as an 18 year old who has read the english version of harry potter 20 odd times in my youth, this is so perfect for me it's like you read my mind. The french audiobooks are even on youtube! Thank you!
This is interesting, when I went to Spain for the first time about 20 years ago I picked up the Harry Potter series. It was perfect for reading on the bus to and from work because the books are simple with a lot of word repetition, engaging enough but rubbishy enough that I wasn't too bothered about understanding everything all the time. The real benefit for me was that it kept me reading and bridged the gap between university and everyday Spanish use. As I got more confident I moved onto better more challenging authors in translation and Spanish original authors.
Of course we don't learn languages with rich literary traditions like Spanish in order to read translated English young adult novels in them, but doing so can be the bridge to reading Borges, Fuentes, etc., in the original.
@@TruFlyFox I Downloaded them so i can just copy and paste a page into Google Translate and instantly see any words that i dont know translated. Then you can save that word into google and then export them into Google lists to revise later.
Beginning in May of 2022, I will offer virtual options for working with me to improve your skills in reading French, German, Latin, or Spanish literatures, to engage in Great Books discussions, and to provide support for the self-study of foreign languages. If these might interest you, please fill out the application form on my website at alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ If this is not for you, but you know someone whom it might interest, please pass this information on to them.
For series with audio in Spanish I found interesting Game of Thrones series; for Mandarin Chinese I found Temeraire series (from Naomi Novik) quite reasonable to work with. The two classics - 'Anna Karenina' and 'War and Peace' - from LN Tolstoy were translated to variety of languages with audio available and as a bonus: the Russian original is very nice to read.
For me, the best tool for the smoothest transition to reading native materials is TV dramas that you can find bilingual captions for and print out to analyze and annotate. Because you're interacting with native material, but the language will not be as grammatically complex as high literature for instance. Also, it seems to me that actors in dramas speak more clearly than actors in movies. At least in the languages I have studied. And of course, having the visual component helps if you're trying to work out how much you can understand without looking at captions.
Interesting video. I was always dismissive of people constantly suggesting to read Harry Potter, but you make excellent points. I like how you examine it from a purely language acquisition point of view and do it very objectively. I'm sold! Thank you!
Thanks for commenting, and for understanding, and being open-minded to give it a try. As a genre, it is not my cup of tea either, but as I say in the video, the series really does provide a unique learning resource for bridging into reading literature.
Great video with very useful information! Personally, I think that children's books and later short stories are very helpful if someone wants to improve his/her vocabulary. Movies and podcasts are also great. (I still enjoy to look for beautiful Japanese children's books. I have a small collection and although I am old, I still enjoy reading some of them from time to time!)
I've just realized that my Harry Potter collection is smaller than I thought. I have only the first book in 9 languages. I should have at least all 7 volumes in those 9 languages.
It's a pleasure to see you uploading so frequently again. The video topic in this presentation is relevant to my stage of Arabic - I have finished a half dozen manuals and I am ready for more challenging material. To warm up for the HP stage I am currently using a book called Arabic Stories for Language Learners (Brosh and Mansur). Do you know it?
So funny you mentioned Harry Potter! I was myself already thinking of taking advantage of its translation to so many languages. I've found audio versions on RU-vid that I just listen to for exposure to a language.
A very interesting video, thank you. I'm going to try the Harry Potter proposition but perhaps with a different series of books or books by a different author. Here are some books and authors for which translations and audiobooks might be more widely available than others: Game of thrones James Bond Stephen King Lord of the rings Discworld by Terry Pratchett John Grisham Sherlock Holmes Charles Dickens Agatha Christie Rick Riordan
Certainly one can maintain multiple languages doing something similar to this, using any of the authors from the list that you mention, and if you cannot Stand Harry Potter you should use these even for this transitional stage. However, for your first venture away from textbooks and into the territory of authentic native materials, this series does offer something unique in that it is progressive. The first book is aimed at a preteen audience and is about 250 pages long, while the 7th book is aimed at 17 year-olds and is 700 pages long. This increasing complexity should hopefully match your increasing mastery of the language so that when you are done with this, you can now read real native literature, not translations of popular English books. Speaking as the father of two teenagers whom I have seen go through the whole gamut of series for young readers, it really does seem to me that all other authors write pretty much all the books in their series at the same level, so you can only get this progression with HP.
@@ProfASAr Although I heard you say something about the progressive nature of Harry Potter, I did not realise that it was deliberately written that way. In light of your comment, I will attempt the Harry Potter proposition proper first.
Some nice suggestions on reading as a means of boosting vocabulary and overall proficiency, appreciated! Something else that may fit in a similar category is audio input at comprehensible level such as targeted podcasts.
I've been putting into practice this method for about 2-3 years now, reading the series in modern Greek and Japanese, switching between different approaches (only reading, audio, the order of the chapters etc.), and I very much agree with the point you make of treating the books as some sort of lengthy textbook. I've found myself more than once trying to explain colleagues or language tutors the reasons behind reading a young adult's book as my main activity (or rather, one of the main activities), and much of what I throw at them is exactly what you are discussing in this video. As for the topic of books with similar characteristics, I've also tried the New Testament (again, Greek and Japanese), but finding the right audiobook for the right translation (while for the HP books, there's usually only one translation) wasn't precisely easy. I've also tried the "Fables" of Aesop, that I very much enjoyed, but doesn't offer continuity and alas, has a very high frequency on animal names. And finally the "Exercices de style" of R. Queneau , this time with the addition of the excellent translation of Umberto Eco in Italian, and the original in French (there's an hilarious recording here in youtube). If someone is not acquainted with the book, it consists of 99 variations of the same story in different styles, à la Bach. Unfortunately it is the less popular of the four and I wasn't able to find the audiobooks in Japanese nor Greek (except for some chapters read by the translator in Greek). From the pure perspective of language learning, I think Harry Potter is no doubt the best choice; but for those who may not like the story, or for any other reason, those could be some other options to explore.
Thanks for the substantive comment, and for concurring that for pure language learning content-value, there is really nothing else of comparable extent at this level.
I’m definitely going to try some of the shadowing techniques you brought up. There’s always something new to consider when I watch one of your videos. Thank you, professor.
I'd really like to ask for something... could you be so kind to record also the second chapter of Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis? I enjoyed so much the previous one. And of course, I can't guarantee that under the not-yet-existing video with the second chapter I won't ask for the third chapter.
I would love to record the whole book with better audio, but not sure whether to post it here - it seems to be a niche audience compared to my other videos.
Instead of Harry Potter, translated material or simplified novels I am reading books written first in Finnish like Rautatie. They are both simple yet literary and used in ciriculum education for schoolchildren.
I did this too with German and didn't know others did. I guess people agree Harry Potter is at a great reading level for just coming out of the study stage and moving into the input stage
I was thinking about what you've said regarding using short stories. I really enjoy reading short stories, but most of the time I find them more difficult than novels. The reason is probably that in a short story there are not so many repetitions of the vocabulary (that's obvious) but also I think that as they are more concentrated on one topic, they use vocabulary that is specific for this topic. So it happens, that even after reading a couple of longer novels, the story is still difficult. So I prefer to read short stories after reading a couple of novels, not before. Or maybe I should try it again in a "new" language and check if what I'm writing makes sense...
@@Yan_Alkovic Good point. I often take a novel in two languages and go through it line by line reading first in a language I know and next in a language I don't know that well. For this kind of exercise, patience is the key. And regarding short stories, I suppose that they are for me more difficult also because it's often more difficult to find both a translation and an audiobook.
The issue is losing the thread of a narrative. When one first begins reading novels in a foreign language, the first chapter always seems OK, but then the may get foggier and foggier with each subsequent one. Whereas with a short story... it is over, no thread to hold together.
I’ve been doing something like this, but I try to have a few different series or very long books to use that I can find ~3 languages for rather than always the same one.
Certainly it helps to have a variety of texts, but then again this is ideally just a bridging stage and after a series or two of translated texts like this, you should be in a better position to begin reading actual literature in the target language.
I tried to post a comment several times about a website that has a lot information about Harry Potter translations, but the comment kept disappearing. I can add that while many of the translations are easy for someone in the United States to obtain, many of the other translations, if they are available at all for someone in the US, are extremely expensive. It may be surprising that versions in some languages that are not widely spoken, such as Maori and Hawaiian, are currently easy to obtain. I think that it can be interesting to see how translators deal with the extensive wordplay in the Harry Potter books. This is also true of books by Lewis Carroll and Dr. Seuss.
Boy, I don’t think that Seuss or Carroll are good picks for learners because for being children’s books, they rely very heavily on the reader knowing what the language is supposed to be like. On top of that, translations necessarily alter tons of small details and you would lose a good chunk of the comprehension.
You can try to post just the name of the page - not the link. We should be able to google it anyway. I think that when we post a link in a comment, it disappears after a couple of seconds (where "couple" means 2, and it's maximum :-))
@@mmmtmp1 I tried before to say that one can search for "all the pretty books" to find the site with a lot of information about the Harry Potter translations, but even that kept getting deleted. I can try again and see if the comment disappears. I have found that using the words "buy" and "sell" may be enough to cause a comment to be deleted. I have tried using words like "obtain" and "acquire" instead. A few years ago, I saw a page on the internet with a chart of of how names in the Harry Potter books had been changed in about 12 languages, but I haven't been able to find it again. In the Dutch translation, almost every name other than Harry Potter has been changed.
@@tmhc72_gtg22c Thank you! It seems that it works fine now. And I've found it - it's a great site. I think I've seen it some time ago, but I've completely forgotten about it.
I have read a lot of dialogue-heavy books made for students in Spanish. Harry Potter is extremely difficult for me. So much descriptions and verbs I don't know.
That's a hilarious name to call it. If ever you get your academy off the ground in any way shape or form we would definitely utilise that name. Me, personally, I am probably not going to make use of HP specifically, because I find it profoundly unengaging and I have not read it even once. I guess I should look for other works to occupy the same niche, like _A Mysterious Affair in Styles_ or somesuch. The problem would, of course, be to actually find the books in the languages, but I'll try to figure something out. 5:30 About related languages: interestingly, I've had a relevant experience with my Catalan just today, actually. I have been having a really good time reading expositional texts about the history of Catalonia, but today I tried to read one of the project Gutenberg books in Catalan, and after just 5 pages I wanted to put it down because I was not getting into the flow of it at all. Mine might be a special case, though, because I've always had a preference for expositional, educational, technical literature, whereas reading novels or books with lengthy narratives has always been a challenge and a commitment for me. In addition I have not read a single novel since the Norwegian _Bondestudentar_ in the summer of 2019. I guess the solution for me would be to somehow get rid of my fear of committing to a book and just get into it and not worry about not understanding everything or about being committed to the book. This has been a bit of a personal ramble, but I'm glad that your video has gotten me to confront these thoughts and hopefully overcome this hurdle! Maybe I could then apply it to my Hungarian, too, which has lied stagnant for a while now. Thanks so much, Professor!
Id like to be able to read Game of Thrones in French, but I haven't figured out the most efficient way to expand my vocabulary to the point where I can comfortably read the book. How do you suggest tackling that mammoth ?
Basically treat it as a massive Assimil manual. Please view my current videos to see how that is done. Basically, read it multiple times in English first to make sure you know the content, then read the French text with the English text next to it so you can figure out what individual words mean, then shadow French audio while reading the English, then shadow it while reading French, then just shadow it and see how much you understand. Good luck to you!
I don't think that classic literature is suited for learning languages. It takes a lot of time for any work to become classic. During this time the language has changed a lot and the culture too. I've learned English with Alice by Lewis Carrol ( very easy to read - I was 11 at that time), Sherlock Holmes (very difficult and old fashioned) and Terry Pratchett (also so much words, which I didn't know, but contemporary language, I've read his "The Unadulterated Cat" in Russian as a teenager and in my twenties struggled through his books in English - his vocabulary is intimidatingly vast). At the same time I've read "The Picture of Dorian Gray". It is an excellent classic literature, but I don't use and even remember his words: they are too outdated for me.
Hi Professor Arguelles - Firstly, many thanks for all your videos, they are very interesting and informative - I have a quick question, during the "harry potter / transitional" stage do you check the unknown words, and if so when? (e.g. after you have reached the end of the chapter) // Then next question, do you repeat the chapters or the idea is to continue in an extensive manner until you reach the end of the book series? Many thanks in advance, George
The idea behind reading a relatively easy text whose content you are very familiar with is that you should be able to follow the narrative because you already know what is happening, and thereby assimilate lots of new words from their use in context. So I would only check those unknown words that are preventing me from understanding, not all of them. As for repeating chapters, you could do this occasionally if you are starting to lose the narrative thread, but in general the idea is to read through the story; if you find that you need to repeat chapters multiple times, then you are probably not quite ready for this stage yet.
I have language berrier? I have been studying English language more than 20 years. I can speak little and I can understand but I have difficulty in learning language but I can speak little? Thank you
Dear Prof. A.A. I am an ESL from Thailand. I met this clip by youtube recommendation. I took a short free online test and i got level B1 now. I have a question: I already have Thai translation of Hunger games. (But i don't have an English version). Is this series are also good enough for practicing since 3 books is less intimidating and less cost for me. Or you still recommend Harry Potter is still a better choice. Thank you very much.
Graded readers are fine and as Yan has written, also our dear professor has done a video about them, but there is one thing which you should keep in mind while choosing one. It's best to choose something with a thorough dictionary. Nowadays there are more and more readers without a translation (or at best there are some brief definitions in the target language for a couple of words) - those are useless. You need a good dictionary at the back of the book or at the end of each chapter so that you can consult it and do an interlinear text yourself (in case you'll meet some words you don't know... and you will meet them).
@@mmmtmp1 I agree, having a translation is so great, but actually I seem to encounter far more older readers that lack translations. This is the only type of reader that I have been able to find for Old English and Old Norse, as sad as it is.
@@ProfASAr No. If you are completly unfamiliar with his works, I would suggest that you look into The Emperor's Soul, which is a short story by him. I think you'd like it
I am teaching myself German. I'm currently reading a bilingual Sherlock Holmes novel and a bilingual Alice in Wonderland by the same author. I also watch English TV shows and movies dubbed into German with the German subtitles on. These are easier than shows in original German. I know that many people use the Harry Potter series but just I can't. I have never had any interest in Harry Potter. I'm looking forward to tackling Star Trek!🤓 EDIT: if you are a person of faith, invest in a bilingual Bible.
The Bible is the most widespread text in the world available in multiple languages, text and audio. Thanks for listing good options for those who hate Harry Potter.
Hi, I'm a native English speaker, and I've read translations of "Alice" into Spanish, Russian, and Norwegian as part of my language learning. It's a difficult book to translate because there is wordplay on almost every page, so it's always interesting to see how the translators tackle it.
