βApologies, missus. Meikaneh. Whereβs the closest one?β repeated Noradon, this time in a language more fit to merchantβs tongue.
βTake a stroll from thereβ pointed out woman over the street behind the medical stand, full of herbs and jars of remedy. βThird left, second right, fourth left, first right then one more right. A public pool youβll see there. Take the stairs behind it. At the end of the stairs, a place called Zalehβs Cellar. My husband slacks around there, mother blast his legs, that useless worm. Donβt forget the direction and youβll be there in two bitsβ.
Noradonβs smile grew even bigger. He nodded his head, thanked her and walked out from maidan. He paced up his steps, walking a bit faster than usual. This happened when a smell of a tavern caught his attention. Tavern meant peace, tavern meant rest. Tavern meant, he can finally lay back and smoke from his gigantic pipe.
βDonβt forget the direction and youβll be there in two bitsβ remembered Noradon, but he couldnβt remember the rest of her sentence. It had been several bits, actually, tall man reckoned. βWhat was it? Third left, second right, second left andβ¦β he mumbled, standing in the middle of the dark roofed street, scratching his grayish beard. βBlast my brainsβ muttered the aging tall man. In truth, no one had to blast his brains. It was already blasted from half a decade of crystal abuse. His short term memory was betraying him. He was ashamed to admit but at times, he would even forget the name of his son in law.
He rubbed his nose and paced down from a random corridor he picked. There canβt be only one tavern in this town. Walking around, he would eventually find one, he speculated. He walked for a couple more bits and found a place called Traproot meikaneh. Tavernβs name was written on a buckskin piece, attached to its door. The place looked like the most pathetic tavern Noradon had ever seen. No sign, no list of beverages and not a single human being in front of it. He didnβt even hear the sound of oud, from where he was standing. But one shouldnβt judge the book from its cover. His son in law was an ugly looking fellow. He ended up being a decent man for Noradonβs daughter.
What was his name again?
Noradon took a skeptical, but optimistic step through the gypsian white door.
Either by writing a journal/diary or just a text with the words you want to learn. I'm studying French, and do you know when you feel you have created a solid base in the language and now is time to intentionally learn a lot of vocab? So, I reached this moment, but I don't know how. I've used Anki, but sometimes it feels frustrating because I don't know if really learned the word. Because if sometime I'm looking for this word, and I had only put it on Anki, it won't it it for me until the time for reviewing. Although that's the purpose of a spaced repetition system, I don't know if I like it. On the other hand, I feel that keeping a journal/diary or writing texts (diary) will get me improving more.
In the journal, I would write about my day and thoughts. Good points: I would know what words are missing in my active vocabulary ; Grammar improvement
In the little texts, I would write about anything, incorporating the words I CHOOSE to learn. Good Points: Grammar Improvement, and I can review any time I want.
I started considering this idea in two different occasions. First at the thread in this forum, and second, at this video, where this girl shows her routine to learn new words (incorporating them in a text). I want to give it a try ASAP.
So how about you? Have your ever tried one of the method quoted above?
For years reading fanfics I would read fics that were decent enough, and the authors would always preface the chapter by saying "Sorry! English is not my first language!" or "Ma français est mal, pardon moi si vous plait!" Fair enough, but I always thought it was weird writing in a language you aren't intimately familiar with. I read fics in French from time to time to practice my reading comprehension and found it fun, but I never imagined myself trying to write anything more than a class assignment in French.
However, with my recent fics (one finished and one on hiatus), I had a character from Scotland, who spoke Scottish Gaelic as her first language but everybody else spoke English. Between scraping together my limited Gaelic vocabulary and google translate and bing translate for maybe a handful of sentences per chapter, I have developed a newfound appreciation for fic authors who are brave enough to cross the language barrier and write in a tongue they are not absolutely fluent in (although they still make me embarrassed about my French because their English is better than most of my coworkers, who are all native English speakers).
Being able to collect your thoughts is important, and I'm glad I'm sticking with this little experiment of mine. If you want to read my second entry, head on over to r/AnEmptyJournal and tell me what you think.
I'm interested in learning to program, and want to dive right in and try to create a journal/writing program that will have integrated thesaurus, dictionary and research components, as a stand alone desktop program for serious writers. So, a word processor plus, plus. Java comes to mind, but I'm very out of date and would really appreciate your input to steer me in the right direction. Many thanks in advance!
Iβm asking mainly out of pure curiosity: have you ever tried to write in a language thatβs not your native language?
For instance, my first language is French so I used to write in French, which I was comfortable with. But more recently, Iβve been trying to write a fic in English, which has been super exciting but also a bit of a challenge (nb: English is my second language, but I have been studying/working in English speaking countries for a while, so Iβm not completely out of my depth either).
I know that writerβs block can happen to everyone in one way or another, but for me I find that it manifests itself in the shape of a βlanguage blockβ. Sometimes, I struggle to move on with my story because I get hung up on a random paragraph; overthinking the grammar or the vocabulary (Iβm often like, βok is this actually a real word or did I just make that up? Does this word even mean what I think it means?!β) Funnily enough, this experience has taught me that thereβs a couple of words that Iβve been misusing in my day to day life but no one has ever called me out on it :βD
So yeah, just wondering if anyone else out there is writing in their second language, and if so: do you have these similar blocks, how do you overcome them etc. I would love to hear your experience with this in general if you're happy to share!
So I defended my dissertation (yay!) and now have to write the beast up for publication (slay).
This is my first time trying to publish and I'm really not sure what I'm doing. I haven't had much direction from my thesis supervisor, who is second author. I'm also so sick of this friggin thesis by now that every extra minute working on this is a hateful struggle.
I've managed to put together a 15-page (single spaced) document, but I suspect this is way too long and has a lot of irrelevant information - it's just hard for me tell where I can trim things at this point.
Is it okay to pass on a rough and way-too-long draft to my supervisor/second author, and ask her to give me feedback so I can go from there? How much should I expect a second author to contribute to the actual writing process?
Thanks!
I moved to an English-speaking country almost ten years ago as a teenager, and since then I have found it progressively more difficult to write in my native language. I used to always know what word to use in my native language to describe something exactly, but now I both write and speak like a three year old. Over the years, I have fully transitioned to writing (and speaking, for this matter) in English. However, I feel that my English vocabulary is too simplistic for creative writing, and I keep reusing the same sentence structures. My writing is somewhat plain and generic as I tend to stick to simpler, less juicy, words. Also, it is taking me so much longer to write than it once did. I agonise over every sentence and criticise myself for three times as long as I actually write.
What would be your guys advice? How should I practice to overcome this quicker?
Update: Thank you so much to everyone who shared advice or experience, I didnβt expect so many positive comments. It is reassuring to know that there are so many people familiar with this feeling, finding ways to overcome it. I hope you achieve your writing and linguistic goals youβve set for yourself.
Punctuation
Hello dear people!
After years and years I wanted to get involved into writing some fanfiction again, but as the title may spoil, my native language isn't English. I know that my vocabulary itself is quite vast, so I don't have much difficulties to express myself. What I struggle with the most is the grammar. Are there any free online resources I may could use that help me keep my tenses and syntax in check? Back in school we never really discussed the usage of English in a writing environment, most of it was only focused on overall understanding, so I never really practiced the grammar. I tend to use German syntax a lot, as well as a lot of commas, so if anyone of you may know a resource for checking these things I'd be so very grateful!
Let me preface this by saying that I've got a very dishonest erection with which I'll (consensually) skullfuck the mothers of the smartasses who mention Conrad and Nabokov. This question gets asked around a lot, and as non-native speaker it can be disheartening to notice that in a world of billions all interconnected by the Internet and a growing, chronic attention-deficit we can only come up with two examples of writers who found success in a second language. You would expect there would be tons by now.
I've got a few (almost) noteworthy publishing credits myself so I'm asking on behalf of the other dirty foreigners like me. And because sometimes I get insecure too. And I get lonely. And you don't really call anymore.
My assumption is that even if someone's L2 is at a very high level, they will still have certain tendencies when writing based on their L1. I was interested to see if there has been any research done on this, because a lot people are throwing their opinions in on the recent Blizzard apology letter that someone claimed sounded as though it was written by an L1 Chinese speaker: https://twitter.com/SGBluebell/status/1182817588147052544
How feasible is it to identify the writer's native language in this way?
Introduced: Sponsor: Rep. Julia Brownley [D-CA26]
This bill was referred to the House Committee on Education and Labor which will consider it before sending it to the House floor for consideration.
So I'm trying to learn french (right now I'm using Memrise, and am still on french 1), and I thought of the idea to start writing in a journal in french to help me learn new words and such. From what I've noticed french follows the same basic grammatical rules as English, therefore making sentence structure comparable. Besides having to use the dictionary/internet to learn what words are for most things, would this be a sound idea?
