Which book was the toughest for you to get through?

[dividedbyblue]

Three weeks for Dreamwidth: Which book was the toughest for you to get through?

This would be "The Well at the World's End” by William Morris published in 1896. The story itself isn’t complicated, but it’s written in an archaic style. Since I read it in English, which isn’t my native language, this was quite hard to get through. Thankfully, I read it on an e-reader (Project Gutenberg has the ebook for free, since it’s in the public domain), and so my e-reader could instantly translate a lot of words. A notable observation was that many older English words I encountered seemed to be linked to older Dutch words, which was interesting.

I knew of the book because we discussed it in a design course in school. Not the story itself, but the beautiful design of the pages with the Illustrations by Edward Burne-Jones. I sometimes wonder if they made reprints of the book as it was with the original illustrations, or if the only way to see this is at a museum. This is what a page looks like:



I decided to read it when, at a certain moment, I heard that this book might have influenced Tolkien for his Lord of the Rings series, and that intrigued me and made me decide to give it a go. I wasn’t aware of the archaic style. When I started reading it, I was puzzled. I assumed I must have been mistaken about the publication date, thinking that the book was way older than I believed it to be. I looked it up and discovered it was just written in an older style. Nevertheless, I decided to continue reading it and I finished the book. Apart from being hard for me to read, I enjoyed it, it’s a nice fantasy story.

Comments

[dividedbyblue]

Cool that you know so many bits and pieces from different languages. It is true that watching media in a language really improves your skills. I have that with Spanish. I never took formal courses, just a bit of Duolingo and watching a daily Spanish Telenovella, as well as interacting with Spanish fandom. I'm now in a situation where I can mostly understand it, but not speak it. Therefore, my grammar knowledge is insufficient. It's also a joy learning a language like that. I'm happy that you found that for Russian!

So fun that you translated a Russian song. I agree that those texts being poetic makes this task more difficult. The only song translation I ever did was "Glede Ma Glede," a song used in Xena, but it is actually a traditional Bulgarian song. I found an English translation and used it to make a Dutch translation, not a literal one, but also more poetic. It's something really short. I was pleased with what I ended up with eventually :)

It's funny, the word 'knecht' also exists in Dutch. The word is often used to describe someone who works for another person, a servant of sorts, such as for a person of noble birth or a farmer.

[igenlode]

It is true that watching media in a language really improves your skills. I have that with Spanish. I never took formal courses, just a bit of Duolingo and watching a daily Spanish Telenovella, as well as interacting with Spanish fandom. I'm now in a situation where I can mostly understand it, but not speak it. Therefore, my grammar knowledge is insufficient.

Yes, that's pretty much my position (minus the interaction :-p)
But I did originally have the grammar; I studied Russian formally for three years, and am supposed to know this stuff. I just haven't gone back to look it all up, although I keep feeling that I ought to.

(Ironically I actually watched a dubbed South American telenovela when I was in Russia in the 1990s. It's one of my most vivid memories of that stay -- tuning in every day on the television with my host family! I think it must have been a re-run and they must have switched from one season to another halfway through, because the characters confusingly all got ten years or so older and had a different set of relationships... the interesting part for me was when there were snippets of dialogue in French or English, because those were then subtitled on the screen *in Spanish* where everything else was dubbed. I'm not sure I'd even realised that it wasn't a native Russian programme before that; after all, if you're watching Russian TV you tend to assume that it's being made by Russians, however exotic the setting ;-)

It's funny, the word 'knecht' also exists in Dutch. The word is often used to describe someone who works for another person, a servant of sorts, such as for a person of noble birth or a farmer.

I would guess that is probably related to our 'knave' (Knabe in German is of course just a young male), which currently means a rascal or rogue, but originally just meant a servant.
The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that "knave" used to commonly be cited as the opposite of "knight", like male and female or cat and dog ;-)

[dividedbyblue]

Cool that you already have a basis of the Russian grammar. I now, after one and a half years of Duolingo/Telenovela Spanish, I bought myself a book to learn the grammar :) Hopefully, I will be able to actually write or speak a bit after finishing it. Russian is intriguing too. I tried doing the Duolingo course some time ago, but got stuck learning the alphabet. I should give it another try.

Interesting about the South American telenovela. I agree, I would also assume it is a native series when watching it while being in the country. In the Dutch region of Belgium, where I'm from, we don't tend to dub TV series; we watch them with subtitles. I think we're a bit in the minority here :) I see French and German TV dubbing everything, too, for instance

[igenlode]

It was the Russian alphabet that first interested me -- I always liked codes and ciphers :-D
(I also studied Ancient Greek, which has the advantage that the Russian alphabet was originally based on the Greek alphabet, with a few extra letters added for the Slavonic sounds that don't exist in the Greek language.)

After a good deal of hunting around on the Internet I am now pretty sure that the telenovela I was watching in its Russian dub the early 1990s must have been "Yeltsin's favourite soap opera", Los Ricos También Lloran ("aired in 1991–1992... was watched virtually by the whole population and became for a long time a reference point").

All I could remember was that the main character's name was Maria (according to Wikipedia it was actually Mariana, but it's possible this was changed in dubbing!)
But I definitely do recognise bits of this plot summary of the 'Yeltsin show', especially the bits about the secret son and the time-skips of several years -- I think I must have come in somewhere close to the beginning of "the second part", with a few flashbacks to Maria/Mariana's early life as a poor peasant...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_ricos_tambi%C3%A9n_lloran

I have vaguely wondered what it could have been for many years -- and now I finally know the end of the story :-D
(Though by the sound of the plot summary, in fact I must have seen virtually all the way to the end of the show before I left!)

[dividedbyblue]

Yes, I also remember recognizing Greek letters in the Russian alphabet; not from knowing the Greek language, but from studying mathematics that uses Greek letters sometimes :)

I'm happy that you found the series again! Was this show something you watched in your youth/ childhood? Those shows always seem to leave a special sensation on oneself :)

[igenlode]

I'm happy that you found the series again! Was this show something you watched in your youth/ childhood? Those shows always seem to leave a special sensation on oneself :)

I was a teenager at the time and half a continent away from home... and it was the one and only soap opera I'd ever seen, given that my family didn't watch TV :-)
Also probably the most enjoyable part of my time in Russia, and certainly one of the most memorable, with the exception of learning the Lord's Prayer in Old Church Slavonic, which was my party trick for a while after getting back to England: https://www.johnkilpatrick.co.uk/music/misc/otchewords.htm