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How well does Spanish "age" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4866 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 8 10 August 2011 at 6:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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When I'm looking for reading materials for learning Spanish, how concerned do I need to be with the age of the texts? I know that English books written 100 years ago sound a bit odd or quaint; books written 200 or 300 years ago are definitely dated, and Shakespeare is, well, positively Shakespearean.
How is Spanish in this respect? Should I keep my reading limited to things written 50 years ago or less, or can I stretch a little further back than that without the risk of learning a brand of Spanish that sounds "off" to modern ears. (Of course I'd like to read Don Quijote and Lazarillo de Tormes anyway, but only after much more experience.) --gary 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5047 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 2 of 8 10 August 2011 at 7:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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Incidentally, in addition to how modern or how dated the language of 50-10-200 years is, it would be interesting to know how 'hard' the classics of Spanish literature are to read compared to a regular modern Spanish detective, romance or mystery novel.
What I mean is that some classics (even modern ones) like Joyce, Falkner, Pynchon, Lawrence are more difficult to read than regular (also modern day) prose like King, Koontz, Salinger, Rand, etc, which is probably one of the reasons why they became classics anyway, but that's beside the point. Is it even worth starting reading with classics or should I stick with nonfiction and leave literature to the advanced stage? So if any fiction fans would care to point out from experience which of the classics are easy, medium, or hard, it'd be appreciated (here's some authors I pulled off the Internet): Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cervantes, Laura Esquivel, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Jorge Luis Borges, Isabel Allende, Federico Garcia Lorca, Roberto Bolano, Pablo Neruda, Lope de Vega, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Camilo Jose Cela, Sandra Cisneros, Julio Cortazar, and any others you care to venture. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| labailaora Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4763 days ago 1 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Galician, Catalan, Basque, Portuguese | Message 3 of 8 11 November 2011 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I see that this topic has been idle for a while, but I thought I'd go ahead and answer anyway, just in case someone is still
interested... 1. Modern Spanish has been relatively fixed since the Golden Age, so I would say you can probably read anything from the 19th century onwards without endangering the modernity of your Spanish. Of course there are differences in phrasing which, as you say, will sound "quaint" or outdated, so I wouldn't go picking up your everyday dialogue from the Romantics, but there's no reason you couldn't read Larra, Galdós, Machado, or Unamuno alongside more contemporary authors. The vocabulary and grammar haven't changed at all, and minor punctuation (such as "fué" and "ó") only slightly. However, medieval and Renaissance Spanish are much closer to the modern than their English counterparts are to modern English, so if you ever decide that you'd like to tackle some of the early literature (Don Quijote or even before!), it's nothing like reading Old English! 2. Regarding the difficulty of "classics" in Spanish, it depends - authors like Borges, Neruda, and Lorca are very challenging to read in the same way that Joyce or Faulkner are challenging, while Cervantes is easier to grasp but requires a much greater knowledge of Golden Age Spanish, which makes him unsuitable for the inexperienced reader. The same can be said of Lope de Vega. Of the list of authors mentioned above, Isabel Allende and Laura Esquivel are what I would consider "very easy" - their novels, literary merit aside, are essentially a straightforward combination of historical romance and adventure stories. Pérez- Reverte and Ruiz Zafón are on a similar level, though if you're planning to read the Alatriste series, there's a lot of quite specific vocabulary relating to military endeavors and 17th century cultural phenomena. García Márquez is pretty easy to read for being one of the "greats", and the same can be said of Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa. (Although Sandra Cisneros would be especially easy, because she's a Chicana author who writes primarily in English!) To answer your other question, I don't think it can ever hurt to start reading the "classics", as long as you don't dive in at the deep end and get over your head. My recommendation would be to start off with a short story collection or two, and the "easier" Latin American greats are very good for this: in particular, Allende's "Cuentos de Eva Luna", Cortázar's "Final del juego", or a collection of García Márquez's stories (there are several). 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4866 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 8 11 November 2011 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you very much for your wonderful suggestions and advice. I really appreciate it. I started with the Harry Potter novels in translation and then went on to a translation of Alice in Wonderland. At first, when I started the first Harry Potter novel, I struggled with every other word. Then, and I remember this clearly, on page 67 of the first novel I suddenly realized that I was no longer struggling with the language, but that I was actually reading for pleasure and enjoying the story. The fact that it was in Spanish had taken a back set to the fact the the story was engaging. I was browsing in a bookstore and picked up La Reina del Sur by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, which I'm going to try next. Just paging through it it didn't look too far beyond my level. Then I will try to tackle the books and authors that you mentioned, perhaps saving the really old ones for later, when I have a bit more experience under my belt. Thank you. --gary 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 5 of 8 11 November 2011 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
Medieval Spanish is Old Spanish, which does have some differences. The difference between Old Spanish and modern is like that of Middle English and modern English. So you are right the drift has been far less in Spanish, but when you get to before 1500 it starts getting a bit removed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Spanish_language Of course, there is not a ton of material from before the Renaissance. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| IonoI Newbie Andorra Joined 4762 days ago 1 posts - 3 votes | Message 6 of 8 13 November 2011 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello everybody! This is my first comment in the site! I truly hope it is the first of a thousand of them!
Well, being as I am a native Spanish speaker let me make some suggestions: -First of all, I believe that it's important to decide if you want to learn Spanish as a practical resource just to communicate with Spanish people or, on the contrary, if you want to master it to seek into Spanish history. If you just want it to communicate with us, I don't think you should start reading classics as they are hard even for native readers. For example, I don't know anyone who has read "Don Quijote de la Mancha" (the original book, not the children or the summarized editions) before being around 30 or 40 years old. These books contain some words that the most of us would find it weird to be used in conversation, even at university. -My advice? As you want to communicate with Spanish people you should try to read the same books they do. Where can you find these books? You have a list of the best-sellers in Amazon.es http://www.amazon.es/gp/bestsellers/books/ref=sv_b_3 that will help you. Which kind of book you read it's up to you, but I would recommend you to start with any Arturo Pérez-Reverte's books as they are all written in a easily understandable way, have interesting characters and stories and have a lot of references to Spanish History. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4866 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 8 13 November 2011 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Welcome. I'm fairly new here myself. I hope you enjoy this forum as much as I do. ---
My intention is to be able to communicate, both with the Spanish-speaking people of the U.S. and when I travel to Mexico. Thank you for your recommendations. I have already started Arturo Pérez-Reverte's La Riena del Sur. It is a bit more challenging than the Harry Potter books were, but still within my reach. --gary 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5047 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 8 of 8 28 November 2011 at 7:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting, and hard to believe, even if that's true. AFAIK native Russian and English school curricula cover most significant literature works of all periods. Not that anyone would ever spew out all the weird words that one could find in them in any context, be it casual conversation or university level literary discourse. So it's surprising that's not the case with Spanish, though perhaps you're holding me to a higher standard of historical and linguistical authenticity. I want to learn Spanish primarily for reading and for the culture, but not at the expense of not being able to communicate (as in the Modern vs Ancient Greek difference). As such best-sellers are fine, and I'll probably try a few as a language learning tool and for fun, but that's missing the point somewhat. Thank you for the answer though.
@labailaora, Thanks for not skipping past and taking the time to answer an old post and for taking the time to make such a detailed answer on the language of Spanish literary classics, made for a very good note on my Spanish lit read list, I'll definitely keep that in mind as I try to learn. Not yet up for most of these classics but with a few more easier books, I'll have a good place to start. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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