(no subject)

[hawkwing_lb]

I remember someone telling me once that doggedness and determination can make up for native talent, and stubbornness is a perfectly adequate substitute for brilliance.

I hope they were right.

It turns out that the majority of the texts I'll need for my thesis are written in French or German, or are papyrological corpuses which do not have complete translations from the Greek. The German is a loss, of course. But I'm going to be spending the next month with a dictionary and my very rusty bad French, nose down over a copy of Le culte d'Isis dans le bassin Mediteranée and other works by either Francoise Dunand or Jean-Claude Grenier.

There are some English works, of course, and some translations of French ones. Not quite enough, though.

I'm not particularly talented where it comes to picking up languages - hell, I'm clever, but I'm a B student across the board, being honest - so I'm very, very daunted.

Not quite daunted enough to give up, though, so maybe I'm not as clever as I think I am.

Comments

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes; without perseverance, even brilliance just sits there. And since you know more than one language, clearly your brain isn't all that bad either. ;-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Know badly. :)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Still better than 'not at all', eh?

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Point.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

_French for Reading_, Karl C. Standberg (sp?). White cover with sort of a bleu-blanc-rouge eye on it. Tells you all about translating academic French. Plus me! Holler if you need help--I've taught reading-skills French for years and years.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I've a handful of books from back when I took first year French (and then ran away screaming), including the massive Oxford dictionary.

I may be reduced to calling for help, and so I thank you for the offer - I started looking at the texts yesterday, and while I can figure out which parts are relevent to my interests, when trying to read in detail I kept running into the problem of only understanding one word in five. Mostly "le" and "était". Words like "succursale", among others, were rather baffling. :)

It'll be an interesting learning experience.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I've only ever seen "succursale" in newspapers--I think it means something like "subsidiary," though I can't be entirely sure. And I do positively adore learning about the ancient world, so please don't hesitate to send me the hard bits!

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Cool.

You may regret volunteering, if I end up sending you pages. But I really, sincerely, appreciate the offer.