2011 - The year people started taking me serious?

I kind of stopped posting simply because I ran out of time. Just as I predicted, keeping up with the one book per week thing is proving increasingly challenging, but I haven't failed yet. My biggest issue is that I want to read in Russian, and that slows me down considerably. Starting Любовь Фрау Клейст is strategically more or less retarded, but I do need to read some more Russian now.


I was speaking to a friend the other day, and he mentioned going completely off a language after having spent some time in the country speaking it. I wonder if that's what happened to me with Russian. Before going to Russia, I read all the time. I've hardly read anything since coming back. That's about to change now though! And I could perhaps just skim through a small Russian book and perhaps make it in a week, but now I'm reading because I want to increase my vocabulary. The translation class at university does not offer me any new vocabulary, and I want to push further ahead into the region of "wtf you know that word!?"-vocabulary.


And as for Russian, I was also at a mini Russian movie night the other day with three friends. We drank the Hungarian national alcohol Unicum (and I was not the one who brought it!!), ate Norwegian carrot cake and watched the brilliant and absolutely absurd movie Город Зеро.


If you see it somewhere, buy it.

I kind of feel like I'm filling up my quota of things Russian. I just have to increase my expertise in some other areas as well, notably in linguistics... Ьy linguistics vocabulary is sorely lacking, and I think it would be a wise investment on my behalf to perhaps dedicate this summer to linguistics self-study. Getting a Master's degree in Russian language isn't the most lucrative thing to do, and our student advisor (a very helpful Russian lady) always mentions how the alternative of our program (career wise) is really a better idea: Russian area studies. There are actually some jobs attached to that one, and you can't do a thing just knowing Russian - there are plenty of Russians in Norway who do that. Getting a Master's in Russian language is, in my opinion, rather pointless unless you do it brilliantly. My dream is to continue working at university, to get a Ph.D. and then just go from there. So I was very pleased when our student advisor told me this was what I was supposed to do based on my grades, without me mentioning my plans to her.

If you plan on going deep into language, you have to know your linguistics. And I'm quite curious to see how this may accelerate my language learning. I already see how being very familiar with some changes in Indo-European languages can be greatly helpful in acquiring vocabulary. The same words really are everywhere, they are just hard to spot unless you can track their development. Naturally, this particular bit doesn't help me at all with Hungarian :-) And I am actually back on track with that one, speaking it twice a week and everything with my new language partner from Hungary. If things go according to plan this weekend, I will even be opening up Üvöltő szelek. For the third time, in a third language.

But as usual I have lots of plans, lots of great ideas. I also have lots of work. Not only did I have to take an extra class outside of my full-time studies this term, but I also got a job as a translator. The job wasn't supposed to take all that long, but I think they greatly underestimated how much text there actually is. Yesterday, I got registered as an interpreter for an interpreting business in Oslo as well. So it does actually look like I'm finally getting a bit of experience to make up for my lacking formal translation/interpreting qualifications.

Well, I have an essay on linguistic agreement to write since we go to Kiel in Germany on Monday. But before I leave, I wanted to share two links for the truly nerdy.

http://www.ruscorpora.ru/ - The National Corpus of the Russian Language - perfect when you're searching for occurrences of words, grammatical features, exceptions, anything.

Vasmer's etymological dictionary of the Russian language - find out where all the words come from! Our Slavic language history teacher teacher told us this was a book (actually, four books) any serious student of Russian should have. But hey, it's online!

Oh, Oslo University...

I desperately want to go to Russia!

Which is why I'm a bit disappointed with my university, where I only get the possibility to go to Russia for three months. I will also have to study with Norwegians only in Russia (at a Norwegian center), with teachers that speak Norwegian but that apparently teach in Russian. How is it fair that the students studying English get to go to English-speaking countries for a year, whereas those who study Russian, which is so much more difficult, only get three months? And why don't we get any practice actually using the language?

Studying Russian in the incredibly grammatical and sterile manner they do here is not a problem for me, since I writes essays on my own accord, have a big vocabulary and can read books, and meet with a Russian speaking person once a week. But if I had had no previous knowledge of Russian, and I only started studying this way, I very much doubt if I would've found it very rewarding. We never write anything of our own, we have never handed in anything written whatsoever, and we only get to speak once a week - that is those who actually show up for those hours. Since they are not obligatory, a lot of people just drop them. Not that the lecturers are obligatory, people still go to them without actually being forced, but for some reason the speaking class seems to be of very little interest to a lot of students. They are the only hours that include some literature!

This really makes me wonder how much Russian stuff the other students do on their own. I really can't imagine that someone who only follows these classes and who doesn't try to improve on his or her own would be able to follow classes in Russian after only one year. Since people still seem to do it, does that mean that the classes that we get in Russia aren't difficult at all? :(

Today as I was browsing through the classes that are offered at Oslo University I got very much tempted by some French classes. However, everything at Oslo University must be difficult and complicated, and I can't choose any free subjects. And if I could, I don't think I would be able to choose those French classes, because they seem to be reserved for people enrolled in French bachelor programs or masters programs. And, certain classes seem to be held once every 4th year... FLEXIBILITY, Norway. It's a virtue.

I'll get to it eventually though. As soon as I am eligible for student funding in this country I'm going to use it to the max, even though staying at this particular university for a decade doesn't feel that very tempting. Meanwhile I want to find some sort of distance class that forces me to go to Stockholm every now and then, just for a change of scenery, but I can't do that either since I'm going to Russia this fall. Bah!

For this summer, I signed up for a distance class on female history and another one in English grammar and translation. (At Swedish universities - distance teaching isn't really a concept in Norway it seems.) I may go crazy and go through with both.

Il faut voir les choses autrement.

Comme d'habitude, je suis très occupée par mes études, mais ce n'est rien de nouveau ça, c'est toujours pareil. J'aime bien être occupée et ce n'est donc pas un problème, mais le manque de temps pour mes langues « mineures » m'angoisse. Je déteste la question « depuis combien de temps étudies-tu le hongrois (ou le russe, l'allemand) ? » Comment est-on censé répondre à ça quand on ne peut s'occuper de la langue en question que des temps en temps ? Les gens s'attendent quand même à des résultats quand tu dis "ben... genre depuis deux ans...".

Autour de Noël, je pensais que c'était une très bonne idée de commencer à étudier l'allemand aussi, ce qui n'aide pas avec le hongrois. C'est forcément le hongrois qui va en souffrir. Je prends le temps qui aurait autrement été dédié au hongrois, et je l'utilise pour le nouveau venu. Je ne vais pas piquer le temps du russe, parce que le russe c'est très sérieux maintenant, et si je ne fais pas gaffe, j'aurai une mauvaise note à l'université. Mais j'aime bien l'allemand, je veux bien l'apprendre jusqu'au bout. Niveau compréhension c'est très facile, et je pense que c'est une langue qui pourrait me servir pour mes études. Maintenant que j'étudie une langue à l'université, je n'ai vraiment pas envie d'étudier mes autres langues de la même manière. Je n'ai jamais été très fan de la méthode « apprends le livre de grammaire par coeur ! », et maintenant que je n'ai plus le choix parce que c'est comme ça que l'on est censé apprendre le russe à l'université, je veux vraiment apprendre l'allemand d'une autre manière. En lisant, en écrivant, bref de la manière que j'ai appris le russe par moi-même, et ce qui m'a toujours beaucoup plu . Dans quelques jours, ou peut-être même demain, j'aurai trois nouveaux livres allemands et j'ai l'intention de commencer à les lire le plus vite possible. D'habitude, les autres études (les études facultatives) semblent toujours plus intéressantes quand on est occupé à faire quelque chose d'autre (non-facultatif). Alors, je dois bien profiter de mon manque de temps maintenant!