Я очень давно ничего не писала здесь. Я чувствую, что я теперь другая чем раньше. Я не могу поверить, что русский для меня настолько труднее францусского. Иногда я вижу других, кто учили его намного быстрее меня! Наконец-то, я прочитала две книги на русском, Гарри Поттер 1 и 2. Я начала 3 сейчас. Это сильно мне помогает, но очень медленно. Я никогда не хочу учить другой язык снова, это слишком трудно.
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Not bad for one bar of Russian! You seem to be getting a good understanding of the grammar and have a good vocabulary. At your level, it's only natural to use English word order, and the more you hear and read Russian, the more you'll start to use a Russian word order. For instance, in the beginning you write Это было очень долго время because of English It's been a very long time. Believe it or not, a Russian would say something closer to Я очень долго ничего здесь не писала. (Natives, correct me if I'm wrong). This Russian "intuition" will come, don't worry. The main thing is that you're off to a great start. I won't correct your post because I believe that's a job for a native, but I look forward to more posts from you.
@Ashley Same here, learning Russian has been so hard compared to German for me!
@Coco Do you have any tips/drills to get better at declensions, how did you improve that aspect of your Russian? I know the endings but still use them wrong
"Я никогда не хочу учить другой язык снова, это слишком трудно." - I agree with that 100%, learning a language is awful and I don't know why anyone would do that voluntarily 😄 We're all masochists here.
It's impressive that you've finished two Harry Potter books in Russian! I wonder if you're reading the new translation (by M. Spivak) or the old one (by several translators)? Or one of the fan translations maybe? They all have their strong and weak sides, it probably doesn't really matter as you're only learning, I'm just curious.
@Ouassou, to tell you the truth, I don't even remember how I did it, but I was always good with declensions. I guess since I was already fluent in German when I started Russian, I was used to the concept of case.
Lol, I've been saying you have to be a masochist to learn Russian. I actually read ("read") the first one multiple times because it was so hard for me and I didn't feel comfortable reading the second one. It was kind of hard to read in French but still doable, but it was a real struggle in Russian. First, I read the "good translation" (a Russian person told me it was the good one) on a physical book and then I read the "bad" one (same person's opinion) because it was the only option available on kindle, then I read it on kindle again because it was still hard. I'm sick of Harry Potter. I don't think my Russian is good enough to really judge the quality of translation but I kind of understand their opinion, there was a few things that seemed off about the second one to me.
My friend thinks the one translated by Росмэн is the good one and the one by Махаон is the bad one. Do you agree? I've heard a lot of people complain about the translations on social media. I think it's interesting people have such strong opinions. I personally don't like translations in English so I understand, but I find translations easier to read in other languages.
Hahah, it's the curse of being a translator, everyone is forever at your throat for every mistake (real or imagined), but no one ever points out the good things 😄 Though to be fair, there really are a lot of very poor translations out there, so people have the right to be dissatisfied.
Funnily enough, I remember that Spivak's translation used to be quite popular back in the day, when it was one of the fan translations on the internet, and people criticized Росмэн's translation a lot. But then Махаон published Spivak's translation and suddenly everyone did a 180 and became huge fans of the old version 😄 There's just no pleasing some people!
In general I agree with your friend, the old translation is better in the sense that it's more professional, more smooth and just generally more pleasant to read, but on the other hand the translator also added quite a lot of what we call отсебятина (from "от себя"). I remember for example that a lot of jokes were overexplained in text, like the kids wouldn't get it otherwise. There was also a whole paragraph added in one of the early chapters where Hagrid asks Harry to switch from вы to ты, and Harry is too shy at first but agrees eventually... It does make sense when aiming at a very young audience, but still, a questionable decision and something that's generally frowned upon in a translation!
As for the new translation (this is getting really long, I'm so sorry...), it attempts to follow the original text more closely, to the point of sounding somewhat stiff and unnatural (very common in unprofessional translations), and also makes some odd stylistic choices, and of course Spivak did some absolutely unspeakable things with the names (Злодеус Злей being the most glaring example). Overall: not great. Still, I feel that some people definitely go overboard, cursing Spivak like she personally murdered their childhood or something. The poor woman passed away several years ago at a (relatively) young age from an illness, and people are still trying to smear her name because of a flawed translation 😑
Also I have some thoughts about reading comprehension, I'm sorry I'm being so wordy, it's just an interesting subject 😄
I remember I saw somewhere that if you understand less that 90% of what you're reading, that's called "reading pain" because you're struggling too much to actually learn anything. I know that feeling well, I keep trying to read native Chinese novels, but after suffering my way through a page or two I'm forced to admit that there's no point, I'm not going to remember a single one of these 50+ new words. So the reasonable thing to do would be to go read a children's book or an adapted text. But the problem is, they're so mind-numbingly boring to read as an adult...
So I guess the adapted texts are like the greens you have to eat, otherwise you won't get any dessert haha. Except the dessert in this simile is like the greens but harder to chew?.. 🤣
I think that children books are not only super boring, they are also surprisingly difficult. Imo, non-fiction is good starting material, since it can be very interesting, and the vocabulary and style are as simple as possible.
I agree. I've tried reading children's books in my language(s) of interest, and they're an out-and-out nightmare. They tend to contain a lot of "cute" language and very colloquial forms. You'd think they'd be easier, but nothing doing! 😅
Having said that, there is one book I read in my early years of learning Russian, but I don't know if it's considered a children's book. It was extremely enjoyable and helped form the thickest layer of my early Russian vocabulary. It's called Человек амфибия by Александр Белаев: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A7%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BA-%D0%B0%D0%BC%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%8F Ouassou, this article will be especially interesting to you because it has a French connection 😉
@Ouassou @CocoPop Oh that's a good point about children's books, I haven't considered that! Not really certain if non-fiction is easier... But I suppose the abundance of 'international' terminology probably helps 😄
@CocoPop Oh wow, so that's where the amphibian man comes from. I didn't know it was Russian. Ps: Lucky you, I don't have this talent for Russian cases. 😅
@liang_feixing i don't think it's the international terminology that helps the most. It's just that stories usually have so much more adjectives and nouns for descriptions, while non-fiction tends to use a language relatively close to the spoken language. I'd bet that 100 pages of Harry Potter have a much broader, richer vocabulary compared to 100 pages of Atomic Habits, though I might be wrong.
@Ouassou: Precisely. And I love the fact that it was originally written in Russian, and not another language, like Harry Potter and the Little Prince. So it’s an actual “Russian“ children’s book.
@liang_feixing @CocoPop Aww, that's kind of sad about her lol. Yeah, that's what my friend said that the first one was a lot smoother. Yeah, there's good and bad about following translations too closely, I think it's very interesting from a cultural point of view but then you have cultural misunderstandings and it's just not the writing people are used to. Maybe there is something to be said for both approaches and people should explain why they did what they did in a foreword or something, or explain what kind of translation it is? Yeah, I understand but honestly I'm bored to death of reading graded readers, although I value them and used them extensively. But I know the story of Harry Potter so well that it is actually not too difficult to read and I feel like I improve a lot from reading it because it builds my core vocabulary and understanding of grammar. Even if the actual words are kind of rare, it just builds your ability to understand what you are looking at, and because it's a children's book, it's not too intellectual and it still has a lot of dialogue in it. It is also great for building everyday vocabulary, I would never memorize the words for drill or whistle, line, etc. but these are everyday words people use. I have a collection of short stories in Russian from famous Russian authors where one page is in Russian and on the other page is English, and that is so far above my reading level, it's terrible! I'll probably wait 10 more years to use it!
@AshleyBlack: Sad about who?