Read in a foreign language?

[toddwiese]

Do you read in a foreign language? My wife is Dutch and I took some lessons to learn it while living in the Netherlands and I can speak it pretty well, but it takes me a lot longer to read a book in Dutch. I keep having to ask my wife what words mean. I want to keep at it so my Dutch can improve. I just met a guy who wants to read all his books in German, so his German can get better. I'm sticking with kids books currently; I mean really easy stuff.

[gali]

Yes, English.

Good luck with learning.

[npandit]

I knew a lady who learned English from reading books (she only used to speak Spanish), and I really wanted to follow in her example, and start reading books in Hindi, Spanish or Portuguese to help improve my competency in those languages. It is a little frustrating, however, and I didn't go through with it, but now I kind of want to start trying again. When you see things written in another language, you start to appreciate all the different, unique ways with which people can perceive and describe the world.

[thym38]

I'm learning german so I wanted to test my skills. I decide to read harry potter and the philosopher's stone because I know the story very well and I even know a lot of it off by heart. Its very difficult to read in german because there are a lot of words I haven't learnt yet, but I keep a dictionary near and annotate words I do not know, and it does help my vocabulary, but also leaves me a bit confused and with lots of questions for my teacher. Another thing is, its not written literally and they have different expressions in german, so its a bit of a puzzle sometime to work out what a sentence is actually saying

[toddwiese]

Yes, and every language has its words and phrases that aren't translatable. My wife likes to read books in the original language they were written. She gets frustrated with bad translations of books. I'm not advanced enough in Dutch to encounter that problem. Of course I'm only reading kids books in Dutch.

[PashaRu]

I sometimes read in Russian. I don't know every word, but I can usually get the sense of it.

[AmandaR]

I can read a little in Korean and Spanish, though my translation is not always perfect. Working on Italian right now.

[TrishaAnn92]

I only read and speak English but that is an awesome way to learn! Good Luck! I want to learn a new language I might have to try learning that way.

[AmandaR]

Trisha,
It is an awesome way to learn a language, second only to speaking it. You should try it sometime.

[TrishaAnn92]

I definitely will. And it would even be good for teaching my babies to.

[AmandaR]

Absolutely! I was I had started younger because it is supposed to be so much easier to learn when you are young. They should be able to pick it up quickly.

[TrishaAnn92]

They should my oldest is 2 my youngest born is almost 8 months and I have one in the way. They have family that doesn't speak much English but mostly spanish so this would be great for them.

[AnaF]

Yes, in English, French and Spanish (I'm portuguese).

[Jbessy]

Not yet but I'm looking forward to knowing a language well enough that this is practical.

[Winter]

I live in France, so I read books in French to help my language skills. In the beginning, I read kids books and magazines, but that got boring fast. Then, I read contemporary books translated from English into French -- the language and phrasing tends to be easier to understand than books actually written in French. Now I read anything, but some books are still tough, even though I've been here for ten years. I just found a nifty technique, though -- read a book while at the same time listening to the audio book version. This lets you see it written, and also work on pronunciation. As a plus, I've also found that some classic literature is available free in ebook format, and online there are sometimes free audiobooks of them.