Recent reading

[luzula]

Country Life in Scotland: Our Rural Past, by Alexander Fenton (1987)
More fic research. This is exactly what I needed for info about 18th century agriculture in the Highlands, and will be most useful to me! Also, bless archive.org. I didn't actually know until recently that you could borrow ebooks there (thanks, regshoe!). It's not very convenient to read them on the screen as you have to do, but a lot more convenient than not having access to the books at all.

Alfabet by Inger Christensen (1981, read in the original Danish)
I can't remember who in my DW circle recced this? Anyway, I saw it standing in my Danish brother-in-law's bookcase and borrowed it. It is a book of poetry, mostly concerned with nature and humanity's relationship to nature (and destruction of it). I like the structure of it a lot--it begins with an alphabetical assertion of things that exist, beginning with "abrikostræerna findes, abrikostræerna findes" (apricot trees exist). I've never read a book in Danish before, but it was quite possible, allowing for a little Google translate of difficult words. The degree of difference between Swedish and Danish is about like that between English and Scots, I would guess (er, I'm sorry that everything needs to be related to my current fandom. *facepalm*)

Speaking of fandom, my poly Flight of the Heron fic is now at 27K! \o/

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

I think it was Naraht who spoke about that poetry collection?

So glad to know you enjoy it too. I mean to read it some day, although I'm sure it will lose something in the translation.

[luzula]

Thanks, yes!

I'm sure it lost something by not being read by a native speaker, too...

[regshoe]

Country Life in Scotland sounds very interesting—and it'd make a good complement to the book on English countryside history I just read, so I might read it next :D And yeah, archive.org is an invaluable resource—very glad I found out about it!

[luzula]

I recommend it! It seems like the mid-18th century was the turning point of the agricultural revolution, so quite an interesting time.

I am tempted to read An Essay on Ways and Means of Inclosing, Fallowing, Planting, ... by William Macintosh of Borlum next. It was written in 1729 and was apparently a major impetus of the agricultural revolution. He seems to have been an interesting person! He was a Jacobite commander in the '15 and the father of one of the main characters of The Bull Calves. Also, perhaps surprisingly, he expressed sympathy for the Levellers in Galloway, where the common people seem to have been early victims of enclosure and eviction in the 1720's.

[regshoe]

Yes, indeed—there's an awful lot going on in the Scottish and English countryside in the eighteenth century, all fascinating to learn about.

Huh, strange to see someone both writing books recommending enclosure and expressing sympathy for Levellers—he does sound like an interesting person!

[luzula]

From what I've read, Borlum seems to have envisioned that it could be written into the lease of tenants on an estate that they had to enclose part of the land they cultivated in order to improve it, but that they should also get really long leases so that they could get to see the fruits of that labor. But I haven't read his own text yet...

[regshoe]

Huh! It would be interesting, I think, to read contemporary arguments about the upheavals of the agricultural revolution that are more complicated than the basic good vs. bad points. Well, see what you think if you do read it... :D

[nnozomi]

I've never read a book in Danish before, but it was quite possible, allowing for a little Google translate of difficult words.
So neat to be able to do this. Two languages (three? Norwegian?) for the price of one. (My reading in English translations of Swedish murder mysteries suggests that it doesn't work on Danish numbers?)

and yay for 27K! You write so steadily.

[luzula]

I've read a linguist saying dismissively that Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are just dialects of the same language, and wouldn't be considered different languages at all were it not for the fact that the respective nation states had felt the need to differentiate themselves. *g*

But yeah, Danish numbers are weird, although I guess no less so than French numbers. : P

and yay for 27K! You write so steadily.

Writing has been a great joy of my life this year. ♥

[antisoppist]

I've read a linguist saying dismissively that Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are just dialects of the same language, and wouldn't be considered different languages at all were it not for the fact that the respective nation states had felt the need to differentiate themselves

I translated a Norwegian book about Edvard Munch and had a sudden breakthrough when I realised 19th century Norwegian was basically Danish and I should be using the other dictionary :-)

[antisoppist]

I studied Swedish at university and in the third and fourth years (they sent us abroad for the second year for a kind of sink or swim total immersion) everyone doing Swedish, Norwegian and Danish had an hour's class together once a week where they taught us the differences between them with the aim of enabling us to read and translate from all three. It was then assumed we'd be able to read literature/research papers in all three in the final year.

It did work, except that when I am in Denmark I can't understand anything anyone says and you can't really ask them to write everything down :-) When I started working as an in-house translator it was again assumed that you could translate into English from all three. But it's a very passive three for the price of one. I can't speak Danish or Norwegian or write in them and Danish use of commas still trips me up if I do get the odd bit of Danish to do these days.

[nnozomi]

That's still an impressive set of skills to pick up; your university knew what it was doing.

except that when I am in Denmark I can't understand anything anyone says and you can't really ask them to write everything down :-)
Ha! This is how I feel about Chinese--not that I can read Chinese fluently, but thanks to Japanese I can get quite a lot from the written language, while in the spoken language I'm lucky if I understand one word in twenty.

Danish use of commas still trips me up
Danish seems to be the odd one out...

[luzula]

Oh, that's cool with the shared class to learn the differences between the languages.

Ha ha, well, I mostly can't understand Danish people when they speak either (except for my brother-in-law, but he speaks Swedish as well, so he can modify his Danish to be understandable).