diciembre 08, 2006

Reading and Languajes

I have attended english classes for many time and french classes just 2 years... But as you can imagine, I have not always choosen english articles, books or whatever is in another language when I have the spanish option. Was I Smart? Maybe not, as I have learnt some benefits of other options. Of course, I read whatever comes to my hands (or to my web explorer) without worrying me about the language, 90 per cent of times it is in english. But it's not the same reading foolishnesses and reading essays, articles, novels... from respectable authors.

Now that I am reading literature in english, I'm wondering why i have procrastinated reading literature in other languages. Even i read once somewhere:

Person 1: Have you read Marx?
Person 2: Yes, I have.
Person 1: Oh, but have you read him in German?
Person 2: No, I got a translated version.
Person 1: Then, in that case you have NOT read Marx.

It's an interesting point of view, don't you think so?

Read should be an obligatory subject at schools, I mean, in all levels!. It should be one of the most important duties of professors. Reading open our mind to new ideas, and reading in other languajes lead us to understand (and think obviously) in a new conception of ideas, in a different space-time...

Purpose of reading should be develop our skills, our brain and neurons, not only entertaining and leisure. Furthermore, when we are learning other reading in other languages, it should be highly recommended read literary works in the suitable language.

Certain day, a couple of years ago, i learnt that language affects in some way our pattern of thinking; please, take a second to think about it, don't you think that those special chinese, japanese, arabic characters affect our reasoning? (Learning 26-28 characters or 5000 kanji's?) And what do you tell me about those times when you have known certain classical literary work in your languaje (translated) and another day you have got the original work? Do you recognize the original idea (intrinsic idea)?

I'm no one to say what people should do or what to read, but I leave you in this post my personal point of view, in hopes it help you.

Puedo haberme equivocado en mi escritura. Cualquier corrección será bienvenida.

Para este caso les dejo la traducción inversa.