Hello everybody!
I only recently returned to the forum - and to reading in different languages in general. Since last autumn I almost exclusively read in my 3 major languages, English, Swedish and German, with the exception of a handfull of books in French, mostly crime novels by Simenon. Only 3 or so weeks ago, I for an unknown reason read a book in
Dutch:Ewald Arenz - De smak van wilde peren. It's a translation from the German
Alte Sorten. No high literature but a nice read and - most important - the language's complexity (or lack thereof) was a perfect match to my Dutch reading ability.
French:At the end of last year I decided to read at least 5 of the chunkers in my bookshelves, all of them with more than 1000 pages. One of those I chose is
Alexandre Dumas - Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo). 2 years ago I read the first 600 pages, so I had about 1000 pages unread which now have shrunk to a mere 300 (still enough for one full-length novel!). I was surprised by the ease with which I now can read it, compared to me struggling with it 2 years ago. I often feel that I'm not progressing in French, but obviously I do! Usually I read a chapter with some checks in the dictionary - not understanding 100%, but I can easily follow the plot - and then reread the chapter in Swedish translation to catch nuances.
Yiddish:Reading
טשאַרלס דיקענס - די פּיקװיק פּאַפּירן (Charles Dickens - The Pickwick Papers). Another one of my fat books, even if this one "only" has 800 pages. But as the German translation which I read again and again (it used to be one of my most favourite books) when I was young has 1016 pages, I decided that it would count nevertheless. Reading 800 pages in Yiddish in one year is quite a challenge for me, but 2 pages and a little bit per day seemed doable, when I decided which books to put on my reading list. I didn't count in that I would neither begin to read it in January nor in February
. I also didn't count in that reading the first chapter would take one hour - PER PAGE!
But so the Dickens' language isn't the most easy imaginable. Check the very first sentence:
The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.
I remember that my sister tried to read the book (in German translation) in her early teens, but gave up halfway through this sentence.
I actually understand, why.
Luckily the language gets easier in the next chapter, so now it takes me about 2 hours to read 3 pages. Guess I won't make it through the entire book this year.
Esperanto:Started reading
Erich Maria Remarque - La vojo returne (The Road Back). It's a sort of continuation of his
"All Quiet on the Western Front", telling about the young men returning home after the end of WWI. I may have read it in the original German in my teens - my parents had several of Remarque's books, and I read all they had - but I'm not sure.
English:Reading
Pat Barker - The Silence of the Girls.