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| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 9 of 133 26 June 2012 at 3:31am | IP Logged | ||
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2012-06-23-25 Samstag-Montag|Lørdag-Mandag
A bit of a lazy weekend. Can I blame the football? Not really, when I've already let on somewhere that I'm not a football fan. I did watch England lose out to Italy though, in the end via a penalty shoot-out. A horrible way to end a match, but really, it was Italy's game, and they deserved to win. Bad luck England; bad luck Roy. You didn't do too badly, and can hold your heads high. Deutsch I have now finished 10 chapters of "Buddenbrooks", using L-R (still no English text; still not a problem). I've been noting down quickly any particularly difficult vocabulary (which means I've missed a few), but not stopped to look them up. In fact I'll put off looking them up as long as possible, in the hope that meaning will be revealed in due course by context, if they are repeated, which is likely in a longish book like this. I will put them in a word-list though, without the meanings for the time being. I don't know anything about the person who is voicing the book; I should probably look him up at some time, in case there are any regional issues. I've realised that - compared with his - my pronunciation has probably relapsed into a far too "English-sounding" mode, and I need to be careful. I'm not exactly shadowing, but I am quite often forming the words with my lips, and imagining making the sounds. I feel I get something from that. For the time being, I think that actual shadowing would just drown out the voice of the reader, which would be missing the point a bit. Maybe later. One good thing about following an audiobook compared with reading just the book (and being tempted to stop to look up words), is that the pace is, if not necessarily faster, much more consistent. It's actually a much more pleasurable way of reading a book, at least a foreign language book, although it's not always possible to do it. Either an audiobook is not available, or it's too expensive, or for whatever reason, you don't have it. I also have a slight fear of getting too dependent on technology, which is why I have eschewed most of the modern devices that people are using, except for a basic PC or laptop, and even then, I don't want to get too dependent, as far as reading is concerned. Dansk I've now got the 2nd volume of Jussi Adler-Olsen's "Department Q" novels, in English translation. It's quite promising, so far. Although this is not, of course, Danish, I am getting to know the regular characters, which may help when I come to read it in Danish - but I must not put that off too long. I'll definitely do some actual Danish tomorrow - probably word-lists taken from TYS, and some more dialogues from the CD. And probably some podcasts from good old dr.dk. Edited by montmorency on 26 June 2012 at 3:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 10 of 133 26 June 2012 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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2012-06-23-26 Dienstag|Tirsdag
Deutsch Quite a lot of chapters from "Buddenbrooks" (L-R - German text only). I'm through about a third of the book now. Although I hate to reduce language to numerical scores (one reason I'm a bit wary of SRS etc), it's nice to see that I should finish a reasonably large size novel in a reasonable time, say the end of this week. When I didn't have the audiobook to "drive me along", it could take much longer than that, and I was always tempted to stop and look up each word that I didn't know or wasn't 100% sure about. There are still plenty of words I'm not 100% sure about. What I'm doing at the moment, is quickly writing down the most difficult looking, without stopping the audio, and at the end of the chapter, I will look back and pick out the more interesting of the remaining words. This still leaves quite a few that I either didn't know, or am not 100% sure about. Of those, if I seem to be seeing them in every chapter, I will write them down and probably look them up. At some point, I'll put all of them in my official word-list(s), but for now, it's just in rough. If these were popular novels, I'd be a bit more worried, but this is a "classical" author, and one who is regarded as not exactly one of the simplest, although this was his first, and perhaps not his most difficult. Even if I don't understand every word first time, one thing I am trying to be very careful about is listening extremely attentively, to the accent and intonation, and if possible, and secondarily, to any grammar implications, and if it's one I don't understand, I try to make a mental note to come back to it, that is if I don't actually write it down. For this reading, I'm doing my best just to enjoy the "music" of the words, washing over my ears, listening out for the "Aussprache", and appreciating the rhythm of the language, as much, if not more, than the meaning. Mit ein bisschen Glück, werde ich Zeit haben, um hier entlang wiederzukehren. Dansk Continuing with "Disgrace" ("Fasandræberne" in Danish), the 2nd of the "Department Q" novels. It is interesting that the swearing is not so intrusive. Could this be due to a different translator being used? I don't particularly mind swearing in films or TV, so long as it is not excessive, but somehow, seeing it on page after page, as it seemed to be in the 1st novel, gets tedious after a while. I suppose it is trying to indicate "gritty". Well, all right. I'll take "gritty" as read, mange tak. To be honest, I'd rather be reading at the level of Fontane, or Mann, or Böll, or Kästner, or Grass, but one has to start somewhere. Edited by montmorency on 27 June 2012 at 12:07am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5791 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 133 27 June 2012 at 6:41am | IP Logged | ||
Immer gerne: Danke fürs Zuschauen und Zuhören! Tusind tak! Kaerlig hilsen, Fasulye 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 12 of 133 29 June 2012 at 12:34am | IP Logged | ||
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2012-06-27-28 Mittwoch-Donnerstag|Onsdag-Torsdag
Yesterday I was out walking in the countryside most of the day, and got home tired, and spent the evening watching Spain v. Portugal and nursing my blisters and nettlerash. Deutsch Today read quite a few more chapters of "Buddenbrooks", although realised that the book was longer than I had mis-remembered, and am therefore still only a bit over one-third the way through. Still, I don't mind long books, and it is interesting enough to keep me reading. There is occasionally some Platt dialogue quoted. I think it is supposed to be mecklenburgishe Platt, rather than niedersäschishe Platt. It's quite easy to understand in context, and there isn't much. I re-encountered an old friend of a word "der VaterMörder", which I think is fun. It does have the literal meaning of "patricide", but also the (now obsolete) meaning of the old fashioned high-collar (der Stehkragen) that some people must have worn at this time. I continue to be intrigued by some of the pronunciation, e.g. the name "Kröger" of this reader, and his rolling "r"s, which seem more rolled than I am accustomed to. I will wait until the end of the book and then look up the reader, whom I suppose to be an actor. I briefly saw my conversation group teacher this evening, at a meeting of our Anglo German (whose proceedings are almost all in English - it's more cultural than linguistic), and managed to speak briefly with her in German. We will probably have some meetings of the group on July. No Danish. I've gone from neglecting German for Danish to the other way around. I must try to get the balance right. Edited by montmorency on 29 June 2012 at 12:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 13 of 133 03 July 2012 at 12:10am | IP Logged | ||
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2012-06-29-07-02 Freitag-Montag|Fredag-Mandag
Deutsch Getting so involved with "Buddenbrook" that I haven't wanted to do much else linguistically. It's taking a bit longer than I'd hoped, but I'm enjoying it, despite the growing air of foreboding (which is of course echoed in the subtitle ("Downfall of a family"). On a lighter note, there is a minor character by the name of Iwersen (und er spricht Platt!) :-) ). Have I mentioned the genitive apostrophe-s-es? On names ending in a vowel (including "y") e.g. Clara's, Tony's. I'd noticed the same in some editions of Fontane's books. I contacted an English author of German grammars to ask about this. He said that his editions of the same books happened not to have them, but he wasn't surprised by them, as the orthography wasn't standardised until relatively late (and Fontane in particular, might have been influenced by English). However, prescriptive modern German grammarians hate them, apparently :-) Dansk Being a bit lazy, so only the next episode of "Borgen". However, I was pleased to recognise and understand quite a lot of words. Edited by montmorency on 04 July 2012 at 3:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 14 of 133 04 July 2012 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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2012-07-03-04 Dienstag-Mittwoch|Tirsdag-Onsdag
Deutsch Phew! Finished "Buddenbrooks". I'm trying not to make a numbers game of this, but it was quite a long book/audiobook, but I enjoyed it, if one can use the word "enjoy" about such a downbeat theme (I don't think that's much of a spoiler). It has certainly whetted my appetite to read more of Thomas Mann, an author whom I had previously found somewhat unappealing and difficult. It was definitely seeing the film (probably the 1959 version) last year (without subtitles - I would have appreciated German subtitles at least) that made me want to read it, and I'm glad I did. I'll probably re-read it with the audio and English text at some point, but I think I need a bit of a change at the moment! Although it is said that the L-R method takes a long time, I suspect it would have taken me longer to read just the German text with no audio to "drive me along". I probably would have kept running out of steam, and of course, I've had the benefit of hearing correct pronunciation, instead of my own internalised approximation to it. I did a certain amount of "shadowing", but it's hard to keep it up for long, but I think even the little that I did helped. It's interesting for me to compare Mann with Fontane, of whom Mann was an admirer, I believe. I used to find Fontane quite difficult, but gradually got used to him, especially with the help of audiobooks. It seems that "Buddenbrooks" has thrown up more unknown (or not properly known) vocabulary than I remember Fontane producing, but I'll have to go back and check. Plenty of fuel for my wordlists, anyway! Just as we should be grateful for our corrected mistakes, I suppose we should be grateful to have the holes in our vocabulary pointed out, in this case in the privacy of our own "study room" :-) edit According to the notes that came with the audiobook, the character Hanno may have been partly based on Mann himself. I had thought it might be Kai (the fledgling writer) who was the Mann alter ego; perhaps it was a combination of the two. While sorting through my audiobook computer files, I found a German translation of a short story by Håkon Nesser (a Krimi), and listened to that for a bit of light relief. However, as I'm on a bit of a roll with Mann, I'm going to see how quickly I can L-R "Der Tod in Venedig" for which I have an audiobook. Edited by montmorency on 05 July 2012 at 11:43am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 15 of 133 07 July 2012 at 12:54am | IP Logged | ||
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2012-07-06 Freitag|Fredag
Deutsch Just a quick note to say that if anyone is interested in an English translation of "Der Tod in Venedig" ("Death in Venice"), I found the following: http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/20281/death-in-venice There are versions in PDF, EPUB, and Kindle (Mobi) format. Now, although I have not checked all that carefully, some of the English seems a little odd, and I'm wondering whether: - It was google-assisted or - The "translator" was not a native English speaker. However, if it is an accurate, literal translation, then it's not a problem for a language learner. I may edit this later... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4772 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 16 of 133 09 July 2012 at 4:53am | IP Logged | ||
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2012-07-07-08 Samstag|Sonnabend-Sonntag|Lørdag-Søndag
Deutsch Finished L-R-ing "Der Tod in Venedig". I didn't have the English text to hand initially, but managed to find our old paperback from way back when (it cost 20p), with a still on the cover of Dirk Bogarde from the famous Visconti film, which has the translation by H.T.Lowe-Porter, and I read that through completely, before going back to L-R-ing with just the German Text. I've started to prepare a parallel text based on the online translation I posted about previously, but I'm thinking of creating a computer-readable version of the Lowe-Porter vesion, and making a parallel text based on that as well, for comparison. It's a short enough book (79 pages in the English paperback) that it wouldn't take too long to re-read in both versions, and it should be good for the vocabulary. Having said it's a short book, it's not really an easy one. I'm not surprised I found the German text so difficult the first time I read it some years ago, not having read the translation (or not for years), and being less competent in German. It's not a particularly easy book to read in English, either. The text is dense and multi-layered. Nothing much seems to happen for most of the time. Aschenbach is agonising about his literary life, then gradually coming to terms with his futile and forbidden love, and finally succumbing to illness. I don't think the vocabulary is particularly any more difficult than Buddenbrooks, but the book (short story really) contains a lot of abstract ideas. I suppose it would repay some intensive reading. Another problem is that the chapters are few in number, but relatively long, and it's easy to lose track between audio, German text and English text, which was finally why I decided in this case that a parallel text was probably essential. I'll also mark the MP3 file names (numbers) to help keep track. I've also borrowed from the library an English translation of Buddenbrooks, ditto of Fontane's "Irrungen, Wirrungen" (rendered as "Entanglements" in this version). I have an audiobook of that, which I have partially listened to. And also "Erbarmen" by Jussi Adler-Olsen, which is the German version of "Mercy" which I already have in English. Edited by montmorency on 09 July 2012 at 5:03am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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