aaleks's log

[aaleks]

Sometimes I think "today I'm going to write an entry in my log", and then weeks will pass before I'm actually doing it. The problem is for these passing weeks I have forgotten what I was going to write about. This is exactly the case with this update but I've decided I'll write it anyway

I remember that initially I was thinking about writing a bit about each of my languages, so I'll start with my weakest one - German.

There's some a bit sad irony in the fact that my first ever foreign language - the language I started learning in school when I hadn't turned 10 yet - is my weakest language at the time. And it is the one of my languages I'm worried about the most. The problem is I seem to have failed to somehow insert German in my language-learning routine. At first everything seemed to be fine, I would watch an episode of one or another series on ZDF Mediatek, but then I lost interest in one of the series I'd watched (some changes in the cast), later I realized I didn't find ineresting another series I used to watch as well. I've tried to watch some others but have not yet found one interesting enough to spend 40 minutes of my language-learning time on watching it every week. And I don't really find Easy German interesting. I'd like to find something like Italiano Automatico or innerFrench but for German so I would watch the videos regularly.

Italian is doing okay thanks to Italiano Automatico in the first place. Sometimes I feel like it's getting worse a bit but in general my Italian seems to be steady. I don't spent much time on it because of it closeness to French but I'm really missing the language.

French and English. I've been thinking recently about the learning one language vs learning several languages question, and I think I'd really like to learn at least one language to a high level. Not the level my English is right now but a really hight level. These two language are the best candidates for the project by an obvious reason - they're my strongest languages at the moment. I'd say so far I'm leaning in the Frech directions. While my English is not perfect but obviously at a higher level than my French is, the lingua franca status of English is rather an interest killer for me. I mean, there are a lot of non-native English speakers out there, and I think as your average non-native English speaker I'm doing fine. Not great, not excellent, but somewhere in the middle between the best and the weakest ones. French is a big language as well yet it doesn't have such a huge population of non-native speakers, and that makes it a bit more appealing to me than English.

Another reason is the French culture seems to be closer to Russian, or just my personality, then the Anglophone one. If nothing else, look at Russian classic literature, Tolstoy's and others of about that time, I don't know how their works look in translations but in original Russian versions there are a lot of French in the books. Sometimes it's just a word but sometime you might see a whole dialogue or a whole paragraph in French, and then a translation to Russian in the footnote. I believe I wasn't the only soviet/Russian kid who at some point toyed with the idea of learning French from these, kind of bilingual, texts (the French pieces and the footnotes).

The third reason is my French experiment.

But I haven't made the decision yet.

[MorkTheFiddle]

If nothing else, look at Russian classic literature, Tolstoy's and others of about that time, I don't know how their works look in translations but in original Russian versions there are a lot of French in the books. Sometimes it's just a word but sometime you might see a whole dialogue or a whole paragraph in French, and then a translation to Russian in the footnote.

From what I remember, English translations note when Tolstoy was writing in French and French translations note that the original was French.
How is Tolstoy's French, by the way?

[aaleks]

How is Tolstoy's French, by the way?

My French is not good enough to judge anyone else's, including Tolstoy* , but, for example, War and Peace starts like this:

– Еh bien, mon prince. Genes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, des поместья, de la famille Buonaparte. Non, je vous previens, que si vous ne me dites pas, que nous avons la guerre, si vous vous permettez encore de pallier toutes les infamies, toutes les atrocites de cet Antichrist (ma parole, j'y crois) – je ne vous connais plus, vous n'etes plus mon ami, vous n'etes plus мой верный раб, comme vous dites.

Actually the entire book is full of French. Some of the French insertions may be really long - a couple of pages or so.

*I believe his French was really good though

[IronMike]

If nothing else, look at Russian classic literature, Tolstoy's and others of about that time, I don't know how their works look in translations but in original Russian versions there are a lot of French in the books. Sometimes it's just a word but sometime you might see a whole dialogue or a whole paragraph in French, and then a translation to Russian in the footnote.

From what I remember, English translations note when Tolstoy was writing in French and French translations note that the original was French.
How is Tolstoy's French, by the way?

The version of W&P I read recently didn't translate the French. That was exciting...and challenging.