Casting about for some motivation to get on with my German, and someone the other day recommended Goethe's Faust, with the comment that he would consider it worthwhile learning German just to read Faust.

Dunno if he's right or not - I haven't read it yet - but that's got me thinking...

What book do you reckon would it be worth learning English to read? How about French? Urdu?

Have you ever learned a language to read a particular book or author?



I'll start... I think it would be worth learning Irish to read Cré na Cille by Máirtín Ó Cadhain.

And I have learned French - what sorry scraps I know - in order to read a particular 'book.' Many years ago, in a frenzy of shareware acquisition, I accidentally installed a French security app on my programmable calculator (I know...) only to find that (1) it came preset with a default password, unknown to me, and (2) the user's manual was entirely in French. (The word, as I found out after several evenings' hard glossing with a dictionary and Teach Yourself French book from the public library, was "PASSE".)

I'd go for "Catch 22" as a book worth learning English for. Which reminds me I'd like to try and pick up a copy in English here, it's well overdue for a re-read.

I learned French partly through reading - well, that and being immersed in Belgian culture that didn't speak anything else.

In my opinion, it's definitely worth learning French to read the classic comics such as "Tintin et Milou" (Tintin and Snowy in English, Tim und Struppi in German) or "Mortimer et Blake". And also Marcel Pagnol's memoirs of his youth ("'Le gloire de mon père", "La chateau de ma mère" etc.).

German... hmm... need to think about that one. Probably also the (newer classics) like the "Schachnovelle" by Stefan Zweig and such.

I'd like to learn to read Ottoman Turkish so I can read the poetry of the Sultans.

Once I'd mastered that, I'd like to have a go at Persian so I could read Hafez.

But I'm still struggling with German, so all that will have to wait...

I wanted to learn German well enough so that I can read the poems of Rainer Maria Rilke. I was impressed by the rhythm of his words and was frustrated that I could not fully understand them.

I also thought I would read Goethe and Hesse. I tried Glasperlenspiel in German, but it bored me to death. After 6 years, it's still sitting on my shelf unread.

As for English... hmmm... I'm American, so I might suggest something like "Catcher in the Rye", "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac, or "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe, or "The Autobiography of Malcolm X". Just for cultural/historical awareness.

German: not a book but der spiegel. It always seemed more thorough & interesting than the weekly news magazines in english. i always wanted to be able to read and understand all the articles (not just look at the photos & headlines) -now after learning german a few years i might give it a try...

French : poetry by Rimbaud (poetry in French always sounds better than in English, even when you don't understand all of it!)

Chinese : Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms - it doesn't translate into english...unfortunately i cannot read chinese - so i will spend my twilight years learning it so i can read this ancient classic

I did not learn Spanish, but bought a Spanish/English and Spanish/German edition of Pablo Neruda's poems.

The bilingual edition offers lots of help to understand the original.

It gives such a different feeling and understanding when reading something in its original language. An effort quite worth taking.

Having read The White Spider first in English (and read it many times) and more recently in the original ("Die Weisse Spinne", funny enough), this is a book well worth learning German to read. Although I probably found it easier to read having done the English translation to death first.

And after you've read Die Weisse Spinne, read Sieben Jahre in Tibet, Wiedersehen mit Tibet, Mein Leben, read all of Harrers stuff. What an incredible life- and to fit it all into just one lifetime. A really incredible story, and a wonderfully humble writer.

The other books I enjoyed reading in German were, funnily enough, translations from the English original: The Harry Potter books (basically childrens books so easy enough to read in German without getting tired with the effort) and the Agatha Christie books (short books so your attention doesn't wane with effort, easy to follow plots, and much repetition to reinforce the vocabulary). However I've got to admit that as a kid I devoured all the Agatha Christie books in English, so there may well be an element of recidivism in my electing to read them now in German.

French - Les Miserables
Russian - Crime and Punishment

Well, I remember that I spent a lot of time learning English so I could tackle this...





Then, some years afterwards I seemed to spend a lot of time reading The Aeneid,
which of course mean learning latin.

I seem to recall that Janet and John had more fun than Aeneas did.
.

Oh what a joy to find that my Italian had progressed to a level that I could finally read Alessandro Baricco's 'Seta' and 'Novecento' in the 'versione originale'.

Baricco is a contemporary writer and although both tales are quite short, they are beautifully crafted stories of love and loss. What else would an Italian write about??

Seta (Silk) 1997

Novecento (Novecento: Pianist) 1994

You can also find both translated into German and French.

SS

Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle and Patrick Süsskind's Das Parfüm as well as his short story Die Taube is definitely worht learning German for; they proved to me that German can be a very beautiful language.

I'd like to be proficient in Arabic to read the Koran since, linguistically, it's said that this is the most complete piece of writing.

Le Petit Prince HAS to be read in French.

I think he is wrong. I read Faust and - since I chose German besides English as "Leistungskurs" at my Gymnasium - I discussed and read the secondary literature explaining it as well. I find the books (there are two parts, the second one is completely rubbish while the first one is somewhat ok-ish) completely overrated.
And like Shakespeare, Goethe is not really a 20th century guy... so expect his language to be very difficult for non-native-speakers. Try something that is good to read from the language point, I would recommend Dürrenmatt's Physiker (you are into science, right?).

I read, aloud, Michale Ende's "Never ending story" to my daughter at a time when I understood almost nothing of German.

It was beautiful.

I look forward to reading it when I do understand.

Oh right. Good point. Dürrenmatt's Physiker is a play. Theatrical plays are a great intro into how to speak the language. It is written in spoken form.

The only other playwright that imediately comes to mind is Max Frisch. But after reading 3 of his works, I realized each one was about incest. This made me suspicious of many of my Swiss compatriots. Anyone know why this man was so obsessed with incest?

I'd recommend Patrick Süskind's "Das Parfum", great story in the english translation, better in the original German

'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' by John Berendt - wonderful prose; extremely evocative of a place, it made me want to visit Savannah, Georgia.

'Midnight's Children' by Salman Rushdie - he takes the language to a different plane, giving it a distinct flavour.

This thread has inspired me to read more books in Malay. I have, sadly, read few Malay books despite having had my primary and secondary education in the beautiful language.

One Hundred Years of Solitude and D. Quijote de la Mancha for Spanish.

The Maias (nothing to with the civilization with the same name) and Dona Flor and her Two Husbands for Portuguese (actually, any Eca de Queiroz or Jorge Amado).

The short tales of Quim Monzo for Catalan (oddly enough, his work is barely translated to be in Spanish at all. I barely can speak Catalan, but I am quite good at passive understanding. This author was one of the main reasons why I decided to make an effort on listening and trying to make sense out of it.

I feel compelled to point out that it is not worth learning Irish to read Peig.

I am trying to improve my German in order to read "Die Elfen" by Bernhard Hennen, a German must read for lovers of fantasy novels.