Dutch literature: lost to English translation How many authors from the country can you name?
"The reason we don’t know Dutch literature over here, according to Zwagerman, is because they barely know it themselves. The Dutch language has been in such constant flux over the past few centuries, he writes, that “many great works of 17th- and 18th- and 19th-century Dutch literature have to be translated into modern Dutch to make them accessible to the average reader”. Laurence Sterne? Jane Austen? Charlotte Brontë ? Imagine them all lost to us!"
Italian: Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (audio) Ru: S King (audio) Pol: R Graves (audio) Fra: Hugo (audio) De: EA Poe (audio) Esp: Lum (TV)
Classic literature & classic cartoons.
Re: Reineke's log
Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 11:33 pm
by reineke
Minor breakthrough with Japanese. Note from former self: the deal was to start on Japanese after having reached a satisfactory level in Portuguese and Russian. Spanish was implied. Polish wasn't.
Re: Reineke's log
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 4:22 am
by reineke
February 2018
Pol voc Feb 18.png
reineke wrote:Czech: 4830
With Czech, I understood some of the headwords and several synonym/antonym options, but I apparently still made the wrong choice. Some international words did not seem to have corresponding antonyms or cognates. It is possible I misunderstood some words. In Polish, the written word for "sun" may be misinterpreted as meaning elephant by speakers of other Slavic languages. That's the only Polish trick I know.
English + German did not earn me a very high score with Dutch.
I would have expected a higher result for Czech and Polish given my background in two Slavic languages. I would say that the test developers were generous with some easily recognizable international cognates. On the other hand I didn't see many easy interslavic cognates. Generally speaking, Romance and Latin cognates are easier to spot than Slavic cognates.
In any case, currently I find written and spoken Polish opaque. I used to think written and spoken Russian and spoken Portuguese were opaque when I started listening to these languages. Spoken and written Spanish felt transparent from day 1.
6/3/18
Pol voc June 18.png
Total Polonization time: 10 hours? Polish is less opaque. Edit: No, I did not learn 10,000 words in 10 hours. The result reflects the fact that I can now navigate Polish a lot better than before.
Re: Reineke's log
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 7:13 am
by Robierre
Congrats! After 300 hours of language courses for me it is still opaque.
(Može link za test?)
Re: Reineke's log
Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 1:33 pm
by reineke
Robierre wrote:Congrats! After 300 hours of language courses for me it is still opaque.
Mar 25, 2018 Polish 0 hours Audiobook (US pulp) Incomprehensible. I can recognize the occasional word. I sort of feel like dropping the idea. Audiobook, (HC Andersen) I can understand some mini scenes and narrative kernels. Very motivating
Prior exposure: a couple of hours of TV watching in the 1990s.
June 4 11 hrs "Co za smród, co za smród, kurwa, co za smród!"
