Learning by reading

[DaveAgain]

French:
Listened to Tom Rob Smith - Enfant 44 (Child 44), read by Frédéric Meaux, while reading the Swedish translation (Barn 44).

In Northern England and Scotland people sometimes use 'Bairn' for child, which presumably has the same origin as the Swedish word.

bairn - ORIGIN
Old English bearn, of Germanic origin; related to the verb bear.

child - ORIGIN
Old English cild, of Germanic origin. The Middle English plural childer or childre became childeren or children by association with plurals ending in -en, such as brethren.

EDIT
Re: Wind in the willows
I was watching a nature documentary the other day, and they mentioned that Ratty was inspired by a Water Vole rather than a rat. I don't think I've heard that before, but the idea of a Rat being presented in a positive light in fiction is an odd one.

[MorkTheFiddle]

French:
Listened to Tom Rob Smith - Enfant 44 (Child 44), read by Frédéric Meaux, while reading the Swedish translation (Barn 44).

In Northern England and Scotland people sometimes use 'Bairn' for child, which presumably has the same origin as the Swedish word.

bairn - ORIGIN
Old English bearn, of Germanic origin; related to the verb bear.

child - ORIGIN
Old English cild, of Germanic origin. The Middle English plural childer or childre became childeren or children by association with plurals ending in -en, such as brethren.

Old Norse uses barn for child. Old Norse has three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter, and barn is neuter, presumably because it can refer to either son or daughter.

[Nogon]

In Northern England and Scotland people sometimes use 'Bairn' for child, which presumably has the same origin as the Swedish word.

I remember encountering "barn" in one of the English classics. Might have been "Wuthering Heights", or another of the Brontës' books. First I didn't understand the sentence, as I thought of an agricultural building, but then the Swedish part of my brain chirped in and helped understanding the text.

Re: Wind in the willows
I was watching a nature documentary the other day, and they mentioned that Ratty was inspired by a Water Vole rather than a rat. I don't think I've heard that before, but the idea of a Rat being presented in a positive light in fiction is an odd one.

Oh, that's interesting! I had no idea that voles can swim. Neither did I know that a water vole is "Ostschermaus" in German. I only ever heard the other name, "Wühlmaus".

[Nogon]

Week 49:
Horrible week at work! Working, eating, sleeping, working, eating, sleeping... Only read while commuting, several short books in my best languages:

Other:
Read Marc Engelhard - Baobab and Wilhelm Bode - Tannen in German. Two short books portraiing baobab and fir trees. Very interesting!
Read in Swedish Kerstin Ekman - Löpa varg. Her newest book, quite good, even though it's not among her very best. Learned a new word: blädning. Funnily that word was mentioned in the "Tannen" book as well, in German of course (unfortunately I've already forgotten the German word). It was explained in that book so when I read it in Swedish I immediately understood what Ekman meant and only checked it to confirm.
Also in Swedish: Nils-Olof Franzén - Agaton Sax och den svällande rotmosaffären (Agaton Sax and the London Computer Plot). A funny children's crime novel, one of a series written in the 1950's and 60's. The main character, Agaton Sax, by the way is one of us, a polyglot. He

kan alla tänkbara svåra språk - graeliska, kryptiska, melankoliska, cibrylliska, brosniska - ja t. o. m. svenska!

(He knows all kinds of difficult languages - Graelic, Cryptic, Melancholic, Cibryllic, Brosnic - yes, even Swedish! )

[Nogon]

Week 50:
Little work and lots of reading done - even though most of it in my native German.

Yiddish:
Read another chapter and a half of קענעט גראַהאַם - דער װינט אין די װערבעס (Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows). Am in the Wild Wood just now and want to visit רב טאַקס (Reb Taks, Mr Badger). Now I have mentioned earlier that most of the animals' names have slavic origin, but "taks" is an exception, badger being "Dachs" in German. Unfortunately for me, it reminds me even more of the Swedish "tax", which is a dachshund, so whenever I read about Reb Taks, I have to remind me that no, he's not a dog.

Swedish:
Read Selma Lagerlöf - Den heliga natten och andra julberättelser. 5 or 6 Christmas stories. Lagerlöf is better when she's not explicitely writing about the Christian faith.

German:
Read Olga Tokarczuk - Die grünen Kinder (Opowiadania bizarne [Bizarre Stories]). Great short stories, even though I didn't like the last two that much.
And several natur writing books:
Richard Mabey - Das Varieté der Pflanzen (The Cabaret of Plants) - gorgeous, one of the best books I've read this year!
Jonathan Drori - In 80 Pflanzen um die Welt (Around the World in 80 Plants). A bit disappointing, too superficial. Presenting 40 plants in more depth had been better than just one or two pages of text about each plant.
J. A. Baker - Der Wanderfalke (The Peregrine). Amazing prose. Nothing much is happening, just 200 pages of nature discription, but gripping nevertheless. Want to reread it in English.

[Nogon]

Week 51:
Had to work all Christmas, poor me! (Not that I care about Christmas; I just don't want to work.) Some reading happened nevertheless:

Yiddish:
Read another 2,5 chapters of קענעט גראַהאַם - דער װינט אין די װערבעס (Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows). Timing was good - In chapter 5 I learned the word ניטל (nitl), which is Christmas Eve. The word is "likely derived from the medieval Latin name for Christmas, natalis," according to Wikipedia, "although it is also often associated with the Hebrew nitleh ("the hanged one"), which was used in medieval times to refer to Jesus". Interesting.

German:
Read Rüdiger Schaper - Elefanten and Susanne Wedlich - Das Buch vom Schleim. Now reading William Henry Hudson - Müßige Tage in Patagonien (Idle Days in Patagonia).

[Nogon]

Week 52:
I'm still in a spree of reading nature writing in German, so very little reading in foreign languages done. Expect that to continue for another few weeks.

Yiddish:
Read a few pages קענעט גראַהאַם - דער װינט אין די װערבעס (Kenneth Grahame - The Wind in the Willows).

German:
Finished William Henry Hudson - Müßige Tage in Patagonien (Idle Days in Patagonia). Read Aldo Leopold - Ein Jahr im Sand County (A Sand County Almanac), Verena Auffermann - Igel and Hanns Cibulka - Sanddornzeit. Now reading Wilhelm Lehmann - Bukolische Tagebücher.

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2021
has been a so-so year regarding language learning.
Polish learning didn't happen at all.
No reading at all in Esperanto, not very much in Afrikaans, but met my reading goal in Dutch.
Read less in Yiddish than I had hoped for, but progressed well nevertheless, and am now the proud owner of a Yiddish-English dictionary, which I already have used diligently.
Progressed well in French, both with understanding written text as well as spoken language. Read lots and lots, surpassed the necessary amount of pages for the Super Challenge by far. Even though I didn't make the SC goal in "films", my understanding spoken language has increased noticeably.

2021
: 503 / 1000 Pages Yiddish
: 1314 / 1000 Pages Dutch
: 0 / 1000 Pages Esperanto
: 725 / 2000 Pages Afrikaans
: 4832 / 4000 Pages French

SC 2020/2021
: 169 / 100 Books
: 69 / 100 Films

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What to do in 2022?
Learn Polish! That is, start to study it. I don't expect to become fluent in Polish - far from it. Tarzan-Polish would be good enough.
Continue reading in the other languages.
Follow every whim of my wanderlust.

[Elsa Maria]

Good luck with Polish! I wish I could commit to Polish this year, but I dare not. So I will instead enjoy reading about your adventures with Polish

Your log is great - I think our taste in books overlaps quite a bit. Eventually, I need to learn to read Swedish just so I can read Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson in Swedish. I have read them in Danish, and hope to start reading Astrid Lindgren in Dutch this year. I also have a copy of Lampje, which I'm eager to read - your positive review is encouraging!

[Nogon]

Thanks, ElsaMaria!
If you have access to a Lindgren or Jansson book in Swedish, just try to read it! I think that with intermediate Danish you'll be able to understand it, especially as you already are familiar with the plot. No need to formally study Swedish first. Just dive into it! Of course there will be some difficulties but compared to (for example) learning Polish, they are minute.

[cjareck]

What to do in 2022?
Learn Polish! That is, start to study it. I don't expect to become fluent in Polish - far from it. Tarzan-Polish would be good enough.

Good luck with your studies! There is a Polish community here, so we will surely help you if necessary