How To Read In A Foreign Language - French Novels

A video on why reading in a foreign language is worth the effort and some tips on how to start doing it.

Other Resources:
My new course on keeping a writer's diary:
The Scrapbook Project (Insights on creativity, art, reading):
My playlist on Storytelling:
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My collaborative novel about Melbourne: There's A Tale To This City:

Time-stamps:
0:00 Why Reading In A Foreign Language is Worth It
3:14 Acquire A Basic Understanding of The Language
7:34 Don't Look Up Every Word
11:14 Use An Audiobook As Reading Aid
13:45 Conclusion: Take The Raincoat Off

[rayssacabral]

It's not easy to read in your target language, specially if you're an avid reader in your native language; because it's frustrating to not being able to read as fast as you do in your native language. It's quite challenging, but it's a great way to learn the language more deeply and access resources that weren't translated yet (or that won't never be).

[AgustinaDGodoy]

this is so true! my native language is Spanish but once I had a decent level of English and I re-read some of the Classics, it blew my mind. Now I cannot read translations (because God no) just as you can't read Cortazar or Mistral in English- a lot of other layers like idioms, culture & history make more sense in its original language
P.D: rn I'm reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman and man! it's a whole new level for English narrative

[SS-witm]

Bilingual readers are perfect for intermediates afraid to read complicated novels. Allows you to dive into a difficult book and you can spend time on every paragraph going back and forth until you understand the French and the English and how the languages compare or not. Difficult sentences are worth reading multiple times anyway. For French, i especially love the Dover, Pocket, and Folio bilingual books.

[Hud_Adnan]

I read english ( my second language) sometimes it’s difficult not because I don’t understand it just because I read slower than normal but yes it’s a whole new world and your video is beautifully presented.

[paulac.munoztorres]

I could listen to your voice all day, it’s so calming yet stern. Keep up the videos, please, I recently re-engaged in this channel and I couldn’t be happier.

[jasminegold]

I've been studying Korean for 5 years and I love reading in it. I read a lot of manhwa 만화 (Korean comics). American comics don't feel the same. I can understand so much more context when I read stuff in the original Korean. There are innumerable things in Korean that just can't translate into English while having the full meaning. Even though I'm not native Korean I understand these untranslatable phrases and words through context and feeling them in my soul.

[heathledger]

I’ve been studying ancient Hebrew for about a year, and it has been difficult to grasp such an old and foreign language. Everything is still strange to me, from grammatical structuring down to how vowels work. But it really is like dipping your mind into entirely different way of thinking, a whole new world that you just got to see with all sorts of different analogies and figures of speech and tonal qualities that you simply can’t directly translate.

At this point I recommend that everyone at least learn one other language, because it really is mind-opening how different languages think so similarly yet so different.

[cherryjuice]

One thing I noticed is, that when I read something translated, they mostly sound ridiculous, but when I read them in the original language, they make a lot more sense. Just like translating a joke.

[nghtfall]

Love the reference to Paterson, such a great film

[tej]

Great video! I've been studying Spanish for about ten months now and have been making my way through the Harry Potter series; it's been incredible! Even though there are SO MANY words I don't know, I'm still able to comprehend everything, partly because I already know the stories so well. Best of luck with your French!

[tictactherevenge]

Very glad that you talk about this, my native language is french and some fiction novels that I enjoyed quite a bit were those of the metro 2033 trilogy. As it turns out, many other novels were written in the metro 2033 universe in russian and polish but none of them have been officially translated to english and only a couple in french. About 10 of them were translated to german however, and I have already spent a significant amount of time learning german, so this was a great reason for me to start reading in german in 2018.

It went really slow at first but it has worked quite well and been really enjoyable, I encourage others who want to do this sort of thing to just keep doing it because it gets significantly easier

[Ozgipsy]

Seriously? That’s impressive. My second language is Spanish and I still haven’t read a Spanish book. I would like to read (say) A Rebours in French.

[lisaharriman]

I'm reading a French gardening book called Cultivez l'autonomie. It is wonderfully written and as a gardener it's an invaluable book full of gardening tips for beginners. Thanks for sharing your experience. I learning French and Italian and I want to learn Greek and relearn Spanish. I love to read so this video really struck a cord. Nice one :)

[niharikatripathi]

your videos are very therapeutic for me, just listening to them.

[axlramirez]

I’m a Spanish native speaker, and I remember the first time I read a book in English, I was terrified, nervous and even anxious; it was in 2020, basically almost two years ago, and from that moment on I never stopped reading in English. You know, it was the best decision ever.
Now I’m reading almost everything in English, even pieces of literature in translation, which is quite good. For instance, now I’m reading All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, which is my first McCarthy by the way, and reading it in its original language is a superb experience, I’m truly enjoying it quite a bit.
And I’m also reading Crime and Punishment in English, Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation, and oh wow! It’s even much, much better than when I read The Brothers Karamazov in Spanish.
I love learning my target language every day, and I couldn’t be happier with my comprehension progress – it is slow, but it is still working. ☺️😁

[nikit.]

Haha I grew up reading Goosebumps and Nancy Drew books!

[leorc]

right now I am reading "the catcher in the rye" by J.D. Salinger to read more things in english (I haven't read in english for a month or so) and It's TRULY something else :)

[nataaalia]

I'm a native Spanish speaker and I barely read in Spanish now. I started reading in english as a challenge, and I loved it. I had already been studying english for about 10 years when I first read a book in english entirely, and I did have some trouble, but since I had prior knowledge, I didn't struggle that much. I started learning french about a year ago, and I felt somewhat comfortable listening to it, so I wanted to try out reading in french, and so I did. I tried with le petit prince but I gave up. I noticed how much it varies when a language is "informally" spoken and "formally" written. I'll probably try out reading in french again, because it will for sure imprive my understanding of the language.

[joreneereads]

I think that translations can be just as amazing as originals, and even theoretically more so, for example the channel Days of French and Swedish used the example of an English author writing about a landscape that is more prevalent in Nordic countries - so Nordic languages have better words for the features being described, but I definitely understand the excitement of reading an original, particularly a classic.

[sivolc]

Thank you so much by your video. I'm from Brazil and I'm learning English. I'm sorry for my mistakes. I'm trying to read as well in my target language, but it so hard.