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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5335 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes  Speaks: Spanish* | Message 33 of 68 11 January 2015 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There is a great amount of important literature written in Czech. Furthermore, as in the case of other east European languages, much of it has not been translated or widely circulated, making them a treasure trove for someone keenly interested in literature.
These last weeks I received and have been enjoying greatly a couple of recordings by the great Czech conductor Václav Talich of works by Smetana and Dvořák. Bohemia has made important contributions to the culture and history of Europe. In fact, stepping beyond the big five European languages into those that have traditionally received only marginal attention is a very good deal in terms of the culture that will become newly accessible. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4697 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 34 of 68 12 January 2015 at 12:19am | IP Logged | |||||
If you can't find what you want, you're looking in the wrong place. Most of these Eastern European countries have loads of culture and literature, but they have to be sought out. I don't watch much TV at all so it's not a criterion, good fiction and non-fiction is a better one for me. Music is also a better one and the eating/drinking culture and the people are also good ones. But if you take Romanian for example, they actually have loads of good movies, they just don't get shown very often. Try widening your scope a bit, check out some arthouse movies. One of my favourite movies of all time is actually a Romanian drama movie about abortion under the Ceausescu regime :) Edited by tarvos on 12 January 2015 at 12:20am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4999 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 35 of 68 12 January 2015 at 1:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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It is not Eastern Europe, it is Central Europe, that is a huge difference. It is half
the way between the typical Slavic culture and the Germanic one. That is actually why studying a slavic language or two is a good idea for people interested in new things. Despite the stereotype of one uniform (and bad) eastern european culture ranging from the borders with Germany to the ones with China, you get access to a variety of cultures. Polish literature is different from Croatian, Polish movies from the Czech and Russian ones etc. And as Tarvos says, most of those things don't get translated. There is as much of fiction and non fiction as one can hope for in a country of ten million people. Sure, it cannot compete with the large countries, but it is no cultureless hole with just a Harry Potter translation and dubbed american series either. I've found out looking for, for exemple, music in other languages is a difficult task at the beginning even when it comes for the mainstream languages. Radios and such sources show only a very narrow image of anything except the anglophone scene and the things that are "in" in the country where the radio is played. So, your best bet, no matter which living language you choose, is to get online access to a local radio or a tv station. You always need to dig deeper when you want things that apply to your particular tastes. ;-) To the new points of Ari's: the ebooks could be trouble for all the languages you are considering, except for German and the dead languages. THe regions are quite likely to complicate the Japanese sources as well. Perhaps you might have better luck trying Czech eshops, such as Kosmas, there are ebooks too. And audiobooks are getting quite popular. Sorry, I didn't know the term was proposed in 1993, that is a good fact. But it never catched on, perhaps as well due to the resemblance with Chechnya, which has already caused us some troubles. Really, there is no need to make the world even more confused about this tiny unimportant country than it already is :-D High income equality has one problem. Most people have just as horrible wages as their neighbours. That is one of the reasons why more and more intelligent young people don't see the future here. And the equality is fading out, which is both good and bad. I understand your dislike for Latin right now as another romance language. However, Ancient Egyptian has the cooles script on earth and no ressemblance to anything, perhaps with slight exception for Arabic, if I am not mistaken. hrhenry: the quality of dubbing varies. In general, older dubbings are of very good quality as in those times, the makers took time to make it really good (and the general public wanted dubbings due to lack of knowledge of English and other languages. nowadays, younger people prefer subtitles). Nowadays, it is being done really fast in order to spend the least money on it as possible, so there are both good and bad ones, even though nothing as horrible as the dubbing of one voice speaking over all the original speakers, nothing like that. In general, and given the fact I am watching much less Czech tv than I used to so I have some gaps in the knowledge, I can recommend dubbings of CSI Miami, NCIS, older shows like Hercule Poirot (that is a really good one, in my opinion) or Stargate and surely others I cannot remember right now. Avoid The Big Band Theory, Doctor Who and other shows that are being hurt by any dubbing. A totally excellent dubbing which is equal to the original is the Red Dwarf (Červený Trpaslík). I have never seen a Czech dubbing with the trouble of two voices being heard overlapping, as you mention the Polish example. My main concerns about decreasing quality of the Czech dubbing (now leaving out it's existence and wide spread) are fairly minor compared to the usual ones like your Polish exemple: 1.lower quality of translations, it is evident they were made as fast as possible. the jokes and such things are the first to suffer under such conditions 2.lower quality of the "acting" of the voice actors, they are repeatedly complaining they do not have enough time to do 100% work these days, but many are still very good despite that 3.The same few voice actors are everywhere. There is a man called Mahdal or something like that and his voice is very unpleasant not only to me, from what I've spoken about the topic occassionaly with others. Yet, my mother and I are convinced he even pays for older movies with much better dubbing to be redubbed and spoiled just so that he can "play" all the famous heroes. :-D Really, in past, you could hear quite everyone you knew from the czech movies in dubbing as well. These days, it is much poorer selection. But it is no exception, I am having the same problem with recurring voices with Spanish dubbings and I've been watching only three or four series so far. Edited by Cavesa on 12 January 2015 at 2:08am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4999 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 36 of 68 12 January 2015 at 2:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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One more thought about the ebooks trouble. The natural reaction to such things not being
accessible is piracy. It is the only way the public can show there is a demand for change and to get to the source as well. You can find them quite easily and at least sort out things you want to buy in paper when visiting the country. I believe that you, as a Swede, will find Czech books to be very cheap, even though they are a bit more expensive than the French, English, Spanish or German ones in general. And another thought. As you are scandinavian, do you like metal music? If so, than German or Latin are the obvious choices. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6572 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 37 of 68 12 January 2015 at 8:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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Haha, no, not a metal fan. Thank you so much for illuminating me on Czech culture, Cavesa. I'm getting more and more interested in taking it up. Regarding the ebooks, it really is a problem specific to Czech, out of the languages I'm currently thinking about. Arabic and Thai are also missing from Amazon, but there are plenty of ebooks in Russian, Japanese and German, not to mention Latin or Ancient Greek. I have been known to resort to piracy when I can't find what I want, but it's a lot less convenient and a lot harder to find something one wants to read. On Amazon, I can just leisurely browse through thousands of titles, buy them and then read them with a popup dictionary on my Kindle. But yeah, if there's a Czech ebook store that lets me dowload the books as epub files, I guess it's not that much of a hassle to just export them to the Kindle (I hope).
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 38 of 68 12 January 2015 at 8:32am | IP Logged | |||||
I adore your post otherwise, but this wording was cruel. Not to mention that the crisis is allowing fewer Russians to visit Sweden, to spend their free time correcting lang-8 posts etc; people in creative jobs can't afford to implement their risky ideas and stick with safe commercial crap if that's what they need to feed their family. And the propaganda on both sides doesn't help. But of course Ari will meet his 20 Russians anyway because there are so many of us. And of course now is a good time to learn Russian anyway. To bridge the newly forming gap, not to widen it. To remain humble and open-minded when financially you feel like a royal. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 39 of 68 12 January 2015 at 8:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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And although I tend to disagree with Cavesa about the importance of the Central vs Eastern Europe thing, I admit that Czech feels very Western, maybe especially due to the presence of the distinction between long and short vowels.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4999 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 40 of 68 12 January 2015 at 8:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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It is very convenient when you know where to look ;-) or when someone tells you where to
start looking. Unfortunately, the legal sources are much less convenient, especially as they might have issues selling ebooks abroad. Russian is a good option though. Slavic grammar, a new script, tons of things available both through 100% legal ways and even more through piracy. The recent crisis is not going to take that long hopefully. If you didn't care much for the amount of content in the language though, you might want to consider celtic languages. Irish or Welsh (or others of the family) might be "weird" enough to satisfy your thirst for complicated and cool languages. Or Finnish might be a very convenient language for a swede and the material would surely be no trouble. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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