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 » Sun Dec 27, 2020 12:58 pm

Week 52:
No Christmas celebrations this year so I had lots of time for reading.

French:
Finished Georges Simenon - Un Noël de Maigret. I hope to soon find another author whose books are as easily read as Simenon's but which I like better.

Afrikaans:
Finished Marita van der Vyver - Vergenoeg. A good read, but its content made me think a lot about my mother's death last year, so I read slower than usual. Nevertheless I'm still surprised about the ease with which I can read books in Afrikaans, even though I have never studied the language. With that book I almost reached my goal of 2000 pages read in Afrikaans this year.

Northern Sami:
Watched Ofelaš/Veiviseren, the first full-length film in the Sami language from 1987. I once watched it a long time ago, when it was shown in Swedish cinemas, and now I found it on Youtube. The linked film has Norwegian subtitles. There is a version dubbed to English, and a version with English subtitles in 6 parts as well. I'm not a big fan of the film (too much action for my taste), but the language is beautiful and the landscape is stunning.

Yiddish:
I spent most of my time on Yiddish, progressing well with Tolkien's Der hobit. It gets easier to read as I've learned quite a lot of new, but here frequently used words. Nevertheless it's slow going, but well worth the effort, both for learning and for pleasure, as I like the book a lot.

Other:
Reading Robert Macfarlane - Underworld. A Deep Time Journey (in English). Learned a new word: Kist/cist.
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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 » Sun Dec 27, 2020 5:59 pm

Apropos Afrikaans:
For the first time ever I heard someone speak German with an Afrikaans accent: It's sooo cute!
(Check from 0:55)
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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 » Wed Dec 30, 2020 8:42 pm

Review of 2020:
As bad as the year has been otherwise, concerning languages it has been really good!
Though I once again failed learning Polish, I've progressed well in Dutch, Afrikaans and Yiddish. My reading ability in Dutch and Afrikaans is quite good; I can read not too complicated fiction with ease. I need to check words in a dictionary from time to time, but that's as it is supposed to be. I'm very content. I also can understand quite a bit of spoken Dutch, not Afrikaans though, apart from a word or phrase here and there. I'm very pleased with my progress in Yiddish. Though I'm still far from reading fluently, I can process Yiddish text better and better, and I've learned quite an amount of Hebrew words, so I don't stumble over every and each of those words, only over three out of four or so :lol: .

2020
: 1802 / 2000 Pages read in Afrikaans
: 1400 / 2000 Pages read in Dutch
: 617 / 1000 Pages read in Esperanto
: 5359 / 5000 Pages read in French


Plans for 2021:
Third time lucky - at least I hope so regarding Polish. I'm going to try Assimil's Polnisch ohne Mühe once again, and hope to learn enough vocabulary and grammar to be able to read very easy children's books. Luckily the library has quite many Polish books, so there will be enough reading material. However, my aim with Polish is not just reading. I wish to learn enough to be able to communicate on a basic level when visiting Poland. Not sure, whether I'll be successfull though. I'd prefer to take some language class, but there isn't any, as far as I could find out last year.

I'll continue to read books in Dutch as soon as the libraries open up again, and I will try to increase my listening skill. I'm not sure how to do that - I hope to find some interesting Dutch TV-program online. That will be difficult though, as I get bored easily by TV. If there is anyone who knows some nice TV-series about animals, zoos, nature in general, please feel free to recommend them.

Likewise I'll continue reading books in Afrikaans. Luckily I have two or three yet unread books in my bookshelves, so I don't depend on the library just now. I'd like to learn to understand spoken Afrikaans too, but I'll need some listening material with a transcript, and haven't found anything yet. Recommendations?

Regarding French I feel like I'm not progressing any more, even though I have read quite a lot in French this year (>5000 pages). I think that I need to learn some grammar - oof. Six or seven (or eight?) years ago I took some one-week intensive classes in French, and since then I have not learned any grammar. I haven't learned all tenses, and no subjunctive at all, even though I do understand them in uncomplicated texts. I feel like I have to properly learn them to be able to progress to reading more complex literature.

I'm going to read more in Yiddish to increase my vocabulary, and plan to start listening practice too. I'm looking forward to listening to audiobooks while reading the book.

So much to learn - even without all the languages, which are on my would-be-great-to-know-list: Greek, Hungarian, Finnish, Japanese, Northern Sami... Oh yeah. 8-)
Last edited by Nogon on Fri Jan 01, 2021 5:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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lusan
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Re: 5 weeks with languages

Postby lusan » Thu Dec 31, 2020 3:34 am

golyplot wrote:
Nogon wrote:I had tried to learn Polish a year and a half ago, but gave up about 4 weeks later, frustrated by my disability to learn the Polish vocabulary.


I'm not sure if you're interested in English corrections, but this should be "inability", not "disability".


No!!!! I go with disability... My wife is polish and we joke that it takes a special brain to deal with their language. :lol:
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golyplot
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby golyplot » Thu Dec 31, 2020 1:26 pm

If you want to use "disability", you have to phrase it differently, e.g. "I had tried to learn Polish a year and a half ago, but gave up about 4 weeks later, frustrated by my disability which makes it hard to learn Polish vocabulary."
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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 » Mon Jan 11, 2021 7:34 am

Week 1:
I've spent many hours on languages but have only little to report, the reason being

Yiddish:
I continued reading דזשײ.ר.ר. טאָלקין - דער האָביט (J. R. R. Tolkien - Der hobit) and am progressing really well. I already have doubled my reading speed: Now I can read 4 pages per hour instead of just two :o ! So it's still slow going, but I feel I'm progressing from day to day and I use the English original less and less. The words of Hebrew origin pose less a problem than earlier - I've learned the pronunciation of quite a few of the more frequent words, which unfortunately is just half the necessary learning required: It happens more than once each day, that I remember the pronunciation, but not the meaning :roll: ! Nevertheless my knowledge of Yiddish, limited as it may be, gives me great pleasure. Reading is my favourite hobby, and reading a book I like in a new language is absolutely great!
I'm on page 234/334 - just found the secret backdoor to the Lonely Mountain ;) .

Afrikaans:
No new book started, as I focus on Yiddish. I was searching for some listening material though and found some TV series on YouTube. Problem is that I don't like soaps; I find them boring. They usually are bearable until I find out who all these people are and how they are connected, and then boredom comes. So it might be positive that I haven't found all 5000 or so episodes of 7de Laan but only some here and there. That might hold my interest for a little longer. Nevertheless I feel after just watching one single episode, that it is not actually compelling input. It has English subtitles - I'd prefer them in Afrikaans, but with the help of the subtitles I usually understand the words they are using, and "see" them written in my mind, so I guess that I'll soon be able to understand the episodes even without subtitles - if I can make me continue watching the soap. (It will be difficult though to ignore the subtitles - if there are letters somewhere to be read I can't not read them.)

Other:
Continued reading Robert Macfarlane - Underworld. A Deep Time Journey (in English). I was very surprised to realise that I didn't know the word hornbeam. I do know (almost) all the names of all common middle european trees in at least German, Swedish, English and Latin (and some in French and Yiddish too), but hornbeam (Weissbuche, avenbok, Carpinus betulus) somehow didn't make it into my head.
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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 » Mon Jan 18, 2021 12:53 pm

Week 2:
This is going to be a very short report as I only worked on

Yiddish:
Still reading דזשײ.ר.ר. טאָלקין - דער האָביט (J. R. R. Tolkien - Der hobit). I'm close to the end, only 16 pages left. That is my first full length book I ever read in Yiddish (the others being very short), so I am really proud. It is also the book I spent the longest time ever to read - with the exception maybe of the unabridged Swedish translation of Dream of the Red Chamber which took me 32 days to read, all 4000 or so pages of it. Compare that to the Hobit's 334 pages... :shock:
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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 » Mon Jan 25, 2021 5:22 pm

Week 3:
One of my "long" weeks at work, so I didn't have not much time or energy left for languages.

Yiddish:
I read the last few pages of Tolkien's Hobbit. :D
The funniest word I encountered was פֿאָטעל ("fotel"). Couldn't guess its meaning at first until I changed the stress from the first to the second syllable - then the penny dropped: It's the same as Swedish "fåtölj", one of my favourite Swedish words! Now Yiddish didn't "steal" the word from Swedish, nor vice versa, but both got it from French. Can you guess which word it is? Click. :lol:
Now I'm taking a short break from Yiddish - books in other languages are queueing.

Norwegian:
I'm listening to an audiobook: Maria Gripe - Tordivelen flyr i skumringen, read by Ane Dahl Torp (who, by the way, does an excellent job). It's a translation from Swedish (Tordyveln flyger i skymningen). Maria Gripe is one of my favourite Swedish children's books authors, so of course I've read even this book earlier. It's not one of her best works, so I was surprised at how much I like the audiobook. I guess, it's for the medium's sake. Gripe wrote the story first as a radio drama (and only later published it in print), so different sounds are of great importance to the story, which felt a bit far-fetched when being read in print. Now I'm (unfortunately) not listening to he radio drama but to a common audiobook, nevertheless it's better to hear about the sounds than to read about them.

Other:
Reading Gamal al-Ghitani - Der safranische Fluch oder Wie Impotenz die Welt verbessert (in German)
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cjareck
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby cjareck » Mon Jan 25, 2021 6:57 pm

Nogon wrote:Week 3:
Yiddish:
I read the last few pages of Tolkien's Hobbit. :D
The funniest word I encountered was פֿאָטעל ("fotel"). Couldn't guess its meaning at first until I changed the stress from the first to the second syllable - then the penny dropped: It's the same as Swedish "fåtölj", one of my favourite Swedish words! Now Yiddish didn't "steal" the word from Swedish, nor vice versa, but both got it from French. Can you guess which word it is? Click. :lol:
Now I'm taking a short break from Yiddish - books in other languages are queueing.

In Polish, it is also "fotel". So Yiddish could borrow it from Polish since we most probably borrowed it directly from French.
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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 » Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:47 am

Week 4:
I had lots of free time, but spent most of it at YouTube :roll: , so not much reading done this week either. I can't find any compelling books since I finished The Hobbit, not in any language at all, not even in my fluent/effortless reading languages (German, Swedish, English). So:

Norwegian:
Finished listening to the audiobook Maria Gripe - Tordivelen flyr i skumringen. I was surprised by the ease with which I could follow the story. There were few words which I didn't understand while hearing them and usually I recognized them when imagining them being written. (Of course knowing the story helped too.) I guess that Ane Dahl Torp speaks a dialect which is easy to understand for Swedes (or in my case a foreigner with good Swedish).

French:
Listened/read at long last the "appendice" of George Sand - La Mare au Diable - in French only, as my German translation didn't include it.
Listened/read Gustave Flaubert - Trois contes. While the audiobook was well read by Jean-Marie Fonbonne, I can't say that I liked the stories. In fact I disliked them that much that I did listen to the last story only once while reading the Swedish translation and skipped the usual "listening again while reading the French text" part. Many years ago I read another book by Flaubert and disliked it, so I don't think I'll give him another chance.
Now I'm listening/reading Françoise Sagan - Bonjour tristesse, read by Catherine Deneuve. Again I'm listening to the audio twice, while reading the Swedish translation first and then the French text.
My "Good Night"-book is Marc Cantin - Les Maléfices d'Halequin, a children's fantasy book. A third into the book, I'm not impressed. One of the protagonists is a "young girl" (une jeune fille) - an expression which I wondered about even as a child. How can a girl when getting older become young? Interestingly, and quite unusually for a fantasy heroine, she doesn't have arms (arms as in limbs, not weapons). In a better book I'd love to read about such a protagonist, but here I mostly wonder how on earth she manages to braid her long, long hair? While I know that armless people are able to do the most incredible things with their feet, I believe there are some limitations, braiding your own hair being one of them. Furthermore the girl is an adventuress, spending a lot of time in a wild, wayless forest. In my mind I'm seeing her really long braid (according to the illustrations it reaches almost down to her knees) getting entangled in the branches of trees and shrubs. Wouldn't a shorter hairstyle be more appropriate? For me, getting sidetracked by such questions is a sure sign of a far-less-than-perfect book.
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