List of free etext sites. (Language Programs, Books & Tapes) Language Learning Forum

List of free etext sites.
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Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes

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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6437 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes

Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

Message 1 of 35

02 March 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged

Here's a thread for written books, in electronic form, similar in spirit to the "free, legal audiobooks" thread. For other resources, see the list of resources list.

Suggestions are very welcome, especially for very large sites with high-quality texts or sites which focus on more obscure languages. Please don't mention small collections of English texts unless they're truly remarkable in some way.

There are four sections. The first is for sites which should be entirely legal for almost everyone (a few small islands with copyright laws longer than those of any major country perhaps excepted). The second is for sites which are useful, are NOT aimed at piracy, but are operating in areas with different copyright laws, such as Australia (books fall into the public domain there sooner than in Europe or North America). The third is to other pages which have collections of links to high-quality etext sites. The fourth, with some trepidation, is recommendations of particular works/authors which language learners have found especially useful, and other links which are hard to classify.

Free etext sites

Anthologie sonore de poésie(dollymangatears)(French).
dollymangatears notes that it has both texts and audio for French poetry.

青空文庫　Aozora Bunko(AniaR)(Japanese)

Archive of Turkish Oral Narrative/Türk Öyküleri Sandığı(Chung)(mainly Turkish)

Chung wrote:

This is an archive at Texas Tech University holding material related to oral narratives in Turkic languages. Most material is in Turkish, but I did see a text in Kazakh and a link to a recording of Tuvan harmonic singing). Most of the site is navigable in English or Turkish, but a few parts are navigable in Turkish only. Texts are in .pdf while accompanying narration where provided is available in .mp3 or .m3u. The archive also includes recordings of Turkic folk music.

Bauddha(AniaR)(Japanese-English)
Japanese-English parallel texts. Only navigable in Japanese, requires Javascript, and consists of legal material under traditional copyright - nonetheless, excellent.

Беларуская Палічка — беларуская электронная бібліятэка(AniaR)(Belorussian)

biblior.net • Biblioteca românească(Chung)(Romanian)

Chung wrote:

Assorted texts in Romanian. Navigable in Romanian only. On the main page, you begin a search using the row of links in the upper half of the screen. The search categories are understood as: "Cărţi" ~ "search"; "Pagini" ~ "pages"; "Autori" ~ "authors"; "Secţiuni" ~ "genre / section". You thus begin a search for an online text using one of these categories.

Biblioteca do site Alfredo Braga(Chung)(Portuguese)

Chung wrote:

This is an online collection of famous literature which is navigable only in Portuguese. I'm not sure about the legality of these translations, but am guessing from the brief introduction that it has some link to a project from UNESCO. All texts are in Portuguese.

Czech and Slovak Literature Resources(Chung)(Czech, Slovak)
Chung notes that the site is navigable in both Czech and English, and that it also has selected works in English translation.

Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren(urubu)(Dutch)

福娘童話集 -世界と日本の童話・昔話集(AniaR)(Japanese)
AniaR mentioned that these are fairy tales.

Ebooks libres et gratuits(dollymangatears)(French)

Eesti rahvalaulud. Antoloogia(Chung)(Estonian)

Chung wrote:

This site is navigable in Estonian only. It's a massive anthology of the lyrics for Estonian folk songs that's classified by theme. Click on "ilma" ('without [frames]') on the first page to get a list of all song-texts and then click on the title to see the desired text.

Eesti värss(Chung)(Estonian)

Chung wrote:

This site is navigable in English or Estonian and has a collection of Estonian poems in HTML.

Електронна бібліотека української літератури(Chung)(Ukranian)

Chung wrote:

Navigable in Ukrainian only. This is the University of Toronto's extensive collection of online texts in .html or .pdf from Ukrainian literature or dealing with Ukrainian literature (e.g. literary monographs)

ELibrary mn(Mongolian)

Estonian Texts(Chung)(Estonian)

Chung wrote:

Assorted texts or articles - e.g. Declaration of Independence from 1918

Estrup.org(Guido)(Danish)

Franklang(fanatic)(Multilingual parallel texts)
English-Russian, English-Japanese, and many resources for German and Russian speakers for quite a few languages.

Grafo(Chung)(Estonion)

Chung wrote:

Navigable in Estonian only. This is a collection of some older Estonian texts courtesy the archives of the Estonian Literary Museum. Texts are viewable as scanned facsimiles or images. Click on the links on the upper half of the page to see the material. The links are:

"Eesti kroonikad" (collection of a magazine series from the 1930s)
"Kalendrid" (collection of calendars from the 19th century)
"Lasteraamatud" (collection of children's books from the 1930s)
"Teatmeteosed" (collection of some non-fiction texts from the 1940s and earlier)
"Vana raamat" (collection of books from the 18th century)
"Väliseesti" (copy of "Eesti asundused ja asupaigad Wenemaal" from 1918 - something about Estonians in Russia)

Gutenberg Project for German(Sprachprofi)(German)

Sprachprofi wrote:

The index is independent of the other Gutenberg project.

Inko(Esperanto)
Classical texts in translation, as well as a number of original and influential Esperanto texts.

ICDL - International Children's Digital Library(Sprachprofi)(Very multilingual)

Sprachprofi wrote:

Multilingual children's library, including texts
not just in major languages but also African languages and Oceanian languages (e. g.
Niu'an).

The Mongolian and Persian/Farsi selections strike me as particularly notable. The site is expanding, but it currently has books in: Afrikaans (1), Amharic (2), Arabic (29), Catalan (2), Chinese (Simplified) (4), Chinese (Traditional) (8), Croatian (24), Danish (15), Dari (5), Dutch (10), English (3085), Filipino / Tagalog (25), Finnish (19), French (53), German (83), Greek (33), Hebrew (16), Hindi (1), Hungarian (15), Indonesian (5), Italian (25), Japanese (10), Khmer (1), Kinyarwanda (3), Korean (2), Latin (25), Macedonian (3), Malay (8), Malay (Jawi) (6), Maltese (1), Maori (9), Mongolian (237), Niuean (2), Norwegian (8), Pashto (5), Persian / Farsi (424), Polish (5), Portuguese (24), Quechua (2), Rarotongan / Cook Island Maori (1), Romanian (6), Russian (7), Samoan (1), Serbian (77), Shona (1), Sinhalese (1), Slovenian (1), Spanish (163), Swahili (17), Swedish (8), Tongan (1), Turkish (3), Vietnamese (1), Yiddish (23)

J-texts(AniaR)(Japanese)

Jónas Hallgrímsson: Selected Poetry and Prose(Chung)(Icelandic)

Chung wrote:

Assorted works of Jónas Hallgrímsson with commentary / translations.

La Bibliothèque électronique du Québec(dollymangatears)(French)

Latviešu teksti datortīklā(Chung)(Latvian)

Chung wrote:

Assorted texts from Latvian literature. Navigable in Latvian only. Click on "Latviešu Teksti Datortīklā" and then you'll see two links leading to online versions of classic (klasikas) and modern (mūsdienu) Latvian literature.

Lib.ru: "Классика" (classics)(Russian)

Liber Liber - Progetto Manuzio(urubu)(Italian)
AniaR also points out the audioteca, which contains recordings of full novels in Italian, original and translated.

Literaturo, en la reto, en Esperanto(Esperanto)

Littérature estonienne(Chung)(French)

Chung wrote:

This site is navigable in French only and has French translations of Estonian literary works.

LLC(Chung)(Latvian)

Chung wrote:

Navigable in English or Latvian. This is the webpage of the Latvian Literature Center. To see texts in the original, set the page's language to Latvian ("Latviski" on the left hand menu), click DATU BĀZE at the top, and then pick a letter of the alphabet (to search for authors by family name). You will then see a list authors whose family name begins with that letter. All authors have biographical information, but only some have their works uploaded in Latvian, and even then they are excerpts. Authors who have permitted at least partial uploading of their works have the link "Darbu fragmenti" in their profile. Click on this link and then you will then see a list of viewable excerpts. As an example, look for the author "Inga Gaile" since her profile includes an excerpt from one of her works.

LMS IC: Classic Lithuanian Literature Anthology(Chung)(Lithuanian)

Chung wrote:

Navigable in English or Lithuanian. This is a collection of 64 works from Lithuanian literature. Texts are available as .html or .pdf and sorted by author or time of appearance.

manybooks.net(goosefrabbas)(multilingual)
Project Gutenberg books, in a wider variety of formats, including for ebook readers.

MEK (Magyar Elektronikus Könyvtár)(Chung)(Hungarian)
A fantastic ebook site for Hungarian. It also features audiobooks. Navigable only in Hungarian. AniaR pointed out a link to browse MEK's mp3s.

宮沢賢治作品館・童話篇(AniaR)(Japanese)
"宮沢賢治 Miyazawa Kenji"

My Book: Digital & Printed(Sprachprofi)(Arabic)

Sprachprofi wrote:

Arabic ebook site for kids with lots of famous stories (Robinson Crusoe, 1001 nights, ...) as well as non-fictional books for kids e. g. about history. Many books have vowelling and are written in an easy-to-understand way.

Netútgáfan(Chung)(Icelandic)

Chung wrote:

Collection of texts (including the Bible) and sagas. Navigable in Icelandic only.

日本ペンクラブ：電子文藝館(AniaR)(Japanese)

Noor-Eesti(Chung)(Estonian)

Chung wrote:

Navigable in Estonian only. This is a collection of some of the works by members of the neo-Romantic literary group founded in 1905 called "Noor-Eesti" ('Young Estonia'). These texts are available courtesy the archives of the Estonian Literary Museum and are viewable as scanned facsimiles or images. Click on "Ajakiri 'Noor-Eesti'" or "'Noor-Eesti' albumid" to the left in order to see scanned images of the books' contents.

Perseus Project for Latin & Ancient Greek
texts(Sprachprofi)(Latin, Ancient Greek)

Sprachprofi wrote:

with on-click dictionary and some public domain translations

PIM.hu - Digitális Irodalmi Akadémia(Chung)(Hungarian)

Chung wrote:

This is an online collection of Hungarian literature mainly from the 20th century from the Petõfi Literary Museum. It is navigable only in Hungarian despite giving the impression at the top right corner of also being navigable in English or German. To see an online text, click on the name of an author (list of names under the heading "A Digitális Irodalmi Akadémia tagjai" ('Members of the Digital Literary Academy') and then click on the left menu "Digitalizált szövegek" ('Digitalized texts'). You will then see a list of works for that author which can be viewed in .html)

Polska Biblioteka Internetowa(AniaR)(Polish)
Navigable in Polish. Click 'Katalog', a book title, and then select your page number using the 'Nawigacja' box on the left.

Old Stories of Japan(AniaR)(Japanese-English)

Project Ben-Yehuda(Chung)(Hebrew)

Chung wrote:

This is a Hebraic counterpart of Project Gutenberg and is navigable in Hebrew only. Texts are viewable in .html.

Project Gutenberg(English/multilingual)
A large multilingual etext site. Primarily English.

Project Runeberg(urubu)(Scandinavian)
A collection of Scandinavian books. Most are in Danish/Norwegian/Swedish - especially Swedish, though a few are in other languages (Latin, English, German, Finnish, etc).

Raamatukogu sisukord(Chung)(Estonian)

Chung wrote:

Navigable in Estonian only. This is another collection of Estonian texts. Almost all of them date from the 1920s and are viewable in .html

Saganet(Chung)(Icelandic)

Chung wrote:

This is an online collection mainly of Icelandic sagas by the National and University Library of Iceland, Cornell University, and the Árni Magnússon Institute. Some texts are still not available for viewing. Viewable texts are presented as digital images. The site is navigable in English or Icelandic.

sefer-li(Nocturne)(Hebrew)

Nocturne wrote:

Tons of illustrated children's stories in Hebrew, downloadable in PDF format for free. It's a veritable treasure trove for easy reading materials in Hebrew.

SKS:n digikirjasto(Chung)(Finnish)

Chung wrote:

Part of SKS (Finnish Literature Society's) website is navigable in English, Finnish or Swedish but its collection of online texts is navigable in Finnish only. The collection has some Finnish literature from the 19th century that can be viewed in .pdf, scanned facsimiles or .jpg. To see the books, click on "SKS:n digitoidut teokset" ('SKS' digitalized texts'), and then click on "Kaikki teokset" ('All texts') to get a list of the texts that can then be read online.

The Latin Library(Sprachprofi)(Latin)

Tutvustuseks - Kreutzwaldi sajand / Eesti kultuurilooline veeb(Chung)(Estonian)

Chung wrote:

This site is navigable in Estonian only. It's a collection of online texts including that of the national epic, "Kalevipoeg" available either as scanned facsimiles or in HTML. Books are under "Rammatud" while the national epic is under "Kalevipoeg".

Ukranian Literature(Chung)(English)

Chung wrote:

Navigable in English. This page contains two collections of Ukrainian literature in English translation. While it may not be useful as authentic Ukrainian material, it may have some use for people interested in Ukrainian literature but whose command of Ukrainian is too low or negligible.

UVa Library Etext Center: Japanese Text Initiative(AniaR)(Japanese)
Legal; not redistributable.

Wikisource(OlafP)(Multilingual)

Wirtualna Biblioteka Literatury Polskiej/Virtual Library of Polish Literature(Chung)(Polish)
Polish literature. Chung notes that the site is navigable in English and Polish.

Zlatý fond denníka SME - Najväčšia elektronická knižnica slovenskej literatúry(Chung)(Slovak)
Chung notes that this is only navigable in Slovak.

Sites which are more legal in some countries than in others

Project Gutenberg Australia(AniaR)(largely English)
Works published before 1955 are public domain in Australia. Works published between 1922 and 1955 may or may not be public domain in your country; use your own judgment.

Collections of etext sites

Free e-books: World - Other Languages,Regional and National(Sprachprofi)(Very multilingual)
If you can't find books in your target language elsewhere, look here. There are quite a few links to ebook sites, including ones for Hausa, Indic languages, Apache, Burmese, etc. More common languages such as Korean, Japanese, Italian, German, Serbian, Arabic, etc are also well-represented.

UNESCO libraries portal(Multilingual)
Links to 173 digital libraries, from all over the globe. If you're looking for links to Palestinian poetry, children's fairy tales in Thai, or 19th century Azerbaijani literature, you're in luck.

Particular works/authors

fanatic wrote:

I like the LR Perry Mason books which I have mainly in English/Swedish.

News sites have been moved to a new thread.

Edited by Volte on 28 June 2010 at 8:32pm
14 persons have voted this message useful

urubu
Pentaglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 6604 days ago
49 posts - 72 votes

Speaks: German*, Dutch, Portuguese, Indonesian, English

Message 2 of 35

02 March 2010 at 9:31pm | IP Logged

Dutch:
Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren

Italian:
Liber Liber - Progetto Manuzio

Scandinavian Languages:
Project Runeberg

Edited by urubu on 02 March 2010 at 9:39pm
5 persons have voted this message useful

dolly
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5788 days ago
191 posts - 376 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Latin

Message 3 of 35

02 March 2010 at 11:00pm | IP Logged

French:

Ebooks libres et gratuits

La Bibliothèque électronique du Québec

3 persons have voted this message useful

Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6468 days ago
2608 posts - 4866 votes

Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

Message 4 of 35

02 March 2010 at 11:36pm | IP Logged

Gutenberg Project for German - the index is
independent of the other Gutenberg project

The Latin Library

collection=Perseus:collection:Greco-Roman">Perseus Project for Latin & Ancient Greek
texts with on-click dictionary and some public domain translations

A collection of online ebook links for
various smaller languages

[url=http://en.childrenslibrary.org/]Multilingual children's library, including texts
not just in major languages but also African languages and Oceanian languages (e. g.
Niu'an).
5 persons have voted this message useful

Guido
Super Polyglot
Senior Member
ArgentinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6526 days ago
286 posts - 582 votes

Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Catalan, Dutch, Swedish, Danish
Studies: Russian, Indonesian, Romanian, Polish, Icelandic

Message 5 of 35

03 March 2010 at 2:34am | IP Logged

Danish:
Estrup.org

2 persons have voted this message useful

Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7154 days ago
4228 posts - 8259 votes

20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

Message 6 of 35

03 March 2010 at 4:47am | IP Logged

- Czech, Slovak (site is navigable in English)
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~tayl0010/czech.html (works in original)
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~tayl0010/transl.html (selected works in English translation)

- Hungarian (site is navigable in Hungarian only):
http://mek.oszk.hu/

- Polish (site is navigable in English or Polish)
http://univ.gda.pl/~literat/books.htm#books

- Slovak (site is navigable in Slovak only)
http://zlatyfond.sme.sk/
4 persons have voted this message useful

fanatic
Octoglot
Senior Member
Australia
speedmathematics.com
Joined 7144 days ago
1152 posts - 1818 votes

Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch
Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto

Message 7 of 35

03 March 2010 at 7:51am | IP Logged

You can download books and dual file LR books from http://www.franklang.ru/ in around 50 or so languages.

You will find books to download in many languages (mainly European) from http://www.greylib.net/.

I have downloaded many books from both sites. I like the LR Perry Mason books which I have mainly in English/Swedish.
2 persons have voted this message useful

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