7 ms·

English is not my first language but I feel fluent enough that the majority of my book reading nowadays are in English, I studied for some time in a English spe

English is not my first language but I feel fluent enough that the majority of my book reading nowadays are in English, I studied for some time in a English speaking country and I watch movies and tv shows without subtitles. So, although I’m not a native speaker I feel deeply invested in the English language. All this to say that I still struggle with many rarely used words. Or archaic uses of the language. I constantly use my kindle dictionary to look for non usual words for birds, plants, etc that I never stumbled upon before. If I do this for a language that I invested 20+ years of serious media/book consumption I’m absolutely out of luck reading anything in French or, god forbid, Russian (two of my favorite literary countries). Yeah, I will never have that deep soul bonding connection with Russian authors that only those who speaks their beautiful language can experience, but I had enough experience reading good translations in my mother tongue and reading the original in English that I’m confident that It’s not a huge loss.

stevekemp 5y ago
To be honest you're not alone, I read a lot of different kind of things and recently I've been reading older books, or book set in the past at least. I've had to lookup what an "omnibus" was when reading the Professor Moriarty Series, or a "charabanc" when reading Poirot.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  'Omnibus' may be more familiar, but 'charabanc' will likely be challenging to younger native speakers too. And then in this category there are the 'brougham', 'phaeton', 'trap', 'hansom', and 'dog-cart', the latter of which can of course refer to a cart pulled by a dog, but often means yet another type of horse-drawn carriage. I fully expect most readers nowadays will just go 'ah, they got into some conveyance pulled by horses' rather than having a clear image of the specific carriage referred to. Reading works by Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, etc. really expands your horsey vocabulary.
5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
I can't speak about French, but IMHO a lot of what Russian classical authors describe can only be deeply understood if you grew up in the region and have seen it with your own eyes. Mentality-wise, I don't think anything really has changed in the last 200 years. It still resonates as strongly as it probably had back then.

stevekemp 5y ago

To be honest you're not alone, I read a lot of different kind of things and recently I've been reading older books, or book set in the past at least. I've had to lookup what an "omnibus" was when reading the Professor Moriarty Series, or a "charabanc" when reading Poirot.

Freak_NL 5y ago
'Omnibus' may be more familiar, but 'charabanc' will likely be challenging to younger native speakers too. And then in this category there are the 'brougham', 'phaeton', 'trap', 'hansom', and 'dog-cart', the latter of which can of course refer to a cart pulled by a dog, but often means yet another type of horse-drawn carriage. I fully expect most readers nowadays will just go 'ah, they got into some conveyance pulled by horses' rather than having a clear image of the specific carriage referred to. Reading works by Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, etc. really expands your horsey vocabulary.

5e92cb50239222b 5y ago

I can't speak about French, but IMHO a lot of what Russian classical authors describe can only be deeply understood if you grew up in the region and have seen it with your own eyes. Mentality-wise, I don't think anything really has changed in the last 200 years. It still resonates as strongly as it probably had back then.