Harry Potter ja Saladuste Kamber

I finally got through the Estonian second book. It seems that Estonian resembles Finnish quite a lot, but there are a lot of differencies. It took me about 2 months to read the book, but now it is finished and I can have a small break before I continue to the Spanish third book.

I did not have an Estonian-Finnish dictionary. I had not had salary for a while when I started to read the book, so I basically did not have any money to buy one. Well, there are many free dictionaries in the web. I could use them, right? Wrong! I found out that Estonian web-dictionaries are more or less useless. I did not find a single word I was interested in. That might get better in the future, but that will not help me with this project, maybe with the next one.

Well, I had to manage without a dictionary. Of course, I could go to library and get one, but when I tried that method, there were none. And after the first try, I hurt my back and could not get out of the apartment for a month - I could hardly get out of bed a couple of times in a day. Since I could not sleep due to pain, I had a lot of time to read.

I managed to go through the book without any dictionary. There were some short pieces I totally missed, and a couple of words that I still don't know what they mean. Despite of that, I guess I understood some 80% of the book. That is quite ok, since I think I miss 5-10% of Finnish books too, just because my imagination starts to fly and I continue reading on some subconscious level. Estonian language can sound hilarious to a Finnish reader and I had many joyous moments in the painful darkness of the night.

Reading the books in Finnish and watching the films really help in understanding the books in new foreign languages. Even if it has been a couple of years since I saw the film and some 5+ years since I read the book, I still can remember the main points and that can help a lot in the course of reading.