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How hard is Agatha Christie really? | ||
Tags: Literature | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| DreamCH Tetraglot Newbie Switzerland Joined 4609 days ago 18 posts - 25 votes Speaks: German, Swiss-German*, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 1 of 21 29 February 2012 at 12:50am | IP Logged | ||
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It`s probably a shame to ask a question about English (or rather boring), but I just read my first pages in "dtv-Agathe Christie, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple and..." a book in English and German that is rated to be a level 3 (the highest)title. Some little reserach shows me that Agatha is usually recommended as "easy", no I wonder if it is mainly new words (sorry, but I`ve about 4 on each page and LOTS on the internet IS easier to read) or the older form of English that puts the book in this area?
"Mrs. Cresswell had a marvellously dressed head of well-blued hair towering upward in meticulosy arranged curls and rolls. It was as though she had dressed her head to go as a French marquise to a fancy dress party. The rest of her middle-aged person was dressed in what ought to have been rustling black silk but was actually one of the shinier varieties of black rayon." (p.54- a snipplet to show the richness of details) thanks for your ideas 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5243 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes  | Message 2 of 21 29 February 2012 at 2:22am | IP Logged | ||
I think the ratings in this series don't judge the difficulty of the original author and her work, but the degree of simplification. This means level 1 is heavily simplified, 2 less, 3 relatively close to the original. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Brun Ugle Diglot Senior Member Norway brunugle.wordpress.c Joined 6565 days ago 1292 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English*, NorwegianC1 Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, Spanish, Finnish | Message 3 of 21 29 February 2012 at 7:35am | IP Logged | ||
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I always assumed her books would be easy until I actually read them. Then I thought they must be fairly difficult. As a native English speaker, I have no problems, but she does use a wide range of vocabulary and a lot of the words are not everyday words, so I think the books would be difficult for a foreigner.
I've read them in Norwegian as well and had no problems, but my Norwegian was at a very high level by then. It's been a while since I read them, so I can't remember if the complex vocabulary was retained or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5279 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 21 29 February 2012 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||
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I have read Agatha Christie in languages I do not even speak or understand, so it can't be too difficult. I think it boils down to how much of what you read you want to understand. Descriptions bore me to tears, so confronted with a paragraph like this, I would have read the first line, and then skipped the rest of the paragraph.
As long as I get the general action and atmosphere and who kills who and why, I'm fine. Of course if you want to get every little detail, then yes, I guess Agatha Christie can be quite difficult because of her attention to detail. You also need to be at a certain level before you are able to skip paragraphs, because you need to be able to make an assessment of what is important and what is unimportant. On my "I can read Agatha Christie in any language I know a little of assumption" I tried reading an Agatha Christie in Russian last year, and that went down the drain. I struggle so much with the Russian alphabet still, that I am unable to run my eyes over a text and pick up what is important. I had to look up every other word just to understand it, and even then I did not neccesarily understand the whole sentence, so it took me about a day per page, and even so I was exhausted. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6854 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 21 29 February 2012 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
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This is great advice even for literature in your native language. Only perfectionists want 100% understanding of a text. Part of the language skill is to know what you can ignore - in my opinion. :)
15 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rincewind Tetraglot Newbie Brazil Joined 4645 days ago 19 posts - 35 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish, French Studies: German, Russian | Message 6 of 21 29 February 2012 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Agatha Christie is definitely easy compared to Joyce or Faulkner. In my opinion, she's marginally harder than Arthut Conan Doyle, who writes in a more straightforward style. I would recommend an English learner to start with something a bit more modern and simpler, maybe a children's or young adult book.
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5869 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 7 of 21 29 February 2012 at 8:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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The trouble with Agatha Christie's writing style could be that she spends more time on describing the physical appearance and personality of characters to provide subtle hints about who might have committed the murder(s) and what their motives could be. It is no longer very popular, or common, for English (I mean English language and not nationality) writers to use this style as English audiences nowadays generally prefer less description of character and more action.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| DreamCH Tetraglot Newbie Switzerland Joined 4609 days ago 18 posts - 25 votes Speaks: German, Swiss-German*, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 8 of 21 29 February 2012 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks a lot for your insight.
Usually, I don`t look up any word when I read a book (or eBook) in English, however I`m interested to use some "vocab rich stuff" to extend my knowledge- and for this reason only, perfectionism is choosed. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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