The so-called, and so sought after, immersion.

People are always complaining about how they get so little exposure to their target language in their home countries, pointing out what great progress they would make were they to find themselves in a situation of immersion. Since I have been through immersion once already, or twice if you count Norway, I have no real illusions about how much progress I expect to make. Three months is not a very long time.

I have now been in Russia for almost a month, and what kind of progress have I made? I have no idea. I don't think my spoken Russian is all that much better, however I find it easier to use since I am in contact with it in a more natural way every day. I don't speak all that much Russian though, and the occasions I have spoken most Russian on here have been while meeting my old Russian friends Alexey and Sasha, who neither of them lives here. We have speaking classes, but they are often used for reading, something I find weird, and a lot of the time is used on defining words. Luckily, the class was divided into two groups after 1 1/2 week, so we don't have to explain all that many words anymore, but it is still almost driving me crazy. If we are given as an assignment to read a text, then surely people can look up the words they don't know at home and learn them before the lesson? And then the teacher can just assume that we know them? Or is this pure insanity on my behalf? The actual time we end up speaking during our speaking classes is very limited, and of course the teacher speaks very slowly. And that's it for speaking Russian, the rest of the time we speak Norwegian, even though some classes are in excruciatingly slow Russian. I can't really blame anyone though, I'm the one who is here with a group of students who have studied Russian for one year, but I did expect it to be much, much more difficult. I expected to be constantly busy, but I'm actually more busy when I study in Oslo, since we don't have any reading to do here, except for some grammar in our fabulously dry and boring grammar book. What takes up a lot of time for most people are the translations, but I did them before I even left Oslo, so even though some of them are going to be replaced by other texts (because the first ones were too difficult), I saved myself lots of time. The other thing people seem to find time consuming is writing short essays every week, but since I have been a fan of writing essays for a long time that is something I do in 30 minutes or so...

And now that I don't have all that much to do, I'm going to try to resist that old temptation of over studying everything, and instead try to read and watch Russian television and movies, and of course see more of the city. Getting to and from school reduces my amount of free time, but I try to use it as best I can and read on the way, that is what I can get a place to sit or when we don't walk. Actually being in Russia beats most things, so I don't really care all that much about school.

St Petersburg Book Market.

Today we visited the book market in St Petersburg, located nearby the Elizarovskaja metro station. I found the line of tables *outside* the actual market, which is an indoor three floor arrangement, the most interesting part. I am really much more interested in actually OLD books, not just new ones, or modern editions, which are easy to find and not the slightest bit unique. And since I'm looking for classics most of the time, book markets with old dusty books are much better suited for me. Unfortunately, only the outside of the market was like that. Lots of books for 10-20-30-40 roubles! I bought a stack of books for 130 roubles in total within a couple of minutes, and a St Petersburg comic for 50 roubles inside the building (mostly just because the seller was so charming and bubbly enthusiastic about her books). I was a bit annoyed at finding Татьяна Толстая's Крысь for 50 roubles there, because I bought it for 140 yesterday...

Накануне - Тургенев
Записки охотника, Рудин - Тургенев

That is, for those who don't speak Russian, On the Eve and A Sportsman's Sketches by Ivan Turgenev. Ever since reading Fathers and Sons, Turgenev has been one of my favorite Russian authors. I got the impression that he writes in very understandable prose, and I have read one short story from A Sportsman's Sketches before, years ago, and I still remember it, which is surely a good sign. So I am very much looking forward to reading his books, and I'm absolutely thrilled that I found them for just a couple of rubles.

"Сквозь жар души, сквозь хлад ума..." - Некрасов

Not even sure what this is, but I knew that I was supposed to know Nekrasov from somewhere, and the book was just extremely cute.

Стихитворения, поэмы - Лермонтов

Lermontov was one of the first Russian authors I read in Russian, albeit in a bilingual French-Russian edition that I bought in France once; A Hero of Our Time. I really liked it, and since I have been trying to read more poetry for the last five or so years (unsuccessfully) I decided to give his poems a go.

По дорогам Венгрии - Дружинин

I don't really know what this is either, I'm not too sure if it's fiction or not (I think it's fiction, or autobiographical, but I haven't really looked into it very much), but it's about Hungary, it didn't cost a thing, and true to my habit I gave in to the temptation :-)

Мелкий Бес - Федор Сологуб

A long long time ago I read a very strange short story by Sologub, and I am a bit curious about him.

Река жизни - Куприн

Just before leaving Norway I read a short story by Kuprin, after having received recommendations on lang-8, and since I liked that short story, and since I always want to discover new authors, this collection of short stories came in very handy.

Полный пока

This is a highly modern booklet with comic strips from St. Petersburg. They seem to be all black humor strips, and language wise I thought it could be a nice challenge.

These are of course not the only books I have bought so far. The book I'm currently reading is actually not a Russian one, but the author is originally Russian and the book is about St. Petersburg and the Revolution: We the Living by Ayn Rand. I will wait with my judgment on the book until I have read all of it. I also bought a Russian translation of a Francoise Sagan book; Un orage immobile. The edition was just so cute I couldn't help myself. The same goes for Любовь Фрау Клейст by Ирина Муравьёва. I have no idea who this author is, but the book was extremely cheap and it appealed to me somehow. The list goes on with The Idiot by Dostoyevsky and finally a tiny hardcover bilingual poetry collection of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke (German/Russian).

As far as the rest of my stay here is concerned, I haven't actually been in the mood for writing about any of it. I think what I would say would be inadequate anyway. Of course everyone knows that St. Petersburg is an excellent city. I even put up with overcrowded public transport here, and that is saying a lot... ;)

Star Trek

Since I am soon going to the big country in the East, I kind of felt like I should write a couple of posts here first, just in case I don't get the time to do so this fall. St. Petersburg is after all St. Petersburg so it needs to be visited, we will have lots of homework and the alcohol will be practically free compared to what we're used to.

But I wanted to talk about Star Trek today.

Star Trek seems to be a rather popular way of getting some instant immersion. I know of at least two other people/bloggers who have used Star Trek to practice their understanding of their target languages. It's quite easy to understand why; there are tons and tons of episodes, each episode is 40 minutes or so and contains some sort of adventure, making them very easy to watch. Since I am on episode 23 of season one of Star Trek Enterprise dubbed in Russian I can affirm this :-) What is so great about having this amount of episodes is that you grow accustomed to the voices of the actors, to the manner of speaking and the rhythm, so the progress in understanding can be very motivating.

For Scandinavians in general, dubbing is quite close to being a mortal sin. I don't think I know anyone who can watch anything dubbed without cringing, but it only takes some breaking in, and then you're good to go. The Star Trek I am watching has kept the English voices and only added the Russian ones on top, which can be rather disturbing at first. The Russians speech is always a bit delayed, so you get the two or three first English words as well, and then there is no real illusion about the Russian voices somehow being the real voices. Dubbing in Swedish is awful. This may have something to do with Swedish being rather chopped up in the kind of movies were dubbing is used (children's movies), making it look absolutely ridiculous as the actors voices move completely out of sync with the way too perky Swedish speech. I somehow imagine this could be less of a problem with a language that has less clear boundaries, such as Danish, but I'm not sure. I also watched the Star Trek movie (I love it, I do, Spock is pure perfection), and it was done very professionally, without English voices, but I hardly even noticed that it was actually dubbed. This is a major motion picture though, and I guess the budget is somewhat bigger for those...

Has anyone else tried watching Star Trek? Any favorite series? :-)

Per Petterson and the gang.

I have always had something of a problem when it comes to keeping up with modern literature. There are just so many classics left to read, so I have never really understood when I am supposed to find time for modern prose. Especially when I started reading in multiple languages, and often quite slowly, this became an even bigger problem. Therefore I am quite proud of how much modern Norwegian literature I have been reading lately. Yesterday I started reading (and read half of) Jeg forbanner tidens elv (I curse the river of time, supposedly a line from a poem by Mao, but I don't know what the "official" translation of the phrase is) by Per Petterson. Funnily enough, this book makes me think of a couple of other brilliant Scandinavian books, and I think it embodies exactly what I like about Scandinavian literature. This particular author uses a rather simple language and some of the forms feel rather like spoken language to me, something I'm not sure I appreciated at first, but then this is Norwegian and Norwegian abides by like 10 different sets of rules. What makes it rather typically Scandinavian, at least for me, is the general sadness that prevails throughout the entire book. There's a sort of weight placed on top of every word, adding a depressing tone to even the happy recollections, but sad books don't bring me down, quite the opposite.

The topic of this book is the life of the narrator, who is now an elderly man. Throughout the book you get to follow different episodes from his life, cut up into different chapters and intertwined with each other, ranging from when he was a child to his divorce and the cancer his mother suffered from as an old woman. Absolutely everything in this book feels typical for me. Since I am very familiar with Oslo now, I recognize all the places he speaks about and I have even lived and worked in them, something that doubtlessly brings me closer to the story, but the people he describes also feel extremely real. His mother, the weird distance she keeps between herself and her son, her constant shortness, her apparent indifference and self-sacrifice do not appear strange at all, nor the weakness (male) of the main character and his father. I get the impression it could have been anyone. His wife, who is divorcing him and whom he cannot look at anymore, and who tells him to stop being so ridiculous, also feels... right.

Other books or authors this one reminds me of are Elisabeth Rynell (Till Mervas especially), Mare Kandre (Aliide, Aliide) and Herbjørg Wassmo (Tora Trilogy). These are the kind of books I enjoy studying foreign languages for. You can certainly read quite a lot of books translated, but there is always a big part of literature that never gets translated, and when it comes to Swedish literature, detective stories seems to be what gets translated and sold abroad. The good literature stays in Sweden.


Jeg forbanner tidens elv has, by the way, won the literary award of the Nordic Council and has been called the best Norwegian book of 2008. In 2003 he wrote another book that became absolutely huge, not only in Norway but abroad as well. So I think that's what I'm going to read once I get back from Russia.

Jens Bjørneboe.

I have almost finished Bjørneboe’s trilogy Bestialitetens historia, and I thought I would provide you with an extract from the end of it, just like I chose one from the beginning when I started reading the book. The books are great, by the way. For me it's the essence of literature, this is what it should be all about.



Jeg ser meget annet også inne i meg, når jeg ligger sammenkrøllet under teppet, full av sovepiller og alkohol, mens jeg kjenner den milde varmen i kroppen, og vet at bevisstheten ikke lenger er av piggtråd og smerte. Jeg ser meg selv som barn, da jeg drakk vin for første gang og visste at dette, det var min drikk... at den hjalp... lindret... at den var levende vann... tryllevann... Da jeg var eldre, ti år gammel, drakk jeg opp et helt vinanker, mens mine foreldre var bortreist. Jeg hadde mine første hallusinasjoner da; jeg så en løve sitte i min fars lenestol, en stor, gul og prektig løve. Og ved siden av den satt en ung mann i blå skjorte og grå bukser. Stolsetet bøyet seg under vekten av løven. Jeg følte ingen angst hverken for dyret eller for mennesket. Det var tvert imot slik at min vanlige angst var borte, og blodet rant ikke langs vinduspostene og ned på gulvet, og alt var mykt og varmt og stille. Luften mellom gutten og løven og meg var full av blomster og ranker, og når jeg la meg om nettene alene og full, da var jeg ikke redd for mørket, og hylingen fra kattene ute i de våte høstnettene trodde jeg ikke lenger kom fra barn som ble pint. Jeg la meg som nu, med varme og likegladhet i kroppen, med det indre fylt av gode bilder, jeg trakk føttene opp under meg, slik som nu – i fosterstilling – og flettet armene om hverandre, med hendene under armhulene eller i skrittet, og alt var mykhet og mørke og alt var godt, men jeg visste at oppvåkningen kunne bli ond, hvis jeg ikke satte en krukke med avtappet vin ved siden av sengen. Jeg gikk ikke på skole, og jeg ga satan i alle kameratene jeg var redd for og i lærerne som jeg hatet. Jeg drakk av vinen med en gang jeg våknet, og alt var godt.

Hva som skjedde, vet jeg ikke. Men etterpå kom det en tid av den vanlige sorten, hvor mørket var vendt tilbake og hvor skolebøkene var klistret sammen av blod, hvor jeg gråt om natten og drømte at jeg ble jaget ut på bryggen av pøbelen og kastet i oet svarte vannet, som drev av kordonger og fiskekadavere og slim. Det hjalp ikke å holde hendene i skrittet eller under armhulene; kattene i den kalde, svarte haven var ikke lenger katter, men lemlestede bam som gråt... allikevel gikk det forbi, da jeg igjen kom over et større lager med alkohol; jeg blomstret opp og levet igjen som et vanlig bam. Bare da det tok slutt, opplevet jeg noe nytt: for første gang drakk jeg opp min fars barbervann, og han skjønte ikke hvorfor det var blitt borte.

1 Month Until St. Petersburg.

This summer hasn't really been my most productive one. I am slowly getting back into some sort of routine, and that will soon be disrupted again as I leave this country for three months. I am finally going to Russia for a longer period of time, but I'm too much of a worrying type to be able to enjoy the thought of it before I know all the practical details are sorted out (we still don't know exactly where we are going to live, we haven't paid the fees, and so on...) I have read the only course book we have that is not all about grammar, Мы похожи, но мы разные (I'm not entirely sure that's the title of the entire book, it may just be the first chapter), so I do feel like I have done at least something. Fortunately, I found the book extremely easy to read and I finished it very quickly. I have added all the unknown words I could find to Anki, so I should know them all before I even leave.

After having thought about it for quite some time, I did finally start rereading The Secret History by Donna Tartt, and I'm loving it just as much as I did the first time, eight or so years ago. I am a bit puzzled as to how so many language enthusiasts have managed to miss this book. Seriously, it should be a rather natural book to read for anyone who is overly interested in some language. When I read a really good book I always want to read more, and even though I want to read more Russian before I leave, I also have some very interesting books on Russia and I would really have liked to read at least one of them before leaving. Naturally, this doesn't make it any easier to squeeze in any German and Hungarian, especially since I have a final essay to write for my women's history class as well.

And I think Yandex fixed that problem dealing with automatically starting to type in the search field after a search! :D

Yandex, WTF?

I've been wanting to write this post for a couple of days now, but I've never gotten around to doing it. Sometime ago, Yandex all of a sudden became a little bit prettier, and way more useless. Yandex used to be my absolute favorite Russian online dictionary, it was more or less perfect. The only thing it lacked was accent marks, but you can find those by clicking the middle box in the translation field, instead of the box to the right (I no longer remember what that box said). Now I have a couple of things to complain about though.

1) By changing from "только перевод" to "только энциклопедии" when doing your search, you can sometimes get accent marks, if there happens to be one in one of the articles that you get as results for your search, but that is not always the case. Actually, I've only managed to find accent marks for a couple of words... for a Russian dictionary, this is very bad. (Can you somehow find stress marks on Rambler?) You need to be able to see stress changes from singular to plural, stress patterns in the past tense, irregular stress patterns for short form adjectives, and so on... and this used to be possible on Yandex.

2) I really have the impression that with the older version, you could just start typing after you had made your search, whereas you now have to click the search field again in order to be able to type. The only positive thing is that the entire word is marked as soon as you click the typing field, but it still makes for way too much clicking.

These are small things, but incredibly important if you want to get anywhere with Russian.

Are there any other good Russian dictionaries that provide plenty of examples as well as a user-friendly interface? I absolutely need a dictionary that will auto-complete as I type, that's the number one criterium, and at least that is still working on Yandex...

The other Russian dictionaries I use are The Russian Dictionary Tree and Multitran, but none of them are good enough. Oh, and this one, which is excellent for all the details.