So my main language is Greek and I read english and greek books. Depending on the book/author I may have 2-5 words per page that I may not understand (or at least I want to understand them better). Thus, many times after I finish a page, I use aard2 and either search the word in the english-to-english dictionary or (rarer) in the greek wiktionary for a translation. (For context, I'm reading ~mainly fantasy, sci-fi or dystopian books of the 20th and 21th century and currently I'm on "Croocked kingdom". I haven't dared to try reading a classic book in english.)
The issue is that this effectively slows me down by an extra ~50% time per page and I'm not even very sure that those words are remembered. I could simply keep reading without searching the words up and just use the context to get a vague sense of their meaning (or simply ignore them as they ~usually aren't necessary to the plot), but I think I'd miss on the whole experience by doing this and it doesn't address the underlying issue (being that I don't know english extremely well even if I have C2 and scored high on vocabulary), which will perpetuate the problem. I'd like to note that I have made searching words almost as efficient as it gets by using downloaded dictionaries, so I don't think I can reduce the time I spend looking up words by anything more, at least on paper books.
I'd like to ask anyone who searches up words like me:
Did you eventually reach a point where you learnt enough words this way, that it wasn't that much necessary to use dictionaries anymore? (I'd be kinda satisfied if I could reduce the frequnecy of unknown words to 1 per two pages or something.)
It gets better, but learning vocabulary at that level is going to feel very slow no matter what. I would recommend keeping a fairly low bar for just ignoring words and moving on, as keeping up the reading habit is by far the most useful. If reading feels tedious it's easy to lose interest.
One to two new words per page sounds high enough where you are bound to get repetition, so you may want to only look up words that seem either important for context or familiar (i.e. feels like something you've seen before) to get the most value. I combine that with spaced repetition (Anki) for words that I seem to look up often, but Anki has a bit of a learning curve so it may or may not suite you.
Oh thank you, I guess I should find some balance then between ignoring and searching up words.
Also tnx about the Anki/flashcards suggestion, might look into it in the future.
Haha been there.
You're used to reading at 300wpm and then you switch languages and you're reading at 70wpm, feels mad annoying
Haha indeed, on Greek books it goes very smoothly, but on any other language I start and stop all the time
i basically read english books by ignoring/guessing the unknown words and only looking them up if they came up a lot. i did this until the deluge of unknown words dropped to something like one every few pages.
THAT'S when i became a dictionary fiend.
i also like re-read books multiple times, so that helps.
It gets easier. My first language is hindi yet I am now able to read war and peace and bible kjv in a month. You get way faster after some time of doing this but your real way of speaking english doesn't become as verbose which is my problem. Like you can understand difficult words easily after some time but you will still speak like americans not a victorian with elegance, which is something I wanted hence i started to read above mentioned books but sadly it seems the american anglo internet is what has shaped my english 😔
The only thing I can think of that would be easier would be swapping to an e-reader/app with a built in dictionary function. I use Moon+ Reader myself, but I don't blame you if you want to stick to physical books.
I actually started by reading pirated digital literature books on my phone and my tablet ~2 years ago, but I eventually switched to paper books about a year ago. I think I disliked the fact that I had to stare at a screen to read, because I'm already a lot of time on my phone and after a point it causes discomfort.
Fun fact, reading was what helped me reduce my reddit time. I swapped the shortcut of infinity (reddit) app with Librera FD (document reader) on my screen and it really worked somehow. Some times I even opened the reader by mistake due to muscle memory, lol. Soon enough though, the api changes came and got kinda hooked again, on Lemmy this time. At least it's for a kinda good cause.🤷
Yeah I miss the feel of real paper in my hands but I have hundreds of books in this little black box and I like to reread most of them so it's handy. Sometimes I'll dust off my Kindle if I'm planning on reading for more than a few hours: the matte screen is a lot easier on the eyes.
That is a fun fact! I try to minimize the number of apps I have installed for that very reason, and the only things I have on my home screen are Moon+ Reader and my email, dialer, and texting apps.
I've seen your comments about reading digital media but if you can get an eink screen (kobo, amazon paper white, etc) it Doesn't feel like a screen at all. Then you can look up words right there. Ive started doing it every once in awhile as a native English speaker since its so convenient.
That said I'm gonna start picking up French again (hopefully) and that's gonna be tough because my vocabulary was always lacking in French and I haven't really read anything in French in years.
I hope you enjoy crooked kingdom. I really liked both books. All the characters are so cool :)
Yeah, I might buy an eink reader one day, they seem useful (at least if I find one I can freely modify its software?). Especially because I don't have much physical space to store books.
I'm in the beginning of the second book, so not much to comment about it, but I liked the first one, lots of action and nice characters/world :)
Good luck with the french books😄
I think I've heard of people putting custom images on kobos but I Don't know too much about it. I'm just using stock kobo and not connecting it to the internet and it's been great for me
It gets easier, but I think a mix of the two is more proper. For example, fantasy books may use the words hauberk or tabard a lot, but not necessarily you will know exactly what it is, as it would entail that you had encyclopedic knowledge about it. Besides dictionaries, you would have to refer to Wikipedia or other encyclopedias, which is fine and can be interesting if you are curious.
You have to balance your curiosity with the need to read along the text in a rhythm that you like. I also find those estimates used in many internet articles (indicated by x min read) to be much longer than what I usually take.
It gets better and you do not have to be perfect at it, as nobody is.
Yeah, eventually thats what I decided to do, finding a balance :)
Thank you for your optimism and your suggestions😊