Montmorency's Log (CY, DE, NO) + (Celtic {Team) Nordic} + SC 2016-7

[Montmorency]

Norsk

Finally finished LL2-RL1-ing "Volvo lastvagnar" (255m).

A strange book, but not disappointing. Very self-referential - a meta-book / meta-novel, perhaps. But how can you not love an author who has as an introduction (to another book, not this one):

(Unfortunately a small dog was hurt while I was working on this book, but it received treatment fairly quickly, and is now doing well, all things considered.)

Update: Started to LL2-RL2 "Volvo lastvagnar" while the "English" was still in my memory. Now about half-way through, which is about 21,250 words, or 70 pages at 300 words/page.

Later update: I have now ordered the three Erlend Loe books available in German which aren't also available in English. I could have got 2 of them from UK Amazon, but I could only find the 3rd at Abebooks.de. Since all three were available from the same supplier I thought I might as well get them all there. Overall, the cost would have been about the same either way; also the ones from Amazon UK would have come from Germany, anyway!. I'd hoped my UK Abebooks account would also work for the .de site, but it doesn't work like that (unlike Google - even though it's all Google ...).

[Montmorency]

Cymraeg

Watched:

Rownd a Rownd 17 Mai 2016 (2 x 19m - watched twice, 2nd time intensively as I wanted to check some things).
http://www.s4c.cymru/clic/c_level2.shtm ... =529479256
Recorded audio and saved Cymraeg and Saesneg subtitles.

I knew the word manylion ("details"), but learned another: "manion" which was translated as "fine print", although an online dictionary gives it as "trifles", "trivia". As a secondary meaning, it's also the plural form of an adjective "mân", meaning "little, small, trifling".
The modern language does not have many plural (or feminine) forms of adjectives, so it's probably worth learning the ones that do as they crop up. I assume that older Welsh had many more. This is what Wikipedia has to say:

For the most part, adjectives are uninflected, though there are a few with distinct masculine/feminine and/or singular/plural forms. A feminine adjective is formed from a masculine by means of vowel change, usually "w" to "o" (e.g. crwn "round" to cron) or "y" to "e" (e.g. gwyn "white" to gwen). A plural adjective may employ vowel change (e.g. marw "dead" to meirw), take a plural ending (e.g. coch "red" to cochion) or both (e.g. glas "blue, green" to gleision).

Norsk

Watched:

"Okkupert" (Norsk med Svensk undertitteler)
http://www.svtplay.se/video/8518018/ock ... ng-1-svt-2
Säsong 1 - Avsnitt 6 45 min

Good series, but too much English for it to be much use language-wise.

Not quite Svensk

"Blue Eyes" (English subtitles) (2x~50m = ~100m)
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/blue ... /62662-007
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/blue ... /62662-008

[Montmorency]

Cymraeg

Watched:

http://www.s4c.cymru/clic/c_level2.shtm ... =529479277

"Rownd a Rownd" - 19 Mai 2016 (~19m)

Recorded audio; saved subtitles (C & S).

[Montmorency]

Deutsch

Finally finished "Mein Name sei Gantenbein" by Max Frisch (287 pages).

Not the easiest of books (I suspect it would not be easy in English, either).
The main difficulty being that it doesn't really have a plot. There is a range of characters, and the person who seems to be the main character (who may or may not be a "real" character) imagines a series of sub-plots in which he and the others take part. I'd call it an experimental novel, although I'm not sure if that's how Frisch regarded it.

Also, the vocabulary was somewhat difficult, and with 40 lines per page, and usually well filled pages of at least 10 words per line, it's nearer 400 words per page than the 300 that I normally reckon on, so 114,000 words, or more like 380 pages of a 300 words per page book. However, I will conservatively record it as 287 pages for SC purposes.

Edit: I feel slightly better now, having read reviews in Goodreads, to realise that some Germans found it difficult as well.

By comparison, the Christa Wolf book that have moved on to has 32 lines per page, and around 9-10 words per page, so that's more like 300 words per page. I don't normally find CW very easy, but this one doesn't seem too bad, and it least it has something more recognisable as a plot.

[Montmorency]

Deutsch

Started reading "Sommerstück" by Christa Wolf. I must have attempted this in the past, but I can't remember how well I got on with it. Probably not all that well.

[Montmorency]

Cymraeg

Skype session with my usual Skype partner. Very useful I thought. We went through an article from Golwg together; reading out loud and translating, and discussing vocabulary a hyn a'r llal - and this and that.

(~50m)

Deutsch

Finished reading "Sommerstück" by Christa Wolf (214 pages).

○

Not quite Svensk

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/blue ... /62662-009

"Blue Eyes", episode 9, with English subtitles.

[Montmorency]

Deutsch

Finished reading "Was Bleibt", by Christa Wolf. 103 pages. However, it's an even shorter book than that suggests, and because of the layout, is barely 200 word per page, and I estimate around the 19,000 word mark in total, which is only around 60 pages of 300 words per page, which is what I shall log for my not-quite-SC.

Wondering whether to go on to "Nachdenken über Christa T.", which I found easily on my shelves, or try to dig out "Der Geteilte Himmel" which is hiding away somewhere. The former is 204 pages with easily 300 words per page, so around 61,000 words in total.

[alexkelbo]

If you need more German material, look here: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2727

[Montmorency]

If you need more German material, look here: http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2727

Thank you for your kind offer Alex.

I will PM you.

[Montmorency]

Because I was out walking most of the day, there was not much activity in the language area.

However, when I got home, I found that the three German translations of Erlend Loe books had arrived (in very good time: thank you Abebooks.de ).

I also called in at my local library. Not really expecting to find anything, I checked to see if there were any English translations of German authors. To my absolute amazement, I found a translation of "Der Geteilte Himmel" by Christa Wolf, under the title "They Divided the Sky", translated by Luise von Flotow. It's quite recent (2013), and contains an interesting forward by the translator, telling how she came to translate it. Apparently there was an English translation as early as 1965, from an East German publishing house, but apparently it suffered from "political correctness" (for the time and place), and a lot of the subtleties present in the original were lost.

As I have now found my own German edition, my plan is to quickly read the English version completely, and then read the German one, with the help of the translation where necessary.