Quote:
Originally Posted by DrMoze
So far, it appears that I'm in the minority. :^(
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Not really
I know what you are talking about. That was the main reason why I bought ectaco dictionary vs. looking up for a word manually. It made a huge difference. Another thing is that before I started to read books I like, I spent almost 2 years reading all sort of things, such as Astronomy magazins, Times, some non fiction books such as God's Fingerprints and few others of the same sort and built up my vocabulary (passive). I tried to read The Interview with the Vampire as my first fiction book...boy it was a disaster. I had to look up every fourth word or so and after 50 pages gave up and read it as "it is" because it was destroying the experience. Nowdays, I use dictionary maybe 1-2 time in 30 minutes when I feel like I really would like to know the meaning of the word and sometimes never for a few days. But mostly my big passive vocabulary saves the day for me otherwise I would have to skip the unknown words, although on the other hand I would miss details and it would destroy the experience too
(if you miss all the small details of the story you miss a lot even though you know what is going on. I am speaking from my experience of watching movies in English. Never go to cinema because they do not have subtitles and I just cannot watch movies in English without subs.)
After reading in English for many years only a few months ago I was reminded for the first time in a long time how it feels when you don't know at least 1-2 word on each page. It did presented a problem. It was Perdido Street Station. It was a difficult read languagewise. If I had to struggle like that with every book I would give up on English and read in Russian. As it is now, I cannot read fantasy in Russian
It sounds so childish, immature and silly
