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Super Challenge Recommendations | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4865 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 60 05 May 2012 at 4:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I thought it might be a good idea to have a thread where people can recommend books they've read and movies they've watched, especially books and movies that turned out to be accessible for beginners and low intermediates. This way we can help each other find suitable material for the super challenge.
Let me start it off with: For those of you doing the challenge in Spanish, (and possibly for other languages) I'd like to recommend "Hunger Games". The book is written almost entirely in the first person singular present tense which makes it very accessible to beginning students. The vocabulary is pretty rich, and will require consulting the dictionary frequently at first, but there won't be any "mystery verbs" you can't figure out. Aside from the occasional (vosotros) imperative or subjunctive (both rare) it's all first person singular or plural present tense. It's 384 pages, but the story is engaging and the pages go quickly even for a beginner. This might apply to other language translations as well, if the original English was written that way, which I assume it was. (I've never read it in English) But I can't vouch for anything other then the Spanish. I'm flying through this book and enjoying every minute of it! 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 60 05 May 2012 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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French: Patrick Bauwen's "Monster"
Randomly picked this up in the library because I wanted to read a thriller; I was pretty surprised when I noticed that it's narrated in the present tense and not in passé simple. Of course I can read passé simple, but too much of it still messes up my spoken tenses. Spanish: Tad Williams' "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn" tetralogy in translation. I found the Spanish translation much easier to read than the English original or German translation. If you like fantasy, this might be a good start. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5729 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 3 of 60 05 May 2012 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Spanish: Las Cronicas de Narnia (The Chronicles of Narnia)
I'm reading with the originals next to me, reading a paragraph in English and a paragraph in Spanish. It's a lot of fun so far. I read part of the first book in 5th grade, so it isn't that hard to read. I just got El Hobbit, and I'm looking forward to reading it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 4 of 60 05 May 2012 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Seconding the recs for Narnia and The Hobbit. Relatively easy but far more interesting than most children's books.
Same goes for Harry Potter. And if you like the books, you can use Pottermore too :) Any idea when they might have all 7 books? Hopefully by the end of the challenge:) For Polish, I really recommend Wszystko czerwone!!! So. bloody. awesome! Mission Europe is a nice substitute for a couple of movies. The English accent is horrible though, I'm doing the one for Spanish speakers although I don't understand 100%. Might also do the German one for Polish speakers :))) If you like sports I recommend watching streams online, even if you have it on TV:) Right now I'm watching Chelsea on TV (sound off) and Fiorentina on my laptop. I'll also share a method rec. Don't always aim to read from cover to cover. As the AJATT guy put it, nobody would watch TV if we couldn't flip through the channels as much as we want, rather than "watching things to the end" :) Edited by Serpent on 05 May 2012 at 7:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 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 5 of 60 05 May 2012 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Any language: The Little Prince, e. g.
available here German: * Siegfried von Xanten by Willi Fährmann, a children's book but interesting - it's a retelling of a part of the famous Nibelungenlied (Germanic epic) Dutch: * Leela.exe, a novel I found quite easy Latin: * Historia Apollonii regis Tyri, a novel, really easy as it is one of very few pieces of trivial literature originally in Latin * Caesaris Bellum Helveticum, a comic book version of De Bello Helvetico * Martial's epigrams, easy mostly because they're very short and funny; the verb forms can still be complex * Aesop's Fables, as told by Phaedrus (the Ancient Greek texts are lost, so this is the oldest document there is of them) * Cicero's "De Amicitia", possibly the easiest of the classic must-read texts but still not "easy" French: * anything by Molière (mostly present tense) * L'étranger by Camus (simple sentences but does contain passé simple) Chinese: * "Annas Sommer in Beijing", story in easy Chinese, can read this with ca. 800 characters, knowledge of German isn't necessary though it's aimed at German students of Chinese * if you're not into classic manga / manhua, there are still comic book retellings of well-known episodes from ancient Chinese history, e. g. "耻的故事" * "From Mainland to Mainstream", easy autobiographic novel, and very interesting: it's a language geek writing e. g. about her first encounter with English, her feelings about it, how schools teach it in China etc. * "Confessions of a Shopaholic", relatively easy and available as a parallel text if you know whom to ask * "Mr Ma & Son" by Lao She, relatively easy and available as a printed bilingual book, with almost-matching audio from pingshu8. Edited by Sprachprofi on 05 May 2012 at 11:01pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| RMM Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5227 days ago 91 posts - 215 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Swedish, Japanese | Message 6 of 60 06 May 2012 at 12:33am | IP Logged | ||
I totally agree. I'm reading The Magician's Nephew (Die Chroniken von Narnia: Das Wunder von Narnia) in German right now. It’s not terribly hard, but still enjoyable. (Of course I can’t get my German reading speed up to anywhere near my English speed yet, but that’s another matter.) I first read the Chronicles of Narnia in 6th grade, so there’s another sign of its difficulty level. Last year I read the first book in C.S. Lewis’s sci-fi Space Trilogy for adults, Out of the Silent Planet, in Spanish (Más allá del Planeta Silencioso), using much the same method that you’re using now for Narnia. I read a paragraph first in English and then in Spanish, and by the end of the book my ability to read in Spanish had noticeably improved. I really enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it to others, although it is decidedly more difficult to read than Lewis’s Narnia books. The other two books in the series are called Perelandra and That Hideous Strength (Esa Horrenda Fortaleza). Currently I’m also reading A Princess of Mars (Una princesa de Marte), the first book in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series. This is a fun piece of pulp science-fiction from the early twentieth century. It’s both easy to read and keeps one’s interest up with adventure and suspense. It’s also in the public domain and free online. As far as Tolkien is concerned, I also support your recommendation of El Hobbit (also called Lo Hobbit in Italian and Der Hobbit or Der kleine Hobbit in German, my other challenge languages). I have a feeling by the end of the year when the Hobbit comes out in the movie theaters, there will be a lot of people reading the book. If someone wants something easier than The Hobbit to start with though, I’d also recommend Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham (Egidio, el granjero de Ham). It’s short, though, so it would only count as half a book, and it really isn't at the same level as The Hobbit. I eventually hope to “graduate” to The Lord of the Rings and maybe when I’m really advanced The Silmarillion. If someone wants to avoid translations, I think that Hermann Hesse is a very good legitimate German writer to start off with. His writing style is much, much easier than that of Goethe, Mann, or even Kafka, etc., and his vocabulary is not especially advanced; yet his books and short stories are good. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5009 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 7 of 60 06 May 2012 at 8:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Spanish:
I have started El principe de la niebla by Zafon and I'm going to return to it for the challenge. It is not hard and the beginning looks promising (and reviews claim the rest to be great). Another book I'll surely return to for the challenge is Entrevista con el vampiro by Anne Rice. It is a bit more difficult but doable for an intermediate. French: (or any langage): translation of True Blood books by Charlaine Harris. Hobit is great as well. From originally French books, I would recommend Erik l'Homme's Le livre des étoiles which I enjoyed and it is not difficult. I'm now reading one of Simenon's Maigret detective stories. Grammar is surprisingly simple (I think it may be wonderful for a low intermediate or even higher beginner) and I enjoy the bits of police slang :-) Other author of great, and in my opinion not hard, detective novels is Fred Vargas. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 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 8 of 60 06 May 2012 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Frankly I'm not convinced about reading fantasy novels as a beginner - there are way too
many unusual vocabulary items. Detective novels or even romance novels tend to employ much smaller vocabularies, and the new words you learn are of the everyday, reusable kind. When reading in languages that I'm fluent in, I prefer fantasy novels and historical fiction over other novels, but I don't find them particularly suitable for beginners with small vocabularies. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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