What do you read in "other" languages

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Oh yes, I'm well aware of that, but I don't know who it appealed to. It makes me cringe to watch it . I suppose some people must have liked it, as you say.

People want to be entertained and not think for themselves. Jokes must be obvious and not too deep. It's also why I don't like those American comedies (usually, there are exceptions). They are so over the top that the "joke" is shouting itself to you.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Oh yes, I'm well aware of that, but I don't know who it appealed to. It makes me cringe to watch it . I suppose some people must have liked it, as you say.

Some of his shows are "cringe worthy", but there are some really good parts in there. You probably turned it off too quickly,.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Some of his shows are "cringe worthy", but there are some really good parts in there. You probably turned it off too quickly,.

One of the advantages is that the skits were so short that if you don't like one, another one will come along quickly.

But, yeah, when people say "British Humor," they are usually thinking of a particular type of comedy that includes Monty Python but that does not include Mr. Bean or Benny Hill.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

One of the advantages is that the skits were so short that if you don't like one, another one will come along quickly.

But, yeah, when people say "British Humor," they are usually thinking of a particular type of comedy that includes Monty Python but that does not include Mr. Bean or Benny Hill.

Maybe Monty Python but I am more thinking of Wodehouse, Three Men in a Boat and Yes, Minister.

[James_Wilde]

I read in Swedish if a) that is the original language of the book or b) there is no English translation (from a third language) of the book or c) I can't be bothered waiting for the English translation.

I read in Icelandic because a) I think it is the most beautiful language I know and b) because my son sends me the latest book by Arnaldur Indridason every Christmas.

I read - very rarely - in Norwegian because sometimes you just have to struggle with the language if it's the original language of the book. Like Sigrid Undset's 'Förtällingen av Vigdis og Vigaljot' (with Swedish equivalents of the Norwegian letters).

I read - also rarely - in German because I don't want to admit to my wife, a teacher of German and English, that I've forgotten my German.

I do, however, write in English nowadays.

[kaleissin]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Sapkowski's witcher is (in contrary to English) already completely translated too.

Can't buy it for Kindle though since I don't have a German address and a German credit card/bank account.

That's what annoys me the most with ebooks really, only getting to buy the "international ebooks" from amazon.com If they are physical I can buy them from anywhere but if I wanted to buy physical books I wouldn't hang on mobileread now would I?

Hm, is all of Karl May's stuff ebookified?

[Billi]

I don't know if exactly all, but very much of his stuff is.

We have quite a lot of his books here in our MobileRead library, another useful link could be this:
http://www.karl-may-gesellschaft.de/...mlit/index.htm

[Polyglot27]

Funny to see Karl May mentioned here. I met a German traveller on the 4 day 4 night train journey from Teheran to Istanbul in 1972 who told me about him and had wanted to read him ever since. Now that I have found him in ebook format maybe I can finally do it.
When I first arrived in France, I started reading all the Arsene Lupin (a gentleman thief who is the perfect anti-Sherlock Holmes) books I could get my hands on. It is in an antiquated style but still helped me with my French vocabulary stock. I hardly read books in French nowadays.
These days, I read mostly non-fiction in English. That is 80% of my reading.
For fiction, I love the detective stories set in samurai Edo by the Japanese author Ikenami Shotaro 池波正太郎。I have read all 16 volumes of his Kenkaku shobai 剣客商売series, and the 7 volume Fujieda Baian 藤枝梅安 hit man series. I am now on volume 6 of his 24 volume Onihei hankacho 鬼平犯科帳 series。
I don't read very much in Chinese anymore but I used to enjoy Sanxia wuyi 三侠五义 and its sequels. They are adventure stories like the Three musketeers with ninja like characters and lots of kung fu action.
Kumabjorn mentioned: "That sounds interesting. Could you provide some examples? The reason being that 漢字 is Chinese incorporated into Japanese. Seems to me they would just imoprt back old Chinese expressions, or are they using characters to express words like kimoi キモい and ikumen イクメン?"
These are words written in kanji created by the Japanese and reimported into Chinese. Words like bento 弁当 (meaning lunch box) or 大幅 pronounced oohaba in Japanese but now used in Chinese and pronounced dafu (meaning large scale). A bit like the way "au paire" has been reimported into French from the English.
Talking of linguistic coincidences of words sounding and meaning the same in Finnish and Japanese. How about this. The common word in modern Turkish for foreigner is Yabanci (i without the dot) with yaban meaning wild or savage. In Japanese Yaban 野蛮 is a Chinese borrowing and means the same thing. How about that.

[Freeshadow]

Another of such strange coincidences is "stranger/alien":

jap. gaijidin
Yiddish: goj
Romani: (m) gadjio

Isn't the fact that it's specifically the word for "not one of us" strange? Have a gin-tonic while you think about it...

[Polyglot27]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Another of such strange coincidences is "stranger/alien":

jap. gaijidin
Yiddish: goj
Romani: (m) gadjio

Isn't the fact that it's specifically the word for "not one of us" strange? Have a gin-tonic while you think about it...

I don't want to be a kvetch but the Japanese word for foreigner is gaijin (to rhyme with guy jean) and the Yiddish word for non Jewish male is normally spelt goy in English. So the only letter in common is g. In that case why not argue that the English word guy is another coincidence?

[Kumabjorn]

On the topic of being a kvetch, the Japanese word gaijin (外人) is actually an abbreviation of the more formal and correct gaikokujin (外国人) and is by some considered a derogatory term. Of course the real derogatory terms for Westerners are keto (毛唐) and nanbanjin (南蛮人) or Southern Barbarian because they approached Japan from Taiwan and Indonesia, even though they originated from Portugal.

[andy1m]

I read Indonesian (bahasa Indonesia), English and Mandarin books. But most my books are in English.

[Namekuseijin]

I read in english, spanish, italian and portuguese. :-)

sadly, french is kinda alien.

[slussen]

Although there's a thread warning because of the date, I'll proceed here anyway.
I like to read Swedish, French and Spanish, mainly nineteenth and early twentieth century literature, but I'd also like to find time for German and Italian classics as I have some command of these, especially the former.
I wish Kindle would provide an Icelandic dictionary too (built-in, as it were) because I'd love to refresh my reading of the sagas. Two of the papers I had in my external Scandinavian languages degree at London were in Icelandic.
Good to see that they have provided Chinese and Japanese for the Paperwhite. And I suppose you can add them to the Touch.

[Kumabjorn]

They are available in the K4NT at least, and also the Kindle apps for Android.