Dostoyevsky, and steps towards polyglotism

[saxonvoter]

I'm currently reading Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Let me be honest with you... I'm starting to get real tired of the dialogue in this book! People will start rambling and sometimes they go on for pages and pages without taking a damn breath and it becomes really hard to understand what they're trying to say. (And the names are confusing, but that's another matter entirely and has more to do with Russian culture than the book itself.)

Otherwise I'm enjoying it. The main character seems to be sweaty and delirious for most of the story, with an added 20% of "oh what's the point" and then sudden "no wait, i'm gonna make it!" moments. Something about that really appeals to me as a fellow human disaster.

Anyway... Couple of days ago I decided I'm going to learn Italian.

I don’t expect great leaps to fluency any time soon, since I’m really busy with majoring in Japanese, but at least Italian doesn’t require learning a whole new writing system. Even though I really ought to be brushing up on my Swedish, I’ve wanted to take up a new European language for a while now. French seems too difficult and I don’t really like German for some reason, but Italian at least seems relatively simple in pronunciation and it's very close to Latin, which is something I've always had a vague interest in.

Additionally, to an art & history geek like me, Italian is really tempting because of the cultural history, since so many notable Renaissance era artists were from Florence.

Look… I’m not saying I picked Italian because of Hannibal.

But I totally did.

Comments

[leiacat]

Better you than me on Dostoyevsky. Really can't stand the guy. (Sympathy on the names thing, most Americans I know get freaked out by it.)

Italian is good stuff. I never learned it formally, but I have enough of it to not die if I had to use it. It's one of my favorite languages.

[saxonvoter]

I saw a play based on Crime and Punishment when I lived in Edinburgh in 2013, so I've been meaning to read it for a while. So far he's certainly not my favourite writer, but as I said, the story is interesting.

It's a beautiful language! I'm surprised I never thought to learn it before now.

[chelseagirl]

I always wanted to learn Italian so I could read Dante in the original. I suspect Hannibal would approve of that . . .

[saxonvoter]

Haha, he totally would! And I gotta say that's among my numerous reasons for wanting to learn Italian. I remember braving to read the English version back in high school when my English skills weren't too good yet, but then dropping it for some reason or another. It's still on my book list so maybe this summer I'll make it my pet project. I looked into it yesterday, and even happened to find one which has the original text side by side with an English translation.

To be honest, the older I get the more I dislike reading translations and would prefer to read everything in it's original language. (But also I have a growing appreciation for people who do translations, since I know it's really challenging.)

[chelseagirl]

As an American, I'm hopelessly monolingual, I'm afraid. I was in Montreal this summer and got a kick out of reading all the signs with my high school French, which got me to go to a French bookstore and buy some novels -- all of which are still unread, alas.

[saxonvoter]

It's never too late to start, or in your case continue learning a language if you ever decide to do so. :)

[(Anonymous)]

It's only a matter of time, really. Since I've suddenly found myself writing for publication, that and fic and my job and occasionally not ignoring my spouse seem to take up all of it . . .

[saxonvoter]

Yep... Time is probably the biggest thing that keeps me from pursuing all of my numerous interests, as well.

[softedisworl]

Good luck on the new language--you're certainly more accomplished than I am. I studied classical Latin for four years, and that's it.

[saxonvoter]

Thank you!

Ah, I wish we'd had Latin as a subject when I was younger, it would help so much with other European languages.

[softedisworl]

You're welcome.

I see. Though, in my experience, I think it might make it more complicated. Proactive interference with similarities and differences of language, and all that.

[saxonvoter]

Ah. I guess it might be different for everyone, then. My friend is from the Netherlands and says she took Latin from elementary school onwards, and says it made learning French and German way easier.

I personally found it much easier to learn Swedish once I started to truly understand English, because they share certain similarities. And even now I can understand the general meaning of certain Italian words simply they're so similar to English.

[softedisworl]

Point. French is understandable, but I wouldn't have ever pegged German.

Similarities word root-wise, or grammar-wise? I'll take your word for it, though--it's not like I was particularly good at any language besides English.

[saxonvoter]

Both actually (at least compared to my native language). But mostly vocabulary.

[softedisworl]

I see. Latin’s decently different grammar-wise from English, though it’s slightly better with vocabulary.

[caitri]

Italian is just close enough to Latin to provide an endless stream of minor errors because what is correct in one language isn't in the other. Italian also has a truly absurd number of tenses--including my favorite, il passato remoto, which is a past tense reserved exclusively for ancient history. Because, of course, it's very important to be able to distinguish the Rome of today from the Rome of yesterday and the Rome of 2000 years ago....

[saxonvoter]

Well, I guess it's a blessing in disguise that I never learned Latin then...? I took a beginner's course about four years ago, but ended up dropping it pretty fast because my course load was too heavy at the time. All I know is that generally it's easier to learn a new language if you already know more than one, and I've heard people say that knowing Latin helps with the other romance languages.

Oh, joy. Tenses! That's gonna be fun, haha... My native language (Finnish) has an absurd amount of noun cases and we had to learn the names of most of them in middle school and it was absolute hell at the time. Lately, I've been increasingly grateful for Japanese which has the same verb conjugation for all subjects. Even though I don't relish the idea of a large amount of tenses, the remote past tense certainly sounds unique. I look forward to learning it!

[grayestofghosts]

You're making me want to read Crime and Punishment again. I'm so sick of reading about people who have their shit together, you know?

[saxonvoter]

I definitely know the feeling.

[manapotion]

I'm starting to get real tired of the dialogue in this book! People will start rambling and sometimes they go on for pages and pages without taking a damn breath and it becomes really hard to understand what they're trying to say.

Okay who recorded me talking! XD