Learning by reading

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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:43 pm

Nogon wrote: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).


I knew I recognized that name from somewhere! She won the Guldbaggen award last Monday for best female actor in the film Charter - where she actually speaks Swedish.
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Nogon
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon Feb 08, 2021 1:41 pm

Week 5:
This week I was luckier in my choice of books :) .

French:
Finished Françoise Sagan - Bonjour tristesse.
Listended twice to Kim Thúy - Mãn, read by the author, while first reading the Swedish translation and then the French text. Loved the book, and went to the library to borrow her other books. Unfortunately those are only available in print, not as audiobook.
Listened to Irène Nemirovsky - Le bal, read by Irène Jacob, while reading the Swedish translation. About 10 years ago, I had read another book by Nèmirovsky and liked it well, so now I'll read more of her books, parallell in French and Swedish.
Listened twice to Faïza Guène - Les gens du Balto (read by Julie Basecqz, Patrick Donnay, Cachou Kirsch, Fabienne Loirot and Aurélien Ringelheim) while reading it in Swedish and French. It's a "novel in voices", 8 people telling their part of the story. I highly recommend it to everybody who wants to read books with lots of colloquial language and slang. (Quite many years ago, I read Guène's first novel Kiffe, kiffe demain, which I liked even more than this book. Very interesting author, writing about immigrants' life in Paris' suburbs.)
Finished Marc Cantin - Les Maléfices d'Halequin, L'œil de Bézoard. Won't read the other parts of the trilogy. The armless heroine not only can braid her hair, she also manages climbing a rope :shock: .
Started listening/reading Michel Bussi - Le temps est assassin, the audiobook being read by Julie Basecqz. Beware of murderous holes! At least in the not-quite-perfect Swedish translation: "Hans sprattelgubbekropp blev totalförstörd av ett stjärnformat hål i taket". :lol:

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

Postby Nogon » Wed Feb 17, 2021 7:37 am

Week 6:
Another one of my long weeks at work with little time for anything else, including reading :( .

French:
Continued listening/reading Michel Bussi - Le temps est assassin. I'm about halfways and can't say that I like it much. I think it's my first book ever read taking place in Corsica (except Asterix in Corsica). While I like the setting, I don't care for the protagonosts nor the story itself which is progressing far too slow, the book being far too long. 250 or 300 pages had been okay, but 500? Furthermore every other chapter are diary entries written by the female protagonist when she was 15 years old and those chapters are being read with a very annoying voice so I dread listen to them.

Other:
Read Han Kang - Den vita boken (in Swedish).
Continued reading Robert Macfarlane - Underworld (in English).
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Nogon
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon Feb 22, 2021 4:55 am

Week 7:
A short week at work, so lots of time for reading! :D

Romani:
Listened and read Fred Taikon - Barnen på Tanto; Lådbilsrallyt/Le gláti po Tanto; Kaštuné matóri, a bilingual illustrated children's book including a CD with the text read by the author in Romani. Romani is one of Sweden's official minority languages, so there are a few books, especially children's books, available at the library. This book tells about some Roma children living in Stockholm in the (I guess) 1930s or 40s.

French:
Read Roald Dahl - La potion magique de Georges Bouillon. A funny book, quite easy to read, although there were quite a few unknown words.
Finished listerning/reading Michel Bussi - Le temps est assassin. With this far too long book, I finished the reading part of the Superchallenge, and came almost halfways with the listening part.
Started reading Christelle Dabos - Les fiancés de l'hiver, livre 1 of La passe-miroir. I've only read 60 pages (of 566) yet, so it will take several weeks to finish it - if I ever read all of it. As far as I've read, I quite like it, but I often like the "world-explaining" part of fantasy or science fiction books well and get bored when all the game pieces (the protagonists) have been placed on the board, and the action commences. I'll see how long this book can hold my interest. In any case there is an abundance of unknown vocabulary, so I'll at least learn some new words.

Norwegian:
Listened to Jo Nesbø - Doktor Proktor og det store gullrøveriet, read by Ivar Nergaard. Nergaard does a terrific job, although it was not easy to understand everything as he has a very deep bass voice, and I have problems to hear all the sounds properly even in my native language if someone has such a deep voice. I could easily follow the storyline though. Nevertheless I wanted to understand all the nuances, as the story is extremely funny, so I borrowed the Swedish translation (the library unfortunately doesn't have the Norwegian book) and read it while listening to the audiobook. Loved it!

Other:
Johnny Schimmel - Arboretet i Baggböle (in Swedish)
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Nogon
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Sun Feb 28, 2021 10:17 pm

Week 8:
French, French, French! I absolutely progress in both listening and reading comprehension, hurray! :lol:

French:
Started listening/reading Honoré de Balzac - Eugenie Grandet. Unfortunately there was something wrong with the audiobook (read by Claude Bermann): CD 2 didn't start where CD 1 ended! :roll: I think, I'll read the book later, when my French has improved some more.
Started listening/reading Guy de Maupassant - Le maison Tellier, but stopped after only 10 or so minutes. The interpreter, Paul Désalmand, read in such a boring, monotone voice that I just couldn't imagine to listen to him for several hours. Luckily I get all my audiobooks from the library, so at least I didn't pay anything for this sleeping pill.
Now I'm listening to Honoré de Balzac - Le lys dans le vallée, read by Philippe Lejour, while reading the Swedish translation (the library doesn't own the French book). A young man experiences his first love to a dutifully married woman, a story overfull of sentiments. I feel like it should exasperate me, but I so far quite like the book.
I'm also reading Astrid Lindgren - Les frères cœur-de-lion. It's the first French book ever that I read without the help of neither parallel reading nor a dictionary! (The fact that I read the books many, many, many times in my teens and a few times as an adult helps a lot of course. Astrid Lindgren is my Harry Potter ;) ) I only check some nature related words and words which are bewildering. For example I understood the expression "le Fleuve des Fleuves séculaires" very well, remembering both the German translation (der Fluss der uralten Flüsse) and the Swedish original (de uråldriga flodernas flod), but "séculaire" made me wonder. Isn't that "secular, worldly" rather than "very, very old"? But no, "séculaire" means "happening once each hundred years" (might well be related to the Swedish word "sekel", a century) and "being very old" - voilà! "Secular, worldly" is "séculier" by the way.
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Assimil French : 65 / 113
Active wave : 15 / 113

Nogon
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Mon Mar 08, 2021 7:08 pm

Week 9:
Lots of work - little time for reading. :cry:

French:
Finished Astrid Lindgren - Les frères cœur-de-lion. Great book, even in French. I noticed though that its emotional impact was less than when I'm reading it in German or Swedish. I don't think that's due to the translation, but due to me being less "at home" in French. A French word or expression, though its meaning is totally clear to me, doesn't carry as much emotions as their counterparts in my best languages.
Continued listening to Honoré de Balzac - Le lys dans le vallée. I'm getting tired of the narrators amorous sufferings :? . Two CD's left.

Dutch:
Read Jo Nesbø - Dr. Proktor redt de wereld (misschien). I like Nesbø's Dr. Proktor-series as they are very good for language exploitations. Up to now I've read the first part in Icelandic (and parallel in Swedish), the second in Faroese (parallel in Swedish as well), the third in Dutch (no parallel reading necessary), and listened to the fourth in Norwegian. There is a fifth part too, but the library only has that in Swedish and English. I might propose them to buy it in another language, if it's been translated to one of "my" languages.
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Active wave : 15 / 113

Mista
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7497
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Mista » Mon Mar 08, 2021 8:01 pm

Nogon wrote: 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).

I can't evaluate it from a Swedish point of view, but I CAN say that she is from Bærum, just outside of Oslo, and that means that her dialect is as standard Norwegian as a dialect can possibly be.
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Nogon
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby Nogon » Tue Mar 09, 2021 7:12 am

Mista wrote:I can't evaluate it from a Swedish point of view, but I CAN say that she is from Bærum, just outside of Oslo, and that means that her dialect is as standard Norwegian as a dialect can possibly be.

Thanks, Mista! A Norwegian person (one whose dialect bewildered me quite a lot) once told me that the people in Oslo don't speak Norwegian but Swedish :D . Maybe that's why I could understand Ane Dahl Torp so easily.

Swedish:
Usually I don't write about Swedish, as it's my by far best non-native language and I'm not studying but just using it, but today I just have to brag:
Recently at work I used an - admittedly rather old-fashioned - idiomatic expression and my (born and bred Swedish) colleague was like " :?: What does that mean?" I know more Swedish than her :lol: ! - Okay, I don't, of course. But I've read far more Swedish books than her and I have learned quite a bit of obscure, not everyday vocabulary and expressions which sometimes puzzle young Swedes.
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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Learning by reading

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Tue Mar 09, 2021 4:42 pm

Nogon wrote:
Mista wrote:I can't evaluate it from a Swedish point of view, but I CAN say that she is from Bærum, just outside of Oslo, and that means that her dialect is as standard Norwegian as a dialect can possibly be.

Thanks, Mista! A Norwegian person (one whose dialect bewildered me quite a lot) once told me that the people in Oslo don't speak Norwegian but Swedish :D . Maybe that's why I could understand Ane Dahl Torp so easily.


Swedes are probably most familiar with the Oslo accent. The prosody isn't all that alien, but it isn't identical to any Swedish dialect you may have in mind. The pronunciation is rather clear. As simple as that. (The vocabulary and grammar is of course still Norwegian.)

I wonder if most Norwegian actors we sometimes hear speak Swedish happen to come from the Oslo region. Sven Nordin, Pia Halvorsen and Aksel Hennie do. Pia Tjelta is one exception - she's from Stavanger. The Ylvis brothers can pull it off too, and they're from Bergen.
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Leabhair/Greannáin léite as Gaeilge: 9 / 18
Ar an seastán oíche: Oileán an Órchiste
Duolingo - finished trees: sp/ga/de/fr/pt/it
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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 Mar 14, 2021 6:35 pm

Week 10:
Quite okay week.

French:
Listening/reading Romain Gary (Émile Ajar) - La vie devant soi. The audiobook is being read by Kamel Belghazi and others. Unfortunately it is abridged, which is not noted anywhere on the cover. Sometimes some words are missing, sometimes a sentence or two, sometimes even several pages. That makes following the text in print quite difficult.
Read Roald Dahl - James et la grosse pêche. That was easy to read even without a dictionary. It's Dahl's first children's book, and that's obvious. While some episodes are quite funny, the book unfortunately is a little boring, at least for this adult reader.
Continued reading Christelle Dabos - Les fiancés de l'hiver. I'm progressing slowly, now being on page 150/566.

Dutch:
Started listenig/reading Annie M. G. Schmidt - Minoes, a Dutch children's book from 1970. I first listen to the audiobook (read by Theo Maasen), trying to understand as much as possible. I'm not acquainted with the plot; nevertheless I can follow it effortlessly, even if I miss a word here or there. I then listen to the audio once again while reading the book.

Yiddish:
I started to read דזש. ק. ראָולינג - הערי פּאָטער און דער פֿילאָסאָפֿישער שטײן (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone). While I don't like Harry Potter much, the book is a very nice hardcover edition and, more important, the language is at a good level for my beginner's Yiddish skills. It's actually easier to read than The Hobbit, which I read two months ago. I'd be able to follow the plot with just a dictionary, but to check details where my dictionary can't help, I also borrowed it in

Afrikaans:
Harry Potter en die towenaar se steen. "The magician his stone" :lol: - isn't that cute?
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