Hundetier está estudiando español...

[Hundetier]

At the moment I am doing almost nothing for learning spanish. But I want to participate in rdearmans study, hopefully this will force me to concentrate and to work on spanish reading and listening comprehension.

I spend my leisure time mainly with reading and watching TV - mainly in English.
Read books so far: "The hanging Tree" (Ben Aaronovitch), "Seven Eyes" (Neal Stephenson), "The Final Empire" and "The Well of Ascension" (Brandon Sanderson); I am still reading the third novel of the Mistborn-series.
TV: some BBC-documentaries, Doctor Who season 5 to 8 plus the current episodes

[Hundetier]

Almost nothing learning-related happened the last two weeks. I am still having my parents (visiting me) at home, so I can't watch anything in English or Spanish and my learning/reading time is reduced, too. They'll stay for another week .
I managed to finish "The Hero of Ages" and before starting with the "Wax and Wayne"-series, I began to read "Salt, fat, sugar - how the food giants hooked us" by Michael Moss. One documentary I was able to watch last week on Amazon was about Tolkien, and now I am thinking about rereading "The lord of the rings". My first attempt to read this book in the original some years ago wasn't very successful - I understood almost nothing although I know the story quite well.

And another thing I am struggling with is rdearmans planned study: I was eager to participate and to be forced to read and watch Spanish. But I am not able to fulfil the requirements: I work full-time, have some commitments outside of work and can't watch so much tv (intensively), read a book a week in a language I don't understand fully and do time-consuming anki-things. Perhaps I should concentrate on English, and postpone Spanish: in winter I should have more time.

[Systematiker]

As for LOTR, go for it!

As for the study, it seems that those goals are in there because of the mix of participants, some will already be quite good and have that sort of time. I certainly won't be hitting those goals in my participation. Heck, I've even told Rick that I'll probably miss an entire month in the middle of it. The value is how time in relates to improvement based on what method or medium - it's the same ratio if you read a book a week or a book a month, if the improvement is on the same scale. So I encourage you to go for it there as well

As an aside, your syntax is noticeably different (better!) in comparison to just a few months ago, so you're obviously making some progress and doing something right!

[Hundetier]

Thank you very much!

As for LOTR, go for it!

I`ve just downloaded the book onto my kindle.
When I was young, I used to read LOTR nearly every year, first time with 10 (I started grammar school, and there was a library next to it). There I found the pretty green single banded books with lots of nice thin pages full of fascinating words. I couldn't resist. Then some years later (when I was out of school) I bought a copy of the red edition. But this happened to be the new translation which I didn't like much (Krege), so I was "forced" to buy a Carroux-translation some time later. And then came the wish to read the original version - but I never finished it, my English wasn't sufficient.
I am curious how I'll get along with it now.

[blaurebell]

Amazing that you managed to get through the green translation! I found it so unbearably boring that I abandoned it. Twice. And so did my dad. We only read it in English and it's a gazillion times better than that rank translation that you loved So, really, do yourself a favour and read it in the original! You will love it even more! By the way, the Spanish translation isn't half bad either.

Edit: typos

[Iversen]

Little children speak Basque all the time though and a lot of parents speak Basque with them but Spanish with each other. Also, anything political will be entirely in Basque.

That alone would be the second best possible reason to learn a bit of Basque. The best reason of all is of course that it is so weird and exotic.

As for LOTR I have read it in English and in Esperanto.

[Hundetier]

Amazing that you managed to get through the green translation!

It took me some years. I started my first attempt as ten year old and gave up after a few pages. But I was so fascinated by these books and the story, that I borrowed them from the library again and again and started over. With fifteen or sixteen I had my first full read.
I began reading LOTR this morning. Amazingly there are only few unknown words so far and I don't have understanding problems. I am a bit astonished as I have this book in bad remembrance with over 50% not understandable text. Last time I had to look up so many words that I lost interest in reading it. Perhaps I`ll read the Spanish edition in the future, but for the beginning I need shorter and easier books for motivation reasons.
And now back to Bilbo and his 111th birthday.

[Systematiker]

My wife got me the green set when I was just starting to read novels in German...I never made it through either.