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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4619 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 9 of 29 08 October 2013 at 8:56pm | IP Logged |
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German<>Icelandic sounds pretty exciting. I've always been a bit scared of Icelandic, but
perhaps one should grasp the nettle. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4044 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 29 09 October 2013 at 8:02am | IP Logged |
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Definitely if you're interested in it. For Icelandic being such a small language it sure has a wealth of materials existing. It doesn't seem like much more of a stretch than German other than in the amount of resources and readers but hey you'll probably cope.
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| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4044 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 29 15 October 2013 at 4:59pm | IP Logged |
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So that was that. I didn't go there to speak German but I'm happy about how well I understand most written things that are put on display in Germany. I spoke a little German with hesitation and mistakes but I seemed to get my point across so there's that. Now I'll start slowly getting to Icelandic too, while I'm intending to first study German phrase grammar such as memorizing all adjective endings for all cases and such and then I'll start doing some L-R (and good old reading too).
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| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4044 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 12 of 29 21 October 2013 at 8:23am | IP Logged |
Time for a monday update!
So German is going nicely, I've been working with some texts and I'm going to start working through some textbooks (most likely Assimil) very soon. I'm pretty good at understanding, not so great with writing yet but that'll come, however I do understand almost all of the grammar when I read; it's just that I don't know all of the words that makes it hard to understand something. As for Icelandic, I got Colloquial Icelandic from the library and I've done a few lessons out of that and even though my grasp of the grammar is pretty hazy I think I'm getting the basics down. The book was kind enough to explain that there are three types of weak verbs in Icelandic, but the types only differ in their singular present conjugation. I had been wondering why the first person singular seems to look like the infinitive sometimes, sometimes with an i and sometimes with no ending and that cleared it up a bit. Also the u-shift thing seems really logical to me. Knowing Swedish helps with the vocabulary but also grammar tremendously; most participles are formed as they are in Swedish. Also once my German develops I'm going to start working through a pdf of "Lehrbuch des Islandisch". 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4044 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 13 of 29 28 October 2013 at 4:40pm | IP Logged |
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Here I am again. A quick update:
I was gifted a German picture-dictionary with 6,000 entries or so so I'm going to read that. After that I think I'll start working through Murder on the Nile by Agatha Christie which I own in German. I'm about halfway through Colloquial Icelandic and the haze is clearing itself little by little. I have learned a few noun paradigms in their entirety and I have a clear grasp of the present declination of verbs. All in all everything is going dandy. Unrelated to current goals but relevant to thread; The same person also gifted me a bilingual edition of Beowulf, which is awesome. Edited by Henkkles on 28 October 2013 at 9:14pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4619 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 14 of 29 29 October 2013 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
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It sounds like your benefactor is someone worth cultivating. :-)
I keep hesitating about buying a bilingual Beowulf. As it's not yet a priority, I don't feel I can justify the expense. Perhaps if I notice a cheap copy I'll snap it up. I read somewhere that it was written in West Saxon dialect, possibly translated from East Anglian, but I can't now find the reference. (Just looked at the Wikipedia entry, which is very interesting, and which offers competing evidence regarding the dialect). My Guide to OE (Mitchell and Robinson) makes the point that when studying OE texts, we have to be aware that we are looking at a language in transition, with, for example, case endings gradually giving way in importance to word order and prepositions to establish meaning. An interesting point they make is that after the Danish invasion, although Old Danish was also an inflected Germanic language, while the roots of many words were the same, the endings were in general different, and would have led to confusion in a hypothetical family of Danish-English intermarriage. That was one practical pressure working against case endings in English. Edited by montmorency on 30 October 2013 at 5:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4044 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 29 29 October 2013 at 7:17pm | IP Logged |
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Yeah I'm trying to not think of OE because all it'll ever do is distract me at my current position. The book really looked to be something of high quality, with explanations and semi-accurate translation as far as I'm concerned, although the modern English part takes much more text, but that just might be due to the nature of modern English.
Say Monty, have you heard of DK's bilingual picture dictionaries? They're apparently available from Waterstone's. I'm working with this begifted copy of mine thus: it's divided into fifteen cathegories so I'm just reading one cathegory a day and probably revisit the cathegory once I'm about to read something considering it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4619 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 16 of 29 30 October 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged |
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I hadn't seen the DK bilingual visual dictionaries, but I've just had a look at the
German one via Amazon "look inside", and it looks quite good. I quite like the principle of illustrated dictionaries (or encyclopedias). Pity there is no Scandinavian equivalent! I noticed quite a few other languages though. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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