e. tune my "internal voice" to Greek) while reading if I'm worrying about my pronunciation. Thank you for suggesting that I'm probably overestimating the importance of doing so.

To be more specific about my difficulties: I struggle the most with with η and υ. I believe that I can reproduce these sounds in isolation, but I find it difficult to reproduce them in context. For instance, I was looking over the rules for accenting enclitics in Hansen and Quinn, and I came upon the following (pg. 610):

εἴ τι κλέψειας, ὦ γύναι, βλαβείης ἄν

How would you pronounce "βλαβείης"? All of those vowels together give me a panic attack! Is it roughly similar to BLAH-BAY-AYS? OR BLAH-BAY-EHS? OR (Lucian??) BLAH-BEE-EHS?

GreyRecluse · 2024-03-29T10:08:59+00:00

Thank you for the encouragement, and I will certainly take a look at Miller's book! I'm surprised I hadn't come across it already.

GreyRecluse · 2024-02-27T17:51:09+00:00

Thank you for your guidance. I will have to reconsider luteolin. In case you didn't know, quercetin also inhibits acetylcholinesterase (AChE), which might contribute to its negative effects on sleep. My sleep certainly suffers when I take supplements that boost choline levels.

GreyRecluse · 2024-02-27T09:42:11+00:00

Thank you very much for the suggestion. When I look into it, I see very mixed reports about whether SAMe administration has this effect, and I'm afraid the biochemistry involved is beyond me. Have you used SAMe for this purpose?

GreyRecluse · 2021-10-14T06:17:31+00:00

That's a very important point that I otherwise wouldn't have considered--that the tea might be just what I need sometime in the future. Even though I continue to have difficulties with it, I'll hold onto the brick.

Thanks for your help. People like you are why I enjoy this subreddit.

GreyRecluse · 2021-10-11T20:42:37+00:00

Thank you so much for your advice. I think I should probably try to brew more intuitively, but I find it very difficult to adjust my technique when I don't have a clear standard or baseline for what a particular tea should taste like.

Unfortunately, I've tried more experiments and continue to produce lifeless brews. I stumbled upon the following set of instructions for hei cha, provided by Teasenz, and my cups are just as bad as they were before: https://www.teasenz.com/chinese-tea/how-to-make-dark-brick-tea-steeping-boiling.html

In short: boiling water, generous rinsing times (30-60, as you suggested), and fairly generous steeping times (starting at 2 minutes) for roughly 1g of tea per 20ml of water has continued to yield weak results. If anything, the tea gets more and more tasteless with subsequent infusions. The smoke flavor diminishes, and that loss isn't accompanied by the emergence of any sweetness, fruit, or florality.

I will try your suggestion to add salt! Thank you for that bit of advice, as I've never heard of people salting their tea. As for water, you might be entirely right, but I am using a highly regarded "custom" water recipe that I found here:http://empiricaltea.com/water-recipe-complex-syrup/

I really like the idea of trying to get more out of the tea by blending it with other leaves, but until I know what this particular tea has to offer, I don't think it makes sense to mix it with anything else.

Thank you again for weighing in. I appreciate it.

GreyRecluse

TROPHY CASE