just doubling down on Duolingo, as I'm realizing I need a baseline syntax and vocab that I don't have yet.
This all sounds great and makes perfect sense. I'm happy that you're studying German!
Random insertion of paragraph breaks has concluded; tomorrow, I'll run the file through the translator and upload the results to the library.
Tomorrow I'm also going to finish the last few pages of volume 1 of Wilhelmine's memoirs: go me! I'm 10 pages from the end and going to try to do a few more before bed.
(I am, however, reading Le Petit Prince very slowly in French, but that's another story.)
Zomg. I'm going to have to work hard to catch up when the time comes!
Go you indeed! Since you're already familiar with the English translation of Wilhelmine's memoirs, I'm curious: does the tone strike you as different due to the language, or the same?
This is where I admit my German is still at the stage where a lot of this happens:
A word: *is German* Me: I know that's a compliment. Which compliment, I forget, but that's good enough. Moving on!
That kind of plowing ahead when it's "good enough" is why my German is progressing so quickly: I trust that my future self will know the things my present self doesn't, and so far that's working out as planned. But it does mean things like tone are a little harder to pick up on at this stage.
Also, the tone of the English translation is partly masked by the translator's choice to render it in English that is not only a hundred years old now, but was an artificially lofty, learned style even then: the English of a great many Classical translations that were trying to be as stilted as possible (some much worse than the Wilhelmine edition I'm using) and that the modern-day Classics student gets stuck with, because they're public domain and easily accessible.
"Contributed to render me acquainted with the usages of society" is not how anyone talks now, not even my dissertation advisor, who has the most Latinate English of anyone I've ever known, and if you read other stuff from a hundred years ago, you can tell the man on the street wasn't talking like that back then, either. You had to learn to write like that.
So unfortunately I have to make a conscious effort to see past it and perceive a tone other than "sounds really stilted to the modern ear."
I can tell you the sarcasm comes through in both translations! Yesterday I got to the Wusterhausen part, and it was full of complimentary words, immediately after a description of just how terrible it was. "Such was the delightful place we were staying at. This is what the glamorous front hall looked like." That sort of thing. :D
Zomg. I'm going to have to work hard to catch up when the time comes!
This totally made me laugh, because reading Le Petit Prince is actually a reaction to knowing I'm going to have to work to catch up with you when you start French :P I figure if I read one page a day, that in fifty days... I'll be approximating what you do in one day :PP
(My French is solid enough, and Prince has simple enough grammar and vocabulary, that even when I was in school I would have been able to read it -- I think it is pretty standard reading curriculum for high school French, and I would have read it in high school had I not moved schools at that point. It's a step down from e.g. Voigt, although I should possibly get a Voigt in French to compare.)
I figure if I read one page a day, that in fifty days... I'll be approximating what you do in one day :PP
Heee. Well, I do have a lot of *time* on my hands, and I'm more committed to making this happen now, it's true. :)
I just know there's a good chance I'll never be this motivated to study French or German again, and if I get my reading skills to a reasonable place now, then I can hopefully *maintain* them such that I can use them for other things. Like especially in Classics, there's a bunch of stuff I want to read in German, but not badly enough to study German for. But with reading group, and gossip, and so forth, now's the time!
I think it is pretty standard reading curriculum for high school French
So I gather, but as you know, I went to an unacademic high school, and after I took all the French that was offered, we still weren't reading anything. We were still just doing textbook exercises consisting of individual sentences, Duolingo-style.
We did The Little Prince in eleventh-grade *English*. Not that we weren't also doing more complicated English prose, but we certainly were not in a position to read that in French. To the extent that I can make heads or tails of French for Frederician purposes, it's because I'm generally good at languages and picked some things up here and there since then, not because my high school French got me up to being able to read entire paragraphs. (Because why send your intellectually talented, ambitious, and frustrated daughter to decent schools, when you could tell her the quality of her education doesn't matter and send her to some of the lowest-ranked ones in two of the lowest-ranked states for education in the US. Though at least no one beat me for studying Latin! Poor Fritz.)
But now I have a method! And I have plans! But before then, I have a long reading list for German. Plus hopefully Yuletide. So you should have more than 50 days to practice. :)
Actually, what with Yuletide, I might actually not start French until next year. We'll see. I did tell Royal Patron we're not starting Greek as soon as I'd originally projected, what with me getting serious about German, then RMSE happening, possibly Yuletide, and hopefully French, lol.
We did The Little Prince in eleventh-grade *English*. Not that we weren't also doing more complicated English prose, but we certainly were not in a position to read that in French.
*blinks* Well, I'm glad you appended that note about doing more complicated English prose, because... what?? But still.
We were still just doing textbook exercises consisting of individual sentences, Duolingo-style.
Yeah, that's not right. My first high school had surprisingly good French, which meant that the second year when we walked in the teacher started talking to us in French and expecting us to respond in same, which we were all very upset by :) (But it turns out that this kind of on-the-fly practice is a really great way to force language learning!) My second high school had great everything except my history teacher, who was terrible (although there is evidence she used to be less bad and was going through some personal problems that year), and the French teacher wasn't nearly as good as my old one. We didn't read books in my third-year class (which first!French teacher would have made us do) but we did read paragraphs!
Now, what your class reminds me of is my Spanish class (at first high school). I don't think I have mentioned before that I took a year of Spanish, which is because I learned and retain next to zero from that class. My parents really wanted me to take Spanish, as it's such a useful language to know in the US, and as an adult living in SoCal I don't disagree with their assessment -- it would certainly be a practical language to know. (Though French was definitely the right choice in terms of life happiness -- useful in a wide range of literary, historical, and musical contexts! :D )
We spent every class, every day, doing the exercises from the book (which are much more repetitive than Duolingo) -- you know, I have this vague memory that we didn't even do them ourselves; I think the teacher told us the answer and we wrote it down -- and then we would be tested on exactly those exercises. This meant that it was much easier to memorize the exercises that one would be tested on than it was to actually learn the language. So I'd dutifully memorize the exercises, and then promptly forget them, and so I know no Spanish. (Well, I mean, living in SoCal, and having done French and Italian, I know enough to pick out words and such, but I can't understand or read as much as I could after even a semester of, say, Italian.)
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Librarian update
Date: 2020-09-23 02:57 am (UTC)This all sounds great and makes perfect sense. I'm happy that you're studying German!
Random insertion of paragraph breaks has concluded; tomorrow, I'll run the file through the translator and upload the results to the library.
Tomorrow I'm also going to finish the last few pages of volume 1 of Wilhelmine's memoirs: go me! I'm 10 pages from the end and going to try to do a few more before bed.
(I am, however, reading Le Petit Prince very slowly in French, but that's another story.)
Zomg. I'm going to have to work hard to catch up when the time comes!
Re: Librarian update
Date: 2020-09-23 02:17 pm (UTC)Re: Librarian update
Date: 2020-09-24 01:05 am (UTC)A word: *is German*
Me: I know that's a compliment. Which compliment, I forget, but that's good enough. Moving on!
That kind of plowing ahead when it's "good enough" is why my German is progressing so quickly: I trust that my future self will know the things my present self doesn't, and so far that's working out as planned. But it does mean things like tone are a little harder to pick up on at this stage.
Also, the tone of the English translation is partly masked by the translator's choice to render it in English that is not only a hundred years old now, but was an artificially lofty, learned style even then: the English of a great many Classical translations that were trying to be as stilted as possible (some much worse than the Wilhelmine edition I'm using) and that the modern-day Classics student gets stuck with, because they're public domain and easily accessible.
"Contributed to render me acquainted with the usages of society" is not how anyone talks now, not even my dissertation advisor, who has the most Latinate English of anyone I've ever known, and if you read other stuff from a hundred years ago, you can tell the man on the street wasn't talking like that back then, either. You had to learn to write like that.
So unfortunately I have to make a conscious effort to see past it and perceive a tone other than "sounds really stilted to the modern ear."
I can tell you the sarcasm comes through in both translations! Yesterday I got to the Wusterhausen part, and it was full of complimentary words, immediately after a description of just how terrible it was. "Such was the delightful place we were staying at. This is what the glamorous front hall looked like." That sort of thing. :D
Re: Librarian update
Date: 2020-09-23 03:18 pm (UTC)Zomg. I'm going to have to work hard to catch up when the time comes!
This totally made me laugh, because reading Le Petit Prince is actually a reaction to knowing I'm going to have to work to catch up with you when you start French :P I figure if I read one page a day, that in fifty days... I'll be approximating what you do in one day :PP
(My French is solid enough, and Prince has simple enough grammar and vocabulary, that even when I was in school I would have been able to read it -- I think it is pretty standard reading curriculum for high school French, and I would have read it in high school had I not moved schools at that point. It's a step down from e.g. Voigt, although I should possibly get a Voigt in French to compare.)
Re: Librarian update
Date: 2020-09-24 01:42 am (UTC)Heee. Well, I do have a lot of *time* on my hands, and I'm more committed to making this happen now, it's true. :)
I just know there's a good chance I'll never be this motivated to study French or German again, and if I get my reading skills to a reasonable place now, then I can hopefully *maintain* them such that I can use them for other things. Like especially in Classics, there's a bunch of stuff I want to read in German, but not badly enough to study German for. But with reading group, and gossip, and so forth, now's the time!
I think it is pretty standard reading curriculum for high school French
So I gather, but as you know, I went to an unacademic high school, and after I took all the French that was offered, we still weren't reading anything. We were still just doing textbook exercises consisting of individual sentences, Duolingo-style.
We did The Little Prince in eleventh-grade *English*. Not that we weren't also doing more complicated English prose, but we certainly were not in a position to read that in French. To the extent that I can make heads or tails of French for Frederician purposes, it's because I'm generally good at languages and picked some things up here and there since then, not because my high school French got me up to being able to read entire paragraphs. (Because why send your intellectually talented, ambitious, and frustrated daughter to decent schools, when you could tell her the quality of her education doesn't matter and send her to some of the lowest-ranked ones in two of the lowest-ranked states for education in the US. Though at least no one beat me for studying Latin! Poor Fritz.)
But now I have a method! And I have plans! But before then, I have a long reading list for German. Plus hopefully Yuletide. So you should have more than 50 days to practice. :)
Actually, what with Yuletide, I might actually not start French until next year. We'll see. I did tell Royal Patron we're not starting Greek as soon as I'd originally projected, what with me getting serious about German, then RMSE happening, possibly Yuletide, and hopefully French, lol.
Language classes
Date: 2020-09-27 04:08 am (UTC)*blinks* Well, I'm glad you appended that note about doing more complicated English prose, because... what?? But still.
We were still just doing textbook exercises consisting of individual sentences, Duolingo-style.
Yeah, that's not right. My first high school had surprisingly good French, which meant that the second year when we walked in the teacher started talking to us in French and expecting us to respond in same, which we were all very upset by :) (But it turns out that this kind of on-the-fly practice is a really great way to force language learning!) My second high school had great everything except my history teacher, who was terrible (although there is evidence she used to be less bad and was going through some personal problems that year), and the French teacher wasn't nearly as good as my old one. We didn't read books in my third-year class (which first!French teacher would have made us do) but we did read paragraphs!
Now, what your class reminds me of is my Spanish class (at first high school). I don't think I have mentioned before that I took a year of Spanish, which is because I learned and retain next to zero from that class. My parents really wanted me to take Spanish, as it's such a useful language to know in the US, and as an adult living in SoCal I don't disagree with their assessment -- it would certainly be a practical language to know. (Though French was definitely the right choice in terms of life happiness -- useful in a wide range of literary, historical, and musical contexts! :D )
We spent every class, every day, doing the exercises from the book (which are much more repetitive than Duolingo) -- you know, I have this vague memory that we didn't even do them ourselves; I think the teacher told us the answer and we wrote it down -- and then we would be tested on exactly those exercises. This meant that it was much easier to memorize the exercises that one would be tested on than it was to actually learn the language. So I'd dutifully memorize the exercises, and then promptly forget them, and so I know no Spanish. (Well, I mean, living in SoCal, and having done French and Italian, I know enough to pick out words and such, but I can't understand or read as much as I could after even a semester of, say, Italian.)