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Don Quijote

  Tags: Literature | Book | Spanish
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
glidefloss
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5727 days ago

138 posts - 154 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, French

 
 Message 1 of 3
17 November 2015 at 7:43pm | IP Logged 
Should I start reading Don Quijote? This is a question about my level, not about books. Please don't move it to the books section that no one reads.

Here's what I've read so far:

Harry Potter 1-7 (Audiobooks)
Cien anos de soledad (audiolibro)

Text:

1 Harry potter 3
2 Harry Potter 4
3 Zetas
4 En el camino
5 Estrella distante
6 La vuelta al mundo en 80 dias
7 En Llamas (Juegos del hambre 2)

Currently reading:
8 Sinsallo (Juegos del hambre 3)

If I finished Don Quijote it would put me at about my page count goal. I am way more interested in reading real literature like Don Quijote than the Hunger Games, but the Hunger Games still has a lot of words I don't know. I've read people say that Quijote is even too hard for native Spanish speakers.
1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6462 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 2 of 3
18 November 2015 at 1:14am | IP Logged 
I once bought the complete work, and it wasn't the one volume thing you normally see - I remember it as being in many volumes and somewhere between 20 and 30 cm thick. I realized that I wasn't going to waste hundreds of hours on reading it so I threw it away somewhere in the mid 80s. But to get an impression of the style and level I checked the version at Gutenberg, and I found it surprisingly easy for a book of its period /the early 17. century), and I wonder whether this really is the original text. But Gutenberg.org should be a a reputable site where you can expect to get the real stuff.

Edited by Iversen on 18 November 2015 at 1:16am

1 person has voted this message useful



shapd
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5908 days ago

126 posts - 208 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Modern Hebrew, French, Russian

 
 Message 3 of 3
18 November 2015 at 11:07am | IP Logged 
The language itself is not too difficult, less so than Shakespeare because it is not
consciously poetic, though there are many old forms which are not used nowadays. For
instance, words which now start with an h are often still spelt with an f. The more
serious problem is the use of many words which refer to concepts which are not often used
these days. How many English words do you know concerning horsemanship or armour?

I suggest you use a bilingual translation and see how you get on. You can ignore the more
technical terms until they sink in by osmosis. A good link is
http://mgarci.aas.duke.edu/celestina/EDICIONES-BILINGUES/ING LES/DQ-1-01.HTM

I certainly would not let it influence your spoken Spanish or you will get some very
strange looks.


1 person has voted this message useful



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