Your first book in a foreign language...

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Stawrberry
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Stawrberry » 2010-03-27, 10:38

lu:ka wrote:
Sean of the Dead wrote:I have "The Little Prince" in about 10 different languages, and I think it's a great book to learn a language with. Not the most practical for everyday stuff, but pretty easy and an interesting story. :)



Me too ;) I have it in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek whenever I go abroad I buy a copy of it in the local language, the only place where I couldn't find it is Amstrdam :( so no Dutch copy (yet :))


How about this? :)

lu:ka

Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby lu:ka » 2010-03-27, 13:33

Stawrberry wrote:
lu:ka wrote:
Sean of the Dead wrote:I have "The Little Prince" in about 10 different languages, and I think it's a great book to learn a language with. Not the most practical for everyday stuff, but pretty easy and an interesting story. :)



Me too ;) I have it in Italian, French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek whenever I go abroad I buy a copy of it in the local language, the only place where I couldn't find it is Amstrdam :( so no Dutch copy (yet :))


How about this? :)


I actually thought about buying it on the Net... but buying it in a real bookshop it's a good reason to go back in Amsterdam :D :D :D ... ... ... it's curious how when I was there (between 26th and 30th December 2009) every single bookshop I visited just had no copy of it :(

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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Leviwosc » 2010-05-08, 12:31

My first book in a foreign language was: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen in English. These days I try to read every book in its original language.
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby jas01 » 2010-07-29, 9:18

David Copperfield is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a novel in 1850. Like most of his works, it originally appeared in serial form a year earlier. Many elements within the novel follow events in Dickens' own life, and it is probably the most autobiographical of all of his novels[2]. In the preface to the 1867 Charles Dickens edition, he wrote, "… like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield."
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Śrāmaṇera » 2010-07-29, 9:31

The first English book I read at school was a short story by Roald Dahl called The Umbrella Man.

The first Japanese book I tried to read was 子供ができました (kodomo ga dekimashita) by 吉本ばなな (Yoshimoto Banana).

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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby rusynkt » 2010-08-07, 9:07

I got my first English book when I was three :)

It was a children's book teaching colours, shapes and numbers in English.
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Shiba » 2010-08-12, 6:31

I basically grew up with Afrikaans, English and German books around me, but the first foreign language book I was able to read more or less without a problem was an English book with a story about a caterpillar who becomes a butterfly, when I was six. I wanted to subscribe to a magazine called "Kids' Clubhouse" and I had to prove that I would be able to understand most of the magazine. x)
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Śrāmaṇera » 2010-08-12, 8:22

村上春樹、羊をめぐる冒険 (上)
(Murakami Haruki, Hitsuji o meguru bôken - first part)

I think sooner or later, I'll have read every single book by Murakami Haruki in the Japanese version. Japanese literature is a bit puzzling at times due to the absence of markers we use commonly in Western languages (person, tense...), but it also feels like you are freed from many things that make French (or English, or Spanish...) so heavy. Japanese is like a bird's song, some kind of soft humming whose words gravitate around the obvious meaning without telling you how things really have to be. It's like Japanese novelists never tell the reader what he needs to understand exactly, they only suggest things by giving you elements you need to collect and assemblate to reconstruct the fiction with your own imagination.

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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Ariki » 2010-08-30, 3:49

Legends from the Atolls

It was written by Kauraka Kauraka in Manihikian Maori :-)
Linguicide IS genocide. :)

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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Sebĉjo » 2010-10-12, 21:06

algorrém wrote:The very first was 'The Long Walk', by Stephen King


Great book !
I guess mine was "Thinner" by Stephen King, or maybe "Jurassic Park" by Michael Chrichton.
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Sectori » 2010-10-13, 0:48

The first long thing I read not in English was Ionesco's La cantatrice chauve. The first novel I read not in English was Unamuno's San Manuel Bueno, mártir.
agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Sebĉjo » 2010-10-13, 15:02

Sectori wrote:The first long thing I read not in English was Ionesco's La cantatrice chauve.

Excellent ! :yep:
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Śrāmaṇera » 2010-10-13, 15:06

Funny, some students asked me to help them find a good play for a contest in November. I suggested the 1st tableau of La Cantatrice chauve.

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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Hunef » 2010-11-05, 21:10

It must've been The Wave by Todd Strasser (in English).
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby memet » 2010-11-06, 4:56

Either Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, or The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger; I cannot be sure which one was the first. Unfortunately, no other "first book"s in any other language. Tried to read the Fables of Fénelon (and a few other attempts in French) with the help of a dictionary, but in vain...
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Nero » 2010-11-06, 5:41

My first novel in another language was "Deine Mutter ist meine Schlampe," written by Johann Wolfang von Goethe (after the play by Christopher Marlowe)

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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby KingHarvest » 2010-11-06, 6:57

Which in turn was stolen from Virgil's Irrumpe me, anus.
Most men are rather stupid, and most of those who are not stupid are, consequently, rather vain.
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Nero » 2010-11-06, 22:49

KingHarvest wrote:Which in turn was stolen from Virgil's Irrumpe me, anus.



...Who in turn plagiarized the whole story from Plato's treatise, "φιλέω τὴν πόρνην"

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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby ILuvEire » 2010-11-07, 6:48

Good artists borrow, great artists steal :]
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Re: Your first book in a foreign language...

Postby Nero » 2010-11-07, 19:03

ILuvEire wrote:Good artists borrow, great artists steal :]


:lol: It was a joke actually. Translations are in Red:

My first novel in another language was "Deine Mutter ist meine Schlampe," [Your Mother is my bitch] written by Johann Wolfang von Goethe (after the play by Christopher Marlowe)


Which in turn was stolen from Virgil's Irrumpe me, anus. [Burst in me, old woman]


...Who in turn plagiarized the whole story from Plato's treatise, "φιλέω τὴν πόρνην" [I love the prostitute]


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