i will manage to read this book if it goddamn kills me
I went to Powell's yesterday because I wanted to see if they had any Dutch-language children's books, so I can expand my vocabulary and retain what I've already learned (hopefully). Powell's has a fairly large foreign language section; however, there was only a teeny weeny Dutch section (the German section, OTOH, was comprised of at least twenty shelves worth of books :/ hmm, maybe each section was directly proportional to the size of its respective country). There were only three children's books that I could see that I could maybe possibly make some sense of. There was a couple speaking Dutch there as well, but I didn't say anything to them because I wasn't sure if they spoke English well or not, and my spoken Dutch is still too terrible to attempt initiating a conversation. I was looking at each of the three books I'd figured wouldn't be too difficult, and the Dutch guy turns to me and, switching to English, said "We are Dutch, is there anything in particular you are looking for?" I replied that I was learning Dutch ("or trying to, anyway") and had a fairly decent vocabulary, and I wanted to find a children's book that I could actually read and add to my vocab. Dutch Guy asked how long I'd been learning and I said a few months so far.
"You haven't become discouraged yet?" he said jokingly.
"Not yet," I replied, grinning. "I still can't speak it very well, but I can understand some of it."
"Well, that's the important thing," he said (I should note that I never asked his name). He looked through the children's books with me and noted that there weren't very many, but he tried to help me find one anyway. There was a book of Grimm's Fairy Tales in Dutch, which was meant for children, but was still way too advanced for me. We talked while we were looking, but I can't remember what all was said. After an indecisive while, they had to leave, Dutch Guy saying "Good luck" to me as they left. I said "thanks!" and realised after they'd already gone that I could have probably said "dank u wel". Oh well. 9_9 I looked through the books one last time, and finally decided on one called Peppino, because it seemed the easiest.
I can say that my Dutch/English dictionary is being put to good use. Also that I need to buy a better one, because some of the words in the book that I don't know aren't in the dictionary ("potsenmaker" for instance). I'm thumbing through it now and I must admit I get happy when I can read a sentence that's more than five words long without using my dictionary. From what I can gather, it's about a boy named Peppino (is it just me, or does that seem more like a Spanish name?) in a circus who dresses up in a bear suit, but he doesn't like it because he's only famous as a bear, not as himself, so he runs away. He comes across another bear whom he thinks is a real bear, so he has to act like a real bear himself ("Peppino at de rauwe vis op en dronk water uit het riviertje" - "Peppino ate the raw fish and drank water from the stream [small river]") so he doesn't get, I dunno, mauled to death or something. (Okay, I may have made that last part up.) I'm kind of skipping around, but I think the "zwarte beer" (black bear) ends up being a boy as well ("Hij was een jongen. De zwarte beer was een jongen." - "He was a boy. The black bear was a boy."). Oh, sorry, spoiler alert.
Anyway, hopefully with the help of my crappy dictionary (or if I get a new one), I'll be able to read the whole book, then maybe get some more Dutch kids' books, then when my vocab gets good enough I'll hopefully be able to read something more challenging (although this is pretty challenging itself).
I also got the latest David Sedaris book, When You Are Engulfed In Flames, in plain old run-of-the-mill English.
Also went to Everyday Music and got the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs release, It's Blitz!. I was never really a YYY fan, but I've been loving Zero lately, which I mentioned to someone on sf_drama on the "music swap" thread when she mentioned that CD. She linked me to a YouTube playlist that had all the songs, so I listened and ended up really liking all of them.
After that I went to Buffalo Exchange, and spent about an hour in there, but I didn't see anything I liked, except for a pair of brown corduroys, but they were too big for me. I was looking for a pair of khaki-green pants, but they didn't seem to have any.
August 15th is Music Millennium's annual summer barbecue/free live music dealie thingy. I love that, so I'm going to go. I hope I don't get overheated and pass out like I did at the last one.
"You haven't become discouraged yet?" he said jokingly.
"Not yet," I replied, grinning. "I still can't speak it very well, but I can understand some of it."
"Well, that's the important thing," he said (I should note that I never asked his name). He looked through the children's books with me and noted that there weren't very many, but he tried to help me find one anyway. There was a book of Grimm's Fairy Tales in Dutch, which was meant for children, but was still way too advanced for me. We talked while we were looking, but I can't remember what all was said. After an indecisive while, they had to leave, Dutch Guy saying "Good luck" to me as they left. I said "thanks!" and realised after they'd already gone that I could have probably said "dank u wel". Oh well. 9_9 I looked through the books one last time, and finally decided on one called Peppino, because it seemed the easiest.
I can say that my Dutch/English dictionary is being put to good use. Also that I need to buy a better one, because some of the words in the book that I don't know aren't in the dictionary ("potsenmaker" for instance). I'm thumbing through it now and I must admit I get happy when I can read a sentence that's more than five words long without using my dictionary. From what I can gather, it's about a boy named Peppino (is it just me, or does that seem more like a Spanish name?) in a circus who dresses up in a bear suit, but he doesn't like it because he's only famous as a bear, not as himself, so he runs away. He comes across another bear whom he thinks is a real bear, so he has to act like a real bear himself ("Peppino at de rauwe vis op en dronk water uit het riviertje" - "Peppino ate the raw fish and drank water from the stream [small river]") so he doesn't get, I dunno, mauled to death or something. (Okay, I may have made that last part up.) I'm kind of skipping around, but I think the "zwarte beer" (black bear) ends up being a boy as well ("Hij was een jongen. De zwarte beer was een jongen." - "He was a boy. The black bear was a boy."). Oh, sorry, spoiler alert.
Anyway, hopefully with the help of my crappy dictionary (or if I get a new one), I'll be able to read the whole book, then maybe get some more Dutch kids' books, then when my vocab gets good enough I'll hopefully be able to read something more challenging (although this is pretty challenging itself).
I also got the latest David Sedaris book, When You Are Engulfed In Flames, in plain old run-of-the-mill English.
Also went to Everyday Music and got the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs release, It's Blitz!. I was never really a YYY fan, but I've been loving Zero lately, which I mentioned to someone on sf_drama on the "music swap" thread when she mentioned that CD. She linked me to a YouTube playlist that had all the songs, so I listened and ended up really liking all of them.
After that I went to Buffalo Exchange, and spent about an hour in there, but I didn't see anything I liked, except for a pair of brown corduroys, but they were too big for me. I was looking for a pair of khaki-green pants, but they didn't seem to have any.
August 15th is Music Millennium's annual summer barbecue/free live music dealie thingy. I love that, so I'm going to go. I hope I don't get overheated and pass out like I did at the last one.