I would like to revisit French again. I was able to read L’Étranger pretty easily. Does anyone have recommendations for anything else of similar difficulty?

Has anyone had any success with other languages with the approach of reading until you just “get” it? How did it go?

>>24567990 (OP)
I used to date an autistic girl who would learn languages by just powering through text with a dictionary and grammar guide. More recently she's refined her methods a bit more, but even before then she was one of the most multilingual people I know.

>>24567990 (OP)

yes, extensive reading for the gist is the best way to acquire language. krashen has some good papers on the topic. if you read l'étranger, you can read anything that attracts you. go to project gutenberg or wikisource and pick something you can take pleasure in regardless of whether you understand everything. look up words if you run into them over and over and still can't infer their meaning (or just if you feel like it of course). use a one-click translation in your browser/reader. it's good to come up with mnemonics to remember new words, but no need to spend much time (you'll run into them again if they're important anyway). you can read the same book multiple times. you can just read a little bit of this book, a little bit of that. just enjoy yourself like a kid. being an effortcel is mostly counterproductive when it comes to languages (the easier ones at least).

>>24567990 (OP)
If you can read a French novel easily, surely your French is at least B2/C1 level?

Georges Simenon's Maigret novels
I've read 19 of them and I feel like they're similar enough to Camus that you won't have too much trouble
My favourites are
>La Nuit du carrefour
>Les Caves du Majestic
>Cécile est morte
>Maigret tend un piège
La Nuit du carrefour is a dumb thriller which feels very unique, very absurd but very fun

>Has anyone had any success with other languages with the approach of reading until you just “get” it? How did it go?
Also on this question yeah, that's my approach for three languages
I sit there with the copy of the book open on my browser and I use yomitan to search up every word I want to know then I make anki cards with them
For me the question is, how am I going to improve? My goal is to eventually read literature and yet reading literature in my current state is very tiresome and often difficult
What else can I do? I'm not going to just stop reading and start attending class until years later when I can magically read every author I want to read
You've just got to fill your body with an immense amount of excitement and passion for the language you're learning and the literary canon you're unlocking and start to grind texts with the knowledge that there is no real alternative to what you're doing
You need to learn thousands of words, you need to feel comfortable reading sentences and learn to understand the grammar instinctively and the only way to do that is to read tons

>>24569254
I don't get it. So did you succeed or not? It just sounds like you failed to learn a new language with your method.

>>24569299
Sorry I have this annoying habit of jumping into a hypothesising voice without any clear indication that I'm doing so which 99 out of 100 people read as an earnest question or thought
I really need to stop doing that

>>24569254
>three languages
let me guess, 1. Japanese 2. Latin or Russian and 3. Spanish

>>24569365
No
French, Old Icelandic and Japanese but I have tried studying Latin and Russian before and I'm sorely tempted by Russian right now despite it being a terrible idea

>>24569254
you have went about your task in the wrong way. you should have spent early times on audio INPUT instead of reading. reading is introduced far too early in language learning because people want to sell textbooks. you should have listened and even watched content to give you the sounds and words and some connection between words and meaning. looking up a dictionary word by word is the worst way to learn a language.
>I'm not going to just stop reading and start attending class until years later when I can magically read every author I want to read
essentially this is what you should do but you don't need a class setting, you need TPRS method.
>and learn to understand the grammar instinctively and the only way to do that is to read tons
you should learn grammar through listening not reading. you have some fundamental misunderstandings on how to learn languages.

>>24569455
>looking up a dictionary word by word is the worst way to learn a language
It's the most efficient method by far and also far less tedious and tiresome than listening or watching
Maybe if you're interested in learning languages in order to speak them reading should probably take a backseat to listening but this is /lit/

>>24567990 (OP)
read an "interlinear translation" it looks like this, highlight any words you dont know and add it to a list to memorize

>>24567990 (OP)
>learning languages through reading
It's one of those things that sounds nice and romantic but it just doesn't work well in practice. You need to be high intermediate/B2+ (which takes the average person putting in an average amount of time and effort several years to get there) to even read babby tier slop like the first Harry Potter book with 90% comprehension, so just rawdogging an actual book with a dictionary by your side is extremely tedious unless you already speak the language to a decent extent.
If you want to learn a language from scratch by reading, you should follow a structured method like the "Natural Method" books (like the Familia Romana book for latin, etc.)

>>24569523
Its easy to memorize a lot of words quickly if you have good study habits research mnemonics, really apply mental effort when you study, its also more in line with individual practice so I think its better because guided learning is more passive. textbooks are a great start however, but you can branch out when youre comfortable

>>24569513
I don’t think this kind of text is popular. I’ve only seen it on Chinese translations like lnmtl or ctext.org.
There are some dual-language books, but usually it’s per page. Like left page English, right side German.

I don't believe that anyone can learn a language in this way. Every time I have discussed with people who claim to use such a method, their understanding of “speaking” amounted to counting up to ten and ordering a coffee with butchered syntax in the process. I don't believe that there is a single, definitive method for language acquisition but there obviously are bad ones, and immersing yourself in a text without any foundational or grammatical training strikes me as a clear cul‑de‑sac. It is no coincidence that this type of method is prevalent on YouTube, promoted by polyglot hacks who sell fluency in three weeks in any language.

>>24569533
Only a native English speaker could tie reading comprehension to vocabulary this close. In the majority of languages, there are complex nominal and verbal systems, and morphology plays a crucial grammatical and syntactic role. In the vast majority of cases, it is impossible to study vocabulary in isolation and then proceed to read in the original language.

>>24567990 (OP)
This is actually a bad idea. You should learn the traditional way, you'll have fewer gaps in your grammar and vocabulary.

>>24569602
>Only a native English speaker could tie reading comprehension to vocabulary this close
Where did i do that? Vocabulary is the bulk of learning thats why I mentioned it

>>24567990 (OP)
>Has anyone had any success with other languages with the approach of reading until you just “get” it?
No one has ever done this. That's stupid. Unless you have some foundation, this doesn't work. Lmao it's just more of the "am I super special, to where I can get this done without work, study, effort or discipline? Am I the One?"
>>24569254
Get actual books designed for structured learning and then follow a structure and stick to it, and learn.

>>24569621
Yeah I recommend you start with a textbook, that's what I did with all my languages
You need to learn about all the different grammatical quirks of the language and a good 1000 or so words first, mostly function words, before you start grinding texts
That said the learning you receive from a textbook is so tiny in comparison that it can often feel like you haven't actually learnt anything until you start inputting
The way I see it textbooks prepare you for learning a language whilst the actual process of learning a language comes from inputting

>>24569533
Good advice, and also study grammar and practice verbal fluency etc.

>>24569573
its pretty rare yeah, and they usually reorder the sentences a little to have it make sense in English, nothing too outrageous though

>>24569630
Yeah thats why total immersion works. But without a baseline foundation it's not gonna happen

>>24569614
Sorry, was a bit pissed off for unrelated reasons!

>>24569254
im in a similar position, i've been reading german books, translating the words i don't know, and going really slowly with it, im reading mostly visual novels, but it feels a lot more like hard studying and less like normal reading
>>24569630
i understand grammar well, i used the "german for reading knowledge" book, and it really sped up my understanding of the language, it is the vocabulary that's the biggest hurdle at the moment, in any given paragraph there's at least 4 words i havent seen before, an animal, an object, a concept. and i need to grind out these words. i already use anki deck top 5000 most common words, it has helped, but i wonder if there's another thing i should be doing to grow my vocabulary faster

>>24570500
Yeah you can just push past that
Make sure you use yomitan and ankiconnect

>>24570500
Use mnemonics, go back and review the words occasionally, thats the most effective way to learn quickly, say if youre reading "hallo" picture an angel with a halo waving at you, feel the greeting get into an act, feel whats it like to say it, have the word hallo spelled out in bright halos, imagine it with the five senses, make a carnival out of it, it takes a little mental effort, but, a normal person can memorise the order of an entire deck of cards in five minutes doing this method, say you pull out a king of diamonds you imagine donald trump to symbolize a "king of diamonds" like with wealth and power, there in your room next to a piece of furniture holding a diamond, make it unique, and then you pull another card and the scene moves to another point in your room, and then when you look at the furniture or whatever again you should be able to retrace your steps with these scenes and remember the entire 52 card sequence. Just an example, its more mental effort than just running eyes over it

>>24569602
Inflectional endings, syntactic constructions etc are not a fundamentally different type of thing than words, cf. construction grammar.

Anyone else stop being excited about literature in their native language and mainly care about their TL's literary canon?
How do you guys cope with that?

>>24569455

>you have some fundamental misunderstandings on how to learn languages.

Says the person slinging around the concept of comprehensible input while having the bizarre notion that it has to be auditory.

For one thing, it's way easier for English speakers to connect French words to their meanings in their written form than in their spoken form. It's more efficient to gather basic vocabulary and grammar structures that way, then to listen to content and connect phonemes to graphemes.

More to the point, OP expresses an interest in literature and has already read a novel before. The second principle of CI theory is to preferentially choose input that's engaging to the learner. TPRS is one good delivery method for CI among others, but someone who has read literature in the L2 before before can teach himself if he feels like it and doesn't NEED to seek out a class with taught where Mommy gesticulates and tells him retarded nonsense stories if he doesn't feel like it.

T. master's in French teaching.

Comprehensible input is nonsense. Just take classes like a normal person. Don’t be poor.

>>24572242
Don't waste money like an idiot.

>>24567990 (OP)
Whoa whoa asshole I got excited for a short story thread when I saw this image. Have some fucking decorum.

>>24567990 (OP)
I wanted to read genuine answers here and not a billion lectures on how to learn languages. I'm in the same position as you, just finished L'étranger. Reading for gist got me past B1 in English, so I recommend it. Any exposure is good exposure at this level, because you can learn new vocab and strengthen your grammar from context. As >>24569138 said, you're good to go for anything that interests you, but depending on where you're at you might not always understand every word, which is okay. I'm looking at Bonjour tristesse since it's short, but I have low expectations. Don't really want to go straight to Les mis & monte cristo though, since I think I would miss out with my 90% comprehension.