Thanks to the wonder that is Goodreads, I got interested in reading the classic The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells. It was found among the recommendations for me based on previous Science Fiction and Classics that I have rated. At the same time, I have too many "ordinary" books to read so this one would have to wait... unless I read it in another language!
So I thought Ukrainian. But, if I read it in Ukrainian, it will take me a year. So why not French? A bit too easy perhaps. Russian? Yes, that would do it. Although Hungarian, which would take me five years, would be cool as well.
So I decided to mix it. A couple of pages in each language here and there, and I will print the whole thing piece by piece and mix it together in all my languages (which is why I need it as a text document). I wonder what this will do to my overall feeling of the book, how I perceive it once read, and in what language I will remember it. It will be a nice experiment.
The problem? I only have the book in Ukrainian and French. A friend has been looking for it in Hungarian for me, but haven't been able to find it. Even though the original is out of copyright, the translation may not be, etc. If anyone with awesome Hungarian searching powers is out there and can find it in the depths of the Internet, please (please) do. I figure finding it in Russian will be easy. Oh! German! I will include German! Any German e-book sites out there?
Showing posts with label language learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language learning. Show all posts
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Read More or Die.
Since I haven't been extremely active on language forums and blogs lately, or let's say during the whole spring, I have kind of missed out on things. For once I did actually manage to catch something on time though and signed up for the Read More or Die July challenge. Of course, I hereby encourage everyone else to also sign up. It starts tomorrow.
It's a rather simple thing. You read as much as you can in the languages you have signed up for and you post your results regularly on Twitter, and the challenge-bot calculates the scores.
My languages will be Russian and German. For Russian I'm reading На солнечной стороне улицы by Дина Рубина and for German Märchenprinz by Marian Keyes.
Keeping away from part three of Abercrombie's trilogy may prove extremely difficult. Which is why I'm going to read as much as I can of it now.
It's a rather simple thing. You read as much as you can in the languages you have signed up for and you post your results regularly on Twitter, and the challenge-bot calculates the scores.
My languages will be Russian and German. For Russian I'm reading На солнечной стороне улицы by Дина Рубина and for German Märchenprinz by Marian Keyes.
Keeping away from part three of Abercrombie's trilogy may prove extremely difficult. Which is why I'm going to read as much as I can of it now.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Me and my iPod.
This weekend has been a rough one. I decided to finish both essays that I have to hand in on Friday, since I don't know how much time I will have next week (I got another job on Friday and will have to go through some training for it, spanning over several days). So I put down an offer of X glasses of wine at a cozy café in Oslo with a friend yesterday (more or less my vision of paradise) in order to read about cosmopolitanism and democracy and inclusion. Bitter, who, me? I'm making up for it by going to the movies tonight with some assorted partners in crime from St Petersburg to see Black Swan and working on my Hungarian homework. Yes, I got homework from my Hungarian language partner! I'm translating a snippet of Norwegian into Hungarian, because she thinks I'm reading too difficult books anyway. She's most likely right, Hungarian has me completely defeated.
BUT ANYWAY. My language learning life has become significantly easier since Christmas when I became the proud owner of an iPod Touch. Naturally, I should've gotten one ages ago, but I have a problem when it comes to spending money, so I usually just wait until someone gives whatever I want to me.
So, how can you use your iPod to make your life easier as language learner? Well first of all, and obviously, dictionaries! I have always been very interested in electronic dictionaries, and I had one as early as 2003. It was perhaps what made me interested in languages to begin with (come to think of it, I've only been a language enthusiast for five or so years) since it all of a sudden enabled me to read books without dragging a dictionary along. All of a sudden I could read French books and I went way past my class all the way to France! Back then it was a C-Pen scanner dictionary. Since those naïve days of Marguerite Duras, Anaïs Nin, Emmanuel Carrère and Guy de Maupassant painstakingly read with grim determination I have invested in an Ectaco Arabic handhold dictionary that didn't work (worst piece of crap I've ever bought) and a C-Pen scanner for Russian that didn't work either since it could only look at words in their dictionary form...
With an iPod Touch you never need to buy another device for this purpose. I have bought the Oxford Russian dictionary (pricey, yep, but you can save flash cards and all the words have pronunciation), a Hungarian-English dictionary that's absolutely brilliant and that cost almost nothing, and I will most likely acquire a serious German dictionary as well when I get more serious about German.
Naturally, there is an ANKI application for iPod. Need I say more?
It is as easy as it gets to find Russian or Hungarian or whatever radio stations that you can listen to whenever you have Wifi.
There are several language courses for iPod, but I have not looked into those since that's not really my kind of thing. I have only downloaded a one Hungarian word a day (with pronunciation!) application, and I'm sure there are loads of others for other languages.
What more can you do with an iPod? I want suggestions!
When I started working with the book Standard Arabic (terrifyingly sexy in its absolutely hard-core approach) I was quite annoyed at how one of the first words they introduced was "diligent". Who on earth uses that word anyway? Now I find myself thinking "diligent" rather often, and feel that I have some of my diligence to thank my iPod for. I think it may be brought me back to "our world". Soon I'll be back on the Forum as well, just you wait.
BUT ANYWAY. My language learning life has become significantly easier since Christmas when I became the proud owner of an iPod Touch. Naturally, I should've gotten one ages ago, but I have a problem when it comes to spending money, so I usually just wait until someone gives whatever I want to me.
So, how can you use your iPod to make your life easier as language learner? Well first of all, and obviously, dictionaries! I have always been very interested in electronic dictionaries, and I had one as early as 2003. It was perhaps what made me interested in languages to begin with (come to think of it, I've only been a language enthusiast for five or so years) since it all of a sudden enabled me to read books without dragging a dictionary along. All of a sudden I could read French books and I went way past my class all the way to France! Back then it was a C-Pen scanner dictionary. Since those naïve days of Marguerite Duras, Anaïs Nin, Emmanuel Carrère and Guy de Maupassant painstakingly read with grim determination I have invested in an Ectaco Arabic handhold dictionary that didn't work (worst piece of crap I've ever bought) and a C-Pen scanner for Russian that didn't work either since it could only look at words in their dictionary form...
With an iPod Touch you never need to buy another device for this purpose. I have bought the Oxford Russian dictionary (pricey, yep, but you can save flash cards and all the words have pronunciation), a Hungarian-English dictionary that's absolutely brilliant and that cost almost nothing, and I will most likely acquire a serious German dictionary as well when I get more serious about German.
Naturally, there is an ANKI application for iPod. Need I say more?
It is as easy as it gets to find Russian or Hungarian or whatever radio stations that you can listen to whenever you have Wifi.
There are several language courses for iPod, but I have not looked into those since that's not really my kind of thing. I have only downloaded a one Hungarian word a day (with pronunciation!) application, and I'm sure there are loads of others for other languages.
What more can you do with an iPod? I want suggestions!
When I started working with the book Standard Arabic (terrifyingly sexy in its absolutely hard-core approach) I was quite annoyed at how one of the first words they introduced was "diligent". Who on earth uses that word anyway? Now I find myself thinking "diligent" rather often, and feel that I have some of my diligence to thank my iPod for. I think it may be brought me back to "our world". Soon I'll be back on the Forum as well, just you wait.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Polyphasic sleep.
Now, this is not something I would try myself. First of all, I am way too fond of sleeping and you have to have very much control over your daily routine in order to be able to follow an unconventional sleep pattern. But it's very interesting to read about other people who try it and I'm very much looking forward to seeing what happens when more time has passed. Read more about it on these two blogs:
Judith's language learning blog
Language fixation
Judith's language learning blog
Language fixation
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Stepping it up a bit.
All of a sudden I'm posting more often than once a month. How come? I'm not really sure, but I used to enjoy writing very much. When I stopped being able to actually write and was forced to dictate instead, I guess the pleasure of writing more or less disappeared, because dictating isn't writing. It's completely different. What was supposed to be unspoken, written words is all of a sudden turned into false spoken language, and spoken language is very much different from its written counterpart. So you see, it's a question of two worlds interfering with one another - and I would very much have preferred to keep them separated.
Plus, I don't like things I don't feel good at. Who does really? I have the impression from school that you are supposed to enjoy difficult things ("these exercises will probably be boring for you, they will be too easy" always seemed stupid to me), things that you are no good at, but I always hated physics, and I was crap at it, whereas I loved writing, because I was good at it. Then I grew older but my writing did not evolve with me and now it doesn't feel special in any way anymore. I guess everyone has those things, "I had so much potential when I was a kid, then it all went away".
But that was only part of what I wanted to talk about. I skimmed through some language blogs today, and I realized how much I miss reading them and how much I miss wasting too much time on language forums while thinking I should be studying languages instead. It also made me realize I should be more ambitious with my other studies and about my general culture, and no, all of that isn't really possible to combine, so I don't really know what to do. However, I felt there were two things I wanted to share on this blog. Two very basic things, those kind of things you actually know without really realizing it, and that become very obvious when someone puts it in plain writing.
The first is about READING. Many people seem to be very hesitant about reading in foreign languages. When someone catches me reading a Russian book in class they are always impressed for some reason. Why is it people think reading is so difficult? It's just a text, it's there, it's not going anywhere, you can read it for as long as you like and using whatever tools you have. What is so difficult about that? I think the important thing to realize is that you don't have to read a text in any specific way. It's perfectly okay to switch between strategies, to go from reading something very meticulously to just skimming through it. No one says you have to read an entire book while understanding 100% of the words - that's not the only way to read a book. You can just as well read one page where you make sure you understand all the words, and then read five more making sure you understand what it's about, regardless of how many words you understand. Books are friendly, don't be afraid of them.
Secondly, USAGE. If you never use a language, you will never know when you make mistakes. Apparently Stephen Kaufman said something about this recently, and this kind of surprised me because generally I don't like much of what he says, most likely because I think he looks too smug. Ehem. Anyway, this is absolutely true. While you are reading or listening, you aren't creating anything on your own, you aren't using the language actively, so you don't really realize exactly what you know and what you don't know. And usually, no one corrects your listening or reading unless it's some sort of a test. You may read something and understand it perfectly, but then try to say it yourself and get it all wrong. It's like only reading Russian books without stress marks and then try to speak Russian and realize you can't pronounce anything correctly, because you have always taken for granted that this or that word has that particular stress, whereas as a matter of fact... it doesn't. Or perhaps you never really noticed the difference between ничего and нечего, because when you read it, you read it all like ничего... Those are just small and simple examples. A big and horrifying example would on the other hand be Russian verb aspects. You read and you have no idea you are missing 500 nuances, but you can't really care either. It only becomes a problem when you have to use the damned things yourself.
But what am I doing here? I am supposed to be analyzing 19th-century texts on nationalism.
Plus, I don't like things I don't feel good at. Who does really? I have the impression from school that you are supposed to enjoy difficult things ("these exercises will probably be boring for you, they will be too easy" always seemed stupid to me), things that you are no good at, but I always hated physics, and I was crap at it, whereas I loved writing, because I was good at it. Then I grew older but my writing did not evolve with me and now it doesn't feel special in any way anymore. I guess everyone has those things, "I had so much potential when I was a kid, then it all went away".
But that was only part of what I wanted to talk about. I skimmed through some language blogs today, and I realized how much I miss reading them and how much I miss wasting too much time on language forums while thinking I should be studying languages instead. It also made me realize I should be more ambitious with my other studies and about my general culture, and no, all of that isn't really possible to combine, so I don't really know what to do. However, I felt there were two things I wanted to share on this blog. Two very basic things, those kind of things you actually know without really realizing it, and that become very obvious when someone puts it in plain writing.
The first is about READING. Many people seem to be very hesitant about reading in foreign languages. When someone catches me reading a Russian book in class they are always impressed for some reason. Why is it people think reading is so difficult? It's just a text, it's there, it's not going anywhere, you can read it for as long as you like and using whatever tools you have. What is so difficult about that? I think the important thing to realize is that you don't have to read a text in any specific way. It's perfectly okay to switch between strategies, to go from reading something very meticulously to just skimming through it. No one says you have to read an entire book while understanding 100% of the words - that's not the only way to read a book. You can just as well read one page where you make sure you understand all the words, and then read five more making sure you understand what it's about, regardless of how many words you understand. Books are friendly, don't be afraid of them.
Secondly, USAGE. If you never use a language, you will never know when you make mistakes. Apparently Stephen Kaufman said something about this recently, and this kind of surprised me because generally I don't like much of what he says, most likely because I think he looks too smug. Ehem. Anyway, this is absolutely true. While you are reading or listening, you aren't creating anything on your own, you aren't using the language actively, so you don't really realize exactly what you know and what you don't know. And usually, no one corrects your listening or reading unless it's some sort of a test. You may read something and understand it perfectly, but then try to say it yourself and get it all wrong. It's like only reading Russian books without stress marks and then try to speak Russian and realize you can't pronounce anything correctly, because you have always taken for granted that this or that word has that particular stress, whereas as a matter of fact... it doesn't. Or perhaps you never really noticed the difference between ничего and нечего, because when you read it, you read it all like ничего... Those are just small and simple examples. A big and horrifying example would on the other hand be Russian verb aspects. You read and you have no idea you are missing 500 nuances, but you can't really care either. It only becomes a problem when you have to use the damned things yourself.
But what am I doing here? I am supposed to be analyzing 19th-century texts on nationalism.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Regularity.
(This post was really much more interesting and better formulated before I wrote it down, but unfortunately it has been traveling around in my head for over a week and bits and pieces got lost whereas other just became muddled.)
When I was still rather new to language learning, I used to have periods when I was extremely motivated and then periods when I wasn't the slightest bit interested in languages. Perhaps this was due to the rather low level I was at in both of my languages (Russian and Arabic), or just due to lack of experience. I really do believe that you learn how to learn, and that I partly did learn after lots of trial and error.
I would really be interested in hearing from you other folks how this works for you personally. Do you ever - or often - lose interest in your languages? I never lose interest anymore. I think the last time I lost interest was last summer; since then I have had no unproductive periods (and since I always used to get quite depressed during such times I guess it's uniquely a good thing, just so that SOMEONE doesn't start talking about how we all need to rest and so on - we don't).
I was engaged in some other things back in the up-and-down days as well; I used to be a very ferocious knitter, and anyone who has ever been into knitting knows that this is (or can be) an extremely time-consuming activity, especially when you are working on 12 simultaneous projects, something that all hard-core knitters naturally do. I also used to go to the gym quite a lot (yes I know, weight lifting and knitting... I have always liked weird combinations) and that is surely a very tiring activity. I do neither of those these days, both due to inability and lack of opportunity/time/money... the positive effect of this has been a concentration of my interest and energy on foreign languages. This concentration could however just as well have been applied to knitting instead. I can very well imagine a situation where it is completely unimaginable to not knit during any free moment of the day (yes, that's how serious you get) since that was practically what I was like when I was not in my language learning mode, just like it is now completely unimaginable for me to not constantly try to improve my languages. It doesn't really require an effort; not doing anything is more of a task than just naturally keeping myself busy. It is usually not worth pointing out such things to people who have no interest in anything and who don't spend ridiculous amounts of time doing something most people wouldn't even think twice about since you just get weird looks. It is much easier to just go along with their "oh, you are so talented with languages"-excuse or the "wow, your knitting is so even, that surely is the result of TALENT and not hard work!". Talent is a lame excuse, and an extremely annoying one when you don't have any.
Oh oh, I almost forgot. I think (know) that the language learning community (dear Skypers/IRCers, dear Forum folks!) has also helped me a lot. I just can't bear seeing other people hard at work, or speaking about being hard at work at least, while just sitting there myself.
---
The other day Jack sent me a link to a song that was just incredibly beautiful and ever since I have been listening to Ludovico Einaudi. I will provide you with the very same song that he gave me. I have the feeling it was made for my very own little world of classic literary.
When I was still rather new to language learning, I used to have periods when I was extremely motivated and then periods when I wasn't the slightest bit interested in languages. Perhaps this was due to the rather low level I was at in both of my languages (Russian and Arabic), or just due to lack of experience. I really do believe that you learn how to learn, and that I partly did learn after lots of trial and error.
I would really be interested in hearing from you other folks how this works for you personally. Do you ever - or often - lose interest in your languages? I never lose interest anymore. I think the last time I lost interest was last summer; since then I have had no unproductive periods (and since I always used to get quite depressed during such times I guess it's uniquely a good thing, just so that SOMEONE doesn't start talking about how we all need to rest and so on - we don't).
I was engaged in some other things back in the up-and-down days as well; I used to be a very ferocious knitter, and anyone who has ever been into knitting knows that this is (or can be) an extremely time-consuming activity, especially when you are working on 12 simultaneous projects, something that all hard-core knitters naturally do. I also used to go to the gym quite a lot (yes I know, weight lifting and knitting... I have always liked weird combinations) and that is surely a very tiring activity. I do neither of those these days, both due to inability and lack of opportunity/time/money... the positive effect of this has been a concentration of my interest and energy on foreign languages. This concentration could however just as well have been applied to knitting instead. I can very well imagine a situation where it is completely unimaginable to not knit during any free moment of the day (yes, that's how serious you get) since that was practically what I was like when I was not in my language learning mode, just like it is now completely unimaginable for me to not constantly try to improve my languages. It doesn't really require an effort; not doing anything is more of a task than just naturally keeping myself busy. It is usually not worth pointing out such things to people who have no interest in anything and who don't spend ridiculous amounts of time doing something most people wouldn't even think twice about since you just get weird looks. It is much easier to just go along with their "oh, you are so talented with languages"-excuse or the "wow, your knitting is so even, that surely is the result of TALENT and not hard work!". Talent is a lame excuse, and an extremely annoying one when you don't have any.
Oh oh, I almost forgot. I think (know) that the language learning community (dear Skypers/IRCers, dear Forum folks!) has also helped me a lot. I just can't bear seeing other people hard at work, or speaking about being hard at work at least, while just sitting there myself.
---
The other day Jack sent me a link to a song that was just incredibly beautiful and ever since I have been listening to Ludovico Einaudi. I will provide you with the very same song that he gave me. I have the feeling it was made for my very own little world of classic literary.
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