Could any of you read this without looking up words every five minutes? Nabokov uses the most arcane adjectives

Could any of you read this without looking up words every five minutes? Nabokov uses the most arcane adjectives...

Am I just a dum-dum?

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>lolita
>difficult

L O L

O

L

Sometimes, that's why it's good
He makes up his own words on a number of occasions, you'd know that if you actually read it pseud

I haven't read Lolita, but I had the same experience with H.P. Lovecraft, who deliberately uses words that were considered archaic and I'm certain he made a lot of them up. Ha.

I'll give you advice I got in grade school.
>If there is a word you don't understand put a finger on it. If there are five words in a two-page spread, the book is too hard for you.

Lolita might be too hard for you. I've studied French, German, and Latin, so those passages were easy. Any word I didn't know, I could at least get its etymology.

i do enjoy expanding my vocabulary

i was curious as to how others perceived it

'inculcated' is a new favorite of mine. as is diaphanous, simulacrum, etc

is there an index of books rated according to this seemingly ad hoc scale of difficulty you've drawn up?

That is the most retarded advice I have ever heard. So you're supposed to put the book down and go memorize a thesaurus instead of just looking up the words you don't know?

nvm i found something called a lexile scale

lolita has a 1380, war and peace is 1120, ulysses is 1050... cant seem to find a meaning for any of these scores though

Yes and yes

What's the best dictionary app on either Android or iOS? Preferably app that could be used single-handedly

>Lolita might be too hard for you. I've studied French, German, and Latin, so those passages were easy.

>>**tips***** lmao

>t. has never studied a language

this

lilithmaud.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/nabokovs-lolita-and-its-more-obscure-vocabulary/

this defines a lot of retarded things (who doesn't know banal??) and leaves out some obscure terms but you can probably just read all these and whatever

did anyone else just skip over all the french tho

Knowing french helped a bit.

Most of the really esoteric choices are placed in situations where their meaning is obvious from context. Nabokov was comfortable inserting completely made-up words so its pretty clear he does not expect or want readers to know every word, or even to look them up in dictionaries.

>ulysses is easier than war and peace

my fucking sides

>did anyone else just skip over all the french tho
I did. I figured that they were justpoetic musings that weren't necessary to understand.

>did anyone else just skip over all the french tho
I did. If the book was written today I would've looked them up on translate but since it was written in the 50's I can't imagine Nabokov would expect his readers to either know french or have a french dictionary next to them and look up each word individually.

>can't imagine Nabokov would expect his readers to either know french
You'd be suprised, and the French he used was usually really simple exclamations

ugh i feel like i missed out tho. when i buy my copy i'm getting appel's annotated so i can finally understand it

This. You all know what MON DIEU or SACREBLEU or TRES BIEN etc mean, right? Same thing in Lolita.

this does not look like sacre bleu, user s'il vous plait

my poor friend (male, respectful), i never saw you again and even though there is not much chance that you see my book, allow me to tell you that i shake your hand quite cordially, and that all of my girls (young) greet you

didn't realize there was a second bit:
with a faint air of false remorse

so godin was a pedo too but for garcons right? cause he knew all the neighborhood boys by name...

>girls (young)
"fillette" only means "little girl"

literally what are you criticizing

"jeune fille" or "demoiselle" = young girl
"fillette" = little girl

Accuracy matters.

In the old days educated Europeans spoke French.

you're wrong, about everything

fillette is the diminutive [age, not size] of fille, which is the word for girl (cf. femme 'woman', femelle 'female'). 'ette' doesn't mean anything. you're inserting an adjective where one doesn't exist.

demoiselle means young lady, whereas dame means lady. the 'ma' prefix commonly seen is just a possessive pronoun. a "little girl" is a petite fille.

Le français est ma langue maternelle donc je n'ai pas besoin de leçon, merci.

fillette = little girl

Period.

L O L I T A
O
L
I
T
A

'little girl' is a colloquialism in english as well (as is 'small girl'), but that doesn't mean it's a good literal translation. if i met a 13 year old who was particularly short, I wouldn't call her a little girl, whereas if I met a particularly tall 5 year old, I would still call her a little girl. What is meant by little is obviously jeune, not petite.

it's kind of like -tan/-chan/-san or youjo/shoujo/jousei

This was literally one of the first books I read for recreation.

>that doesn't mean it's a good literal translation
Except what's being translated here is french, not english. "Fillette" can only be translated as "little girl". Literally the only thing that someone who speaks french natively thinks of when hearing "fillette" is "petite fille", i.e. "little girl".

dude go on google images and type in 'fillette'
i understand that -ette typically has to do with size (e.g. cigarette, croquette), but not always. Or are you going to tell me that when a French person hears the term 'brunette' they think of a little brown-haired person? 'little' is just a conflation of size with age.

anyways im going to bed

>go on google images
Je n'ai pas besoin d'aller vérifier sur Google puisque, comme je te l'ai déjà expliqué, le français est ma langue maternelle. Pourquoi est-ce que tu n'arrives pas à comprendre ça?
>i understand that -ette typically has to do with size (e.g. cigarette, croquette), but not always
I never made this argument. "Fillette" however ALWAYS means "petite fille", i.e. "little girl" and it should ALWAYS be translated as such.

Bonne nuit.

Excuse me for budging into your increasingly heated little debate, but couldn't that be translated also as "my little daughters"? Just asking; neither of the two languages is my first.

>couldn't that be translated also as "my little daughters"
Yes, depending on the context. There is no literal translation of "daughter"; only "fille" is used, ex.: "mes filles" i.e. "my daughters" (literally "my girls")