Children's Books and Apple Pie

This photo was taken in Hjá Jórun, Klaksvík, just outside the entrance to the subsea tunnel that leads back to Eysturoy and onwards to the capital on Streymoy, and yes... we ate the whole pie that same day. The apple crumble and I are reading Faroese: A language course for beginners, while Jane documents and enjoys the rolling fog and sea outside the window. On the table sits 'Myndaorðabók' for reference, otherwise known as the picture dictionary for the language learning challenged or umm, children. Now, as it turns out, this book is not just great bedtime reading for your child, and as most learners of multiple languages can tell you, children's books are one of the best sources of material to learn from. They're often targeted to an age group, so us beginners can start with the littlest ones and gradually move up through the years as we, and they, progress, gradually reading and comprehending more complex sentence structures and words, and sadly, gradually relying less on pictures. But these books have the advantage of providing us with a true test of our comprehension without supplying the answers, something that I find can put a stick in the spokes of any new learner who often relies on the answers in the back of their textbook.

When visiting the bookstores in Faroe, I'm surprised by the amount of authors and books that have been published, especially considering the population of the island's and how long the Faroese language has been in its written form. Within just over a century, the Faroese have made a remarkable literary history and the current scene is, for what would otherwise be a small town anywhere in Canada or any other country, quite staggering. As far as the children's books go... well, keep an eye on your bank account -- there are a lot. So to start, consider the Myndaorðabók. It'll give you all the basic terms for a whole range of daily activities, providing both the English and the Faroese. This book is particularly suited for English readers as well since all words have both English and Faroese, and not just pictures and the equivalent English word, as some other myndaorðabøkur published in the Faroes provide. And since it is kinda-technically a dictionary, it doesn't give you details on sentence structure, but we all know that learning to name objects and activities around us is where we all need to start. After that, it's just a matter of putting the words together. Well, maybe there's more to it than that. For now, we can sit and enjoy the illustrations and learn a few Faroese terms.

Myndaorðabók and other short stories are available online at both Rit og Rák and H.N. Jacobsens. You can find it by searching for the book directly, or use the side panel, under barnabøkur, to search the available children's books.