Dave's log, (German and French)

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
slowmoon
Orange Belt
Posts: 121
Joined: Sun Jan 12, 2020 6:25 pm
Languages: EN (N), DE (Int.)
x 339

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby slowmoon » Sun May 10, 2020 1:20 pm

Sounds good.

DaveAgain wrote:You mentioned a new project with wordlists the other day, what have you got in mind for that?


Still working out the details, but it'll be similar to what Iversen did with Serbian: going through an entire dictionary A-Z, making lists of unknown words, and reviewing each word once.
2 x

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1968
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4050

Re: Dave's log, French & German.

Postby DaveAgain » Sun May 10, 2020 2:40 pm

Mista wrote:
DaveAgain wrote:I'm doing a mixture of intensive and extensive reading so I'm not sure what to change. Perhaps I just need more time at it?


What exactly do you do when you do intensive reading? If you are mostly focusing on vocabulary, it could be that Dialang expects a better understanding of grammar at the B1 level.
This is just looking up words. Sometimes I'll play around with deepl.com to see how the meaning changes when you add/remove parts of a compound word.
Also, is that a summary of your reading activities, or all of your studying activities? If the latter, it's possible that you would profit from some more productive activities, like writing summaries in your target language of what you read. It could help you become more conscious of the details in what you are reading.
I own a copy of TeachYourself Complete German (ISBN: 9781444177398), and after Small White's suggestions I've started working with that a little, but it's not an established habit, and I don't know if I'm going to stick with it.

Reading and listening are the only skills I want to develop at the moment.
1 x

Mista
Blue Belt
Posts: 608
Joined: Wed May 11, 2016 11:03 pm
Location: Norway
Languages: Norwegian (N), English (QN). Studied Ancient Greek (MA), Linguistics (MA), Latin (BA), German (BA). Italian at A2/B1 level. Learning: French, Japanese, Russian (focus) and various others, like Polish, Spanish, Vietnamese, and anything that comes my way. Also know some Sanskrit (but not the script) and Coptic. Really want to learn Arabic and Amharic.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7497
x 1459

Re: Dave's log, French & German.

Postby Mista » Sun May 10, 2020 3:19 pm

You don't really need a coursebook to work on grammar, if you prefer working with literature. For example, if you start checking which forms of the verbs you have in the passages where you do intensive study, that would be a way to get some grammar study into your already existing routine. If you do that, I think you are more likely to notice the verb forms in your extensive reading too, which will bring you closer to a thorough understanding of the text.
4 x

User avatar
smallwhite
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2386
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 6:55 am
Location: Hong Kong
Languages: Native: Cantonese;
Good: English, French, Spanish, Italian;
Mediocre: Mandarin, German, Swedish, Dutch.
.
x 4876

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby smallwhite » Sun May 10, 2020 5:37 pm

Not sure if you want to analyse your progress and test results with us. Here are some points you can think about. You don't have to share your analysis with us if you don't want to.

When you read, what is it that gives you trouble or slows you down? Grammar? Vocabulary? Nouns? Articles? Pronouns? Telling the two apart? Adverbs? Adjectives? Telling the two apart? Prepositions? Verbs? Conjugations? Tenses? Moods? Do you fully understand a sentence after looking up the unknown words, or is it still just a gist that you're getting?

Can you confidently translate into English a B1 article like this DW Top Thema one without looking at the Glossar or using a dictionary? Then, when you do use a dictionary, how many words do you look up?
2 x
Dialang or it didn't happen.

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1968
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4050

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby DaveAgain » Thu Jun 11, 2020 1:51 pm

46. Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer by Patrick Süskind.

I read this aloud, along with an audio book. I listened to a sentence, then paused the audio and repeated it. When I came to the end of a page I then looked up all unknown words. At first I used online dictionaries for that, but then I bought an english language copy (english title: The Story of Mr Sommer) to use as a parallel text instead.

This is a children's book, but it reads well for adults too. We never learn much about Mr Sommer, where he comes from, why he's always walking around, who is pursuing him but that lack of information is part of the draw, you're always reading on in hope of an answer.

I was interested enough to look for an interview with Mr Suskind where he talked a little about the plot, but it seems he's not one for interviews.

https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-most-mys ... a-48050838

Sempé (who illustrated the book) does not share this aversion to publicity, but alas I could not find an interview where he discussed this book, and explained the secret of Mr Sommer for me. :-(

A (very negative) review on the German book website mentioned by Kat, led me to look at Mr Süskind's essay Über Liebe und Tod
Die Liebe und ihr ewiger Gegenspieler, der Tod, sind das Thema von Patrick Süskinds provokantem Essay. Mit Beispielen aus Philosophie und Literatur (von Platon über Kleist bis Thomas Mann) wie aus dem modernen Leben führt er uns die Liebe als Himmels- und Höllenmacht vor. Und er vergleicht die Schicksale von Jesus und Orpheus, die beide den Tod durch die Liebe zu überwinden versuchten.


Mr Sommer's death can be bent to fit the Orpheus story, a descent into the land of the dead, and his wife's occupation as a doll maker could evoke a Goddess, but I'm stretching there, and bad review or not I suspect I'm going to eventually buy Mr Suskind's essay in the hope of eventually finding what was going on with Mr Sommer.

47. Eine Geschichte von zwei Städten by Charles Dickens

I read this on an eReader, I first read each chapter in German without looking up any words, then again in English, then again in German looking up all unknown words.

I've been meaning to read this for some time, but I caught the tail end of the 1958 film adaption, just in time for the line:
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.
I'm sure I've heard that line many times, but I didn't know it was from A Tale of two Cities, so I moved it to the top of my to read list.

I read a book on rhetoric a few years back, and you cannot help but notice rhetorical devices in this book, starting with the famous opening lines

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

From what I understand of Mr Dicken's childhood his education must have been self-study to a large extent. Wikipedia's artcle on rhetoric suggested Hugh Blair's 'Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres" as a popular rhetoric book Mr Dicken's might have found in a bookshop or library. Archive.org have this in several languages.

Gutenberg have a biography of Mr Dickens by his friend John Forster, and a memoire by his daughter, My Father as I recall him.

48. Fräulein Smillas Gespür für Schnee by Peter Høeg

I read this without looking up any words, but I had read it before in English (english title: Miss Smilla's feeling for snow), some years ago.

I think this would be a good choice for anyone wanting a book they could re-read several times. Smilla's a super character, and the book reads well.

Books mentioned in the text: Euclid's elements (German, English)

Courses
I've worked through TY Complete German, and I'm now using the dialogues for dictation and double-translation.

I start with English>German translation of the previous day's text. Then listen to that day's dialogue, then listen again while looking at the text, then treat it as a dictation exercise, then translate German > English.

The audio is so far usually less than a minute, I stop at a minute if it goes much beyond that.

Test.
I took the Leipzig receptive vocabulary test to have a number to guage any future progress against, result: 56%.

French
Other than two episodes of Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie this has just been reading every day. Currently Mr Blair's rhetoric book.
6 x

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1968
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4050

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Jul 05, 2020 9:36 am

49. Die Schatzinsel by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I read this on an eReader, looking up all unknown words with the pop-up dictionary.

I have a 1 hour audio drama adaption on my MP3 player that I've listened to several times, before and since reading the book again. There's also a 1966 german mini-series adpation that I began to watch, but I couldn't get past the fact that they'd cast a twenty-something actor as Jack Hawkins, who I have always pictured as a small boy, so I abandoned that unfinished.

50. Meine Gute Alte Zeit, by Agatha Christie

I read this passing over any unknown words.

This is the German translation of Agatha Christie's autobiography. The edition I have was published by Fischer (ISBN: 3596168023), the current edition is published by Atlantik. Mrs Christie wrote this book towards the end of her life, but it wasn't published until after her death. She wrote another autobiographical book that was published during her life, covering a period in the 1930s after her 2nd marriage, "Erinnerungen an glückliche Tage" (English | French), she used her new married name of Mallowan for that.

When Mrs Christie was ~5/6 years old, her parents had a fall in income, that they responded to by letting out their home in Britain, and moving to a hotel in the south of France. Her mother took advantage of the situation to begin Mrs Christie's education of the French language. There were two false starts with tutors, then her mother hired a monolingual French seamstress to be both Mrs Christie's nursemaid, and make clothes for the ladies of the household, Mrs Christe had one older sister, and an older brother.

The family remained in France for a year, and when they returned to Britain, the seamstress came too. She returned to France one/two years later by which time Mrs Christie was conversationally fluent, and reading French children's books.

While Mrs Christie's two older siblings were sent away to boarding schools Mrs Christie's education seems to have been homeschooling. As a teenager she spent 2-4 years at different schools in Paris, studying art/music mostly but also some French, she appears to have had considerable trouble with written French.
Meine Fehler im Französischdiktat ließen die Lehrerin in Panik geraten, sie konnte es kaum glauben. "Vraiment, c'est impossible", sagte sie. "Vous, qui parlez si bien le français, vous avez fait ving-cinq fautes en dictée, ving-cinq!" Fünfundzwanzig Fehler, obwohl ich doch so gute französisch sprach!

Unter den gegebenen Umständen war das nicht weiter verwunderlich, da ich die Sprache ja ausschließlich durch Konversation gelernt hatte. Ich sprach Französisch geläufig, aber natürlich nur nach Gehör, und die Wörter été und était klangen in meinen Ohren eines wie das andere. Daß ich das eine so und das andere so buchstabierte, war reiner Zufall. In manchen Fächern wie etwa Literatur und Deklamation gehörte ich zu den Besten; in bezug auf Grammatik und Buchstabieren zu den Schlechtesten. Damit machte ich es meinen armen Lehrerinnen schwer - und für mich war es beschämend -, aber mir lag einfach nichts daran.

51. Wachtmeister Studer by Friedrich Glauser

This was mentioned in the Krimi Forum's best Klassic Krimis list, I read it on an eReader, looking up all unknown words with the pop-up dictionary.

Wachtmeister is a police rank, the story is set in Switzerland which at that time had a what appears to be a investigating judge system, where a lawyer/judge heads the investigation, but police detectives do the footwork.

As a young man Mr Glauser was treated for TB with morphine, and developed a drug habit that was to be lifelong. He was admitted to mental hospitals several times, but I'm not sure if this was due to mental illness, or as a form of addiction treatment.

He died the night before his wedding. :-(

Repeated listening

I've been doing a good deal of repeated listening to radio dramas, and Polyglot Gathering presentations. My understanding seems to improve over repeated listens, but I've also started looking at YouTube generated transcripts where they are available. I use deepl.com to create a parallel text and read that before listening. (5 minutes of a PG presentation seems to match the deepl.com character limit).

New Toys!

After reading a paper on dictionary use, I bought monolingual dictionaries for German and French. The French one can just replace the bilingual dictionary I already use, but for German my vocabulary is so small that I've not used a paper dictionary before as there are just too many unknown words. I may just use the German dictionary to look up unknown words in the the introduction of the German dictionary. :-)

Sprachekalender & articles

I've kept up with my sprachkalender, this is generally just a paragraph of bilingual text, French on one side, German on the other.

For articles I use the Chrome web browser and readlang's web reader extenstion and look up all unknown words. I read one or two artciles. Currently I'm using a magazine geo.de for articles, I've also used the Hamburg Morning Post mopo.de and bunte.de which is a celebrity gossip website.

French

I read in French every day, other than that I watched a two-part crime mini-series on TV5Monde and listened to a radio documentary about Hercule Poirot on FranceCulture.fr
8 x

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1968
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4050

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Aug 02, 2020 12:59 pm

52. Die Nacht von Lissabon by Erich Maria Remarque

I read this without looking up any words.

The Goethe eLibrary offer this as an eBook, and WDR have a four part radio drama adaptation.

I listened to different episodes of the radio adaption as I progressed through the book.

This is the third of Mr Remarque's four 'exile' books.

Der 1962 veröffentlichte Roman Die Nacht von Lissabon steht an dritter Stelle einer Tetralogie von Exil-Romanen Remarques. Nach Liebe Deinen Nächsten (1941) und Arc de Triomphe (1946) erschien Die Nacht von Lissabon, und die Reihe wurde schließlich beendet durch den 1971 postum veröffentlichten Roman Schatten im Paradies. Die vier Romane erfassen zusammen die gesamte Zeit von 1933 bis hin zu den letzten Kriegsjahren.

Während 1933 in Liebe Deinen Nächsten die Exil-Schauplätze noch Wien, Prag, die Schweiz und Paris sind und für die Figuren immer noch die Hoffnung auf einen Neubeginn in Mexiko besteht, schildert Remarque in Arc de Triomphe schon die Internierung in französische Lager 1939. Die zeitliche Folge wird eingehalten, und so umfasst Die Nacht von Lissabon die Zeitspanne von 1939 bis 1942 und beschreibt die verzweifelten Versuche der Exilanten in Europa, sich weiter von der Bedrohung durch das Regime zu entfernen. Bei diesen Versuchen wird der Pass in Remarques Roman zur zentralen Metapher für die Enthumanisierung des Einzelnen. Ohne Pass sind die Charaktere niemand und so gut wie tot.


https://www.remarque.uni-osnabrueck.de/

53. Winnetou I by Karl May

I read this on an eReader, looking up unknown words with the popup dictionary. The Goethe eLibrary have this both as an eBook and an audio book.

Karl May's western novels seem to have an enduring success in central Europe, with many dramatic adaptations.

54. Hildegard von Bingen: ihre welt, ihr wirken, ihre vision by Régine Pernoud (ISBN: 9783451045929)

I read this passing over any unknown words.

Hildegard von Bingen was a nun who became famous for her visions, which she wrote down in Latin, and for her books on natural history, medicine, and music. Many of her musical compositions are still performed today.

In 2012 she was made a doctor of the church by Pope Benedict XVI.


Barbara Beuys, who appears in the docu-drama linked to above, has also written a biography of Hilldegard von Bingen: Denn ich bin krank vor Liebe. The Goethe eLibrary have a biography by Maria Kaiser, and an audiobook of a novel featuring Hildegard by Gabriele Göbel, Die Mystikerin.

Courses

I've been following dw.com's Das Sagt man so! course, which is based on German expressions. Many of the expressions translate directly ot English, but there some new ones too e.g. 'Leben wie Gott in Frankreich' and, 'Unter den Fingernägeln brennen'.

French

Usually in July there is a theatre festival in Avignon, it was cancelled this year due to the public health concern. I watched several plays over the past few weeks, half an hour a day.

The recorded Avignon productions I often found hard to understand due to shouting (its an outdoor venue, which may partially explain that). Of those I watched all the way through I thought Antigone by Jean Anouilh was very good.
7 x

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1968
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4050

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Sep 07, 2020 9:38 am

55. Schatten im paradies, by Erich Maria Remarque

I read through the text without looking up any unknown words.

This is the last of Mr Remarque's Exile books. After his death his widow auctioned the publishing rights of an unfinished book, for which two drafts existed. The drafts were edited together and published by Knaur in 1971. In 2018 another publisher (Kiepenheuer & Witsch: kiwi) re-edited the original drafts, and produced a new edition, but used the same title.

https://www.remarque.uni-osnabrueck.de/ ... atten.html

The copy I read was the 1971 text.

56. Matto Regiert by Friedrich Glauser

I read this as on an eReader, looking up all unknown words.

This is another whodunnit with Mr Glauser's Studer detective. The investigation takes place in a mental hospital and the title is attributed to something the inmates say, Matto Regiert, Matto we are told is italian for madness.

The Goethe eLibrary have a radio drama adaption.

57. Die Schattenhand by Agatha Christie

I read this without looking up any unknown words.

This is the German translation of A Moving Finger. I was expecting this to be an easy read, alas no! Bit of a disappointment. :-(

Courses
I've finished the Das sagt man so! course, and I've started going over it again and double-translating the texts.

Day 1: German > English, Day 2: English > German, Day 3: scriptorium of the German text.

French
UK TV Channel 4 has a number of French mini-series on their website, with always on English subtitles. I've watched several of these, the subtitles are suprisingly distracting!

Of the programmes I've watched Maman a tort (UK title: the other mother) was the best.
7 x

User avatar
MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2114
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
x 4824

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Sep 09, 2020 9:08 pm

DaveAgain wrote:55. Schatten im paradies, by Erich Maria Remarque

I read through the text without looking up any unknown words.

This is the last of Mr Remarque's Exile books. After his death his widow auctioned the publishing rights of an unfinished book, for which two drafts existed. The drafts were edited together and published by Knaur in 1971. In 2018 another publisher (Kiepenheuer & Witsch: kiwi) re-edited the original drafts, and produced a new edition, but used the same title.

https://www.remarque.uni-osnabrueck.de/ ... atten.html

The copy I read was the 1971 text.

....

French
UK TV Channel 4 has a number of French mini-series on their website, with always on English subtitles. I've watched several of these, the subtitles are suprisingly distracting!

Remarque's tetralogy fascinated me. Each one was as good as the one before, but Schatten im paradies took my fancy the most, leaving me to wonder just who die Schatten were, Germans or Americans.

As for subtitles always on, a curse on the practice. I have DVDs of the first season of Spiral aka Engrenages with English subtitles that are always on. Sometimes too they cover almost half the screen, making almost impossible the task of masking them without obscuring too much of the action. I wonder if you found a workable solution.
1 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1968
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... &start=200
x 4050

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby DaveAgain » Thu Sep 10, 2020 5:37 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Remarque's tetralogy fascinated me. Each one was as good as the one before, but Schatten im paradies took my fancy the most, leaving me to wonder just who die Schatten were, Germans or Americans.

As for subtitles always on, a curse on the practice. I have DVDs of the first season of Spiral aka Engrenages with English subtitles that are always on. Sometimes too they cover almost half the screen, making almost impossible the task of masking them without obscuring too much of the action. I wonder if you found a workable solution.
It was your mentioning the Remarque books that pointed me to them. :-)

Re: subtitles
I'm watching these programmes with someone who has no french, so the subtitles have to stay on. I'm making an effort to tune them out, with varying degrees of success.

What I've done in the past is lean an empty DVD case against the middle-bottom of the TV screen. This only partially obscures the subtitles, but it's enough to stop me automatically reading them. Given how light today's TVs are, you have to be careful doing this!

One funny thing about watching so many series is the appearance of actors you recognize from other programmes.

The red haired actor from French in Action has appeared in two of the Channel 4 hosted series. He was in juste un regard (UK title: just one look), a good series, and le passager (UK title: the passenger), not such a good series, but the lead actress looked like a supermodel. :-)
2 x


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: vonPeterhof and 2 guests