Yzabel / October 31, 2006

A New Playlist Is (Finally) Here!

It took me one year to come up at last with a new lil’ playlist for the radio.blog here… And given the time of the year, what could be more suitable than one that I will use to keep me pumped up for NaNoWriMo! Of course, once again, this is only but a glimpse of what I’ll be listening to in November.

My genre this year is Fantasy, without dragons and all the fluff. It’ll be more focused on the characters, as well as on the magic in that particular world, its rules, and what being a mage really entails. So, don’t be surprised if there isn’t much… epic in that playlist.Read More

Yzabel / October 21, 2006

Updating The Books Page

It had been months I hadn’t kept up with my current & past readings listing, and it was high time to dust the place off. The past readings page is now up to date, at least when it comes to the present time–it was too much of a hassle to remember exactly when I had read each book during spring and the end of winter, so I just kept these out for the time being.

Also, I’m not sure I’ll put everything I read in there. Lots of these are/will be for school, and I’m not sure I want to brag much about the ‘How to write a proper text analysis’ books and the likes. I’ll see what I’ll do about these.

Yzabel / October 13, 2006

The Vast Lexis of English Language

As my first post here for the month of October (wow, we’re already on the 13th??), and now that I have a good three weeks of classes behind me, let me tell you that I’ve realized an important fact about English language, that I hadn’t really paid attention to before, when I was ‘only’ reading foreign books for my pleasure:

The English lexis is fricking huge.

It may strike me more now because I’m using both languages—French and English—on a daily basis, and have been for some time. It’s true that when writing in a casual manner, only looking up a couple of words here and there in the dictionary, one doesn’t need to be aware of this difference, but when one then needs to explain texts, pay attention to semantic fields, perform an analysis of a poem, or learn to recognize each and every trope, all of a sudden this ‘novelty’ becomes overwhelming.

For instance, to throw/cast/dispatch/toss… may all be translated in French by the single verb of ‘lancer’, and the latter doesn’t manage to convey all the subtilities of each of their meanings. These are only an example among many, and probably my English-speaking readers here will simply shrug and laugh, wondering what took me so long. The fact remains that it’s all new for me, in that I’m becoming aware of it now only. French language also has its strong points, of course. Nevertheless, I can very well see that when translating a text, often I find myself wondering how I need to modify the French counterpart to convey every detail of the original words, without losing any meaning, yet at the same time without ending up with awkward, leaden sentences.

At the moment, I’m definitely fascinated with this new, conscious knowledge. It seems that large doors kept closed until now are slowly opening, letting me catch a glimpse of everything I’m yet to learn, and that I will learn, being back to a study environment that actually allows me to do so without constraints.

You can bet that as soon as I get to properly master this, my writing in English will jump a good notch.