Peter’s Comments (group member since Nov 13, 2021)

Peter’s comments from the Language Learners and Polyglots group.

@Jane. As you are able to read in German and have an interest in historical novels about Rome I would like to recommend to you the novel Kampf um Rom. I read it last year and enjoyed it a lot. It is about the little known period when the Ostrogoths ruled the Apenin Peninsula and competed with the remaining Romans and the Emperor of Byzantium. Just click the link to see my review.

Lea wrote: "I really like the sound of Danish. I like that it sounds "weird", and I think Swedish sounds a little plain in comparison. ..."

My Danish friend admits that even amongst Scandinavians the Danish language sounds a bit weird, almost like keeping a hot potato in your mouth while speaking. Swedish - my wife can speak it - it special because of its unique melody. Finnish in turn sounds also pleasant to me with all the long vowels and repeated consonants.

I am glad that my post sparked off so many comments. In my view the attitude, both emotional and rational, to a language depends a lot the knowledge of it.

I agree there used to be a lot of prejudices towards languages here (Germany) as well, mainly derived from prejudices towards the nation, who speaks it. French, the language of l'amour, Italian, lingua del canto e della opera, mysteriously deep and/or brutal Russian, intellectual (UK) or perfunctory (US) English, Spanish as the language of "mañana".

Personally I have always liked French for its liaisons and nasal sounds. Though being my first foreign language, I did not particularly like English for a long time, but started to appreciate it for its creativity and short, but matching words. Working for international companies I better started to like it anyway. Since school I wanted to learn Russian for its beautiful cursive writing and wealth of soft sounds (я, е, и, ё, ю - yah, yeh, yee, yo, you). I like Italian for the amount of vowels. Subsequently I disliked the sound of Polish and Czech, who are rich in consonants. Only when I started to learn Polish and was able to read the first Polish poems, I started to see and hear the beauty of this language. My story with Dutch is similar. First I disliked it mainly for the guttural sound of "g", but once I travelled more often to the Netherlands I started to appreciate the proximity to German in terms of words and grammar and for their cute words like brommer (lorry), bromfiets (motorcycle), knuffelen (to cuddle).

In our school students are free to pick their foreign languages regardless of previous knowledge. As there are two foreign languages compulsory for most of the students at least one will be new to them. English by far is the most popular, then follow French and (growing) Spanish. Latin ist losing ground and Russian gaining again with all the refugees from Ukraine (most prefer to speak Ukrainian nowadays, but they are still fluent in Russian as well). All other languages (Italian, ancient Greek or Dutch, Danish, Polish and Czech in border regions) play a very minor role.

I am currently reading Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before. The action is situated in the 17th century. in chapter 21 a clergyman states that the German language must be the true language of Adam and Eve, because it resonates all the sounds of nature: the rumbling of thunder, the sizzling of a lightning, the bluster of winds, the roaring of a lion, the mooing of an ox, the barking of a dog, the growling of a bear, the bleating of a sheep and the squeaking of a pig.

While I do not see this as a great compliment of my mother tongue, the statement gives rise to a question, which I would like to extend to you: Are there languages that have a pleasant or unpleasant sound? Is this perception a question of individum or does it prevail in larger groups?

Congratulations, Berengaria. The Italian historical vocabulary must have been challenging. I tried some time ago to read parts of Dante's Inferno, mainly in order to get a feeling for the rythm of the "terza rima". That was very, very difficult.

Few weeks ago I finished reading "Empuzjon" by Olga Torkarczuk in Polish. It took me a while to get going, but once I caught her way of story telling I was not too difficult to follow. Currently I am reading or better hearing "The Promise" by Damon Galgut, which will be my first book in English this year.

Berengaria wrote: "... That's where you can be led down the primrose path by books in translationl ..."

Your comment by itself Berengaria is a nice example of the difficulties translating fixed expressions. While I ascertained that primrose would be "Primel" in German, I have never heard of a "Primelpfad". Further investigation told me that this is an expression used by Shakespeare and others to illustrate an easy, but wrong way. So how would that be in German? "Holzweg" is similar, but does not have the pleasant connotation of floral odour.

By the way. I am starting reading today "Empuzjon", the newest book by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, in Polish. I will be reading it in a group and hope not to fall behind overly, as my reading speed in Polish is considerably lower than in German or English (which is anyway rather slow).

Lea wrote: "I finished my first Dutch book of the year. ..."

Gefeliciteerd, Lea.

The discussion has gone silent for more than a week, so let me throw in a problem that I have with translation. Currently I am reading the Step (Степь) by Anton Chekhov in German translation. I have been feeling uncomfortable with the text. Unfortunately my Russian is not good enough to enjoy the original version, but at I could doublecheck some of the sentences. In fact the Russian text "flows" much better than translation and there are some blatent mistakes, like the translation of the language еврейски (Jewish) of the Jews as Hebrew, whereas it could be only Yiddish.

Did you have similar experiences where your language skills helped you to understand a translated text better or identify false translations?

@Berengaria Well Döner! Congratulations! This made me think of the longest foreign language book I’ve ever read. I guess it is “The Order of the Phoenix” out fo the Harry Potter series. Or “Ogniem i mieczem” (With Fire and Sword), first volume of the 17th century trilogy by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Which were yours?

Well, J.C., I live only 5 miles from the former Roman border (limes) and cannot deny that there are some quite impressive leftovers from Roman times. Or, in the words of Monty Python

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xad5Rl...

Let me chime in and confess that I am a teacher too. My subjects are physics, maths and computer science, so Fortran, Cobol, Delphi, Python and Java round up my "foreign" language skills. I have been teaching in junior highschool (Sekundarstufe 1 for those, who know the German school system) for 8 years now, when I left my previous job in international sales.

Coming from the science angle I have a different take on grammar. It helps me to find my way around in a new language and - as hard as it may be for students to understand - adds to its unique beauty. Often I find my just learning the differences to languages already known. For example that the plural for numbers 2-4 in Russian goes with the genetive singular, whereas in Polish with nominative plural (5 and up go with genetive plural, while combinations with 1, like 51, in Russian require the nominitive singular!) I may have a distorted mind, but this is fun for me.

I did 7 years of Latin at school (it was my second foreign language), which laid a very solid basis of grammar concepts. Latin in fact is special, because we very rarely read it aloud (just to learn the hexameter of Ovid's Metamorphoses), so grammar has a much stronger place in its teaching than with active languages. In fact it is only recently that I learnt that the Roman "v" is correctly pronounced like the English "w". But the question of ancient languages could be a different topic for the future.

What I wanted to say is that the approach to learning a language may be very different, depending in the learning preferences, experiences and starting point of the learner.

Getting back to the video. Olly is right when he says that love is a very efficient language teacher. Besides English, Polish is the foreign language that I understand and speak best. And guess, my wife is Polish. We met when I was working in Poland for a few years. Since 2004 we live in Germany. She is fluent in German, so we switch languages regularly, sometimes in the middle of a sentence and even create our own melange words or expressions.

Berengaria wrote: " ... How do you plan to expand your vocab this year?"

I feel compelled to answer as well. When reading or doing Duolingo I write new words into my Ankiweb app. In Anki I learn an rehearse the words. If the pronounciation is not straight on (in Russian e.g. pronounciation depends where you stress the word and modern Hebrew does not denote the vowels) I not the stresses or even add an audio file with it, which I look up in https://forvo.com/.

Nowadays Goodreads in fact is the main place where I can practice foreign language writing skills. I used to work in an English speaking environment, a couple of years in Poland, so that helped a lot with speaking and writing in these languages. With all the Ukrainian refugees in Germany I can practise my Russian from time to time, though some of them are not happy to use the language of the invader.

@Berengaria: So far I am learning Yiddish mainly on Duolingo. Some time ago I learnt some Hebrew, so I already new the letters in printed and cursiv form. Furthermore there are courses on Youtube and old textbooks that can be accessed for free. The main question is pronounciation as there are some differences between the speakers in US and those you preserved the old Eastern European way.

You also mentioned the question of interferences between languages. Obviously knowing one language in a family gives easier access to the others. But the proximity comes at a price. Knowing some Italian I started to learn Spanish, but struggle to keep them apart in particular for words that a similar like "como" and "come". Similar happens to me when I started learning Ukrainian, which hovers somewhere between Polish and Russian. Still most people understand either way, once I talk to them and appreciate the effort of learning their language.

Lea wrote: ".... How are you liking the Lize Spit so far? ..."

At first I struggled with the perspective of an 8 year old boy and the specifics of Belgium in the 90s. I had, for example, to google the nature of "flippo's". But the story of refugees is very close to my heart. Being a middle school teacher quite a number of my students are either refugees themselves of children of refugees, some even from Kosovo.

Berengaria, Rod, Paul, Jeanne, Lea and Kathy. I am extremely delighted to find so many reactions on my post within less than 24 hours time. I hope there will be sufficient interest to keep this going, even if we do not read dozens of books in foreign languages.

There is no need for a challenge, Kathy and Lea, and there is for sure no minimum number of languages to cover. Everything is up to you. Personally (my native language is German) I strive to read a books in English, Polish (I am farely fluent in both) and in those languages, where I am at an intermediate level (Dutch, French, Italian and Russian). I am currently learning Yiddish and hope some time to read also in this language, for example Isaac Bashevi Singer.

Berengaria and J.C. I am deeeply impressed by your knowledge of Welsh. My first visit to Britain was a language school in Llandudno and my school had a regular exchange with a school in Cwmbran (not so far from your place, J. C., I believe). So I had contact with this beautiful (by its sound) language, but never could motivate myself to endeavour the group of Celtic languages.

Berengaria wrote: "... Shall we move it all over there?"

Certainly, Berengaria. I added a note to the 2022 topic only in case some members are getting alerts from all group postings.

Wow. I hoped there will be some reaction, but did not expect it to be that quick. I am glad that hopped on the train.

Today I finished reading my first foreign language book in 2023. A small booklet with Polish poetry "Fantasmagoria". I asked a GR librarian friend to create an entry for it. The author is Sylwia Łukomska-Zijlstra, a Polish woman, who seems to have a Dutch husband. Some of the poems are accompanied by their Dutch translation.

Also reading at the moment: The 2023 boekenweeksgeschenk De eerlijke vinder, which I got by one of my Dutch GR firends.

I hope that in 2023 I will be able to read books in 6 foreign languages.

I am starting off with my current reading. Today I finished a bocklet of Polish poetry title "Fantasmagoria" by Sylwia Łukomska-Zijlstra (I asked GR librarian friend to create it). It seems the author is a Polish lady married to a Dutch person. Some of her poems are also translate into Dutch.

The other book that I am currently reading is the 2023 boekenweekgeschenk De eerlijke vinder, a small book that everyone gets as a free give away who buys a book during the Dutch book week.

I am missing these conversations. So I created a new topic for 2023. Maybe someone feels likewise and to share her or his foreign language reading experience in this year as well.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Having enjoyed the 2022 Foreign Language Reading Challenge, I miss this place to share my foreign reading experience with the polyglots of the group. Such is the motivation for this group. I left out the "challenge" by intent. You can either set yourself a goal or just share your reading experience with the group. I am looking forward to your posts.