There was a sale on the sale and I am still a woman.

The front batch of tulips are mutant-tulips. Unfortunately, this is difficult to see on this particular photo.

And every time I get new books I have to post pictures of them. Perhaps my relationship to books is not really healthy, but since we just moved, and I don't see us moving until perhaps in... two-three years from now, I somehow think I can buy new books. Excuses, excuses... But they were cheap, okay? And I actually put two away, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and another book I can't remember the title of.

The French book I bought indirectly. A friend of mine went to Belgium, and a friend who goes to a French speaking country without buying books for me is not a real friend. Reading the blurb (it hurts my soul to use that word...) made me think of Jean Giono, which made me realize I want to read more of his books (I may have some, perhaps, possibly). I think I need to go to France soon, anyway.

I have posted earlier about Jens Bjørneboe (#1, #2), the magic Jens Bjørneboe. Three of his books on sale? Irresistible. One of them is an erotic tale that he got prosecuted for. Mmm, free-spirited Norway.

I have previously read Dreams Of My Russian Summers by Andrei Makiné, and I enjoyed it. Seeing another one of his books practically for free made it an easy decision...

I leave you with this, which I found thanks to one of the members of the LanguageLearners Forum.

A round of applause for Mobipocket!

Everyone is reading nowadays. Vera and my Hungarian tandem partner are reading and listening to Harry Potter in Swedish and Norwegian, and Doviende is reading Polish without much prior knowledge of the language. Just a couple of days ago, my Hungarian tandem partner sent me the link to Alice in Wonderland, both the text and audio (I wrote about it on lang-8 today). I immediately thought that it would be too difficult, and I had already started another book in Hungarian. I changed my mind today though, and gave it a try. Just a bit. My last try was with Jane Eyre, but then I had a parallel text in Hungarian and English. Now I just have the Hungarian.

First of all, I downloaded the .lit e-book, and converted it to mobi-format (so that it will be readable on my Kindle) and started reading it in the Calibre e-book reader on my computer while listening to the audio (Kindle, after all, isn't all that flexible...). I soon realized that I wanted to take notes though. Some words kept appearing, and I thought it would be great to be able to add a note to those. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any way of doing this in Calibre. Mobipocket Reader came to my rescue though! If anyone wonders why I don't simply read a Word document, I just have to say that e-book format is 1000 times more pleasant to read even on the computer. Changing the background color from white to beige, for one, helps a lot, and you get the text divided into appropriately wide columns so that you don't lose focus and don't have to move your eyes all that much. Flipping pages is ever so easy (space key), which is excellent when you are concentrating like mad to keep up with the audio while trying to make clever reflections on what you read. In Mobipocket, you can very simply highlight words, copy them, and add notes to them that are saved in a column to your right (perfect if you want to add them to ANKI later).

(Click to enlarge.)

I've read the first chapter, which was 15 minutes of audio, and I can't say I understood all that many words. I know what happens in the first chapter since I have seen the movie, so I was able to tag along, so to say. I find that what may be even more important than actually understanding all the words is to get a grasp on word order. Word order is, like in all languages that claim to have "free word order", annoyingly difficult in Hungarian, more so than in Russian. Also, I think that you pick up correct usage of small particle words, multiple negations, possessive constructions (these things aren't as easy in Hungarian as in all the Indo-European languages I've studied) from just pure exposure.

Oh, and Alice in Wonderland turn out to be much easier than I thought, since I was set on not understanding anything.

Правильно?

(Этот текст вообще не написан на правильном, русском языке, и я сама это отлично знаю, но я надеюсь, что он понятен всем русскоязычным людям.)

Как вы думаете, чем больше языков человек знает, тем больше он станет терпимым к ошибкам других? Вот такая у меня есть идея. Люди, знающие лишь один или два языка, или вообще не мыслят о языках, о правилных формах слов, о грамматике, и так далее, или этим очень сильно интересуются. То есть, интересуются ошибками других. Или язык совсем не очень важен (это на самом деле просто инструмент коммуникации), или он почему-то станет дело чести (так или так говорить на красивом, родном языке нельзя, это стыд!). Везде есть такие люди, в каждом веке они откуда-то возникают, и постоянно их раздражает то, что н о в о е.

Как мне кажется, всё это логично. Когда ты просто одно дело знаешь, именно это дело для тебя станет очень важным. И вот здесь речь идёт о языках. Когда ты выучишь больше языков, ты обнаруживаешь, что везде по-разному устроены слова, предложения, грамматика. Возможно ли вспомнить, как поставить запятые правильно на десятых языках? Когда человек после немецкого, итальянского, арабского, румынского, и так далее, выучит свой Х-ый язык, это, может быть, больше не так уж важно? Я по какой-то причине надеюсь, что это так. Где-то, на самом деле, мысль важнее всего, не правда ли? И, может быть, красота языка. Но красота - это не всегда то же самое, как правильность. Если перед тобой есть слово, которое любой человек понял бы, как оно может быть неправильным, просто потому, что ещё никто его не поставил в национальном словаре?

Я хочу видеть больше свободы в языках. Когда мне было 15 лет, для меня грамматическая правильность была очень, очень важной. Конечно, она всё ещё важная, чтобы сохранить мысль и чёткость языка, но язык также должен быть чем-то личным. Меня по-прежнему раздражают те люди, которые не умеют писать даже три слова правильно на родном языке (потому что там есть какое-то неуважение к тому, кто будет читать). Но есть большая разница между тем, кто ничего не знает и кому на всё наплевать, и тем, кто знает, но не хочет писать как и все другие. Каждый человек использует свой язык по-разному, и по-моему, это так должно быть.

По этому поводу, вот интересное видео Стивена Фрайа. Он лучше меня объясняет, в чём дело.

Le français au féminin.

Pour une raison quelconque j'ai toujours voulu que le mot « silence » soit du genre féminin. Il y a quelque chose dans la sonorité du mot qui fait que je pense automatiquement « la silence ». Ensuite, je suis toujours un peu énervée quand je me rends compte que ce n'est pas grammaticalement correct. C'est la même chose pour « problème », mais là, la connotation est moins positive...

L'autre jour, quand j'ai écrit ici à propos de mon premier dictionnaire électronique, j'ai énuméré quelques auteurs français. Ensuite, j'ai commencé à réfléchir un peu plus aux auteurs français que je lis. Je me suis rendue compte, que parmi les auteurs modernes (ou disons plutôt contemporains) il y a une forte majorité féminine. J'aime beaucoup Zola, Maupassant, Balzac, Giono, etc., mais quand je lis des livres plus ou moins contemporains, et quand je veux donner des recommandations de livres français, il y a un tas d'écrivaines qui surgissent. Et elles ont toutes quelque chose en commun, notamment ce que l'on pourrait appeler « la sensibilité féminine », même si, en principe, je déteste de telles choses. D'habitude, c'est quelque chose que l'on méprise parce que « sensibilité » est fortement liée à « faiblesse », et c'est ça que, je pense, fait que la littérature féminine n'est pas beaucoup estimée (hors des cercles de femmes).

Je ne sais pas pourquoi c'est comme ça, si c'est uniquement une coïncidence que j'ai trouvé de tels livres en français et non pas en anglais, en suédois ou en norvégien (pour le russe, je ne trouve jamais quelque chose que j'adore vraiment et ça me déçoit énormément).

De quels auteurs parle-je donc ?

Annie Ernaux, Françoise Sagan, Anna Gavalda, Amélie Nothomb, Anaïs Nin, Virginie Despentes. Parmi ces écrivaines, je regrouperai Annie Ernaux, Françoise Sagan et Anaïs Nin dans un groupe, et Anna Gavalda, Amélie Nothomb Virginie Despentes dans un autre. On pourrait peut-être se demander ce que fait Virginie Despentes là-dedans, vu que elle est certainement d'un autre genre que les autres ; plus sexuelle, plus vulgaire, moins « haute littérature » (comme haute couture :-)). Despentes est là parce que elle sait écrire d'une manière stupéfiante, d'une manière à rendre aimables des personnages que l'on aurait peut-être autrement détestés, et elle écrit souvent des choses qui parlent de femmes troublées. Tout à fait comme Annie Ernaux et Françoise Sagan, d'ailleurs. Despentes est un peu plus concrète ; ses personnages ont des problèmes réels, tandis que les problèmes des autres sont souvent d'un genre beaucoup plus insaisissable (lassitude, indifférence, désir trop fort, parmi d'autres).

Virginie Despentes
(Dont j'ai lu Bye Bye Blondie et Les Chiennes Savantes.)

Annie Ernaux
(Dont j'ai lu Le Journal Du Dehors, Passion Simple et Les Années)

Françoise Sagan
(Dont j'ai lu Un certain sourire, Aimez-vous Brahms ?, Le Garde du coeur, Le Lit défait, Un sang d'aquarelle, Château en Suède, Les violons parfois, La robe mauve de Valentine)

Anna Gavalda
(Dont j'ai lu Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part et Ensemble, c'est tout)

Anaïs Nin
(Dont j'ai lu trois journaux et des nouvelles érotiques. Maintenant je suis en train de lire Les Enfants De L'Albatros.)

Amélie Nothomb (Dont j'ai lu Stupeur Et Tremblement et Attentat.)

Cela fait que pour moi, le français c'est une langue très féminine. Et c'est sans doute une des meilleures pour la littérature, même si je ne saurais pas dire exactement pourquoi.

Je me demande quand même où sont les hommes. J'ai lu Michel Houellebecq, mais là... je ne sais pas trop quoi dire, j'ai plutôt eu l'impression qu'il écrit pour choquer. J'ai aussi lu Emmanuel Carrère, qui m'a plu uniquement parce que je pouvais le comprendre. Romain Gary, bien sûr, est excellent. Mais où sont les autres ? Il me faudra peut-être un magazine de littérature française pour me tenir à jour avec la situation littéraire en France. Sinon, pour ceux qui comprennent le Suédois, il y a le blog Camillas Läsdagbok, d'une professeur d'anglais et de français qui lit quelque chose du genre 100 livres par mois - français, italien, suédois et anglais. Mon seul problème, c'est que j'oublie souvent de lire les blogs que je suis, mais je pourrais peut-être faire un effort.

Sinon, est-ce qu'il y a des recommandations ?

And there was much rejoicing...

It happened. I got a Hungarian text that I can actually read, look up some words per sentence and understand without too much trouble. All thanks to my Tandem partner! It's even a funny text. An extract for the Hungarians (from Bezzeg az én időmben by Fehér Klára):

Hálóingben nem lehet iskolába menni.

Nem. Akárhogy nézem, nem lehet.

Esetleg levágnék az aljából egy fél métert, akkor nem lógna ki a szoknyából. Múltkor, amikor nem volt időm rendesen megfésülködni, a hajamból is lekanyarítottam a kimaradt fürtöt. Igaz, hogy másnap a fésülködésnél éppen ez a hajcsomó hiányzott... Nehéz az élet. Még egyszer körül kell néznem a lakásban.

A konyhában, a ruhaszárító kötélen két árva zsebkendő lóg. Igaz, tiszta zsebkendőm sincs. De ezek még vizesek. A fürdőszobában, no persze, a fürdőszobában, a kádban, mosóporba áztatva ott vannak a kombinék és - engedelmet kérek - a bugyik, amiket este könnyelműen én magam hajigáltam bele.

And speaking of languages, I'm toying with the idea of writing in Russian here. Not sure if it's a good idea, if I should keep it English (with the extremely occasional French) or turn it more multilingual. Time will tell. I'll go French first, anyway.

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.

There was a sale and I'm a woman.

Well actually, I did not buy all of these books at this year's book sale. Usually I buy more, but that's just because the Swedish book sales are actually cheap...

Speaking of Sweden, I visited a bookstore with my boyfriend the other day, and we went by the Swedish corner. There's always lots of Swedish crime novels in Norwegian bookstores, but this particular one also has a table with a sign saying "Swedish paperbacks are extremely cheap". And with paperbacks that cost 75NOK instead of the usual 100NOK, I guess that's true. For me, that's still a lot of money for a paperback. My boyfriend snatched up a book, went and paid for it and told me it was about me. It's the book in the picture that says "Duktighetsfällan", with a mirror on it. "Duktig" is one of those Swedish words that I always have some trouble translating; it's both "good" (as in "Good boy!"), "skillful", "dutiful"... lots of things! "Fälla" is much easier: trap. "The trap of being too good." The book deals with the problem of burning yourself out doing too many things, a problem that mostly affects women in today's Sweden and that leads to some only being able to work for seven or eight years before becoming permanently ill. It's about perfectionism and high demands. Even though I don't think all of it really applies to me, I do recognize many things, like for example how all the women in the book (patients) get annoyed by how little their boyfriends do, at how they can just exist. There are actually two sorts of "duktighetsfällor", the female kind and the male kind. The female kind is more about pleasing everyone, never saying no and neglecting yourself until it makes you break down. (Boring.) The male variant, however, is about measuring worth in achievement (you are what you achieve), and never being satisfied with the results - a sort of perfectionism that women are taking over. Quite appropriately, everyone I know who fits this description are women. But I've only read half the book so far, so I'm no expert yet.

During our three hours in Kiel on Tuesday, I naturally had to visit a bookstore. Again, my boyfriend just went and picked up a book that he liked the look of, Mängelexemplar by Sarah Kuttner, and suggested I get it. And I did, because I found the synopsis appropriate.

"Karo lebt schnell und flexibel. Sie ist das Musterexemplar unserer Zeit: intelligent, selbstironisch und liebenswert. Als sie ihren Job verliert, ein paar falsche Freunde aussortiert und mutig ihre feige Beziehung beendet, verliert sie auf einmal den Boden under den Füssen. Plötzlich ist die Angst da."

I love things that have something to do with anxiety!

Let's move on to my book sale shopping! I never buy hardcover books, simply because they are ridiculously expensive and there's always a paperback that's cheaper. But when there's a sale... Funnily enough, the last time I bought hardcover books was when my boyfriend entered a book club and got three books for free. I got (yes it was more like me joining the club) Per Petterson's Jeg forbanner tidens elv (I curse the river of time), Magda Szabó's The Door, and another book. What did I get this time? Per Petterson's Ut og stjæle hester (Out Stealing Horses) and Magda Szabó's The Deer! What a coincidence. I can't wait to read some more Szabó. I got a third book as well, perhaps the most spoken about Norwegian book in many years, after Ut og stjæle hester I guess. Min kamp by Knausgård. There are six or so books in this series, and everyone reads them. There's been lots of scandal around them, because they are based on the author's real life - and he hasn't gone too very much trouble to dissimulate the other characters in the book. It will be fun to finally read it.