To Romania with Asterix and the rest

[Meddysong]

Hello, folks. You might well know Radioclare. She's an extremely diligent learner. I'm her other half and I could never be described as diligent. Truth be told, I'm fairly woeful.

We're planning to go to Romania in 2019. It's been on the agenda in the past but we've never got around to booking a holiday there on account of my failure to make even a token attempt at learning the language. It's not Clare's fault, since she's equipped me (via Santa Claus) with the tools for the job:



I have my trusty Asterix on hand:



This is my secret weapon when it comes to language learning. If anything seems a bit hard, at least I have plenty of copies to act as parallel texts:



My usual way of knowing I'm at a reasonable enough stage to go on holiday is that I've read a Ken Follett book. With Catalan I was foolish, buying a 1300-page book before I had any intention of learning the language just because I could get it cheap. (I may be in possession of the same book in Latvian for the same reason.)

This time I'm much more measured, having a copy of Ken Follett's Eye of the Needle:



(It's probably my favourite book and if I can find it in a language I speak, I buy it.)

I doubt there will be many entries in this log, not least because I know myself very well. I'm quite capable of setting out a goal now but that won't stop Future-Self from rebelling against Past-Self and deciding that he's not going to do what Past-Self tells him to. But whilst Current-Self has somehow managed to free up a day and has decided that he's going to start reading Complete Romanian (though not before procrastinating by creating this log in what he knows is a vain hope to committing himself to studying), I'll be able to say that in my life I've done at least one unit of a book about Romanian. And all being well, I'll surprise myself by getting through Asterix and Eye of the Needle, and not having to postpone the holiday plans again.

[Elenia]

I really enjoyed reading your adventures with Asterix in Sweden. Looking forward to seeing how magic potion serves you in Romania!

[rdearman]

Well if Asterix in Romanian fails, I can give you Asterix in Czech.

[Meddysong]

Well if Asterix in Romanian fails, I can give you Asterix in Czech.

Already got it, as well as in, um ... Latin, Welsh, Dutch, Swedish, German, Russian and Greek, none of which I speak and all testament to my language eyes being bigger than my stomach. I keep telling myself I'll get around to studying them one day!

[Meddysong]

Here you go, folks; the unread Asterix:



Those are only the first ones in the series, which are the ones I intentionally collect, but I also pick up other books in the series in a range of languages. It seems I have approaching 30 in the unread pile. Four seem to be languages I can read (Spanish, Catalan, Italian, French), some are in languages I could read passively (Picard, Occitan), several are in languages that I could read with a bit of study and a dictionary (German, Dutch, Swedish). A few are in languages which I could read passively one day if I learn a Slavic language. But then there's also a Greek one and *gulp* a Finnish one too.

[Meddysong]

That's the first two chapters of Complete Romanian down.

First thoughts:

-i at the end of a word is a devil, isn't it? Rather unhelpfully, the book says "don't pronounce it" but I know from having spoken to a Romanian student that it is pronounced, it's just incredibly subtle. It seems that it's so subtle as to be almost imperceptible to my ears and hard to replicate without adding a clear extra syllable.

- Oh crikey, I'm going to have trouble with â and î. I think I can just about cope with ă; the main challenge is going to be remembering which accent above 'a' is which! Note to self: the letter which sounds identical to î has the same accent as it.

[Meddysong]

That didn't take long for me to underperform, did it? I just can't seem to find the time to do some proper studying.

That said, the time found me when I had a several-hour roundtrip recently in the car. I got through a couple of albums but also managed the first six units of Pimsleur Romanian.

That wasn't entirely new to me; I'd been over those units at the start of the year when I'd made an attempt to get in 10,000 steps each day and chose that as my accompaniment. (The fitness attempt went about as well as my language learning.)

One thing I've picked up from the recording is something which I think is probably spelt Unde este bulevardul Enescu? Somehow that's taught (or reminded me from somewhere) that Romanian postpositions its definite articles ...

... and suddenly the cover of Asterix looks a lot more familiar:



A-ha! Eroul = the hero, with, presumably, ero being the word itself. And now it looks much more like a Romance language!

I'm not convinced about the galilor part. I'm going to hedge my bets and guess that the noun is gal and that there's some sort of suffix or marker to make it into an adjective.

Let's see whether I can get some work done this weekend ...

[Serpent]

Spoiler: I think it's related to the Italian loro

The first time I watched a match in Romanian, I was really confused because I kept hearing -ul and it sounded like Esperanto to me, but I knew the stream couldn't actually be in Esperanto

[MamaPata]

Anthea Bell, who translated Astérix into English died recently and her obituaries talked quite a bit about the process, which was interesting.

On mobile now so apologies for not hyper linking

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/ ... es-aged-82

That then links to an interview the Guardian did with her a little while ago, which was amusing.

(Also like the profile picture by the way!)

[Meddysong]

I heard about her death on Radio 4 but didn't know about the article.

(Also like the profile picture by the way!)

*panics* What's the picture of?!

*relief* Oh, it's my Heidi mask. I need to check where my big girl is, come to think of it. Clare, Pebbles and I are in the office and Heidi's normally in here too. Eh, I'll leave her snoozing wherever she is.

Who's your furball? Looks like a Scottish/American Fold.