Learning by reading

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
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 Jul 26, 2022 8:30 am

Week 29:
Another week gone by...

French:
Read Xavier-Laurent Petit - Mon petit cœur imbécile. A children's book about a heartsick girl somewhere in Africa whose mother tries to get enough money for an operation. Easy to read.

English:
Read Geetanjali Shree - Tombs of Sand. A very well crafted book which I didn't like quite as much as I thought I would.

Swedish:
Read André Strömqvist - Trädgårdmästarens anteckningar. A gardener's diary.

German:
Read H. W. Katz - Die Fischmanns. Partly autobiographical novel about a Jewish family living in Galicia (the one in Eastern Europe), who in late 19th, early 20th century again and again become victims in pogroms. In WWI they have to flee to Germany. The book was published in 1938 in Amsterdam, when the author was in exile in France.
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 » Mon Aug 01, 2022 8:00 am

Week 30:
Mostly English...

Afrikaans:
Reading Zirk van den Berg - 'n Ander mens (Nobody Dies). A crime novel/thriller about a very successful witness protection programme. None of the disapeared witnesses has ever been found again, as the police officer in charge has found the perfect way to prevent that: She kills the witnesses herself :shock: .

English:
Read Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Water Dancer. About slavery in the South of the USA and the underground railroad, Not a bad book, but it didn't quite work for me.
Read Muriel Spark - The Public Image. I like Spark's books, but this wasn't among those I love most.
Read (again) Terry Pratchett - Mort. Hilarious!
4 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 Aug 08, 2022 9:23 am

Week 31:
Great week languagewise!

Afrikaans:
Continued reading Zirk van den Berg - 'n Ander mens (Nobody Dies). While it's not a bad book, neither it is compelling reading. I like it well enough when reading it, but I don't feel any urge to go back to it after a pause. Not sure whether I will finish it or not.
Read Nils-Olof Franzén - Agaton Sax en die geheim van die wit pette (Agaton Sax and the Haunted House). Funny beginning but a bit boring towards the end.
Absolutely loved the parts in Graelic language and their translation. Graelic seems to be a very efficient language which can express a lot of meaning in just a few words:
"Thlan ghall Scot-y!" (As mens sulke idiote soos jy til hulp het, kan Scotland Yard se personeel met di helfte verminder word!)


Faroese:
Finished reading reading Maj Bylock - Mánaringur (Månringen). A great historical middle-grade novel about two brothers on Gotland. Written in a very easy language, so perfect for me. Read it parallel with the Swedish original to check the nuances which I otherwise could/would have missed.
Now reading Astrid Lindgren - Brøðurnir Leyvuhjarta (The Brothers Lionheart). My favourite children's book of all times. I've learned quite a few of the frequently used words, which aren't easily understandable through other scandinavian languages, so reading gets easier and faster. Of course it helps a lot that I know the book very well.

French:
Reading Philippe Claudel - Les âmes grises (Grey Souls). I read the book in Swedish translation quite many years ago and liked it very much. The beginning was deceptively easy, but now I have to check the translation from time to time when there are too many unknown words in one sentence. I want to read the novel for more than just the gist which I could do without refering to the translation, but the book deserves better understanding, I believe.

Jiddish:
At long last continued reading קענעט גראַהאַם - דער װינט אין די װערבעס (Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows). Read chapter nine, "The Wayfarers". Wonderful! Next chapter will be about Mr Toad.
I was surprised that I still remembered the pronunciation and meaning of many of the loshn koydesh words. Others though I should know but had forgotten, for example "oytser". Someone who has read Tolkien's Bilbo in Yiddish should remember the word for treasure, shouldn't they? Yes, they should, but they didn't. :roll:

Norwegian:
Reading Carl Schøyen - Tre stammers møte. An old book from 1918 about the Sami people. Not sure whether it is worth reading, but I love this more than 100 year old copy which I borrowed from the library.
Learned a new Norwegian word: hubro (eagle owl).

Swedish:
Read Patricia Fjällgren & Malin Nord (editors) - Inifrån Sápmi. Vittnesmål från stulet land. Texts from Sami authors from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia. Some very interesting texts about the acquisition and usage of the Sami language. The texts written in Norwegian were not translated, which I really appreciate. There were some poems as well, both in the original Sami (different Sami languages) and in Swedish translations.
Read Maj Bylock - Stjärnhavet. Part 3 of the trilogy about two brothers on Gotland. As much as I liked the first two, which were very intense books about life and death, as much I was disapointed by this book, which was just an adventure story, and not a very well crafted one.
Reading Katarina Taikon - Zigenerska. She wrote her autobiography 1963, at just 31 years of age. The book was an eye-opener for at least some Swedes who learned from it that racism isn't just something which is happening abroad.
Reading Emma Reyes - Brev från min barndom (The Book of Emma Reyes: A Memoir).
7 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 Aug 15, 2022 7:24 am

Week 32:
Far too hot, yearning for autumn.

Danish:
Reading Niviaq Korneliussen - Blomsterdalen, translated from the Greenlandic by the author herself. The book won last year's Nordic Council Literature Prize. I'm only about 30 pages into the book so too early to say anything about it.

Faroese:
Finished reading Astrid Lindgren - Brøðurnir Leyvuhjarta (The Brothers Lionheart).

French:
Continued reading Philippe Claudel - Les âmes grises (Grey Souls). Great book, but frustrating languagewise. Tons and tons of unknown vocabulary, so now I'm reading each chapter first in Swedish translation and then in French.

Jiddish:
Progressing well with קענעט גראַהאַם - דער װינט אין די װערבעס (Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows). Only a chapter and a half left to read. Toad managed to escape from jail and returned home only to find Toad Hall occupied by weasels and stoats :o .Won't be easy to get it back.

Low German:
Read Astrid Lindgren - Pippi Langstrump (Pippi Longstocking). My first book in Low German! It was a realy easy read as I could find similar words in High German, Dutch, Scandinavian or English for almost all words. Of course it helped alot that it's a translation and that I'm very familiar with the book as well. It will be interesting to see my level of understanding when reading a book for adults, written in Low German. I've ordered the one and only such book they have at the library.
There was one really interesting feature in the translation: While all people spoke Low German, the teacher at school taught in High German! I guess that's a realistic depiction of the linguistic situation in Germany's countryside in pre-TV times. People spoke dialect in everyday life and kids learned standard German at school.

Norwegian:
Progressing slowly with Carl Schøyen - Tre stammers møte. An account of the Sami people's life in the beginning of the 20th century.

Swedish:
Read Chi Zijian - Godnatt, ros (Good Night, Rose). A novel about two women's life in Harbin in Northern China. So-so. Won't read the author's other books.
Finished reading Katarina Taikon - Zigenerska. Very interesting but frustrating as well. The Roma's situation in Sweden hasn't improved as much as Taikon hoped for when writing the book 60 years ago.
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 » Sun Aug 21, 2022 1:41 pm

Bokbordet Stockholm - The Stockholm Book Table

Today it happened again, the big "Book Table" in Stockholm. Every year in late August, there is a big book sale in central Stockholm. Lots and lots of Second Hand Book Sellers as well as some tiny publishers sell their books cheaper than usual. This year I was a little disappointed, as there were fewer sellers than usual and I only bought one book. But then, on the way back to the underground station, I saw the table of a new to me publishing house: pionier press.

They publish bilingual children's books in several language combinations. This in itself was interesting enough, but it got even better: Many (but not all) of their books are from Romanian authors. You don't see many Romanian books in Sweden, do you? Here I couldn't refrain from buying several books: one Romani/Swedish book, one Romanian/Swedish and one Romanian/English.

I didn't buy the Romanian/Korean one, although I must admit that I was very tempted to, especially when the publisher told me that the book was about Romanian and Korean words that sound similar but of course differ in meaning: Anuta Varsta - La est de est. I almost regret not buying it, although I don't read neither Korean nor Romanian. In any case I had a nice talk with the publisher about her books.
I'll check the library for the publisher's other books. Unfortunately they don't have the Romanian/Korean one.
7 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 Aug 23, 2022 8:33 am

Week 33:
Luckily it cooled down a bit at the weekend. Still warm but not hot.

French:
Finished reading Philippe Claudel - Les âmes grises (Grey Souls). Really liked it. Should reread it when my French is better and I can appreciate the book without the help of the Swedish translation. Not sure what to read next.

Low German:
Reading Fritz Reuter - Ut mine stromtid (From My Farming Days). A Low German classic from 1864. I knew about the book ever since my youth but had never read it. Luckily my edition (Reclam, 1957) has lots and lots of footnotes, explaining the more difficult Low German words for High German readers. Many of the footnotes I don't need, as I'm well acquainted with the High German consonant shift through Dutch and Skandinavian, but even so there are quite a few words which I can't easily guess. I'd still be able to follow the plot without the footnotes, but it would be a pity not to understand the words as they enliven the novel very much.
I especially like the words derived from French, which I for the most part wouldn't be able to understand, f.ex. "Musche" - Monsieur. My favourite is "Luggedor". "... as wenn em en Luggedur in den Smutz follen wir" (something like "as if he had lost a Luggedur in the mud"). A Luggedur is a Louis d'or :D .

Meänkieli:
Read Bengt Pohjanen - Meänkieli rätt och lätt. A short introduction into Meänkieli, one of Sweden's official minority languages. The introduction about the language's history and about the importance of having one's native language recognized was very worth reading. The grammar part less so. There are THREE infinitives in Meänkieli, and these are they: infinitive I, II, III and IV. Oh, indeed?

Norwegian:
Finished reading Carl Schøyen - Tre stammers møte. Not a must-read.

West Frisian:
Reading Astrid Lindgren - Pippi Langkous giet oan board (Pippi Goes on Board). A few years ago I read two books in Frisian. Then I found that Frisian was more difficult to understand than Dutch (which I then just started to learn to read). This book confirms that. Even though it's a translation of a book I know (haven't read it for many years though) I find it quite difficult to guess the words. I'm about to learn which Frisian vowels and diphthongs correspond to the German ones which will make understanding much easier. But there are some words too, which I only understand through previous knowledge of the book, which have no similarity to the corresponding words in any of the languages I understand. (Or if there are corresponding words, I don't know them). For example "famke" (girl) and "hynder" (horse).

Yiddish:
Finished reading קענעט גראַהאַם - דער װינט אין די װערבעס (Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows). Such a lovely children's classic, a wonderful, albeit difficult, read even in Yiddish. Not sure what to read next; I've borrowed several books from the library.

Swedish:
Read Märta Tikkanen - Det finns en skräck på bottnen. A gorgeous short story about two lovers falling out of love. Tikkanen is a great writer!
Read Harald Gaski & Lars Nordström - Sju sorters vatten. A short children's book translated from the Northern Sami, about a boy collecting seven different kinds of water to gift to the sun's daughter, about whom his grandfather had told him a story. Really nice - wish I could read the original.
9 x
Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

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: Learning by reading

Postby Mista » Wed Aug 24, 2022 9:46 am

Nogon wrote:Read Harald Gaski & Lars Nordström - Sju sorters vatten. A short children's book translated from the Northern Sami, about a boy collecting seven different kinds of water to gift to the sun's daughter, about whom his grandfather had told him a story. Really nice - wish I could read the original.

Well, at least you can recommend it to me, so that I can read the original. Thank you - it doesn't happen often that I find a recommendation for a Sami book. I've already searched for it in the library system, and I'm happy to say that they have it both in Sami and in Norwegian.
2 x

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 Aug 29, 2022 8:19 am

Week 34:
Summer's ended.

Danish:
Finished reading Niviaq Korneliussen - Blomsterdalen (translated to French "La vallée des fleurs", but not to English). A young Greenlandic woman goes to Denmark to study, leaving her female lover behind, only to return when her lover's cousin - like so many Greenlanders - commits suicide. A story about sex (quite a few graphic lesbian sex scenes there), love, loneliness and death. Didn't think I'd like it as much as I actually did.

Low German:
Still reading Fritz Reuter - Ut mine stromtid (From My Farming Days). Love it!

West Frisian:
Finished reading Astrid Lindgren - Pippi Langkous giet oan board (Pippi Goes on Board). Frisian is difficult to read whithout ever having studied it and without having a dictionary! I don't think I could read a novel for adults written in Frisian. Luckily the library doesn't own any such, so I can't try, which saves me a lot of frustration, I guess ;) .

Yiddish:
Tried to read Vevl Tchernin - Yidishe Faktazyes. A collection of science fiction short stories, originally written in Yiddish. The font was promising (very clear and quite big, which often isn't the case with the older books the library own), and the preface as well. Easily understandable with only a handfull of unknown vocabulary in its 3 pages. So I felt very optimistic when starting to read the first story. But outch - lots (that is LOTS) of words of Hebrew origin, making it impossible to even get the gist of the story without checking far too many words. Tried the second story, but just the same there -> returned it to the library.
Now reading שלמה בן-ישראל - דער צײכען פֿון נקמה (Shlomo Ben-Israel - Der tsaichen fun nekome). A crime novel from 1961. Don't like its font - much smaller letters than the other book, and no differentiating between "ay" and "ey", "kof" and "chof", "sof" and "tof" and no line on top of the "fey", making it more difficult to read and to find the words in the dictionary. Even the spelling is sometimes different to what I'm used to. For example, verbs often have an additional "e" before the "n", and there are some silent "h" which I'm not accustomed to from other books. That's usually not a problem for me though, as both the extra "e" and "h" make the words more similar to German.
The story is about a young Israeli, whose mother made it out of Germany together with him just in time, while his father was killed by the Nazis. He has travelled to Germany to ensure receiving Wiedergutmachung, but is arrested for suspected murder. In Tel Aviv a detective (the novel's hero, I guess) is hired by the young man's fiancé to find the real murder. Soon he and his side-kick will travel to Germany.

English:
Read Alan Garner - Treacle Walker. A dream, a myth, a fairy-tale? Somehow all of these, told in a deceptively easy, captivating language. Can't say I "understood" the story, but I loved it and would like to read more af Garner's works.

Swedish:
Read Kristina Hård - Kleptomania. A fantasy novel taking place in more or less "our" world, but there are trolls and other creepy creatures out there, and they want revenge! Surprisingly thrilling. First part of a trilogy; I just might read the second part as well, even though I often find second parts far less good than the first.
Read Danny Wattin - Herr Isakowitz skatt (lots of translations - German, Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Slovak, Icelandic, Czech, Russian and maybe other languages - but no English). Together with his father and his son, Wattin travels to Poland to search for the treasure, which his great-grandfather presumedly hid before being deported and killed by the Nazis. In addition Wattin tells all the stories about how his grandparents managed to flee Nazi-Germany and find a new home in Sweden. Well worth reading.
8 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 Sep 19, 2022 11:43 am

Week 35:
Entirely Yiddish.

Yiddish:
Finished reading שלמה בן-ישראל - דער צײכען פֿון נקמה (Shlomo Ben-Israel - Der tsaichen fun nekome). That was one bad, bad crime story with all the tropes of us-crime novels from the 1950's, but badly executed. For example, we didn't learn anything about the "heroes", the two Israeli detectives who try to find a serial killer in Munich, except that the one is very intelligent and the other one very good-looking and strong. Both Tel Aviv, where the story begins, and Munich felt like New York. It took more than 150 pages until I felt that we finally arrived in Germany. I had hoped to read more about the problems around "Wiedergutmachung" (my uncle worked with that in the 1960's), but no, that didn't happen. There were a few scenes about the gruesome happenings in the Nazi concentration camps, where the story suddenly got tense and interesting, but those scenes were far too few and too short.
Languagewise it was quite easy to read - far easier than דער װינט אין די װערבעס (The Wind in the Willows), even though I neither knew the story nor had any translation to help my understanding. Unfortunately it was badly proofread. Lots and lots of spelling mistakes, and the three alefs (אַאָא) were used interchangeably. I'd like to find a book at the same level of difficulty, but a much better one.

Week 36:
Mostly English.

Faroese:
Read Moni Nilsson-Brännström - Tsatsiki og kærleikin. The fourth in a series of children's book about Tsatsiki, a boy with a Swedish mother who each summer visits his Greek father in Greece. Quite easy to read allthough I haven't read the other books.

English:
Read Audrey Magee - The Colony, Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These and NoViolet Bulawayo - Glory. All three from the Booker longlist and well worth reading. All of them would be worthy winners (though "The Colony" didn't make it to the shortlist).
Read Neil Gaiman - Fortunately the Milk. A hilarious children's story. Loved it.

Week 37:
A week in Swedish and German.

Swedish:
Read Kristina Ohlsson - Sjuka själar. An untranslated horror thriller. Very gripping, literally unputdownable - I started reading it one late evening in bed ("Just a few pages before I fall asleep", you know) and read the last page at 6 am.
Read Denis Mukwege - Kvinnors styrka (The Power of Women). The gynecologist and Nobel laureate tells about his fight against the sexual violence which women experience especially, but not only, in war. A must-read! (But the Swedish translation was flawed.)

German:
Read Rita Falk - Weisswurstconnection. A typical "Regionalkrimi" from Bavaria. Quite funny, but I probably won't read her other books.
Read Kristine Bilkau - Nebenan. From the Deutscher Buchpreis longlist. About a few women living in a village in Northern Germany. Nothing much happens, just life slowly going on. I like this kind of books.
Read Katharina Geiser - Unter offenem Himmel. About the lives of 5 generations of women in Switzerland. Okay but nothing special.
8 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 » Wed Sep 28, 2022 7:58 am

Week 38:
Autumn.

Dutch:
Reading Neil Gaiman - Het kerkhof (The Churchyard).

English:
Read Shehan Karunatilaka - The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. An absolutely fantastic novel about life and death in Sri Lanka during the civil war in the 1980's.
Read Oliver Milkman - The Insect Crisis. About the decline of insects and its consequences. Interesting and important, but depressing.

Swedish:
Read Stefan Spjut - Rovet. A gripping horror thriller, published this year. I wanted to read more of Spjut's books but realised that this is a rework of an older book, which has been translated to English: "Stallo".

German:
Read Monika Helfer - Löwenherz. Biographical novel about the author's brother who committed suicide at 30 years of age. Very well written, want to read the Austrian author's other works.
4 x
Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113


Return to “Language logs”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests