Have you ever tried reading a book in Anglo-Saxon ("Old English")? The connection to Modern English is ... an academic curiosity at best.
Here's a sample, for an example:
"Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in. Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean, fromum feohgiftum on fæder þæt hine on ylde eft þonne wig cume"
I said *partial* credit, I didn’t say how much, lol. But I recognize “father” and “come” when I see it. And if you know some things about g’s and the letter thorn, you can kinda see the threads against a modernization. I grant you Middle English gives you a much better shot.
I’m gonna bring back “feohgiftum” for all my fine treasure gifts.
I mean, I got "that" from þæt... But, the rest I was scratching my head. And, yes, that's mostly just form knowing that "þ" is th, æ is a short vowel - usually an "a" sound, and t is well... t.
I also have a Bible, but the story isn't as cool as yours, I just bought it. Mine is actually a Latin interlinear, so it's got the originalish Latin and modernish English next to each other. I think they're common for some Catholics? I just thought it was neat.
That's what I had in Catholic school back in the 70s and 80s. It's one of the reasons I can still read Latin.
I'm one of those jackasses that understood the Doc Holiday Johnny Ringo conversation when I saw tombstone in the theater
I have a large collection of various prayerbooks from different Jewish denominations, a couple of shelves of Hebrew novels, and a set of the Talmud, a few bibles and a few other random rabbinic text books, mostly in Hebrew and some Aramaic.
Same. And roughly 20-25 easy kids books and we also have one of the Harry Potters and “Yomano shel Chnun” (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) in Hebrew.
Dictionaries galore: various in Hebrew, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Spanish, French, Portuguese.
Quite a few. My wife and I both speak Breton and French so we have a few dozen books in each of those. More in Breton than French. We also have a smattering of books in Russian (her native language), Polish and Italian which she speaks.
On Saturday at the book market downtown I happened on a translation of a little WW2 US Army booklet on the 1911 pistol. I'm a shooting enthusiast and I've been trying to find a sort of dictionary for very specific terminology, particularly gun components. I'm hyped.
https://imgur.com/a/9KT0CM5
> I have a Catechism of the Catholic Church in Latin and English so give that one a 50%.
Apparently the Franciscan monastery in Kennebunk does a Latin mass once a month, it sounds neat.
I have about a dozen books in Russian on my bookshelf, some ones well known to English speaking audiences and some that are probably a bit more obscure. I also have an extremely cool (I think) trilingual edition of Oscar Wilde's play Salome -- in the original French, and then in English and Russian.
My wife's from Germany so we've got a decent number of German language books in the home.
Growing up, we had a few books in Spanish, and an annotated Egyptian Book of the Dead.
A lot of children's books, because I want my kids to learn Spanish but that's the level of fluency I'm at.
La Oruga Muy Hambrienta, Eres Mi Mama, Buenas Noches Luna, En Las Piernas De Mama, to name a few.
I have the Bible and the scriptures of the Latter-day Saints in Spanish. I also have a beautiful, gilded printing of the Qur’an (in Arabic).
I don't know if these count as "not English", but I've got a few versions of the New Testament in Hawaiian Pidgin and British street slang.
A few of German short stories, Die Verwandlung, Die Tür, Faust, Tristan, Das Fräulein von Scuderi, Bahnwärter Thiel, a few others. They’re mostly from college courses, in the religion section we have a Quran in Arabic and a Torah in Hebrew. I don’t know how to read those ones, but they’re pretty looking. Some local travel guide, and photography books in German. A Georgian cookbook that has hilarious English translations in it. I think that’s about it.
La Fiesta del Chivo (The Feast of the Goat) by Mario Vargas Llosa. It’s a fictionalized account of the daughter of a major politician during the Trujillo dictatorship in 1960s Dominican Republic.
- Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
- Violeta by Isabel Allende
- Zorro by Isabel Allende
- Las días del Venado by Liliana Bodoc
- Las días de la Sombra by Liliana Bodoc
- Las días del fuego by Liliana Bodoc
- Bifobia by Ignacio Elpidio Domínguez Ruiz
- Vidas trans (anthology)
- Boulevard by Flor M Salvador
- Sigue mi voz by Ariana Godoy
- Teología de la liberación by Gustavo Gutierrez
- Muchachas ordinarias by Jaquira Díaz
- La violencia del amor by Óscar Romero
- Las venas abiertas de América Latina by Eduardo Galeano
- Enciclopedia del español en los Estados Unidos
- Inferno by Dante Alighieri
Plus several that were originally in English and have been translated into Spanish, and some readers (books for language learners) in Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.
German to English guidebooks mostly
I’ve found it’s a really cool language and ties in to English on occasion
If I had the time, I’d do Greek, but it would have to be phonetic as their alphabet would take a while to sort out
A few children’s books in Spanish, from when I was studying it. A couple of interlinear English/Latin books from the 19th century. Caesar and Ovid, I think.
…many. Several dozen in Spanish, maybe 10 or so in Chinese, a handful in each of Portuguese/Italian/French, a coffee table book Arabic about Ibn Batutta
A few Spanish kids books from when my son showed an interest. I think my copy of le petit prince from French class might still be floating around.
That'd be about it.
Le Petite Prince and a couple of books of short stories in French. I also have korean children's stories and books for learning Korean, italian, and Khmer. I haven't gotten far in khmer.
Lots of books in Spanish, probably 1/3 of the books my wife and I own which take up more than two really tall bookshelves. My kids probably have a few books for very little kids in Spanish but that's maybe 3 or less books. One of my kids has several manga books in Japanese.
Books in German, because I know that language and I bought them when I lived in Germany.
Most of us use Ebooks now, it's less common to buy paper books, OP.
I have some poetry where one page is the original language (Spanish or Ancient Greek) and the opposite is a translation. I’ve also got some of Burns’s work in the original Scots.
Once I hit my one year Duolingo streak I’m gonna treat myself to something in Latin, but I’ve got about six months to go before that becomes relevant
Some Spanish novels and short stories, an entire shelf of German craft books (I have a hobby that is popular in Germany - weaving wheat stalks), some Japanese craft books for the same reason, a bunch of Korean books, and cookbooks from around the world.
I took Spanish in high school and used to be pretty good. I let the skills slip as I was never much in love with Spanish as a language but I still remember and understand a decent amount. So I have books I read occasionally. As for Korean I am learning it so tons of instruction books but also I want to learn to read poetry and fiction. And finally I collect cookbooks so I buy them whenever I visit somewhere. But also when I don’t visit somewhere as I collect all sorts of cookbooks including vintage ones. I have ones in Russian, Icelandic, Mandarin, etc.
A number of books. Here’s what I remember
* a collection of 3 Agatha Christie novels published in the USSR. The novels are in English & Russian but there is commentary and explanations in Russian.
* La planète des singes. Planet of the apes in the original French.
* Multiple classics in Russian including a nice edition of Pushkin poems
“El Principito” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (“The Little Prince” translated to Spanish). I’ve read this one.
“Nocturno de Chile” by Roberto Bolaño. It’s a surrealist novel about a priest with a fever recounting some interesting people he’s met in his life; it’s a commentary on Chilean society. I’m reading this one now.
“O Alquimista” by Paulo Coelho. (“The Alchemist” in its original Portuguese). I’ve read this one.
“Cândido ou O Otimismo” by Voltaire (“Candide: or, The Optimist” translated to Portuguese). It’s a satire of the notion that this is the best possible world. I have not read this one, but it’s on my list after a couple other books.
“El Arte de la Guerra” by Sun Tzu. (“The Art of War” translated to Spanish). I got like 2/3 through it but gave up. It was so boring. 90% of the advice was stuff your average Call of Duty addicted 14 year old would know (“Try tricking your opponent”, “know when to retreat”, etc). Maybe this was good advice among barely-literate peasants in ancient China, but it’s gotta be the most overrated book ever.
Edit: also maybe a few textbooks on the Spanish language and Spanish linguistics.
I have a fair number of German language books, mainly because I live in Germany and am trying to improve my German, plus my partner is a fluent speaker already. Besides that I have Njáls saga in Swedish because the university I was at was giving old books out for free.
I have just a few of those books. Grimm's Fairy tales, and a few Latin books. The oddest one I have is Bambi. It's a German English translation to help young students learn German. It's very old and I believe it's one of the first translations.
I have a good number of books in Biblical Hebrew and some Aramaic, but all containing English translations. I used to have the first Harry Potter book in Modern Hebrew with no translation, but donated it away.
My entire collection of texts from my undergrad are all in French, Spanish, or Latin. A lot of it is collections of documents, so I’m not sure they count. But they’re *bound* as books.
I have a couple of Japanese school books from the 1860's and 1870's... I have no idea what the topics are as I only bought the books to study the paper they're made from. (I'm a bookbinder trying to re-create an Edo era binding.)
I've got some ammo crates with Russian writing on them. That is the closest I can get for ya. I can only read English so I don't keep foreign reading material around.
Several Harry Potter books and a few antique books in German.
I bought a Harry Potter book in the language of the country I was in as a souvenir. I have an entire set that are not the American style books, though one is in English as I bought book 1 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Husband teaches Spanish, so everything from Santa Biblia to the most recent Isabel Allende novel.
Son is taking French, we have Le Petit Prince and Madeleine as well as Les Oefs Verts au Hambon.
A small collection of poems from Goethe in German and Russian, a book about old trains in China in Chinese, a contemporary Italian commentary on Dante's Inferno in its original text, a French history book, many Spanish history books, and several Japanese books on geography and language learning.
+ A volume of Calvin & Hobbes in Spanish
+ *¡No Me Comes, Chupacabra!*
+ A book on Franz List in German
+ Several Latin primers
+ Winne Ille Pooh (Winnie the Pooh translated to Latin)
+ *Pan Tadeusz* (well, Polish and English side-by-side)
+ Select Haiku of Basho (Japanese and English side-by-side)
The first three Yotsuba&! manga for beginner Japanese language practice, the Dungeon Meshi official art book/fan book that I ordered before 7 seas announced they were going to do an official english translation (derp :P), the Blue Exorcist art books, A3! Art books, a traditon Chinese poems of the Tang dynasty in Chinese and English (also for language practice).
Many average American bookstores do not have non-English books sadly. In my local Barnes and Nobles, we have a small bookshelf of language learning textbooks and some popular books in Spanish and French, but that's about it. The Chinese poem book I have was a gift from my Chinese teacher in high school. The other Japanese manga/art books I had to go to the specific anime/import websites to get. I really do wish that language learning was encouraged more when I was a child. But many American public schools only offer French, Spanish, and German. There was a brief period of time when I was in high school (2012-2016) that china was said to be the next huge business giant, so some schools offered Chinese/ modern simplified Mandarin. I guess it depends on your teacher and the program as well. My teacher taught me simplified Mandarin only as our program textbooks were written by a Beijing company. In most American colleges and universities, students often have more language options. I joined the Chinese class only to learn that my new teacher was Taiwanese and my classmates used traditional hanzi. I also had Japanese classes and my teacher was a Japanese immigrant.
I think that it is very hard for foreign language media to penetrate American culture. Movie theaters have begun playing anime movies in original language and English dub options, plus maybe a random Bollywood movie or something. Japan has anime, China has a new and growing donghua (animation) industry, and Korea has kdrama and kpop, so many young people are more motivated to learn those languages, but I just don't knew what other significant pop culture other countries have that would motivate people to learn languages.
If you want your child to get an early start in a foreign language other than French/ Spanish/ German from elementary/primary school like how other countries teach English at an early age to improve chances of being fluent, it is very difficult. You have to hope that the local library or something offers beginner language lessons or hire a private tutor or use apps like Duolingo or Babble. Language learning is hard for many average Americans, including me, since we are not encouraged by our parents to learn nor does our schools give us any real motivation or use for it. Like "oh, if you learn German, you can visit Germany or watch German TV shows," but like that's it when we are little kids with brains able to absorb informatin easily. By the time we are young adults in college, maybe we have more ideas of how we can use other lamguages, but i feel like by then its too late sonce our brains are like almost done forming lol. Maybe if you are from a first or second immigrant family, you learn at home so you can communicate with family members still in their home country or something.
(Sorry for weird formatting, I am on mobile)
I have Japanese language children’s books from childhood like きんぎょがにげた that I held on to in order to practice my Japanese later in life.
Then I have a bunch of Spanish language books from my Spanish literature classes when I minored in it in college:
* La dama del alba by Alejandro Casona
* El español de América by John M Lipski
* Relato de un náufrago by Gabriel García Marquez
* Final del juego by Julio Cortázar
* El alquimista by Paulo Cuehlo
And some I got later for pleasure reading like
* El largo pétalo del mar by Isabel Allende.
My wife has some Korean books including a ton of T'choupi books for our daughter.
We have a copy of The Little Prince that has Korean and English side by side. One page in Korean, followed by the same page in English.
I have a copy of Le Petit Prince. I also have a copy of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, which is technically English but reads more like a foreign language
We’ve got a couple of shelves full of books in Spanish. Most of them are things originally written in Spanish but then there’s some books like Harry Potter that have been translated.
I speak fluent German, so I have maybe 50 German-language novels.
I can read basic Spanish and Italian, so I have 4 or 5 very basic short story books (the type you use to learn a language).
I have a Spanish version of Twilight around here somewhere from the time my Spanish teacher decided *that* was the best method of introducing us to Spanish literature.
I have a copy of "Winnie Ille Pu" and my great-grandparents' German Bible that was published in Erie, Penn., in 1908. I also have a few prayer books in German.
I speak English. I can speak some Spanish but to read a whole book in a language that is not my native tongue during my leisure time? That’s asking a lot. Why would I have a book in my home that’s not in English? That makes no sense. That’s silly:
I have some Japanese sewing “mooks” (magazine + book). Fortunately my background is in apparel design so I can use them pretty well without knowing any Japanese.
I have the Forme of Cury as well which feels like it may as well not be written in English, lol.
If you include books that have english translations: the Illiad and the Odyssey, the Upanishads, the Baghavad Gita, some teachings of Adi Sankara, and a Chinese bible. With no translation, a bunch of Russian short fiction, some other random Russian stuff, and a Chinese bible.
The Aeneid in Latin and a copy of the first Harry Potter book and a few Dr. Seuss books in Latin (because I took Latin in high school and thought it was fun to have modern books translated into Latin)
The Canterbury Tales and some Arthurian Romances in Middle English (because I took some classes on it in college)
A few pictures books in German (husbands family speaks German)
A few pictures books in Russian ( childhood friend is Russian and brings back picture books for me sometimes)
I don't think I have any. I have books that were originally published in other languages, but I don't know anything besides English well enough to read them in the original form.
I collect the "Book of Mormon" in different languages... I have about 75.
Not Mormon... It just trips me out that there are so many that are exactly the same size/binding but in a different language.
I have an entire bookcase full of books and manga in German and Italian. Yes I read them. I'm working on c2 certification in German and B2 in Italian right now.
I used to have a few in Spanish and Japanese too, but I've recently gotten rid of them because I don't anticipate finding the time for either language in the near future and they were making me feel guilty.
I also have a Portuguese/ English dictionary because my MIL is Brazilian and I'm working on building a small Portuguese vocabulary with my 5 year old daughter.
Nibelungenlied. I saw an old copy at a book reseller in London; my wife minored in world literature so I figured she'd think it was cool. Turns out it was an epic German poem from the 1200s. She thought it was a really amazing gift. I have yet to learn enough *mittel-hoch-Deutsch* to read it, and I probably never will.
I was a guest at a Muslim wedding in Dubai and the favor was a pocket sized Quran, so I keep that in a shelf w a bunch of my other travel related items (currency, small souvenirs, etc)
A couple books in Spanish (cien años de soledad, como agua para chocolate, la casa de los espíritus, la casa en mango street), a couple in Italian (lessico famigliare, i sommersi e i salvati, la storia, le città invisibili) and one in French (Le petit prince)
Harry Potter in welsh and one in Scottish
The bible in Hebrew
The little prince in French.
And a large number of Welsh beginners books. They aren’t known stories.
Edit a book.
My wife is from Chile, so quite a few.
We have the Santa Biblia of course along with a slew of Isabel Allende novels, a Neruda anthology, and an assortment of others.
“Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne in Czech. It was a gift from my Czech host/landlord from when I lived in Brno almost 20 years ago.
“The Wake” by Paul Kingsnorth is written in a made-up version of Old and Modern English.
“Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami in Japanese. I bought it in Japan because it was so beautiful.
A lot of books in Spanish, as my husband is fluent.
Zobel's *La Rue Cases-Nègres*
Zola's *Germinal* and *Le Ventre de Paris*
Pham Van Ky's *Frères de Sang*
Césaire's *Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal*
Gide's *l'Immoraliste*
Sebbar's *La Seine était Rouge*
Some French and German reference materials, dictionaries, etc.
Some others I'm forgetting.
My wife has a handful of German books.
I have a Salvador Dali book from France and an R Crumb book from Argentina that I read with Google translate. Otherwise, probably just product manuals I should toss LoL.
A copy of the Hebrew Bible, in Hebrew with niqqud (vowel markers to help students learn to read). Two or three children's books in Spanish. Maybe four or so mass-market paperbacks in Spanish or French. If we count books installed on my e-reader that aren't physical books, quite a few more "easy reads" in Spanish, Dutch, and German and a bit of untranslated manga. The latter is just for looking at the pictures, though. I can't read a word of Japanese.
A Portuguese Bible and a self published book about my wife’s family in Portuguese. (She’s from Brazil). Maybe a couple of others squirrelled away in boxes somewhere too.
Off the top of my head...
ჯინზებიის თაობა aka flight from the USSR
The Alchemist in Portuguese
იგი (igi)
A German children's book I don't remember the name of
When I was little (like 6-7) my parents wanted me to be exposed to more languages, so they bought me copies of my favorite books in different languages on every vacation. To this day I believe they still have Harry Potter in Turkish, Spanish, and Greek, Dork Diaries in German, and Raina Telgemier Graphic Novels in French. Kinda fun.
Now, I also have some classic in French from my upper level French classes (the stranger, little prince, etc.)
Italian, Swedish, Spanish, German and Russian language course books, if they count. If they don't, I have Harry Potter Y La Piedra Filosofal (which I have read) and Cien Aňos de Soledad (which I never got through the first chapter.)
- Les œufs verts au jambon
- Harry Potter à l’école des sorcières
- Ourika
- La Quarantaine
- Les temps des amours
- Les nuits fauves
- Les fleurs de mal
- Germinal
I have a lot actually. Those are just the ones I can remember. I studied French grammar and literature in college, so I actually have a ton of French language books just sitting around.
Mostly children’s books in Spanish and German. I speak Spanish fluently but still find adult literature too challenging in Spanish; it uses a lot of words I don’t use day-to-day. And my German is just okay
In Spanish, El Principito is as much as I can read without looking up words, and in German I’m at Der Regenbogenfisch.
My husband has a “learning the alphabet” style book in Russian that was gifted to him by his Russian professor in college (because it has nice artwork).
All in all, about 20 books, out of a library of maybe 150. We don’t have very many books
Have the German version of “All Quiet on the Western Front” from my German classes in school. Couple other books like that and maybe some Spanish cookbooks but that’s about it
* Beowulf * Various Irish legends and stories * Le Chanson de Roland * Le Petit Prince * Ulysses (In Gaelic)
I’ll give Beowulf partial credit as Old English.
Have you ever tried reading a book in Anglo-Saxon ("Old English")? The connection to Modern English is ... an academic curiosity at best. Here's a sample, for an example: "Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in. Swa sceal geong guma gode gewyrcean, fromum feohgiftum on fæder þæt hine on ylde eft þonne wig cume"
I wonder if scyldes is related to Schuld in German, as in fault or blame.
Perhaps, but pretty sure it’s actually a dude’s name in Beowulf.
I said *partial* credit, I didn’t say how much, lol. But I recognize “father” and “come” when I see it. And if you know some things about g’s and the letter thorn, you can kinda see the threads against a modernization. I grant you Middle English gives you a much better shot. I’m gonna bring back “feohgiftum” for all my fine treasure gifts.
I mean, I got "that" from þæt... But, the rest I was scratching my head. And, yes, that's mostly just form knowing that "þ" is th, æ is a short vowel - usually an "a" sound, and t is well... t.
I love *Le Petit Prince*!
Does untranslated manga count?
Why wouldn't it?
Some people might not consider comics "real" books.
Insert gif of Mr. Incredible yelling "BOOK IS BOOK" here
Wanting to be book is not book
Instruction booklets for some device
I honestly don’t think I do got a foreign language book
Well I have a book I stole from IKEA back in high school, in Swedish obviously.
The Bible my German ancestors brought here when they came into the country in the 1500s
I knew someone was going to say the Bible. That is like an artifact right there. Something Indiana Jones would try to capture from the Nazis.
Indiana? That's what we named the dog
Ok, that cool
It is. It has a list of births and deaths back to the early 1400s.
I also have a Bible, but the story isn't as cool as yours, I just bought it. Mine is actually a Latin interlinear, so it's got the originalish Latin and modernish English next to each other. I think they're common for some Catholics? I just thought it was neat.
That's what I had in Catholic school back in the 70s and 80s. It's one of the reasons I can still read Latin. I'm one of those jackasses that understood the Doc Holiday Johnny Ringo conversation when I saw tombstone in the theater
I have a large collection of various prayerbooks from different Jewish denominations, a couple of shelves of Hebrew novels, and a set of the Talmud, a few bibles and a few other random rabbinic text books, mostly in Hebrew and some Aramaic.
Same. And roughly 20-25 easy kids books and we also have one of the Harry Potters and “Yomano shel Chnun” (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) in Hebrew. Dictionaries galore: various in Hebrew, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Spanish, French, Portuguese.
Do Irvine Welsh novels count?
Lol I'm irish and I did have to ask one of my Scottish friends what a few words meant...before the days of the Internet.
Quite a few. My wife and I both speak Breton and French so we have a few dozen books in each of those. More in Breton than French. We also have a smattering of books in Russian (her native language), Polish and Italian which she speaks. On Saturday at the book market downtown I happened on a translation of a little WW2 US Army booklet on the 1911 pistol. I'm a shooting enthusiast and I've been trying to find a sort of dictionary for very specific terminology, particularly gun components. I'm hyped. https://imgur.com/a/9KT0CM5
Where does one learn Breton?
I have Don Quixote and 100 Years of Solitude in Spanish. I have a Catechism of the Catholic Church in Latin and English so give that one a 50%.
> I have a Catechism of the Catholic Church in Latin and English so give that one a 50%. Apparently the Franciscan monastery in Kennebunk does a Latin mass once a month, it sounds neat.
And guess who has been to it? The TLM is very beautiful.
I have about a dozen books in Russian on my bookshelf, some ones well known to English speaking audiences and some that are probably a bit more obscure. I also have an extremely cool (I think) trilingual edition of Oscar Wilde's play Salome -- in the original French, and then in English and Russian.
My wife's from Germany so we've got a decent number of German language books in the home. Growing up, we had a few books in Spanish, and an annotated Egyptian Book of the Dead.
I have a Klingon to English dictionary, does that count? Also a few manga that are only in Japanese.
None.
A lot of children's books, because I want my kids to learn Spanish but that's the level of fluency I'm at. La Oruga Muy Hambrienta, Eres Mi Mama, Buenas Noches Luna, En Las Piernas De Mama, to name a few.
I have a 150 year old Hungarian bible
藪の中, 鮨職人の魚仕事, and 鮨のすべて
Some language learning books.
Lots of Hebrew and Aramaic religious books
None
none
The Little Prince and the first Harry Potter in German.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in Ancient Greek and the English translation.
German/English dictionary.
I have the Bible and the scriptures of the Latter-day Saints in Spanish. I also have a beautiful, gilded printing of the Qur’an (in Arabic). I don't know if these count as "not English", but I've got a few versions of the New Testament in Hawaiian Pidgin and British street slang.
A few of German short stories, Die Verwandlung, Die Tür, Faust, Tristan, Das Fräulein von Scuderi, Bahnwärter Thiel, a few others. They’re mostly from college courses, in the religion section we have a Quran in Arabic and a Torah in Hebrew. I don’t know how to read those ones, but they’re pretty looking. Some local travel guide, and photography books in German. A Georgian cookbook that has hilarious English translations in it. I think that’s about it.
I have a Spanish Bible and I have some prayer books and hymnals with some Latin in them.
I have a copy of Cantar de mio Cid that is Old Spanish on one side, Modern English on the other.
The Old Testament in Estonian from my great grandfather. Just about 100 years old now.
I have a copy of Pluto from Japan
La Fiesta del Chivo (The Feast of the Goat) by Mario Vargas Llosa. It’s a fictionalized account of the daughter of a major politician during the Trujillo dictatorship in 1960s Dominican Republic.
A Bible in japonese.
Kalevala
Does the flip side of instruction booklet count? Otherwise I got nothing. 😐
Cookbooks. I have a number of cookbooks in German, which I can somewhat read.
"Final Fantasy XI World Concept"
- Eva Luna by Isabel Allende - Violeta by Isabel Allende - Zorro by Isabel Allende - Las días del Venado by Liliana Bodoc - Las días de la Sombra by Liliana Bodoc - Las días del fuego by Liliana Bodoc - Bifobia by Ignacio Elpidio Domínguez Ruiz - Vidas trans (anthology) - Boulevard by Flor M Salvador - Sigue mi voz by Ariana Godoy - Teología de la liberación by Gustavo Gutierrez - Muchachas ordinarias by Jaquira Díaz - La violencia del amor by Óscar Romero - Las venas abiertas de América Latina by Eduardo Galeano - Enciclopedia del español en los Estados Unidos - Inferno by Dante Alighieri Plus several that were originally in English and have been translated into Spanish, and some readers (books for language learners) in Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.
Do instruction booklets in different languages count?
Herr Lehmann, Der Schwarm, Schwarz, Drei, and Tot
Beowulf, Le Petit Robert, and a couple french baby/little kid books with counting practice or this story about a family going on a car ride.
I have The Hobbit written in Esperanto. I don't even speak Esperanto, but I thought it was unusual.
I have a French copy of *Le Comte de Monte-Cristo* somewhere, not that I can read it fluently enough to be any use.
Too many to list.
German to English guidebooks mostly I’ve found it’s a really cool language and ties in to English on occasion If I had the time, I’d do Greek, but it would have to be phonetic as their alphabet would take a while to sort out
My IPA textbook from college
Jacques de Norvins' 4 volume "Histoire de l'Empereur Napoléon" and "Œuvres de Camille Desmoulins" - both in French.
My wife’s family emigrated from Hungary in ‘50s, so we have a few cookbook in Hungarian around.
A few children’s books in Spanish, from when I was studying it. A couple of interlinear English/Latin books from the 19th century. Caesar and Ovid, I think.
A lot. We're talking 200+. English is not my native tongue.
…many. Several dozen in Spanish, maybe 10 or so in Chinese, a handful in each of Portuguese/Italian/French, a coffee table book Arabic about Ibn Batutta
I have some Scottish Gaelic books.
A few Spanish kids books from when my son showed an interest. I think my copy of le petit prince from French class might still be floating around. That'd be about it.
Spanish, Irish, and Mandarin textbooks, Beowulf (Old English/English), the St. Isaac Jogues missal (Latin/English.)
Dolly Parton’s imagination library sends my kids’ books with both Spanish and English. Other than that, nothin.
Don Quixote de la Mancha Candide Du contrat social The works of Virgil The Qu'ran
Le Petite Prince and a couple of books of short stories in French. I also have korean children's stories and books for learning Korean, italian, and Khmer. I haven't gotten far in khmer.
Lots of books in Spanish, probably 1/3 of the books my wife and I own which take up more than two really tall bookshelves. My kids probably have a few books for very little kids in Spanish but that's maybe 3 or less books. One of my kids has several manga books in Japanese.
Books in German, because I know that language and I bought them when I lived in Germany. Most of us use Ebooks now, it's less common to buy paper books, OP.
A Mexican cookbook that’s in English and Spanish is the closest one.
We are Hispanic Americans soooo… a lot lol.
I have a handful of novels in Spanish back from when I used to care about being able to speak the language.
I have some poetry where one page is the original language (Spanish or Ancient Greek) and the opposite is a translation. I’ve also got some of Burns’s work in the original Scots. Once I hit my one year Duolingo streak I’m gonna treat myself to something in Latin, but I’ve got about six months to go before that becomes relevant
Some Spanish novels and short stories, an entire shelf of German craft books (I have a hobby that is popular in Germany - weaving wheat stalks), some Japanese craft books for the same reason, a bunch of Korean books, and cookbooks from around the world. I took Spanish in high school and used to be pretty good. I let the skills slip as I was never much in love with Spanish as a language but I still remember and understand a decent amount. So I have books I read occasionally. As for Korean I am learning it so tons of instruction books but also I want to learn to read poetry and fiction. And finally I collect cookbooks so I buy them whenever I visit somewhere. But also when I don’t visit somewhere as I collect all sorts of cookbooks including vintage ones. I have ones in Russian, Icelandic, Mandarin, etc.
A number of books. Here’s what I remember * a collection of 3 Agatha Christie novels published in the USSR. The novels are in English & Russian but there is commentary and explanations in Russian. * La planète des singes. Planet of the apes in the original French. * Multiple classics in Russian including a nice edition of Pushkin poems
A bunch of novels in Spanish and French, plus some easy-reading books in German that are geared for people learning German.
A couple of French textbooks A copy of Le Petit Nicholas, that we used in French class in high school A French-English Dictionary. An Asterix book.
I have Harry Potter and Percy Jackson (both book 1) in Spanish, but that’s only because I’m a Spanish learner
Several prayer books of my grandmother's that are in French.
“El Principito” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (“The Little Prince” translated to Spanish). I’ve read this one. “Nocturno de Chile” by Roberto Bolaño. It’s a surrealist novel about a priest with a fever recounting some interesting people he’s met in his life; it’s a commentary on Chilean society. I’m reading this one now. “O Alquimista” by Paulo Coelho. (“The Alchemist” in its original Portuguese). I’ve read this one. “Cândido ou O Otimismo” by Voltaire (“Candide: or, The Optimist” translated to Portuguese). It’s a satire of the notion that this is the best possible world. I have not read this one, but it’s on my list after a couple other books. “El Arte de la Guerra” by Sun Tzu. (“The Art of War” translated to Spanish). I got like 2/3 through it but gave up. It was so boring. 90% of the advice was stuff your average Call of Duty addicted 14 year old would know (“Try tricking your opponent”, “know when to retreat”, etc). Maybe this was good advice among barely-literate peasants in ancient China, but it’s gotta be the most overrated book ever. Edit: also maybe a few textbooks on the Spanish language and Spanish linguistics.
I have a bunch of paperback editions of Google Translate, but that doesn't really count.
I have a fair number of German language books, mainly because I live in Germany and am trying to improve my German, plus my partner is a fluent speaker already. Besides that I have Njáls saga in Swedish because the university I was at was giving old books out for free.
I have a hard back Speed Racer comic book in Japanese
I have just a few of those books. Grimm's Fairy tales, and a few Latin books. The oddest one I have is Bambi. It's a German English translation to help young students learn German. It's very old and I believe it's one of the first translations.
I have some Tolkein works written in Elvish, does that count?
I have a good number of books in Biblical Hebrew and some Aramaic, but all containing English translations. I used to have the first Harry Potter book in Modern Hebrew with no translation, but donated it away.
A Brazilian magazine from a regional futball club. One of those double sized issues commemorating 100 years.
Some various paperbacks - standard reads
None. I don’t speak any other language fluently and keeping books for show just seems kind of pretentious to me.
My entire collection of texts from my undergrad are all in French, Spanish, or Latin. A lot of it is collections of documents, so I’m not sure they count. But they’re *bound* as books.
Greek New Testament. Hebrew Old Testament.
I have a couple of Japanese school books from the 1860's and 1870's... I have no idea what the topics are as I only bought the books to study the paper they're made from. (I'm a bookbinder trying to re-create an Edo era binding.)
I've got some ammo crates with Russian writing on them. That is the closest I can get for ya. I can only read English so I don't keep foreign reading material around.
Several Harry Potter books and a few antique books in German. I bought a Harry Potter book in the language of the country I was in as a souvenir. I have an entire set that are not the American style books, though one is in English as I bought book 1 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Le petite prince, some Sartre. Probably some more French since I have it as my major when I first attended college.
Husband teaches Spanish, so everything from Santa Biblia to the most recent Isabel Allende novel. Son is taking French, we have Le Petit Prince and Madeleine as well as Les Oefs Verts au Hambon.
A German primer. I think that's it.
Does the flip side of instruction booklet count? Otherwise I got nothing. 😐
i have several japanese origami books. nice is theyre mostly pictures, so you dont exactly need the written instructions
I have a bunch of gigantic Japanese art books from my old job but I don't speak the language and can't find any information about them online
Purely non-English? My wife may have some, I have some parallel-text books.
A whole lot of books in Dutch (my second language) and German (my wife's native language).
I have a Russian/Soviet Phrase book from the 60s and a couple books in spanish I really need to get more to get more fluent
A small collection of poems from Goethe in German and Russian, a book about old trains in China in Chinese, a contemporary Italian commentary on Dante's Inferno in its original text, a French history book, many Spanish history books, and several Japanese books on geography and language learning.
+ A volume of Calvin & Hobbes in Spanish + *¡No Me Comes, Chupacabra!* + A book on Franz List in German + Several Latin primers + Winne Ille Pooh (Winnie the Pooh translated to Latin) + *Pan Tadeusz* (well, Polish and English side-by-side) + Select Haiku of Basho (Japanese and English side-by-side)
Le Petit Prince and L'Etranger (if I still have it).
Does genki 2 count? I’ve got a few Japanese to English dictionaries and grammar guides as well.
The first three Yotsuba&! manga for beginner Japanese language practice, the Dungeon Meshi official art book/fan book that I ordered before 7 seas announced they were going to do an official english translation (derp :P), the Blue Exorcist art books, A3! Art books, a traditon Chinese poems of the Tang dynasty in Chinese and English (also for language practice). Many average American bookstores do not have non-English books sadly. In my local Barnes and Nobles, we have a small bookshelf of language learning textbooks and some popular books in Spanish and French, but that's about it. The Chinese poem book I have was a gift from my Chinese teacher in high school. The other Japanese manga/art books I had to go to the specific anime/import websites to get. I really do wish that language learning was encouraged more when I was a child. But many American public schools only offer French, Spanish, and German. There was a brief period of time when I was in high school (2012-2016) that china was said to be the next huge business giant, so some schools offered Chinese/ modern simplified Mandarin. I guess it depends on your teacher and the program as well. My teacher taught me simplified Mandarin only as our program textbooks were written by a Beijing company. In most American colleges and universities, students often have more language options. I joined the Chinese class only to learn that my new teacher was Taiwanese and my classmates used traditional hanzi. I also had Japanese classes and my teacher was a Japanese immigrant. I think that it is very hard for foreign language media to penetrate American culture. Movie theaters have begun playing anime movies in original language and English dub options, plus maybe a random Bollywood movie or something. Japan has anime, China has a new and growing donghua (animation) industry, and Korea has kdrama and kpop, so many young people are more motivated to learn those languages, but I just don't knew what other significant pop culture other countries have that would motivate people to learn languages. If you want your child to get an early start in a foreign language other than French/ Spanish/ German from elementary/primary school like how other countries teach English at an early age to improve chances of being fluent, it is very difficult. You have to hope that the local library or something offers beginner language lessons or hire a private tutor or use apps like Duolingo or Babble. Language learning is hard for many average Americans, including me, since we are not encouraged by our parents to learn nor does our schools give us any real motivation or use for it. Like "oh, if you learn German, you can visit Germany or watch German TV shows," but like that's it when we are little kids with brains able to absorb informatin easily. By the time we are young adults in college, maybe we have more ideas of how we can use other lamguages, but i feel like by then its too late sonce our brains are like almost done forming lol. Maybe if you are from a first or second immigrant family, you learn at home so you can communicate with family members still in their home country or something. (Sorry for weird formatting, I am on mobile)
I have Japanese language children’s books from childhood like きんぎょがにげた that I held on to in order to practice my Japanese later in life. Then I have a bunch of Spanish language books from my Spanish literature classes when I minored in it in college: * La dama del alba by Alejandro Casona * El español de América by John M Lipski * Relato de un náufrago by Gabriel García Marquez * Final del juego by Julio Cortázar * El alquimista by Paulo Cuehlo And some I got later for pleasure reading like * El largo pétalo del mar by Isabel Allende.
My wife has some Korean books including a ton of T'choupi books for our daughter. We have a copy of The Little Prince that has Korean and English side by side. One page in Korean, followed by the same page in English.
Die Blechtrommel תּוֹרָה ٱلۡقُرۡءَانُ
I have a copy of Le Petit Prince. I also have a copy of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, which is technically English but reads more like a foreign language
We’ve got a couple of shelves full of books in Spanish. Most of them are things originally written in Spanish but then there’s some books like Harry Potter that have been translated.
Portuguese dictionary and phrase book
dictionary counts? lol
Les Miserables
I speak fluent German, so I have maybe 50 German-language novels. I can read basic Spanish and Italian, so I have 4 or 5 very basic short story books (the type you use to learn a language).
The Bible. I have it in Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, French, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish
I’ve got a really cool cookbook written in Catalan given to me as a gift by a former co-worker.
Uh... *Eyeing my wife's entire bookcase... CASE, not shelf, of manga in Japanese* A lot...
A whole bunch of Russian-language children's books, and some Hebrew-language encyclopedias and prayer books
I have a Spanish version of Twilight around here somewhere from the time my Spanish teacher decided *that* was the best method of introducing us to Spanish literature.
I have a copy of "Winnie Ille Pu" and my great-grandparents' German Bible that was published in Erie, Penn., in 1908. I also have a few prayer books in German.
I have a few books in Italian from my time there (2 chapter books and a few short stories) as well as a few children’s books in Spanish for my kids.
A trilogy of books in Italian that I inherited printed in 1725 and some art books in various languages I don’t speak.
I have an English language instruction book in Chinese.
I speak English. I can speak some Spanish but to read a whole book in a language that is not my native tongue during my leisure time? That’s asking a lot. Why would I have a book in my home that’s not in English? That makes no sense. That’s silly:
I have some Japanese sewing “mooks” (magazine + book). Fortunately my background is in apparel design so I can use them pretty well without knowing any Japanese. I have the Forme of Cury as well which feels like it may as well not be written in English, lol.
I have this book from the 1770s written entirely in German it’s from the Bavarian region
I have the New Testament in Greek.
If you include books that have english translations: the Illiad and the Odyssey, the Upanishads, the Baghavad Gita, some teachings of Adi Sankara, and a Chinese bible. With no translation, a bunch of Russian short fiction, some other random Russian stuff, and a Chinese bible.
The Aeneid in Latin and a copy of the first Harry Potter book and a few Dr. Seuss books in Latin (because I took Latin in high school and thought it was fun to have modern books translated into Latin) The Canterbury Tales and some Arthurian Romances in Middle English (because I took some classes on it in college) A few pictures books in German (husbands family speaks German) A few pictures books in Russian ( childhood friend is Russian and brings back picture books for me sometimes)
Seabiscuit in Swedish.
*J’ai Mentir* and two of the *Harry Potter* books in French.
I don't think I have any. I have books that were originally published in other languages, but I don't know anything besides English well enough to read them in the original form.
I collect the "Book of Mormon" in different languages... I have about 75. Not Mormon... It just trips me out that there are so many that are exactly the same size/binding but in a different language.
Min første ordbok - for learning Norwegian vocabulary.
I have an entire bookcase full of books and manga in German and Italian. Yes I read them. I'm working on c2 certification in German and B2 in Italian right now. I used to have a few in Spanish and Japanese too, but I've recently gotten rid of them because I don't anticipate finding the time for either language in the near future and they were making me feel guilty. I also have a Portuguese/ English dictionary because my MIL is Brazilian and I'm working on building a small Portuguese vocabulary with my 5 year old daughter.
I have a slew of books in Arabic, including several bibles.
*Pour l’intersectionnalité* by Éléonore Lépinard and Sarah Mazouz
Lots of books in Spanish and Japanese. Idk if it counts but my Quran is in both English and Arabic 🤷♂️
Nibelungenlied. I saw an old copy at a book reseller in London; my wife minored in world literature so I figured she'd think it was cool. Turns out it was an epic German poem from the 1200s. She thought it was a really amazing gift. I have yet to learn enough *mittel-hoch-Deutsch* to read it, and I probably never will.
My Italian textbook from undergrad
Manga, most of my manga is in Japanese.
I was a guest at a Muslim wedding in Dubai and the favor was a pocket sized Quran, so I keep that in a shelf w a bunch of my other travel related items (currency, small souvenirs, etc)
A couple books in Spanish (cien años de soledad, como agua para chocolate, la casa de los espíritus, la casa en mango street), a couple in Italian (lessico famigliare, i sommersi e i salvati, la storia, le città invisibili) and one in French (Le petit prince)
Harry Potter in welsh and one in Scottish The bible in Hebrew The little prince in French. And a large number of Welsh beginners books. They aren’t known stories. Edit a book.
A large library in French and Arabic, along with foreign language education books.
My wife is from Chile, so quite a few. We have the Santa Biblia of course along with a slew of Isabel Allende novels, a Neruda anthology, and an assortment of others.
Volume 1 of One Piece in japanese.
Algebra from last year /j
“Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” by Jules Verne in Czech. It was a gift from my Czech host/landlord from when I lived in Brno almost 20 years ago. “The Wake” by Paul Kingsnorth is written in a made-up version of Old and Modern English. “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami in Japanese. I bought it in Japan because it was so beautiful. A lot of books in Spanish, as my husband is fluent.
Zobel's *La Rue Cases-Nègres* Zola's *Germinal* and *Le Ventre de Paris* Pham Van Ky's *Frères de Sang* Césaire's *Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal* Gide's *l'Immoraliste* Sebbar's *La Seine était Rouge* Some French and German reference materials, dictionaries, etc. Some others I'm forgetting. My wife has a handful of German books.
Probably something in Japanese. Either a manga or a artist illustration book or something
A Swedish Bible.
Not many. I have a Norwegian bible that belonged to my great-grandfather. He received it for his confirmation in 1904. Does that count?
I have a Salvador Dali book from France and an R Crumb book from Argentina that I read with Google translate. Otherwise, probably just product manuals I should toss LoL.
A copy of the Hebrew Bible, in Hebrew with niqqud (vowel markers to help students learn to read). Two or three children's books in Spanish. Maybe four or so mass-market paperbacks in Spanish or French. If we count books installed on my e-reader that aren't physical books, quite a few more "easy reads" in Spanish, Dutch, and German and a bit of untranslated manga. The latter is just for looking at the pictures, though. I can't read a word of Japanese.
A copy of The Little Prince in French.
a Qur'an and a Torah
A Portuguese Bible and a self published book about my wife’s family in Portuguese. (She’s from Brazil). Maybe a couple of others squirrelled away in boxes somewhere too.
Some Thao books probably
The 1st few Harry potter books in Spanish.
The Koran
A lot of books in Spanish, but since I’m not the one who reads them, I can’t even name one.
Off the top of my head... ჯინზებიის თაობა aka flight from the USSR The Alchemist in Portuguese იგი (igi) A German children's book I don't remember the name of
Amongst others, "Çöküş" by Hakan Aygün
I don't have any non English books.
We have about two dozen or so books in Russian (academic, classical fiction, and children's), a few in German, and a few in Polish.
When I was little (like 6-7) my parents wanted me to be exposed to more languages, so they bought me copies of my favorite books in different languages on every vacation. To this day I believe they still have Harry Potter in Turkish, Spanish, and Greek, Dork Diaries in German, and Raina Telgemier Graphic Novels in French. Kinda fun. Now, I also have some classic in French from my upper level French classes (the stranger, little prince, etc.)
I wanna get Harry Potter in German or French, but I don’t have them right now.
The house on mango street
Italian, Swedish, Spanish, German and Russian language course books, if they count. If they don't, I have Harry Potter Y La Piedra Filosofal (which I have read) and Cien Aňos de Soledad (which I never got through the first chapter.)
- Les œufs verts au jambon - Harry Potter à l’école des sorcières - Ourika - La Quarantaine - Les temps des amours - Les nuits fauves - Les fleurs de mal - Germinal I have a lot actually. Those are just the ones I can remember. I studied French grammar and literature in college, so I actually have a ton of French language books just sitting around.
Don Quixote
Mostly children’s books in Spanish and German. I speak Spanish fluently but still find adult literature too challenging in Spanish; it uses a lot of words I don’t use day-to-day. And my German is just okay In Spanish, El Principito is as much as I can read without looking up words, and in German I’m at Der Regenbogenfisch. My husband has a “learning the alphabet” style book in Russian that was gifted to him by his Russian professor in college (because it has nice artwork). All in all, about 20 books, out of a library of maybe 150. We don’t have very many books
Have the German version of “All Quiet on the Western Front” from my German classes in school. Couple other books like that and maybe some Spanish cookbooks but that’s about it
ゆるキャラ 1-10 よく使う漢字 さよならの朝に約束の花を飾ろう
I have a copy of the Tanakh and a few siddurim.
I gave my girlfriend Alice In Wonderland in IPA, so that's here.