french

Oink! Cluck! Baa!

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It took reading many articles and watching quite a few YouTube videos made by polyglots and language teachers before I started to accept the idea that it’s OK not to understand every word as you’re reading a book in another language. Two-three years ago I read Ollie Richards’s Short Stories in Swedish for Beginners, which encouraged this style of reading, but I never really internalized it.

But finally, I (metaphorically) shut my eyes and took the plunge with Ronja rövardotter by Astrid Lindgren. The compromise I made with myself is that I underlined the words I didn’t know. Y’know, so on the off chance I come back to the book someday, I can look those words up. Because I let go of needing to know everything, to read/understand the book “as the author intended,” I was able to read to the end in a weekend.

(Of course, now that I’m reading a play–Macbeth–in Swedish, I’ve reverted to looking up unfamiliar terms. But I don’t think that’s much different than having words or phrases defined every few lines in the original version because they’re incomprehensible to modern English speakers. Overall, I’d say reading/understanding Macbeth in Swedish is similarly challenging to reading it in the original.)

One of the reasons I pushed myself to finish Ronja is that there’s a recent Swedish Netflix adaptation of the book . . . though the more I watch the series, the more I find that they’ve added characters and subplots that didn’t appear in the book to pad it out to two parts and 12 episodes.

So I’ve been trying to focus on fun details instead of my frustration with their storytelling choices. For example, the onomatopoeia in the subtitles describing the sounds of the forest and city:

  • [fågelkvitter] – bird chirping
  • [en tupp gal] – a rooster crows
  • [en uggla hoar] – an owl hoots
  • [vingfladder] – wings flutter
  • [en hackspett hackar] – a woodpecker pecks
  • [en fluga surrar] – a fly buzzes
  • [möss piper] – mice squeak
  • [syrsor spelar] – crickets playing
  • [en hund skäller] – a dog barks
  • [ett får bräker] – a sheep bleats
  • [dörren gnisslar] – the door squeaks
  • [elden sprakar] – the fire crackles
  • [spridda djurläten] – scattered animal sounds
  • [en häst gnäggar] – a horse neighs
  • [grisar grymtar] – pigs grunt

Yes, I am a word nerd. And yes, I am still enjoying the series, even though what I really wanted was some comfort viewing with no surprises. Sigh.

Though familiar isn’t always good. I’m a bit disappointed with Ollie Richards’s Short Stories series, as it appears that the books for beginners have the same stories with the same pictures, just in different languages and with culture-specific details changed. For example, the first story in the Swedish book is “Den galna köttbullen”–The crazy [Swedish] meatball. In French, it’s “La Ratatouille folle”–The crazy ratatouille, and in German, “Die verrückte Currywurst”–The crazy curry sausage. (These are the names of restaurants.) I read the Swedish book several years ago, and I recently bought the French version in hopes of having something to read when I’m ready for it. I guess it’ll be helpful to have a general grasp of the stories before I start?

In addition to all the conjugation, I believe there are 16 tenses (combinations of mood and tense) in French. I’ve just completed level A1 and have only been splashing around in the present so far. Time to go a little deeper! I’ve heard that it’s difficult to read before reaching the intermediate level (B1 or above) because many books use a tense not generally used in everyday communication. German may be similar, though it uses fewer tenses. I’d always wondered why we learned “I have run” before “I ran” in German, and it seems that’s because the former is more commonly used in speech and the latter is more commonly used in writing.

Anyway, these are the things I’ve been thinking about as I’m learning languages, of late. Currently moving on to A2 in French and attempting to polish my Swedish grammar with the Rivstart B1/B2 book, though I’ll be starting a new reading class on Monday with En helt vanlig familj. (I hope to finish Macbeth before then, but we’ll see.)

Allons-y! / Nu kör vi!

Words, Words, Words

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Oof, it’s been a while since I posted. Of late I’ve felt that what I post needs to be worthy in some way I’m not sure exists, and that’s prevented me from hitting “publish.” I also wasn’t happy with my last book review post. (And I’ve read 30 more books since then. Do I have it in me to review all of them?)

In any case, I’ve decided that I’m going to post about things I find interesting or projects I’m working on without worrying about whether it fits into an overall theme or contributes to a personal brand. Keep reading if you like. Or don’t. It’s up to you.

Last week I finished the Swedish “tree” on Duolingo. I’d hit a point of just not caring during the last few units, so I had to push myself to finish them. I didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment as I approached the end, just a grim determination to get it over with already. And was there a celebration or (even an acknowledgement) on the app when I finished? Nope, just a new screen for a daily review. So “finishing” wasn’t quite worth it as a goal. In general, I’d recommend Duolingo for vocabulary building–I’ve occasionally noticed words from the lesson I’d just finished in an episode of Livet på lätt svenska. But keep in mind that memorizing words is not the same thing as learning a language. There’s that pesky grammar part of it as well, which Duolingo mostly avoids tackling.

However, a few months ago when I was obsessively hitting the French lessons in Duolingo, I discovered that I was able to understand the French conversations in Agatha Christie: An Autobiography. That fact made me consider returning to Duolingo French now that I’m done with Swedish. I reset my progress, so I’m back to the beginning. I’ve also bought a few French textbooks, but I’m a little nervous about diving in on my own, without a class/teacher.

Speaking of which . . . because of scheduling conflicts, I recently had to decide between my weekly Swedish class at ASI and my community band rehearsals. I chose to stick with the band–after all, we just went on an international tour of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in late July. Though I have to say goodbye to my Swedish cohort, I’ll still be learning Swedish via a translation class starting in September. We’ll be reading Bröderna Lejonhjärta (The Lionheart Brothers) by Astrid Lindgren, who also wrote Pippi Longstocking. And I’m looking at language learning opportunities for next summer, though that’s still a long way off.

Here’s hoping that I’m able to keep the languages separate and that they don’t start interfering with each other. Lycka till!