Learning by reading

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Nogon
Green Belt
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N), Swedish (C), English (?), French (A2), Esperanto (A2). Reading Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans. Wanting to learn Polish, Yiddish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16039
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Wed Nov 03, 2021 7:05 pm

przyzwyczajony :shock:

Don't think I'll ever learn Polish!
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Assimil French : 65 / 113
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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)
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby cjareck » Thu Nov 04, 2021 7:18 am

Believe me, this one is easy :) Compare it to these:
W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie


Or already posted somewhere classical "Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz: scene:
5 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

Nogon
Green Belt
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N), Swedish (C), English (?), French (A2), Esperanto (A2). Reading Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans. Wanting to learn Polish, Yiddish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16039
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Thu Nov 04, 2021 9:42 am

cjareck wrote:Believe me, this one is easy :) Compare it to these:
W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie

:o I'll NEVER learn Polish!

I love "Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz"! Is that part of a longer movie/TV show?
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cjareck
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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)
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby cjareck » Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:37 am

Nogon wrote:I love "Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz"! Is that part of a longer movie/TV show?

Yes, it is. It is a short fragment of Polish comedy "Jak rozpętałem II wojnę światową" (How I started the Second World War). It was made during the communist time, so history is manipulated there, but the film is amusing.

Here are all three parts in Full HD. The Original was black and white. Now they are available in color also:


3 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

Nogon
Green Belt
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N), Swedish (C), English (?), French (A2), Esperanto (A2). Reading Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans. Wanting to learn Polish, Yiddish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16039
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Thu Nov 04, 2021 1:46 pm

cjareck wrote:
Nogon wrote:I love "Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz"! Is that part of a longer movie/TV show?

Yes, it is. It is a short fragment of Polish comedy "Jak rozpętałem II wojnę światową" (How I started the Second World War). It was made during the communist time, so history is manipulated there, but the film is amusing.

Thank you, cjareck! The title sounds great :D . But no subtitles - I think I have to learn Polish after all! ;)
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Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

Nogon
Green Belt
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N), Swedish (C), English (?), French (A2), Esperanto (A2). Reading Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans. Wanting to learn Polish, Yiddish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16039
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Sat Nov 06, 2021 5:08 pm

Week 44:
Going to summarize this week today already, as I won't have time to do so neither tomorrow nor the following days.

Yiddish:
Reading נאוה סמל - אונדזערע לײַכטער (Nava Semel - Undzere laychter/Our Candlesticks). It's a short children's book - 44 pages out of which I've read 22. I was afraid, I might have forgotten the letters as I havn't read anything in Yiddish for at least half a year. I was surprised by my ability to sound out the words quite well, much better than I had expected. I even remembered the pronunciation (AND meaning) of several words of Hebrew origin! So I'm quite pleased, even though it's slow going, s-l-o-w going!

Dutch:
Finished Annet Schaap - Lampje (Lampie). Really good children's book; unfortunately the library doesn't own more books by that author.
Read a few pages of Ewald Arenz - De smaak van wilde peren. It's a translation from German (Alte Sorten), which I borrowed due to its fantastic cover. (I love bumblebees.) Couldn't find an English translation.

Polish:
Listening to Astrid Lindgren - Bracia Lwe Serce (The Brothers Lionheart), read by Edyta Jungowska, while reading the book in Swedish (Bröderna Lejonhjärta). It's quite easy to follow along reading even though I just understand the names and a few words. Of course it helps that I know the book very well.

French:
Read another short story from Tove Jansson - Contes de la vallée de Moumine (Tales from Moominvalley). Quite a few unknown words, but I enjoy reading it.

Other:
Finished Jessica J. Lee - Zwei Bäume machen einen Wald (Two Trees Make a Forest). Great book, absolutely loved it! I even learned a new German word: die Fumarole. It's one of those wonderful "Learn one, get three" words :D . (Swedish: en fumarol, English: a fumarole.)
Read the first two stories of Chen Qiufan - Råttans år (The Year of the Rat and other short stories), translated from Chinese into Swedish. Even here I found a "Learn one, get three" (and probably many more) word: en sponton, der Sponton, a spontoon.
6 x
Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

Nogon
Green Belt
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N), Swedish (C), English (?), French (A2), Esperanto (A2). Reading Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans. Wanting to learn Polish, Yiddish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16039
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon Nov 15, 2021 5:01 pm

Week 45:
Not much reading done in whichever language. I spent a few days in Åland - loved it! - and had taken along several books to read in the evenings. That didn't happen as I wrote postcards instead (one of my hobbies is Postcrossing). The weekend I spent working, so no time for reading then either.

So I only read some more stories from Tove Jansson - Contes de la vallée de Moumine (Tales from Moominvalley) in French and another two chapters נאוה סמל - אונדזערע לײַכטער (Nava Semel - Undzere laychter/Our Candlesticks) in Yiddish.
In German I started reading the grandfather of nature writing Gilbert White - Selborne und seine Naturgeschichte (The Natural History of Selborne).
5 x
Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

Nogon
Green Belt
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N), Swedish (C), English (?), French (A2), Esperanto (A2). Reading Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans. Wanting to learn Polish, Yiddish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16039
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon Nov 22, 2021 9:24 am

Week 46:
Not as much done as I'd have liked to, due to being horribly tired and falling asleep each time I open a book. Nevertheless:

Yiddish:
Finished אונדזערע לײַכטער (Nava Semel - Undzere laychter/Our Candlesticks).
Read the first three stories of דניאל גלאי - פּינקס כעלעם (Daniel Galay - Pinkes Khelem). Funny stories about the Wise Men of Chelm. Like the stories, although they contain more unknown vocabulary than I'd like to have, quite many of those being unknown to my dictionary as well. At long last I've ordered a better dictionary which I should receive this week.
It's slow reading - I can't believe that I was able to read the entire "Hobbit" in Yiddish earlier this year. Does it help that much to be familiar with the story? Or is it an effect of that book being a translation while the Chelm book seems to be originally written in Yiddish? I know that books in translation usually are easier to read, but that much easier???

French:
Another two stories of Tove Jansson - Contes de la vallée de Moumine (Tales from Moominvalley). Jansson was a terrific author!

Other:
Finished Gilbert White - Selborne und seine Naturgeschichte (The Natural History of Selborne) in German. Learned a new word: Die Miszelle. I guess it's etymologically related to the English "misc. (miscellaneous)".
Last edited by Nogon on Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
5 x
Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

Nogon
Green Belt
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N), Swedish (C), English (?), French (A2), Esperanto (A2). Reading Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans. Wanting to learn Polish, Yiddish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16039
x 1068

Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:46 am

Week 47:
Quite a good week!

Yiddish:
Read another story of דניאל גלאי - פּינקס כעלעם (Daniel Galay - Pinkes Khelem), while waiting for my ordered dictionary and some other books. So now I have an official Yiddish TBR pile, consisting of three books!
What I DON'T have, is a better dictionary. It was sent from the UK to Germany, from Germany to somewhere in Sweden, from somewhere in Sweden to Hägersten (a suburb of Stockholm), and from Hägersten ... back to the UK! Why? Why? Why? Nobody could tell me. Now I've ordered it from another book provider. Hopefully I will receive it next week.
As there are quite a few words in Galay's book which my tiny Yiddish-Swedish dictionary doesn't know, I started to read one of the new books:
קענעט גראַהאַם - דער װינט אין די װערבעס (Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows). As I know and love the book, and own an English copy to check when in doubt, it's not that difficult to read. There are fewer loshn-koydesh words than in Galay's book, but quite many words of Slavic origin, which I of course don't understand, except where I remember the story exactly. So I of course knew that the קראָט (krot) in the very first sentence couldn't be a German "Kröte" as Mr Toad only appears later on in the book. It is the Mole, Polish "kret". I didn't check "rat" in Polish, but a word beginning with "shtsh" MUST be of Polish origin, mustn't it? (שטשור "shtshur").

French:
Finished Tove Jansson - Contes de la vallée de Moumine (Tales from Moominvalley).
Reading another of Jean-Claude Mourlevat's books: Le chagrin du roi mort (couldn't find an English translation). A Young Adult novel with a thrilling beginning. Now it's more like a standard fantasy book, but okay to read.
Something has happened with my French: Now I read with far more ease than only two weeks ago! Hooray! I still have to check several words on each page, but nevertheless my understanding has improved considerably.
I also listened to Luca Lampariello interviewing the Inner French guy in French, and was happy to be able to understand more than just the gist, even though I understood far from everything.

Dutch:
Listened to Roald Dahl - De heksen (The Witches) as radio theatre. Great! Even without previous knowledge - actually I've neither read the book nor seen the film - I understood almost everything. Difficult were the scenes where several people spoke at the same time, but even there I understood the general theme.
I had borrowed another two Dutch audiobooks from the library, but decided not to listen to them, as I disliked the voices from the very beginning.

Norwegian:
Listened to Sven Nordqvist - Gubben og katten og nissemaskinen (Findus and the Christmas Tomte), read by Sigve Bøe. Lovely! Now I'm in Christmas mood.

Other:
Read Katrin Schumacher - Füchse. Ein Portrait. A short book about foxes and humans. (In German)
Currently reading Helen Macdonald - H is for Hawk. Gorgeous! (In English)
Last edited by Nogon on Mon Jul 18, 2022 9:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
6 x
Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

Nogon
Green Belt
Posts: 305
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 6:21 pm
Languages: German (N), Swedish (C), English (?), French (A2), Esperanto (A2). Reading Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Afrikaans. Wanting to learn Polish, Yiddish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16039
x 1068

Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Tue Dec 07, 2021 4:13 pm

Week 48:
Read more than I thought I would have time to.

Yiddish:

Finished the first chapter of קענעט גראַהאַם - דער װינט אין די װערבעס (Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows). I love that book, which makes it much easier to read than it objectively is. I don't believe all Krashen's hypotheses, but he's right about the power of compelling input, I think. If a story really grabs you, and you just have to know what will happen on the next page, you (or at least I) can spend an incredible amount of time and effort to find out/understand. Now of course - having read the book multiple times - I know what will happen in the next chapter, but that doesn't matter. A well-written book is just as thrilling when being re-read. Will the hero survive even this time? Even if I know that they made it alive to the very end all the times I read the book, maybe they won't this time? ;)
My reading pace is slooow - partly due to the size of the book and the minuscule print. The Yiddish book has only 144 pages while my English Puffin pocket book has 240 pages. So there is a lot af text on each page and progress feels even slower than it is.

This morning I received my Yiddish-English dictionary, hooray! Haven't had time to use it yet; I will let you know later whether I like it or not.

French:
Listened to Tom Rob Smith - Enfant 44 (Child 44), read by Frédéric Meaux, while reading the Swedish translation (Barn 44). I didn't really trust in all the praise the book received, and I was right. I didn't like it at all. I've read far too many thrillers to enjoy another one, which, although it had a "new" setting employed all the standard tropes of the genre. Don't know how many times I rolled my eyes at another pseudo-shocking event. Finished it only because I wanted to listen to lots of French. I had planned to first listen/read it and then listen to it again without any translation, but no! Spent far too much time on that "Schrott". But okay, another 8,2 "films" for the Super Challenge.

Other:
Read Robert Macfarlane's and Jackie Morris' fantastic books The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. Adorable!
Still reading Helen Macdonald - H is for Hawk. Great book.
3 x
Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113


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