|
 |
Novels written in several languages | ||
Tags: Literature | Multilingual | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| Bolkonsky Diglot Newbie France Joined 5195 days ago 25 posts - 27 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 1 of 10 15 November 2010 at 10:35pm | IP Logged |
|
I have always wondered if a writer had the good idea to write a novel in several language. I don't speak about translated novels or something like that. I mean a novel in which the author had mixed different language all along the text.
Have you ever heard about this kind of novel ? Edited by Bolkonsky on 15 November 2010 at 10:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| gogglehead Triglot Senior Member Argentina Joined 6066 days ago 248 posts - 320 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Russian, Italian | Message 2 of 10 15 November 2010 at 10:38pm | IP Logged |
|
I heard somewhere that in order to read War and Peace in the original, one would have to have achieved reading fluency in both Russian and French. I haven't read it, so I could not confirm.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bolkonsky Diglot Newbie France Joined 5195 days ago 25 posts - 27 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German, Swedish | Message 3 of 10 15 November 2010 at 10:57pm | IP Logged |
|
I have read it in French so the whole text was translated in French. But It's true that the first version of 'War and Peace' published in Russia in the 19th century was composed of a great part of French (which was the language used among the upper class) and even a little bit of German.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5335 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 10 16 November 2010 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
|
While I haven't heard of a book like that, olisin erittäin kiinnostunut lukemaan jotain sen tapaista. Это была бы замечательная книга, mixing everything in a cascade of linguistic abandon.誰にも読めない本になる危険があるけ ど。It would be difficult to understand om du kan inte tala så många språk, ja sen lisäksi vielä you could never know all the languages that the author decided to use in his book. По-моему, это неплохая идея, но эту книгу надо написать in no more than two languages,そしてその場合でも多くの人が分か 言語を選ぶ必要があり、till exempel, français, Deutsch, 中文, jne.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 7123 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek | Message 5 of 10 16 November 2010 at 3:25pm | IP Logged |
|
The closest match to what you describe that I can think of is Finnegan's Wake by
James Joyce. It doesn't have entire passages in other languages but it does mix together a lot of different languages the knowledge of which helps the reader better understand the text. Wikipedia describes its language thus: The entire book is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, consisting of a mixture of standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words, 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5164 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 10 29 November 2010 at 7:58am | IP Logged |
|
I've heard that there's a lot of Spanish mixed into 'The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar
Wao' by Junot Diaz. I haven't read it so I can't comment on the veracity of those claims. Just putting it out there. Might wanna check it out. Also, do Tolkien Elvish/Wookiespeak/Klingon etc count? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6656 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 7 of 10 05 December 2010 at 10:04pm | IP Logged |
|
"Der Zauberberg" by Thomas Mann has several passages in French.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| dotdotdot Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5210 days ago 24 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Korean, English* Studies: Italian, Russian | Message 8 of 10 06 January 2011 at 4:00am | IP Logged |
|
House of Leaves by Danielewski has lots of different languages in various amounts, although their not really long passages.
Also, would Nadsat(the Russian-based slang in A Clockwork Orange) count? 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
