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Learning languages to read great books | ||
Tags: Book | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5679 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes  Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 1 of 76 18 June 2009 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||
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My focus is on learning languages specifically to read great books. (It was wonderful to find a sizeable Persian section in Professor Arguelles's great books list for the "central civilization." Details are on his website.)
Have any of you learned a language purely to read great books in that language? The emphasis here is on satisfying your own curiosity and enjoying yourself, rather than fulfilling the requirements of a job or a course of study. If so, what was the language, how did you learn it, did you succeed, and what have you read? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tudwell Groupie United States Joined 5854 days ago 41 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Icelandic | Message 2 of 76 18 June 2009 at 6:07am | IP Logged | ||
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That's a big part of my motivation for learning languages. I'm a huge reader in English, wannabe writer, and an English major, so literature is a huge part of my life.
I've read a few Kafka stories in German, but my level's not high enough to read a novel, unless I wanted to spend a year on it. Right now, though, I'm reading The Little Prince in German. It's slow going, but I hope to get my vocabulary to a decent level, so that I'm not looking up 15 words a page. I guess that means I haven't been terribly successful so far. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5679 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 3 of 76 18 June 2009 at 6:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Tudwell--
I'd suggest being patient with yourself. Find something that fascinates you in German after you finish the Little Prince and allow yourself to look up those 15 words a page. When I read Siddhartha by Hesse recently, which I think is excellent for this purpose because it's somewhat repetitive in vocabulary and predictable (but interesting; it's not a thriller, it's a contemplation), I put 3x5" post-its inside the front cover and wrote the words I really had to look up to keep the gist of the story. Now I'm reading some stories by Wilhelm Hauff (early 19c) which are delightful. Yes, it takes a long time to gain reading fluency, but every day you work on it brings you one day closer to that very worthy goal. Besides, I sort of enjoy regaining the sensation that I had back when I was 8 or 9 or 10 years old and really reaching to read books that were over my head, when I didn't quite grasp the story and didn't know every word. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5697 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 76 18 June 2009 at 8:41am | IP Logged | ||
That is a nice question. It is very easy to become a literature snob - and decide that only certain books are worthy. I am sometimes guilty of this. I planned to read only "great books" in Czech: "classics" from the 17th century, by great Czech "thinkers" of the time. It didn't last long though. The language was archaic. I realised it is like somebody reading Shakespeare to improve their English comprehension. I humbled myself, and decided to read books I could actually understand and enjoy. I started with Good Soldier Svejk (a very funny book) and am now reading the Harry Potter books (snobbishness had prevented me from reading them in my native language). They are exactly the right level for somebody at lower-advanced level if you ask me. And they are far less "dry" than the "classics" - which keeps me reading. This makes them (at least for my purposes) great books! Edited by Splog on 18 June 2009 at 8:44am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5679 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 7 of 76 18 June 2009 at 10:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I know nothing about Cornelia Funke, but, oddly, the friend with whom I do Persian is a friend of hers. They're both authors. Apparently there's a new movie based on one of her books which has a scene which shows a beautiful, illustrated copy of the Persian classic (by any standard!), the Shahnameh, by Ferdowsi, which is the national epic of Iran. He's going to check with her about the origin of that Persian reference in the movie. (BTW, as Persian classics go, the Shahnameh is not all that hard, especially for a book written about 1000 years ago. It's a huge treasure chest of stories, written by one great author, describing myth and history from the beginning of time to a few decades prior to its writing.)
One way to define "great books" would be in terms of influence on civilization, artistic merit, and so forth. What works for me, though, is simply this: is the book compelling enough that I strongly want to read it? If so, it's great enough for me. (I'm not going to worry about all the great books that I'm not particularly interested in.) An important corollary is this: a book that's really worth reading is worth reading in its native language. This applies most strongly to poetry, strongly still to fiction, and perhaps less so to non-fiction. So if Cornelia Funke can help motivate a person to learn to read German or if J. K. Rowling can do the same for English, more power to them. I personally am not interested in reading a book originally written in English in a foreign language translation simply to work on that foreign language. However, I have a friend who does that with each new language, reading a popular book familiar to him in English which has been translated into the target language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6706 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 8 of 76 18 June 2009 at 11:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I mainly learn languages in order to read. I'm not really very much of a "people person" and I dislike speaking. I mainly learned English through reading and thought it was the normal thing to do if I wanted to get better at the language (I never even considered speaking to people even though my mother is an English teacher and could have spoken loads with me).
When I was learning French, I didn't think about it much and always thought I was incapable of reading in it until I one day, 6 or so years ago, wanted to read a Swedish classic my mom had in her bookshelf ("Barabbas"). I took the book down from the shelf and discovered it was in French and immediately said I would have to read something else, but she just shrugged and said "no, just read it in French". Now that it's done (=French), I'm only glad I know the language so that I can read books in it. I started with Russian in order to read Russian literature in the original, something I am now capable of. I don't really know much about Hungarian literature yet, and starting Hungarian was more of a grammar geek thing I think ;) Still, I can't wait until I can start reading some of my Hungarian books. Edited by tricoteuse on 18 June 2009 at 11:42am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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