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.)
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.