Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

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Arnaud
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log

Postby Arnaud » Mon May 29, 2017 11:18 am

neofight78 wrote:Oh, Arnaud, you've blown a hole in my Anglo-centric word! :P It's possible to install a French-Russian dictionary for the kindle, and I would have thought that it would be possible for a Kobo as well. As for the quality of such dictionaries I'm not qualified to say. Have you found any worthwhile French-Russian dictionaries online at all? Can it really be that an old school paper dictionary is the only way to go? :o

For Kobo, there are no official russian dictionaries: some people have created little dictionaries from stardict online dictionaries, but it's not working well and the dictionaries are so little that they are useless for intermediate students like me.
Is there a way to see the kindle dictionaries somewhere before buying them ? Is there a "kindle market" ? Does the dictionary recognise declined forms of nouns ? Sorry for my ignorance...

I use an old edition of that paper dictionary, it's the most "complete" on the french market (77000 words, 200000 expressions). Afaik, there is no electronic version of it. Still, I often need to use my smartphone and search online for a lot words...complete, but not complete enough :lol:
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log

Postby blaurebell » Mon May 29, 2017 1:14 pm

Arnaud wrote:Is there a way to see the kindle dictionaries somewhere before buying them ? Is there a "kindle market" ? Does the dictionary recognise declined forms of nouns ? Sorry for my ignorance...


The dictionaries to English are actually the best on the kindle, they have the most entries, but there is also a translation function that works for most words that are not in the dictionary! The dictionary recognises declined forms and for the odd moments when it fails to recognise the word the translation function tends to work just fine. My kindle was definitely the best investment for language learning for me. I have read thousands of pages with it in Spanish and French, and I had a very positive impression from the few pages I tried in Russian. The font is very nice and my mum uses it all the time. You can find tons of books in Russian online that work on the kindle. Getting paper books from Russia is a problem, but with the kindle she keeps up with the books that are published over there. So, I would definitely recommend the Kindle, not just for Russian, but for any language really. After my first 5000 pages I will definitely use the kindle a lot for Russian.
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Arnaud
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log

Postby Arnaud » Tue May 30, 2017 5:01 am

I've done a little search on the-ebook.org (russian site for ereaders) and vk and from what I read, there is no ru-fr dictionary, only a ru-en.
Русско-английский словарь MEGA (Ru-En). So, it's basically the same problem as with my Kobo.
Perhaps I'll buy one, I don't know...the problem is simple: can you reach a C1 level in russian through a B2/C1ish level of fossilized english :lol: . I suppose the answer is pretty clear, at least for me. So for the time being, I keep my ru-fr paper dictionary.

Edit: Finally found a ru-fr dictionary on the-ebook.org. 6Mb vs 19Mb for the english one, but it's better than nothing. I don't know how I could test it in the Kindle for PC app. I can read it as a book, but I don't know if I can use it as a pop-up dictionary...I don't even know how to transfer a .fb2 russian book converted in .mobi with Calibre in the Kindle for PC app...
I'll have to explore all that.
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log

Postby Ani » Tue May 30, 2017 6:22 am

The one I found is in the kindle store called Solvoed Deluxe Russian French dictionary (Russian edition). Not sure if that is the same one you found. You can't use kindle popup dictionaries in the kindle cloud reader but you can test them in the kindle app on android with a little work around:

http://learnoutlive.com/add-german-engl ... indle-app/
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Arnaud
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log

Postby Arnaud » Tue May 30, 2017 6:27 am

Ani wrote:The one I found is in the kindle store called Solvoed Deluxe Russian French dictionary (Russian edition). Not sure if that is the same one you found. You can't use kindle popup dictionaries in the kindle cloud reader but you can test them in the kindle app on android with a little work around:

http://learnoutlive.com/add-german-engl ... indle-app/

Cool, thanks for the link, I'll try that asap.
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Arnaud
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log

Postby Arnaud » Tue May 30, 2017 8:51 pm

I've tried to follow the instructions in the link given by Ani, but to no avail: I can't see the folders on my device, so I give up. Amazon is too complicated for me, with Kobo you just have to drag and drop epubs and fb2 files in a folder of your choice: it eats everything happily.
I've installed a monolingual russian dictionary on my Kobo: I'll use it to read not too difficult books. I've tested it and it's working okay. The dictionary is the Большой толковый словарь русского языка Кузнецова, a good dictionary that I wanted to buy a few months ago.
I don't know if it's really useful to use a monolingual dictionary when you learn a language, until now I've resisted the urge...sometimes it's more difficult to understand the russian definition of a word than the word itself :roll: :mrgreen:

Edit: Just for info, the pop-up dictionaries don't work with fb2 books (but the fb2 format is not supposed to be supported by kobo, so....)
The .fb2 format is working more or less correctly in my Glo HD, you just have to play with the size of the font, because usually the text is smaller than with epubs, that's all.

Edit 2: Pfff, how difficult it is to read in russian...(I know, this log is a long complain :lol: )
The feeling is confirmed by the figures: 10% of unknown words in Источник счастья and 9% in Человек-амфибия, for the time being. Let's hope that these figures will diminish while progressing in the story.
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Arnaud
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Arnaud » Thu Jun 08, 2017 4:45 pm

Russian:
Not a lot to write. I've started Русские глаголы движения by Караванов : it's by the same author who wrote Виды русского глагола. The book is built on the same principle: explanations in russian followed by "forced" exercises.
Although I've read Виды русского глагола, I still have a lot of problems to understand Dative+verb, btw.
I've also started Le pain éternel - вечный хлеб by Beliaev: it's a dual-language book in russian-french and I read it extensively, contrary to my habit of reading all intensively. It's going fast but I'm not sure it's very productive. At least it's interesting to see how the translator is rendering the russian text in french. The book contains four short stories: Вечный хлеб, Невидимый свет, Мистер Смех, Держи на запад!
I have a contrastive grammar in my bookshelves that I've never dared to read because the level is pretty high, but I think it would really be useful to read it.
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Arnaud
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Arnaud » Mon Jun 26, 2017 9:03 pm

Russian:
- I've reached 25% of Человек-амфибия by Beliaev. The descriptions are difficult, the dialogs are okay, some days I can read 3 or 4 pages and other days only half a page, it depends. I've written around 700 unknown words in my notebook so far.
I'm also listening to the audiobook and here, that's a total disaster: I understand almost nothing. I've probably listened to the 1st chapter 15-20 times but to no avail...Really strange because I can watch TV series without too many problems...I don't panic, I'll probably get used to it. One of the reasons I've identified is that I expect the declensions to sound like as if they were under the tonic accent, while they are also reduced like vowels out of the accent. It's something I have to work on. What I hear in my head is not exactly what the russian reader says.
For exemple: какой is pronounced like [kakoye] but машиной is pronounced more like [mashynee], the -ой declension is reduced to a kind of -ee sound. A lot of feminine declensions are reduced that way out of the accent, and it causes me problems when I listen to audiobooks.
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Arnaud
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Arnaud » Fri Jul 07, 2017 4:00 pm

Arnaud wrote:Russian:
- I've reached 35% of Человек-амфибия by Beliaev. The descriptions are difficult, the dialogs are okay, some days I can read 3 or 4 pages and other days only half a page, it depends. I've written around 1000 unknown words in my notebook so far.

Nothing special happens, I progress slowly in my books...
I've added the transcripts of Мажор 2, if someone is interested: I read them to correct the OCR that didn't go very well (I didn't read the 1st season), so I've also read about 110 A4 pages of dialogs...
Всех благ ;)
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Re: Arnaud's lazy log (Russian & co)

Postby Xmmm » Fri Jul 07, 2017 7:47 pm

Arnaud wrote:
Arnaud wrote:Russian:
- I've reached 35% of Человек-амфибия by Beliaev. The descriptions are difficult, the dialogs are okay, some days I can read 3 or 4 pages and other days only half a page, it depends. I've written around 1000 unknown words in my notebook so far.

Nothing special happens, I progress slowly in my books...
I've added the transcripts of Мажор 2, if someone is interested: I read them to correct the OCR that didn't go very well (I didn't read the 1st season), so I've also read about 110 A4 pages of dialogs...
Всех благ ;)


I'm interested! Much obliged ...
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