A Most Peculiar Mademoiselle

Quotage

“When I get a little money I buy books, and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”
~Desiderius Erasmus

"You lot. You spend all your time thinking about dying, like you're going to get killed by eggs, or beef, or global warming, or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible. Like maybe you survive."
~Doctor Who

"Nothing in this world that's worth having comes easy."
~Scrubs

"When you can't run, you crawl, and when you can't crawl - you find someone to carry you."
~Firefly

"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
~Mark Twain

"Porthos dreams of being a bear, and you want to shatter those dreams by saying he’s just a dog? What a horrible candle-snuffing word. That’s like saying, “He can’t climb that mountain, he’s just a man”, or “That’s not a diamond, it’s just a rock.” Just."
~Finding Neverland

"Sometimes our best decisions are the ones that don’t make any sense at all."
~How I Met Your Mother

Quotage

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legoline

03 September 2006 @ 04:31 pm

Hm.

Spent an hour or so today going through fanfic and writing down words and wordings that I don't know to improve my vocabulary.

So far so good.

Only, especially with wordings and phrases I'm pretty unsure whether it's actually common to put a phrase like that, or whether it's just an author's particular style. Because if it's the latter I don't want to go round copying it.

Teh Dilemma.

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embroiderama on September 3rd, 2006 02:58 pm (UTC)

The only thing I can think of is that you could Google a phrase in quotes to see if it comes up as used often or not. Might help?

Honestly, I find it shocking that people can manage to write fiction that's not only readable but *really good* in a language they didn't grow up speaking. There is no language other than Engligh in which I could put together a coherent sentence beyond the kindergarden level, so my hat is seriously off to you.

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legoline.livejournal.com on September 3rd, 2006 03:05 pm (UTC)

The only thing I can think of is that you could Google a phrase in quotes to see if it comes up as used often or not. Might help?

Oh, that's a good idea. Thank you!

Honestly, I find it shocking that people can manage to write fiction that's not only readable but *really good* in a language they didn't grow up speaking.

Heh, well you haven't read much of my stuff yet, I find most of my fics written rather awkwardly. :-)

I know foreign speakers that are so much better than me, and I definitely bow to them. I'd never notice those aren't actually native speakers :-)

And - I've had English classes at school for 9 years, and I've been studying it at uni for 4 more years. I really like languages, and though I was glad when I could drop French and Russian (I never could warm up to those) I'm kinda sad I don't have the time to pick up Spanish again :-)

I guess when English's your native language, there isn't really the need to learn another one, is there? And I don't mean this in a deprecatingly way, honestly :-)

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embroiderama on September 3rd, 2006 03:17 pm (UTC)

French is the language I studied the most--2 years in middle school, 2 years in high school, 1 year in college--and yet I'm completely incompetent. I studied Russian for a semester in college, but when we got to the complicated grammar in the second semester I dropped the class. So, yeah, I'm not really good at languages. I actually wanted to take German instead of French, but they cancelled it at my school right when I got to that grade.

I guess when English's your native language, there isn't really the need to learn another one, is there? And I don't mean this in a deprecatingly way, honestly :-)

I just think we're lazy. :) My mom and step-father go to Belgium regularly, and they always feel bad because their friends there all know at least 3 or 4 different languages, and they only know one.

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legoline.livejournal.com on September 3rd, 2006 05:03 pm (UTC)

Well if it's any consolation I took French for 4 1/2 years and I barely emember anything. Same goes for Russian which I took for only 2 years. I think it depends onhow often youuse a language, and since I'm surrounded by English all day long (books/music/films etc. ) you kind of keep in practise automatically :-)

And if you grow up in Belgium you grow up in a country that's multi-lingual anyway. So you kind of have to know your way through two other languages at least .-)

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beige-alert.livejournal.com on September 4th, 2006 03:27 am (UTC)

Yeah, either Google or else pester your friends who speak the language with questions about how normal things sound to them.

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legoline.livejournal.com on September 4th, 2006 06:33 am (UTC)

Pester them even more? .-)

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beige-alert.livejournal.com on September 5th, 2006 01:19 am (UTC)

That's what friends are for! Or, however you would say that in German. ... ;)

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legoline.livejournal.com on September 5th, 2006 06:53 am (UTC)

We would say it exactly the same :-) "Dafür sind Freunde da!" .-)