Elenia Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom lilyonlife.blog Joined 3849 days ago 239 posts - 327 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Swedish, Esperanto
| Message 17 of 22 01 June 2015 at 12:26am | IP Logged |
Every time I see an Icelandic log I have to check it out. I invariably end up tempted by
the language, and your log is no different! I wouldn't worry about feeling mediocre: as
you say, you're still here and you're still pushing on, so well done to you!
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Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4543 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic
| Message 18 of 22 01 June 2015 at 12:34am | IP Logged |
Thank you for the encouragement - much appreciated!
It's a wonderful language. I love the look and sound of it, which is enough to keep me going on. Originally I
started learning the language because I loved the country, but now I find myself going back to the country to
keep learning the language. Funny the way these things happen. :)
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basica Senior Member Australia Joined 3529 days ago 157 posts - 269 votes Studies: Serbian
| Message 19 of 22 01 June 2015 at 1:33am | IP Logged |
Glad to see you still plugging away :) I am also learning a language that is sorta
lacking resources (Serbian) and like you my reading/writing skills far exceed my
speaking/listening ones. In one conversation I had with somebody after sending them
something I wrote they expressed amazement at the fact that I didn't use Google Translate
or a dictionary or whatever to check for grammar and so forth :P
Anyways, I wish you continued success with your language learning!
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tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4700 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 20 of 22 01 June 2015 at 2:46am | IP Logged |
Good luck with Icelandic. I still haven't got round to learning it properly. I will have
to find the time to sit down with it one day to do it, but too many other projects right
now...
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Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5159 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian
| Message 21 of 22 03 June 2015 at 11:39pm | IP Logged |
The Little Prince is a false beginner's book. I read it in Georgian as my first book and it was far beyond my level. Even with the original in French I couldn't make much out of it because I wouldn't know enough vocabulary to learn enough from the sentences. It is like when you read a sentence with 7 words and you only know 1 or 2, it is hard to keep learning 5 words per sentence all the way through a book.
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Soffía Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4543 days ago 22 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic
| Message 22 of 22 22 August 2015 at 1:10pm | IP Logged |
Belatedly, thanks to everyone for the good wishes. Expugnator, I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds The
Little Prince difficult! It has an unusual vocabulary and a rather odd plotline as well (one that I enjoy very much
in English!), so it's not terribly predictable as a read.
Anyway, I'm back from Iceland with fresh motivation and enthusiasm. Somehow my listening comprehension
improved significantly over the past year despite the fact that I didn't do much listening. I don't know; I'm not
complaining.
I'm also back with fourteen new books and two audiobooks. To be fair, eight of the books are translated Mills
& Boon romances, but these are actually really good beginning readers - they're short, the plots are
predictable, the language is simple, they're full of incident... but they're light and cheap. I got them as library
discards at the grand price of 50 kronur each. I don't know why more people don't use romances as beginning
readers! It will have taken me just under a week to finish the first one.
The other buy I'm really excited about is "Englar Alheimsins," which I've already read in English. The language
is fairly simple and the chapters are short, but even I can tell that the style is much better than the romances! I
also have the audiobook, read by the author, and he reads very slowly and deliberately. Really looking forward
to this and I expect I'll get a lot out of it. (Having just glanced at the first chapter of the book, I listened to that
section of the audiobook hours later and found I could just about follow it - hurrah.)
In the course of my Icelandic studies to date I've read about 500 pages. (Not counting newspapers etc.) Now
that I have my stack of books I think I'll aim to hit 2500 pages by the end of the year, which seems eminently
achievable. I'm a voracious reader in English so why not play to my strengths? I feel like I've finally got a
foothold on Icelandic literacy and I'm eager to see where I can get with a bit of practice. Extensive reading,
here we come...
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