Books

[Pedrito]

Very easy. Spoken is a different thing but I listen to loads of stuff on Youtube to get my year accustomed. Tricky at first but you get used to it. I'd say the main issue people would have is confusing the 2 languages to be honest.

[blessed1]

The Elementals by Michael mcdowell. A load of boring shite.
Has anyone ever read any jonathan aycliffe books?
Id highly recommended one called naomi's room. One of the best ghost stories I've ever read and it's genuinely scary.

[O Drighes]

Portuguese is my first language, so while I read English-written books in English, I rather read books from certain languages in Portuguese. Said that I have been re-reading Nietzsche in English now and it is so much more powerful.

I've never read Coelho's books, but The Alchemist is for sure a lot easier than Brazilian and Portuguese classics as Machado De Assis and Fernando Pessoa respectivily.

Give João Antônio or Nelson Rodrigues a go, their novels are full of street wisdom, which is pretty much where Brazilian sense of humour lies on anyway. As for Portuguese books maybe try Jose Saramago, "Ensaio sobre a cegueira" (translated as "Blindness", same as the film) is great. You'll probably find it quite different since he masters using extremelly long sentences (I mean page-long).

As for reading in Portuguese knowing Spanish, it really depends on your knowledge of Spanish. I can easily read better Spanish (I don't speak it) than listen to it, but I've never tried reading a whole book in Spanish myself to be honest.

[Caomhaoin]

I speak fluent Spanish and can read it easily.

I heard a group of people at the next table in a bar once speaking a language I couldn't even identify it's family let alone the specific language, so I asked them where they were from. I was amazed when they said Portugal. Brazilians are far easier to understand as I've discovered.

[O Drighes]

I speak fluent Spanish and can read it easily.

I heard a group of people at the next table in a bar once speaking a language I couldn't even identify it's family let alone the specific language, so I asked them where they were from. I was amazed when they said Portugal. Brazilians are far easier to understand as I've discovered.

The European Portuguese accent sounds like Slavic languages to non-speakers as they tend to stress fricative sounds.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Reading Dostoevsky's short novel THE ETERNAL HUSBAND this weekend. The man was just second to none when it comes to developing troubled characters. Reading it in Portuguese though, Russian and French translations don't work well for me in English as they dismiss a lot of the diminutives.

This is a really interesting point which I never would have considered. First things first, The Eternal Husband is a wonderful little read; it almost feels like a study in preparation for larger works that would contain a host characters developed to the same extent. Now, apart from a few quotes and extracts in English here and there, I've only ever read Dostoevsky in French, after I moved over here, because he was referenced regularly at university, both by lecturers and classmates (one of whom just defended his thesis on Dostoevsky, Hegel, and Lenin last month). I started with The Brothers Karamazov and, discovering through that what a Francophile society he was writing about (frequent footnotes saying "En français dans le texte"), I decided French was a better language to read him in than English. But since neither French nor English have much of a diminutive dimension to them, it never even occurred to me that there might be a whole character interaction level missing, as in beyond "okay, he's using her diminutive name here" or "um, what's this character's real name again??" I don't recall attention being called to it either, whereas there were a few places where passages were omitted with a footnote saying something like, "Passage containing a short tale constructed of largely untranslatable play-on-words."

Irish has much more going on with diminutives than French or English, but it would have felt very odd - if good translations are even available - to read Russian literature as Gaeilge. I didn't actually know before today that Portuguese also had a strong diminutive thing going on; will have to discuss with some of my colleagues here.

[Born of Fire]

Since the topic has drifted to languages, any recommendations for books to help a novice improve their Spanish?

[Pedrito]

Probably the best thing you can do is find a translation of a book you've already read in English. Something easy enough or at least at your level. That way you can intuit a lot of words and get the context. I'd do that a good few times before having a go at something like Carlos Ruiz Zafon's book for teenagers/young adults. What you don't want is to be staring at a page and having no clue what the hell is going on like I was recently trying to read Goethe in German. Thick, I should have known better.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Parallel bilingual translations are dead handy too. I have a load of French-German, German-English, Latin-French, Greek-French ones, and speaking of my southern neighbours, just got my first Spanish-French one for Christmas; Fictions by Borges.

[CorkonianHunger]

I've harper on about S Craig Zahler in the film thread but just starting his second novel Wraiths of the Broken Land. Violent Western stuff. So far so good, writes a good scene. Bought a couple copies so me and two mates are reading in unison.

[Born of Fire]

Thanks for the input Pedrito and Shepherd, I suppose a story I'm already familiar with would be a good way to get to grips with context, phrasing etc. Parallel translations would be a great asset there.

[nukeabuse]

Going to jump on this, but let me know if it should be another thread. Have been looking to learn Spanish for a while and have been using Duolingo since before Xmas. It is good for learning words and basic phrases, however it's lacking when it comes to actually understanding the language and speaking it. Would any of you be able to recommend any resources/tips for approaching a new language? It doesn't have to be exclusively for Spanish. The only other thing I can think of is buying a high school textbook

[Pedrito]

Duolingo is only really learning through repitition and I highly doubt anyone would learn a language through it despite claims otherwise. I honestly believe a class with a good teacher is the best way to get started. Instituto Cervantes in Dublin is excellent for Spanish. I went for a year and I improved dramatically in that time.

For self learning you should find a series of some sort that has structure. The Assimil series often get highly recommended by the Polyglots so that might be worth checking out. I listen a lot to people like Steve Kaufman and Stephen Krashen who talk constantly about comprehensible input especially if you are self learning. Kaufman has an app called LingQ which is based on the ideas and I was using it for a while. The idea is you build vocabulary through reading, noticing and working with material that is just a little more advanced than you are. I personally still think some guide book or teacher is very important for the way I learn but these lads are able to speak multiple languages so they must be onto something.

https://youtu.be/oxj5mUYUqDk

[Caomhaoin]

Duolingo is a very good resource, but as Pedrito says it is limited, and even finishing a course will leave you wanting in certain areas. I still use it every morning for 30-40 mins for French, but reading and listening to songs in your target language is an enjoyable complimentary element you can incorporate.

I'm doing a French module at Uni at the moment too and that has helped me immensely.

This might be worth a thread of its own, especially as there seems to be various lads who 'talk foreign' as their native language fiddling about here, my man warhead for example, as I'm learning Serbian (Croatian Cyrillic essentially) and it's always nice to get a few bits of advice. A huge pain in the hole grammatically compared to Spanish or French which are relatively speaking straightforward.

[Carnage]

Lee Child: The Visitor

Bit of the old Jack Reacher to cleanse the palate before getting on to something more substantial, perhaps.