Dave's log, (German and French)

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
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 Mar 11, 2021 9:46 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:A century earlier saw the many letters of Madame de Sévigné, many of them to her daughter. Worth a look, if not a complete read. The marquise was from the very highest upper crust of French society, but her letters are not hoity-toity at all.
Thanks, I'll give those a try. :-)
1 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 Apr 18, 2021 4:29 pm

63. Die schönsten griechischen Sagen by Dimiter Inkiow.

I read this underlining all unknown words, then went through again to look them up. I used dict.cc as a dictionary. I had intended to try Carmody's method, and read it again, but so far I haven't.

This is a collection of short stories, based on Greek myths, intended for children. The publisher gives an age suggestion of "ab 5 jahren".

Mr Inkiow was Bulgarian, and came to Germany as a political refugee in his early thirties. I don't know if he could speak German before his arrival, but I like to think not, it makes his success as an author more impressive.

Arte.tv have some adaptations of Greek Myths (not based on Mr Inkiow's text!). Die großen Mythen: Geschichten von Göttern, Helden und Tierwesen.

64. Das entschwundene Land by Astrid Lindgren

I read through this underlining unknown words, then looked them all up.

This is a collection of autobiographical stories and essays that I suspect were originally published as magazine articles.

In "Es begann in Kristins Küche" we learn the Genesis of Pippi Longstocking:
Dass ich selbst mit der Zeit Kinderbuchautorin geworden bin, liegt einzig und allein am Wetter. Hätte es an einem bestimmten Märztag 1944 in Stockholm nicht geschneit, wäre ich nie dazu gekommen.

1941 lag meine Tochter Karin krank im Bett, und eines Abends sagte sie "Erzähl mir was von Pippi Langstrumpf." Es war ein Name, der ihr gerade in diesem Augenblick durch ihren fieberhißen Kopf geschossen war. Ich tat ihr den Gefallen und dachte mir eine närrische Range aus, die zu dem Namen passen konnte, und musste bald entdecken, dass uns eine Pippi ins Haus geschneit war, die wir nicht wieder loswerden konnten.

1944 wurde sie gedruckt, einerseits abgelehnt, andererseits preisgekrönt, jedenfalls lag sie plötzlich in den Buchhandlungen.


There seem to be two biographies of Ms Lindgren, one by Jens Andersen, and one by Margareta Strömstedt.

Books/writers mentioned in the text include:

Courses
Langenscheidt's Deutsch alles drin contines, I begin to fear it will never end :-)

TV
YouTube has the German dub of the 1970s TV series The Water Margin (Die Rebellen vom Liang Shan Po), which was fun to relive.

French
I've been watching some current affairs TV, most often C dans l'air, but also C à vous, Affaires étrangères etc.

I'm currently reading Metronome by Lorànt Deutsch.
6 x

User avatar
cjareck
Brown Belt
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:11 pm
Location: Poland
Languages: Polish (N) English, German, Russian(B1?) French (B1?), Hebrew(B1?), Arabic(A2?), Mandarin (HSK 2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8589
x 2979
Contact:

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby cjareck » Sun Apr 18, 2021 6:04 pm

DaveAgain wrote:63. Die schönsten griechischen Sagen by Dimiter Inkiow.

I've got the Polish edition of this book, "Najpiękniejsze mity Greckie" (The Most Beautiful Greek Myths). My boys like it very much. I also enjoy reading it to them!
2 x
Please feel free to correct me in any language


Listening: 1+ (83% content, 90% linguistic)
Reading: 1 (83% content, 90% linguistic)


MSA DLI : 30 / 141ESKK : 18 / 40


Mandarin Assimil : 62 / 105

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 May 09, 2021 7:44 am

MorkTheFiddle wrote:
DaveAgain wrote:French
My French reading has fallen off a bit, but I'm still reading something every day. Currently Chesterfield's letters to his son.

A century earlier saw the many letters of Madame de Sévigné, many of them to her daughter. Worth a look, if not a complete read. The marquise was from the very highest upper crust of French society, but her letters are not hoity-toity at all. Thanks for the reference to Chesterfield's letters.
In letter CXI [Vue.296 : p.264 of the Numelyo book] Chesterfield recommends Mme de Sévigné's letters to his son too :-)
A propos d'écrire des Lettres; les meilleurs modelles sur lesquels vous puissiez vous former, sont Ciceron, le Cardinal d'Ossat, Madame de Sévigné, & le Comte de Bussy-Rabutin. Les épitres de Ciceron à Atticus, & à ses amis familliers, sont les meilleurs exemples que vous puissiez suivre, dans le stile amical & familier. La simplicité & la clarté des lettres du Cardinal d'Ossat, montrent dans quel goût les lettres d'affaires doivent être écrites: nuls détours affectés, aucun effort d'esprit, n'obscurcissent ni n'embrouillent sa matiere; qui est toujours exposée simplement & clairement, selon que la nature des affaires l'éxige. Quant à ce que est des lettres gaies & amusantes, où l'auteur est enjoué & badin, il n'y en a point qui égalent celles du Comte de Bussy, & Madame de Sévigné. Elles sont si naturelles, qu'on les prendroit pour les conversations imprévues de deux personnes d'esprit, plustôt que pour des lettres, qui ordinairement sont étudiées, quoi qu'elles ne dussent pas l'être. Je vous conseillerois de mettre ce livre là dans votre bibliotheque ambulante; il vous amusera en même temps qu'il vous instruira.
2 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 » Sun May 09, 2021 3:23 pm

The Comte de Bussy-Rabutin and Madame de Sévigné were cousins, and some of her letters are to him.
When last I commented, I knew of a shorter collection of her letters, had a copy but could not find it, and I could find no reference to it on Amazon. By chance, I recently found the book amongst some unshelved books of mine. The title is simply Lettres, published in 1976 by Garnier-Flammarion. In case you are interested and Amazon still has nothing about it, the ISBN is 2-08-070282-3. It is a paperback, 17.8 x 10.6 x 2 cm, 448 total pages, with a chronology, introduction, notes (important to learn her references) and a few assessments of her letters by famous readers.
The second letter in the collection is to Bussy-Rabutin.
The lady was widowed rather early by an event hard not to laugh at. Her hubby was killed in a duel defending the honor of his mistress.
3 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 » Wed May 19, 2021 4:40 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:I knew of a shorter collection of her letters, had a copy but could not find it, and I could find no reference to it on Amazon. By chance, I recently found the book amongst some unshelved books of mine. The title is simply Lettres, published in 1976 by Garnier-Flammarion. In case you are interested and Amazon still has nothing about it, the ISBN is 2-08-070282-3. It is a paperback, 17.8 x 10.6 x 2 cm, 448 total pages, with a chronology, introduction, notes (important to learn her references) and a few assessments of her letters by famous readers.
I came across a paperback copy of Mme Sévigné's letters in a charity shop earlier today, and I think it's the same edition you have (can't see an ISBN number anywhere though!). À l'attaque!

EDIT
Europe 1's Au coeur de l'histoire programme have an episode on Madame de Sévigné.
Last edited by DaveAgain on Thu May 20, 2021 8:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
1 x

User avatar
einzelne
Blue Belt
Posts: 804
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2018 11:33 pm
Languages: Russan (N), English (Working knowledge), French (Reading), German (Reading), Italian (Reading on Kindle)
x 2882

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby einzelne » Wed May 19, 2021 6:07 pm

I hit my pages target so I retook the Dialang test. Dialang says my reading is still A2 :-(


Thanks for documenting your progress. I think your experiment is very instructing.

I'm late for the party, but I think the test doesn't reflect what you've actually achieved.
And I think your experiment reflects a very important fact: extensive reading alone is not that effective as people tend to believe. You need to review new vocabulary more or less systematically, if you want to achieve better results. I discovered this once I started to use ebooks in my learning. You can always check how many times the same word/expression would pop up in a book and quite often it appears only once. May be a couple of times, if you're lucky. Then you might not come across it in months. And it's not like some obscure or low-frequency words but rather pretty common ones. I read around 30 fiction books in French since the lockdown and I came across the word sauterelle for the first time just today! Needless to say, unless you're into biology and nature books, you won't see this word often. But this is the word every French kid knows.

Personally, I think 99 comprehension is a good aim for fiction. But that means that even in that case an average novel (70k words) will bring you around 700 new words.
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 Jul 12, 2021 12:12 pm

65. Fräulein Smillas Gespür für Schnee by Peter Høeg

I've read this before.

I read each chapter first in German, then English, then German again.

Arte.tv recently streamed the film of this, but I wasn't able to watch it due to geoblocking. I found a German radio drama adaptation that I could access, and listening to that made me want to read the book again (which I had to re-buy!).

The main character Fräulein Smilla speaks three languages in the course of the novel, Danish, German and Greenlandic:
Ich habe das Privilege genossen, Fremdsprachen lernen zu dürfen. Statt wie die meisten anderen Leute nur eine blasse Ausgabe der Muttersprache zu sprechen, bin ich noch in zwei bis drei anderen Sprachen hilflos.

I also went through the YouTube generated transcript of the radio play, and looked up any unknown words.
-------
Gsbod suggested reading multiple books, of differing difficulty levels, at the same time. I like the idea but unless I read online from the Goethe eLibrary easy books will be very limited. I think I may just try reading an eBook, and a paperback and see how that goes.
-------
Le Baron mentioned DTV's jugendbuch (young adult?) range the other day, and I've ordered two of those in the hope that they'll be the right level for me.

Courses
I got fed up with my Langenscheidt Deutsch alles drin/grundwortschatz course, and stopped for a while, but I've picked it up again.

I was window shopping for another course, and noticed that Langenscheidt's Sprachkurs Deutsch für Fortgeschrittene seems to be a repackaged edition of Willkommen 2.

French
I'm currently reading La religion Cathare by Michel Rocquebert, I read his 'Histoire des cathares' a while back.

In the Arte.tv series L'origine du Christianisme I learned that the earliest christian schism in Jerusalem had a language angle, there were two communities, one Hebrew speaking and one Greek speaking.
7 x

User avatar
luke
Brown Belt
Posts: 1243
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2015 9:09 pm
Languages: English (N). Spanish (intermediate), Esperanto (B1), French (intermediate but rusting)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16948
x 3631

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby luke » Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:07 pm

einzelne wrote:
I hit my pages target so I retook the Dialang test. Dialang says my reading is still A2 :-(

Thanks for documenting your progress. I think your experiment is very instructing.

I'm late for the party, but I think the test doesn't reflect what you've actually achieved.

Personally, I think 99 comprehension is a good aim for fiction. But that means that even in that case an average novel (70k words) will bring you around 700 new words.

You mean 1% of the words have to be deciphered based on the context and other clues, right?

Makes sense to me. The target language seems to swim in my head more when I do highly comprehensible material, as opposed to difficult stuff.

Just trying to understand perspective.
4 x

User avatar
cjareck
Brown Belt
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2017 6:11 pm
Location: Poland
Languages: Polish (N) English, German, Russian(B1?) French (B1?), Hebrew(B1?), Arabic(A2?), Mandarin (HSK 2)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8589
x 2979
Contact:

Re: 10,000 pages of German

Postby cjareck » Mon Jul 12, 2021 1:29 pm

DaveAgain wrote:Arte.tv recently streamed the film of this, but I wasn't able to watch it due to geoblocking.

This problem can be fixed easily by using proper proxy server
2 x
Please feel free to correct me in any language


Listening: 1+ (83% content, 90% linguistic)
Reading: 1 (83% content, 90% linguistic)


MSA DLI : 30 / 141ESKK : 18 / 40


Mandarin Assimil : 62 / 105


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: guyome and 2 guests