Learning Russian Through Reading 'War and Peace'.
It's always been my intention to read Tolstoy's great novel and yet somehow, despite a growing interest in Russian language and literature, it never happened.
About a decade ago I was studying Russian history in an evening class. I told the teacher I had the idea to read War and Peace in Russian as an exercise in learning a difficult language from the beginning. She said it would be impossible. I, in the manner of Dostoyevsky's Raskalnikov, smiled at her through my gritted teeth and went home to seethe and writhe in my bed with indignation and rage. How dare she believe I couldn't do it?
And then I didn't do it...
Well now I am doing it. And I'll be telling you all about it here, on Steemit.
But first I should confess: I am no longer a total beginner at Russian. I recently began teaching myself and at the same time passing on what I'd learned through a series of Golos posts designed to help other English speakers learn Russian. In a similar vein, one of the aims of this blog will be to encourage other users to read War and Peace alongside me.
In literary circles, reading War and Peace for the first time is sometimes known as 'The Great Adventure'. Well please feel free to join me on The Great Adventure, or follow me, whether in Russian on Golos or in English on Steemit.
(None of the images used in this post are mine. They were all taken from multiple internet sources )
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Nice, I follow you.
This reply is for you.
I read it in English, I read it in French... Never in Russian :) Good luck for the adventure! It's an interesting and rewarding challenge for sure!
Oh come on. Read it in Russian with me. Could do with a 'War and Peace' buddy.
I look forward to following your Great Adventure!
Thanks very much! I hope it's as interesting for you as for me.
Also uniquely you can learn some french if you read the pevear translation, 2% is in french, lots of good dialogue and some written memos/letters, and the english translation footnoted at the bottom of the page.
When I was mining STEEM in april, I made account names from a text file of War and Peace because each mining instance needed a unique name. I think I used a script to pick words out that were greater than 10 characters. and satisfied some other checks. I created at least 50 accounts this way. This happens to be one of the mined accounts :).
What a nice coincidence. I'm currently living in France so my French is reasonable but thanks for the tip. I've read other Pevear translations and they're first class. Tricky to get a hard copy of War and Peace in Russian so I've got a pdf instead. That'll do me for the moment...
You chose a long book to read in russian:) I'm a native speaker, but I gor bored on chapter 3, haha:)
Yep I'm a masochist. Perhaps if I get stuck you can help me with certain bits. Btw where in Russia are you?
No-no-no, I live in Ukraine:) In Kyiv. But lots of people speak russian here. If you'll have problems with understanding I'll be happy to help:)
Молодец! I need to get more serious about my Russian reading now that I am no longer speaking it everyday in Russia. I would be responding in Russian but my typing skills on a keyboard without Russian characters are still very lacking.
Have you tried finding it as a dual language book? I like that, I have one now, I usually don't look at the English pages but when I get stuck, I check it, then read the Russian again, and I can usually make sense of every word.
I'm not a very good learning partner but Ill try to share what I can if you would like any help or just someone to talk to occasionally.