Re: Improving my writing
Posted: August 12th, 2010, 7:28 pm
yeah the thinking in one language and translating to a different language - that didn't work out so well for me in french.ninafromnorway wrote:theepicwinner:
May I then ask if you have read Twilight? I haven't read many English novels, but I have read Twilight and there I found some words difficult and I had to look them up. I'm not sure if some of her words are a little university degree-ish, but I know that her books is written for teenagers, and I am way past that stage and still not understanding those words.
So, usually I'll find a synonyme of a word in the Thesaurus, then I'll check the definition of it to see if it is misplaced or not, then I'll decide weather to use it or not.
But here is my weak spot. Since I think Norwegian when I write (and Norwegian is a very limited language) I have to translate the words directly to English. In Norwegian you can have 2 synonyms for a word that you in English may have 6 synonyms for. So I have to be a little more creative writing in English rather than in Norwegian. In Norwegian I could write "appears" in most sentences. "She appears to be angry", "it appears to be cold outside" etc. While in English the word "seems" might be more appropriate in some of the cases. And last I checked "seems" and "appears" are quite regular words in the English language, and I have to admit that when I started writing 7 months ago, I actually had to look that up *shame*...
Here are some of the words I had to look up from Twilight. Are these regular words, because I am really curious about that? (I do know the meaning of them now).
Incandescent
Scintillating
Disconcerting
Facets
Iridescent
Cadences
Circuitous
Acerbic
Exuberant
Chasm
they are not words that come up in everyday conversation, but I don't think they are overly fancy words, either. They don't show up all that often in my own writing, either.