Ask HN: Have you learned a language to read a book in its original language? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have you learned a language to read a book in its original language?

6 pointsjdale277 comments

Like the title says: Have you learned a new (natural) language specifically in order to read a certain book in its original language?

What was the book (and language)? Was it worth it?

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More of an inspiration, but when I needed to choose a language in high school I chose German partly because it was the original language for The Neverending Story.

More than a decade later, I finally read the book all the way through in the original German. Was reading The Neverending Story in German worth learning the language on its own? Almost certainly not. The only differences between the original and the English translation were:

* One sentence was less ambiguous. * One of the characters sounded more sexist. * The events took place on a different holiday.

On the other hand, along the way I ended up studying with the best German high school teacher in the state when most of the other language teachers at our school were mediocre. They not only taught me German, they taught us how to enjoyable and deeply learn a language. I got to study abroad in Germany, make friends from several countries, and read many other books and newspaper articles in German. Learning German was definitely worth it, and my fancy copy of The Neverending Story in the original German sitting on my bookshelf was a nice piece of motivation when I felt like abandoning the project.

Reading Shakespeare in the original Klingon version was worth learning the language I'd say, so many subtleties got lost when translating his works to English.

Jokes aside, I (really) learned English by reading Douglas' Adams "The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy" series. I still have the complete edition paperback and it's probably the only book I possess that I've read from start to finish at least three times. Which says a lot since the 5 individual books are more than 1.000 pages together. Well, writing about it here I'm thinking I should start another read-through.

I also enjoyed reading Argentinian fiction once my Spanish was good enough for it, e.g. Adolfo Bioy-Casares or Julio Cortazar, which were surprisingly accessible (Borges was really painful in comparison).

I do magic as a hobby. And, even though I had spanish classes in highschool, and live in Brazil, I've never looked into the spanish language with much interest. However, as I dove deeper into the magic literature, my style and artistic lean were tilted towards the Spanish magic literature. Even though I've read a few english translations, I picked up a few Tamariz's books and some other magicians in the original editions, and I found it very pleasurable. So much that I went back to study the language just to read those books properly.

No, but I get the sentiment. I wanted to learn Spanish to read Borges and Cortazar. I gave it a try anyway and read Casa tomada by Cortazar. Understood most of it, because I know Italian, but it’s not tha same thing as knowing the language. I’m glad I know Italian, so I can read Calvino and Buzzati in their original language.

I would never do it for a singular book but I did learn Japanese because I was into manga and anime like thousands of people. Now I have experience living in a foreign country, Japanese friends and I read manga I bought in Japan on the train to work every morning. Learning a language to any level that is useful will usually take you at least 2-3 years if not more depending on the language. Japanese was pretty hard. Took a long time. So yeah, it will change your life dramatically in ways that are more beneficial than just reading a book simply because your whole life will be pulled in a slightly different direction due to the amount of your attention you're putting towards this one thing over many years. However, if reading one singular book is your motivation I find it unlikely that you'll achieve it.

Maybe tangential.

I learned English specifically to read electronic programming manuals and references (mostly txt’s and ng’s, infinite respect to Ralf Brown and co). My school only taught German, so I just took a thick dictionary and started translating, word by word, all the files I had. Here I am now, never learned it at any official institution. Discovered most rules and idioms naturally much later and only maybe 10 years ago began to understand songs and speech in general (youtube helped immensely).

Was it worth it?

It defined the course of my life.

Well if you want to read a book in its original language, it’s mostly because some idiosyncrasies don’t always translate easily, right? Learning a new language to the point where you get its idiosyncrasies will require a lot of time. Just to read one book? That doesn’t make much sense to me.

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