My first Icelandic novel
Never have I read a book with more difficulty and concentrated focus than the Harlequin medical romance that I'm fighting my way through at the moment. A ten-page chapter takes me about forty minutes.
Because this is an Icelandic translation, Barn breytir öllu, AKA Having his baby by Karen Young. (The Icelandic translator actually went for "Baby changes everything," who knows why.) I bought it for 10 kronur, about 8 cents US, from the library in Ísafjörður. I was amused by the idea, the price was right, and I thought it might just be simple enough for me to cope with. It's taken me a while to sit down and actually start reading it seriously, but I think I was right.
The vocabulary is small enough that I'm not making *too* many trips to the dictionary - or at least I can bluff my way through. (I'm learning a lot of "feelings" words, as well as obstetrical terms that I probably will never use again.) The paragraphs are short and the sentence structure is not too complex. Even so I feel like I'm improving a bit at parsing syntax; I had some trouble reading aloud coherently during the course because I wasn't thinking quickly enough to work out which words should be grouped with which other words in the sentence. If you see what I mean.
Also it's just cheesy enough to keep me going through sheer amusement. There is something deeply bizarre about reading romantic scenes in Icelandic - though I'm sure Icelanders disagree.
I've now read 58 pages out of 167. I may actually get through this one! Once I finish it I'll be going on to Just William in Icelandic, which I probably should have started with.
(Yes, I do own actual Icelandic novels in Icelandic as well, but I feel I may need to work my way up to Laxness.)
This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/581354.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Because this is an Icelandic translation, Barn breytir öllu, AKA Having his baby by Karen Young. (The Icelandic translator actually went for "Baby changes everything," who knows why.) I bought it for 10 kronur, about 8 cents US, from the library in Ísafjörður. I was amused by the idea, the price was right, and I thought it might just be simple enough for me to cope with. It's taken me a while to sit down and actually start reading it seriously, but I think I was right.
The vocabulary is small enough that I'm not making *too* many trips to the dictionary - or at least I can bluff my way through. (I'm learning a lot of "feelings" words, as well as obstetrical terms that I probably will never use again.) The paragraphs are short and the sentence structure is not too complex. Even so I feel like I'm improving a bit at parsing syntax; I had some trouble reading aloud coherently during the course because I wasn't thinking quickly enough to work out which words should be grouped with which other words in the sentence. If you see what I mean.
Also it's just cheesy enough to keep me going through sheer amusement. There is something deeply bizarre about reading romantic scenes in Icelandic - though I'm sure Icelanders disagree.
I've now read 58 pages out of 167. I may actually get through this one! Once I finish it I'll be going on to Just William in Icelandic, which I probably should have started with.
(Yes, I do own actual Icelandic novels in Icelandic as well, but I feel I may need to work my way up to Laxness.)
This entry was originally posted at http://naraht.dreamwidth.org/581354.html. Please comment there using OpenID.