Sorry, I've been reading Robert Graves "I Cluadius" and "Claudis the God", along with Dante, Chaucer and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein...So what's "Methusala's Daughter"?
Oh yes, and anyone is welcome to joing my little blogging bookclub. There is NO joining fee, initiantion ritual or need to be presently sane. :)
...and if you had to get past the broken slang of T.M.I.A.H.M., you must be loving the Chaucer's spellings.
By the way, aside from the Claudius series, Graves also wrote a memoir of his experiences in the trenches of WW I that's pretty good, Goodbye to All That. Be warned, he's a pacifist (although a pacifist who volunteered for service).
He also wrote a great book on myth called The White Goddess, but it's controversial because he made a lot of it up.
Chaucer is quite readable, imo. He's writing in an actual, all-be-it archaic, language. I've read Beowulf in High German as well, so it's no big sweat for me with Chaucer. My argument with Heinlein is that it's a broken form of English with bad verb conjucation, poor noun to verb agreement and overall gives a sense of second-rate writing. I understand fully WHY the charecter uses that form but I personally dislike the literary usage.
I assume they'd be much like "A Farewell to Arms" among others. I have no issues with pacifists, I respect their adherence to their own morality (Quakers mainly) I just despise those that try to force their morality on me, which most pacifists don't attempt. Those that do really aren't pacifist, they just choose less violent ways to force their will...
Then I think you'd have no problem with Graves. He was deeply opposed to the war, and actively campaigned against it, both without and within the service. But he joined up because he thought it cowardly to stay home safely while others joined up and died.
In college, we did Beowolf in Old English. The instructor could speak it, so he would read and translate for us. Very like German, but of course not Hoch Deutsch.
Regarding Heinlein -- when I read it whan I was younger, I was able to pick up the obvious slang and terms from the more obvious original languages of the transportees, like Australian and Russian, but on my last reading, I noticed a lot of Cantonese as well, which has no conjugation, definite articles, gender, or even much tense. So the choppiness of the slang may have been a concious decision, or it might simply be that Heinlein isn't a great writer in a literary sense.
Anthony Burgess does something similar in A Clockwork Orange, but he only derives from Russian.
Old English and High German are kissing cousins. As I'm fluent in German, there is no real difference in them to me. Just as Chaucer wrote in a "bastardized" form of French imo.
Chinese is outside my language skills sadly (though it and Arabic/Aramaic and Hebrew are all languages I hope to study in the future), so I will defer to your knowledge of it's tenses and verb forms. Russian is honstly not that hard if I see it in "western" charecters versus Cirillic. I love language, and can usually grasp it's usage the first time around but Heinlein took a bit of myself diassociating with the modern world ("suspending belief" as it were) to get past my writing issues. Once I did, I greatly enjoyed the book.
By the way, good luck to Dean's venture here. Despite my differences with the fellow, he's done what I have always wanted to do since age 12, write a sci-fi novel. Irregardless of its success or not-so-much success, even the completion of such a task is an accomplishment to be proud of. Kudos.
Rhianna: Chinese is outside my language skills sadly...
I have the advantage of being in a North American city with a huge Cantonese-speaking (and cooking, thankfully) population, as well as Cantonese-speaking family members, so there's an unnatural advantage.
Although I also took a course. Which made me increase my admiration for the Chinese who have learned our language. Theirs is so much simpler and logical, and ours so Baroque and random in comparison.
Oh yes, and anyone is welcome to joing my little blogging bookclub. There is NO joining fee, initiantion ritual or need to be presently sane. :)
As it happens, that's the first time I've ever read a Heinlein, though I must say it's a good book...Once I got past the broken language usage. :)
By the way, aside from the Claudius series, Graves also wrote a memoir of his experiences in the trenches of WW I that's pretty good, Goodbye to All That. Be warned, he's a pacifist (although a pacifist who volunteered for service).
He also wrote a great book on myth called The White Goddess, but it's controversial because he made a lot of it up.
I assume they'd be much like "A Farewell to Arms" among others. I have no issues with pacifists, I respect their adherence to their own morality (Quakers mainly) I just despise those that try to force their morality on me, which most pacifists don't attempt. Those that do really aren't pacifist, they just choose less violent ways to force their will...
In college, we did Beowolf in Old English. The instructor could speak it, so he would read and translate for us. Very like German, but of course not Hoch Deutsch.
Regarding Heinlein -- when I read it whan I was younger, I was able to pick up the obvious slang and terms from the more obvious original languages of the transportees, like Australian and Russian, but on my last reading, I noticed a lot of Cantonese as well, which has no conjugation, definite articles, gender, or even much tense. So the choppiness of the slang may have been a concious decision, or it might simply be that Heinlein isn't a great writer in a literary sense.
Anthony Burgess does something similar in A Clockwork Orange, but he only derives from Russian.
Chinese is outside my language skills sadly (though it and Arabic/Aramaic and Hebrew are all languages I hope to study in the future), so I will defer to your knowledge of it's tenses and verb forms. Russian is honstly not that hard if I see it in "western" charecters versus Cirillic. I love language, and can usually grasp it's usage the first time around but Heinlein took a bit of myself diassociating with the modern world ("suspending belief" as it were) to get past my writing issues. Once I did, I greatly enjoyed the book.
I have the advantage of being in a North American city with a huge Cantonese-speaking (and cooking, thankfully) population, as well as Cantonese-speaking family members, so there's an unnatural advantage.
Although I also took a course. Which made me increase my admiration for the Chinese who have learned our language. Theirs is so much simpler and logical, and ours so Baroque and random in comparison.