Update time! There’s already quite a bit to report since my last post, so forgive me if I do so rather telegraphically – I know I tend towards verbosity, which is something of a liability in my forum posts, as any evening spent writing a forum post then becomes an evening with no time left to actually study languages. I'm trying to work on that. We'll see how it goes in this post.
But first, responses:
Radioclare: Hvala puno for the recommendation of CroVoc (
https://crovoc.de/). I hadn’t known that site, but at first glance it looks like it will be very useful – I bookmarked it. And thank you also for the translations of “Bitange”! That was along the lines of what I was suspecting, but it’s good to have it confirmed.
blaurebell: No apologies necessary for the delayed reply – as you can see, mine is even more delayed!
And in any case, it was rather rude of me to come vent in your log about the show I was annoyed by, anyway – it was simply “at the front of my mind” at that moment, haha. I just looked up
Un village français (
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1288631/?ref_=nv_sr_1) and I must say it sounds quite interesting – I’ll have to check it out. Thanks for that!
And a general note before I dive in here: as always, corrections to my language-practice sections are much appreciated! Okay, here we go…
GERMAN
Since making my decision to actively work on bringing my German up to the next level, the main step I’ve taken to approach this goal is returning to heavy reading, starting off with
Die unendliche Geschichte (I finished it today). I also finished, after a long time away from it,
Mutterzunge by Emine Özdamar. That’s a fascinating book because it’s written in German, but German the way many Turks speak it, not necessarily “grammatically correct” but full of flavor and cultural meaning. A very interesting book, but I couldn’t recommend it to anyone who hasn’t already reached a very solid level of German (including cultural knowledge, not just linguistic).
My preferred way to read is in Bliu Bliu, because it keeps track of the number of word forms I know with almost no effort on my part, and although this is actually not a very meaningful statistic, it’s wonderful for motivation. I am currently at just over 26,000 word forms marked as “known” in BB for German, and am eagerly pushing it toward 30,000.
I do what I think of as “extensive-intensive reading”, because I try to move through texts as quickly and effortlessly as possible without spending any real time on each word, but I do feel compelled to look up (at least quickly) every single word I don’t know, every time I see it and can’t define it to myself without peeking. BB also works great for this technique.
Die unendliche Geschichte turned out to be a surprisingly dark and psychological story for something that I had always mentally filed under “children’s books”. It was a real page-turner all the way through, and I’m so glad I finally got around to tackling this monster of German literature, even if I feel that it would have been a more powerful experience to read it as a pre-teen. (And just to pre-emptively fend off any suggestions to watch the movie version – I’m not interested in the slightest, thanks anyway!)
DE:
Was ich besonders an dieses Buch schön gefunden habe, ist die etwas altmodische Sprache. Viele Leute meinen, man sollte beim Lesen von älteren fremdsprachlichen Büchern vorsichtig sein, weil die heutige Sprache “nicht mehr so klingt, wie vorher”. Na schon, offensichtlich, aber ich habe das wirklich nie als Problem empfunden und zwar aus zwei Gründen: erstens, ich spreche auch auf Englisch manchmal sehr altmodisch, mit Absicht, und es freut mich, so zu reden (zum Beispiel, wenn ich aufs Klo gehe, sage ich oft “I shall return anon”), und deswegen lerne ich sehr gerne, wie man auch auf anderen Sprachen entsprechend redet; und zweitens, weil ich eigentlich fast niemals Schwierigkeiten dabei habe, den eher altmodischen Sprechweisen von den eher modernen zu unterscheiden.
Besonders bei der
unendlichen Geschichte aber auch im Allgemeinen, verwende ich immer öfter Google Images als Wörterbuch. Das ist eine so gute Herangehensweise, ich verstehe nicht, warum ich es bis jetzt nur ab und zu gemacht habe. Natürlich funktioniert es nicht für alle Wörter, aber meistens erkennt man ziemlich schnell vom Kontext her ob es sich bei dem jeweiligen Wort um ein theoretisches Konzept (besser gesucht bei
http://www.dict.cc/) oder eher einen physischen Gegenstand (funktioniert herrlich mit Google Images) handelt. Aber es muss in der Tat eigentlich kein richtiger Gegenstand sein – zum Beispiel, tippt man in Google Images “sich verbeugen” rein, bekommt man sofort genügend bildlichen Darstellungen davon, dass man den Ausdruck problemlos verstehen kann.
Fast 98% von dem, was ich bisher für Tadoku gelesen habe, war DuG. Mein Dank gilt Herrn Ende. Besonders weil ich den Fehler machte, ein ziemlich großes Buch auf Englisch während dieser Tadoku zu lesen (
Cloud Atlas von David Mitchell – Gott sei Dank, dieser Müllhaufen ist jetzt erledigt, obwohl ich die Stunden, die ich damit verschwendet habe, nie zurück kriegen werde – das Buch war eine persönliche Empfehlung eines Freundes, sonst hätte ich mich damit nicht so lange gequält) und dann danach anderthalb Bücher auf Esperanto gelesen bevor ich bemerkt habe, dass ich mich bei Tadoku mit Eo gar nicht angemeldet hatte. D’oh!
FRENCH
My temporary French surge has been put on pause for the past few weeks while I threw myself with renewed vigor into German and Esperanto (more on the latter below), but I’m still slowly making my way through the audiobook of
Le journal d’une femme de chambre and regularly journaling in French as well. Both of those activities are very enjoyable. It’s almost silly how many years it took me to realize and accept that I simply don’t want to practice all the skills with all my languages – e.g. speaking French (and Esperanto) is not something I’m interested in, but writing and reading in these languages is still great fun!
I was continuing to read
Le langage, cet inconnu (by Julia Kristeva – have I already mentioned that book in this log? I thought I had, but now I can’t find the reference) at a local café today when, as so often unfortunately happens, the gentleman sitting at the next table decided to initiate a conversation with me. He pointed to it and said “What book is that?” and I said “It’s a book on linguistics – complex but really good so far.” He replied “Linguistics… so it’s about languages?” Me: “…Yes, in a way.” Him, staring at the cover where the title can easily be seen: “So is that French?” Me: “…Yes.” Him: “You can read French?” Me: “…Yes.” After this, he had apparently exhausted his wellspring of conversational material, because silence ensued and I continued reading. You wouldn't believe how many times this scene has played out in my life. It seems that whenever I’m reading a book in public – especially one that’s not in English – that’s apparently interpreted as being a secret code for “I’m dreadfully bored of pointing my eyes at this confusing text and wish some gallant fellow would rescue me from this tiresome charade!” Strange, how these things work.
My written French continues to be rather reckless because I rarely have the patience to look things up in the dictionary anymore, which is not a good sign, haha. But I did write a whole letter in French to a friend a couple of a weeks ago! And here’s an excerpt copied in from my offline notebook, May 29.
FR:
Je suis restée chez moi toute la journée, desintéressée par le temps ensoleillé, mais dans le moment que j’ai entendu le tonnerre du dehors, j’ai éprouvé – comme chaque fois – le désir irrésistible d’être dehors. Alors je me suis habillée super-vite en téléfonant à tous les cafés locaux pour découvrir lequel est ouvert. J’ai réussi avec Chrome Yellow, j’y suis arrivée juste avant que la pluie a commencé, et maintenant je m’assois à la fenêtre et je regarde tranquillement un spectacle plus intéressant que tous les films et tous les séries du monde : Le Temps. Mais pendant les quelques minutes qu’il me fallait pour écrire ça, la pluie est presque disparue. Les belles choses de la vie durent toujours si courtes. Raison de plus à les apprécier dans ces moments !
ESPERANTO
I suddenly got way into Esperanto. Like way. I mean, I was already, but now, way. I’ve been hardcore pushing towards the end of the tree on Duolingo this past week (re-gilding everything first, which I’ve now managed, and then learning the final new skills – I think I have about six or eight of them left), at a rate of about 30 to 100 points per day, while simultaneously reading – first
Gerda malaperis!, which I’ve now finished, and then
Vere aŭ fantazie (also by Claude Piron), which I’m about ten percent of the way through. Next up:
Marvirinstrato by Tim Westover. (Which, incidentally, shares its name with a very good asynchronous-collab album by Woody Guthrie, Wilco, and Billy Bragg.)
The combination of returning to active Duo study plus reinforcing and expanding vocabulary through reading has FINALLY pushed me up to the edge of being able to journal comfortably in the language without a dictionary. I say “up to the edge” and not “over the edge” because it still depends on how vortkreema (“word-creative”) I’m feeling that day, but all in all it feels like a real breakthrough!
EO:
Mi jam multfoje menciis, ke mi havas aman-malaman rilaton kun Esperanto – nu, pli ĝuste, neniam estis ĝi malama. Tiu vorto estas tro ekstrema. Sed mi neniam trovis en mi veran intereson pri la lingvo – ĝis nun! Finfine mi konas E-on sufiĉe bone, ke la lingve kreemaj aspektoj ne plu ŝajnas kiel foraj sonĝoj, sed kiel atingeblaj eblecoj. Certe, restas multe, kiu plibonigendas, kaj mi scias, ke mi skribas ankoraŭ tre malbone – sed nun mi sentas veran entuziasmon, ĉar mi aliras al la parto de ĉiu lingvo, kiu estas por mi la plej amuza – la kreemo. (Kiel oni povus kombini “kreemo” kaj “-ebl-” por diri “the possibility of creativity”? Kreemeblo? Kreeblemo?)
CROATIAN
Croatian has mostly been rudely pushed aside due to my new Esperanto-Rausch, although I am up to lesson 23 in Assimil and today I randomly did FSI Serbo-Croatian Unit 1. I kind of like FSI in all its barren brusqueness. Maybe I’ll continue that. Need to get back to reading
Harry Potter i kamen mudraca, though.
WRAPPING UP THIS STUPIDLY LONG POST
I can’t believe I did it AGAIN. Am I physically incapable of writing short update posts? It would appear so. Whatever happened to my hoped-for telegraphic style? That was an idealistic joke back when I started writing this post, a bajillion sentences and almost four hours ago. I won’t be a truly good writer until I can write succinctly. Must keep practicing. Gratitude to those who put up with my loquacity <3