Summary of Devices for Reading Foreign Novels

If you're an intermediate student of a foreign language and you want to try to read a novel in that language, you need an e-reader that lets you press on a word and instantly get a definition without having to leave the page you're reading. It also needs to let you easily switch back and forth between two dictionaries:

• a bilingual dictionary that lets see the definition in English. (To my knowledge, there are no good free bilingual dictionaries. This will be an extra cost--usually under $10.) 
• a monolingual dictionary that gives you the definition in the same language as the book you're reading. (These typically come for free.)

The reason you need both is that the monolingual dictionary by itself is too difficult for an intermediate student to use, but the bilingual dictionary is limited in size and won't have the most difficult words in it. Over time, you'll move to using the monolingual dictionary more and more--especially if the device lets you use the bilingual to look up unknown words that appear in the monolingual's definitions. When you don't need the bilingual anymore, you won't be an intermediate anymore either.

At this point, I know of only four devices that are able to support multiple dictionaries in this way. I'll discuss their pros and cons and then mention some other devices that are known not to work.

Kindle E-Readers and Apps

I have already written at length about how to read a foreign novel on a Kindle e-reader. All three of the current models seem to be running the exact same software as far as foreign-language support is concerned. Whenever you download a foreign-language book, Amazon automatically downloads the appropriate monolingual dictionary for free.

Basic Kindle

This is the cheapest Kindle that will do the job. It doesn't have the built-in light the other Kindles have, it's heavier than the Voyage, and it has lower screen resolution, but it's half the price of a Paperwhite and only a third the price of a Voyage. Otherwise, they all have about the same features. If price matters, this is the Kindle to get. Caveat: this is a model I haven't ever used personally.

I see that Amazon is offering Kindles on sale for National Reading Month. I don't get a kickback, but I know that many people have wanted to try reading a foreign novel with a Kindle but been unable to do so. At $59 ($20 off the regular price), this is probably the cheapest anyone can get into the game.

Kindle Paperwhite

The light is nice, and the improved resolution is helpful for reading languages with lots of accent marks. (E.g. French.) It's actually very slightly heavier than the Basic Kindle for some reason. It's $119, and I've usually thought of this one as the best value (I used one for a long time and loved it), but, during the sale this month at least, the Basic Kindle seems like the better deal. Caveat: some people like the light so much that they consider it a must-have. (I wonder how they ever managed with paper books.)

Kindle Voyage

If $200 doesn't seem like a lot, and you want the best, this is the one to get. I was pleased with the weight reduction when I switched from a Paperwhite, and I appreciated the resolution improvement too--especially for reading the accent marks on French letters. Even the little page-turn strips on the side are nice, once you get used to them.

Here are Amazon's specifications for all three devices:

Kindle App on iOS

Apple's iPad and iPhone host a Kindle app that appears to have all of the foreign-dictionary support that the Amazon e-readers have. If you already have an iPhone or iPad, that would obviously be the cheapest alternative--hands down.

From How To Add a German-English Dictionary To Kindle on Your iPad or iPhone (iOS) by André Klein

The screen shot from André Klein's web site clearly shows that you can press on a word, read the definition, decide that you want to see that in a different dictionary, and select one without closing the dialog.

Older Kindles

The Paperwhite I and the Kindle Touch also support multiple dictionaries, although not as conveniently. My original post on how to read a foreign novel on a Kindle describes the extra hoops you had to jump through to make those work.

Prior to the Kindle Touch, Amazon's devices didn't have touch-sensitive screens. However, a determined reader could move the cursor next to a target word and get a definition anyway. Readers have told me that the same instructions for installing a bilingual dictionary which worked for the Touch will also work for the older Kindles.

Other Devices

At present, I know of no other devices that have multidictionary support. I would be very happy to get information from more people who use a variety of devices. In particular, I can't figure out whether it does or does not work on a Kobo e-reader. The documentation suggests that you can install and remove dictionaries, but it doesn't say how you change the default dictionary for a given book.

Here are a few that are known to not work.

Kindle Fire and Fire Phone

I have no clue why Amazon doesn't make the e-reader on the Kindle Fire work the same as the ones on the dedicated e-Readers, but, as of this writing, you can only chose one of Amazon's free monolingual dictionaries. You can download a bilingual dictionary, but only to read as a book

Kindle App on Windows 8.1 (Metro version) and on the Windows Phone

It doesn't let you change the dictionary at all. If you open a Spanish book it still tries to use an English dictionary. One wonders why it isn't easier for Amazon to just have a single code base for all their apps and devices.

Nook

You can't change the dictionary on a Nook without rooting the device, which I don't recommend. If you want to read Spanish books, you'd have to buy a Spanish Nook. Supposedly the Nook apps all work the same way.

Summary

If you want to read a novel in a foreign language, you either need to run the Kindle app on an iPad/iPhone or else buy one of the three Kindle e-readers. If anyone can send me screen shots showing that some other device or app also works, I'll be very happy to include that info.

La forma dell'acqua: Why I Abandoned it

I decided to abandon the popular Italian novel La forma dell'acqua (first novel in the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri) because it is too far from standard Italian to read comfortably, and because there is no value to a non-native speaker in learning the non-standard words.

How I Chose it

About a month ago, following my usual process for choosing a foreign novel to read, I made a list of Italian novels to consider. About a week ago, I asked my Italian teacher for some suggestions for novels suitable for a strong intermediate reader. He sent links to a few web sites that listed books that are popular in Italy at the moment. Camilleri was the only name to turn up on both lists.

I really like crime stories, and the Inspector Montalbano series sounded interesting. If any of the reviews complained about the unusual language in the books, I missed that entirely.

What happened when I tried to read it

From the very first page, I found myself looking up way too many words that didn't exist in the dictionary. This slowed me down a lot because I'd try switching dictionaries, then checking Wikipedia, and finally highlighting the word for later. Sometimes there would be two or three unknown words in a single sentence. Given the setting, I had expected to encounter a few Sicilian terms in the dialogue, but not in the narration. Regardless, I forged on to the end of the first chapter.

Even with all that trouble, I did get the gist of the story. A couple of garbage men doing their morning rounds and complaining about their bosses find the dead body of someone they know. They report it to the local police, commanded by Salvo Montalbano. In retrospect, I'm amazed I got that much out of it.

It's not just that it took a couple of hours to do this--it was painful. Still, figuring that perhaps there were only a few words I'd need to know for the rest of the book, I went back to the start and looked up the mystery words online. Or at least I tried to.

The first unknown term, cummigliava probably meant "accumulated," but Wordreference didn't have it, Linguee didn't have it. I consulted an online Sicilian-Italian dictionary, and that didn't have it either. Finally I did a Google search for it, and I found this article:

‘I am Montalbano/Montalbano sono’: Fluency and Cultural Difference in Translating Andrea Camilleri’s Fiction, by Saverio Tomaiuolo

There I learned that I'm not the only one who has trouble reading this author's work.

Why I abandoned it

The author has loaded it with words that he himself invented by merging words from the Sicilian dialect with standard Italian words. Apparently Italians find this entertaining--my Italian teacher told me that he's hugely popular over in Italy, and that you can figure out most of the words by doing Google searches on them because there are all sorts of web sites where people argue over what they're supposed to mean.

I actually considered that. After all, even time spent reading someone's Italian web page is time spent reading Italian, but what put me off the idea is the fact that I don't want to be memorizing a bunch of non-words. Not when there are so many real words I need to add to my Italian vocabulary.

So even though Italians love Camilleri's work, I think students of Italian need to stay away from it.

Finding Foreign Novels to Read

One of the challenges of reading in a foreign language is finding novels to read in the first place. You want something hard enough to challenge you but not so difficult that you give up in despair. If you already have recommendations from friends or teachers, that may be all you need, but recommendations can go badly wrong too. (See the last section of this post for a story about that.)

Even if you follow my advice on reading a foreign novel with a Kindle, you are likely to spend a hundred hours or more on this book, especially if it is your first in the language. It's worth your while to take a couple of hours to pick one out.

Availability

Because my strategy calls for using a Kindle, it does limit you to books you can buy on a Kindle. This turns out to be a limitation, but not a fatal one.

Amazon has a large selection of foreign-language novels in the Kindle store, but you'll be disappointed to learn that it's only a fraction of what's sold in those markets. For example, I checked just now and there are 113,182 Spanish Kindle books in the US Kindle store, but on Amazon.es, there are 3,198,321 available. That calls for an explanation.

Unless you have a mailing address in the EU, Amazon cannot legally sell those books to you. This is because standard contracts with publishers set out different rules for different countries and those contracts usually only give Amazon the right to sell a book in a few markets. It's okay (in theory) to order copies of the physical, printed books, if you're willing to pay the shipping costs from Europe, but you cannot buy the e-books. The fault for this lies entirely with the publishers, who generally won't sign international contracts even for e-books. People complain about this a lot.

As a practical matter, there are plenty of interesting books in the US store; you really aren't going to run out. But sometimes I'll see a book review that praises the English translation of a foreign novel, and I'll want to see if I can read it in the original language. So far, I have never been able to.

The most you can do is write a letter to the publisher. Short of that, you can find the US Amazon page for the printed book and click the link that says "I want this book on the Kindle." 

The upshot is that you have to start your search with the set of books that are actually for sale on Amazon in the US.

Selection Criteria

As mentioned above, you want to pick a novel that'll be fun and challenging but not too difficult for you. Toward that end, I've come up with a set of rules. They aren't hard-and-fast rules, but they're a reasonable guide to start with. As you read more and more books, you can relax some of these rules.

The most important thing--above all else--is that you pick a book that interests you enough to stick with it. This is a principle that supersedes any rules.

1. The book must be an "authentic novel." This means written by and for adult native speakers. That rules out translations, children's books, and materials for students. The reason is that these things all dumb-down the vocabulary and sometimes use unnatural grammar.
2. The book must be new to you. If you already read an English translation of the book, don't try reading it again. It's not just that this makes it too easy--it also makes it too boring. Worse, because you already know what you're reading, it can lull you into a false sense of accomplishment--of thinking that you understand what you're reading when you really don't.
3. The book should be exciting. I like crime novels, action-adventure, etc. Find something that sounds fun. If this is your first novel in the language, you'll need something interesting enough to get you through the first chapter. Young-adult novels may be a good compromise. They're only a little simpler than mainstream novels, and they're action-packed.
4. The book should be contemporary. Books over 100 years old often use different grammar and/or spelling. Sadly, most of the free books on Amazon are old ones.
5. The book should not be too hard. Literary writing uses a bigger vocabulary and often uses unusual grammar. Science Fiction often makes words up (some claim that this is offset by the fact that SF is otherwise simpler).
6. The book shouldn't be too long. Under 200 pages is good. Over 500 is probably too much.
7. The author should be one you haven't read before. Authors have favorite words and phrases that they reuse a lot. That's part of why the first chapter or two of a new novel is always the hardest to get through. But if you keep reading books by the same author, you're not growing. That said, if you really like an author, that can add a lot to your motivation to read.
8. The book should be a professional publication. You do not want to be reading something with spelling or grammar errors in it! Almost all self-published books are really bad, and it doesn't matter what language they're written in.

Browsing

Start by going to the foreign-language section of Amazon's US Kindle eBooks store. If you're in the UK, then visit the UK store.  Amazon Canada is more complex because French Books are listed separately from Foreign Books. In any case, look at the left-hand column and select the language you're interested in. That will then let you select the genre (e.g. crime stories, science fiction, romance, etc.) and finally you can look at the top twenty or so best sellers.

With that restriction, start at the top of the list and ctrl-click on every novel that seems like it might meet your criteria. This opens up a separate tab for each one. When you get to 10 or 15, go through them and discard any that don't meet the criteria above.

Now take some time and read the book descriptions on Amazon. Discard anything you're sure you wouldn't be interested in. (For example, I won't read anything that depends on some conspiracy theory being true.) Then have a look at the comments from readers--especially the three-star ones. To get more comments, go to Amazon's foreign-language site (e.g. amazon.es for Spanish) and read the reviews posted there. You can't buy anything from the foreign language site, but it's perfectly okay to read the reviews. Be suspicious of anything that doesn't have very many reviews. Goodreads is another place to look.

Of the books that remain, do Google searches for the titles and/or authors. See if they have Wikipedia articles that say anything positive about them. Look to see if they won prizes.

For any book that passed your screen, add it to a Wish List. Amazon lets you create private, named wish-lists to keep track of books you're thinking about but haven't decided to buy. Sleep on it. Review the list in the morning, and buy one!

Recomendations 

Conventional Wisdom

Many people will tell you not to attempt a book if you need to look up more than five words per page. You'll get discouraged and give up. There is a lot of truth to this recommendation--it certainly describes my own pre-Kindle experiences. But I claim that advice is now out-of-date for the following reasons:

1. A Kindle with electronic dictionary eliminates 99% of the work involved with dictionary lookups. That completely changes the equation.
2. The notion of "a page" was always shaky (would that be a page from a hard-back book or from a paper-back book) but on a Kindle it makes no sense at all. Scholars studying reading usually talk in terms of words. To read a novel without a dictionary, you can only be confused about 1 or 2 words in 100. I would adapt this rule, then, and say that there should only be 1 or 2 hard words in every 100. That means words that take more than a few seconds to figure out even with the dictionary.
3. If you use the old standard, there are almost no books that an intermediate student can read. The ones that are available are called graded readers, and they use a carefully restricted vocabulary. They're very expensive, they're rather boring (in my opinion), and there are very, very few to choose from. (Most of them are for people who are trying to learn English.)
4. It makes more sense to estimate the difficulty after the first chapter. Unless it's really easy or the author is familiar to you, the first chapter will be by far the hardest. It's not good to give people reasons to give up so soon.

A Cautionary Tale

A friend or a teacher may recommend a book to you. You should welcome that, but check it out a bit before you read it. I'll illustrate just how bad it can be.

When I was a senior in high school, the teacher of my fourth-year Spanish class assigned each of us a novel to try to read over the Christmas holidays. She gave me La Gaviota by Fernán Caballero. For all the reasons I've described earlier, I failed to finish even the first chapter. Thirty-eight years later, I am still ashamed to admit that I lied to her about it, claiming I'd read it but that it was just really, really dull.

In the summer of 2014, after I'd mastered the technique of reading a foreign novel using a Kindle, I decided that after all these years I would finally make this right, so I bought a copy of La Gaviota and read it all the way through. Even with all the resources of modern technology, it took me weeks to finish it.  Part of the problem was that it was written in 1848 and the grammar and vocabulary were different enough to make quite a few sentences difficult to decipher. I eventually broke down and bought an English translation, which I consulted when all else failed. (The translation turned out to only cover the first half of the book, but fortunately I didn't need it after that.)

And it was awful. It's about a peasant girl whose talent for singing briefly lifts her to the top of Spanish society but whose selfishness and ingratitude destroys her life and the lives of those around her. There isn't a single likable character in the story. The book has an unfinished feel to it, at least by modern standards, because it has numerous plot elements that go nowhere and lots of characters who are introduced but never developed. Worst of all, the novel's message seemed to be that God was punishing her for rising above her place and punishing those her helped her do it. Yuk! (For a different opinion, read Eva's glowing review of La Gaviota.)

To add insult to injury, the book was actually a translation from French into Spanish, so it wasn't even an authentic Spanish novel in the first place.

On the bright side, I no longer feel quite so ashamed of myself. Mrs. Parker never should have assigned such a book to an 18-year-old boy. Not without strong guidance on how to read it, anyway.

So pick your novels carefully. If you like, you can review my own list of novels. These are books I've read, am reading, or thinking about reading.

Learning a Foreign Language by Reading a Novel

Reading for Pleasure vs. Reading to Learn

My previous posts on using a Kindle to read in a foreign language outline most of what you need to know to do pure extensive reading--that is, reading just for enjoyment. Sometimes, though, you want to do a bit of intensive reading with the explicit goal of improving your language ability. This week's post talks about how to do that.

Intensive and Extensive Reading

The notion that you can learn a foreign language as a side-effect of reading for pleasure in that language is called extensive reading, as contrasted with intensive reading, which is when you analyse a text until you have understood it thoroughly. Teachers of English as a foreign language have had great success with extensive reading; when properly directed, it's a key part of many if not most ESL programs today.

The #1 principle for a successful extensive reading program is that "the reading material is easy." For this reason, most extensive reading programs direct students to what are called "graded readers." These are texts that are deliberately written with limited vocabulary and simplified grammar for the purpose of making the reading easier.

My experience has been that using a device like a Kindle makes the reading experience so much easier that you can do extensive reading with authentic texts, which I'll define as being texts written by and for adult native speakers. Richard Day talks about "the rule of hand," which says there should be no more than 5 difficult words per page. For readers using a Kindle, I would amend that to say "no more than five difficult words despite the dictionary look-up."

Scott Thornbury wrote a fascinating account of his attempt to improve his Spanish strictly using extensive reading (never using the dictionary at all). He was already a very advanced Spanish speaker, so it makes some sense that it didn't help him as much, but I think the important takeaway from his experience is that you need to do some of both. Extensive reading is fun and it does improve your ability as a side-effect. Intensive reading is--well, intense--and you can't do a lot of it, but it pushes you ahead faster.

Learning Objectives

There are four things to try to improve in the course of reading:

• Simple vocabulary. These are words that have easy translations into English. For example, in Spanish "to melt" is derretir. That's a common enough word that if you didn't already know it, you probably want to make an effort to memorize it.
• Collocations. These are combinations of words whose meanings aren't obvious from the pieces. For example, in Spanish dar is the verb "to give" and por is "for" but dar por is "to consider" as in "I consider him a friend." Lo doy por amigo does not mean "I give him for a friend." These can be tricky because the words don't always come right next to each other.
• Basic grammar. This is the material covered in a basic college textbook. How to conjugate the verbs, how to decline the adjectives and nouns, when agreement is required, etc. You should have already been exposed to the entire basic grammar before attempting to read a novel, but that doesn't mean you know it by second nature.
• Complex grammar. Sometimes people are surprised to learn that languages have grammar beyond what they learned in school. When reading a book, you'll find sentences that seem to make no sense at all unless you know one of these extra rules. For example, in French, Spanish, and Italian, the form that you learned as the future tense is also used as a "suppositional" tense. So the Italian sentence Avrà potuto nuotare does not mean "He will have been able to swim" but "He probably managed to swim."

Each of these objectives needs a different method of attack, and you need to arm yourself accordingly.

Tools

Ones you buy

Some things are worth paying for. Here are the key ones:

1. An electronic bilingual dictionary. We've talked about this already, but the speed of doing look-ups on a Kindle is what really transforms the reading experience. This is where you'll find most of the words and collocations.
2. If you have lost your original college or high-school language textbooks, you'll want to get one of the "Schaum's Outline of [your target language] Grammar" books as a resource for the basic grammar. A quick read through it will tell you what you ought to refresh yourself on before attempting a novel, just in case you've forgotten some of the basic grammar.
3. A reference grammar. This is a book of 500 to 1,000 pages that explains countless nuances of the grammar. Like an encyclopedia, this is not the sort of book you read straight through, but it is the place to go for complex grammar questions.
4. An English translation of the novel. This one is debatable. I've read nine foreign novels now, and I've only used English translations for two of them. In both cases, the novels were from the mid 19th century, and I was concerned they might use grammar that wasn't covered in my reference materials. If you do use someone else's translation, the key is to use it sparingly.

Free ones

The Internet is rich in free resources, but I want to list some of the most important ones.

• WordReference is the ultimate online dictionary for a dozen languages. It has pronunciations, it gives verb conjugations, it has collocations. It also has forums where native speakers can answer questions for you. Note: you will get better results if you can ask your questions in their language.
• Linguee claims to have the results of over 1,000,000,000 translations, and it's a good place to look for suspected collocations that you couldn't find elsewhere. Paste in a phrase and see how professional translators have translated it in other documents.
• Duolingo turns language learning into a game. If you're ready to read a novel, Duolingo may be too elementary for you, but it includes a translation section called "Immersion," which is excellent practice for reading. In Immersion, people try collaboratively to translate texts, mostly from Wikipedia. It also has forums for people who are trying to learn English, and those can be a good place to ask language questions--especially if you're willing to write in their language. I have a posting about how to get the most out of Duolingo.
• Anki is a free flashcard program. It's hard to beat as a way to drill yourself on new vocabulary and collocations. Steer clear of the decks others have constructed, though; write your own flash cards so you're studying just the words that you need to. Otherwise the flashcard task can become so overwhelming that you quit doing it. Adding ten new words per day is a reasonable upper limit. I have a posting about using Anki flashcards for vocabulary drill. Note: The Kindle has a built-in flashcard system called "Vocabulary Builder." Don't turn it on! It gradually makes your Kindle slower and slower until it locks up and you have to reset it.
• Meetup.com lets people organize groups for (among other things) native speakers and learners to meet regularly to chat informally. If there is a group near you, by all means go and talk about what you're reading. It's also a great place to ask questions about sentences that stumped you.

The Process

So how do you use all of this to read intensively? The general idea is to read some unit (say a paragraph) and make a solid attempt to understand it before resorting to any of the materials above. Then you use the resources in roughly this order:

1. Use the monolingual dictionary for any words you're not absolutely sure of. Don't feel bad about looking up words you already guessed correctly; there are lots of "false friends" out there. (E.g. embarazada means "pregnant" in Spanish.) Whenever you look up a word, decide whether it's worth memorizing. Common words (e.g. sidewalk) and words the author uses a lot are worth it. Names of plants, animals, foods, etc. are probably not. Highlight anything you think you should memorize and add it to your flashcards later.
2. If you can't make out the monolingual definition, switch to the bilingual, as I described last week. When you've figured out the word, switch back to the monolingual and see if you can make sense of the definition now. It is is important to get comfortable with the monolingual because it will generally be a far better dictionary than the bilingual and also, the more time you spend immersed in the language, the faster you'll learn.
3. Sometimes there is no definition in the bilingual. In that case, open the monolingual as a book and then use the bilingual to read the definition. In general you shouldn't have to do this, because dictionary definitions are usually written using simplified vocabulary, but sometimes there is no other way. (I describe this in detail in my review of Sostiene Pereira.)
4. If that fails, use Wikipedia--especially if the word looks like it might be a proper name. The Kindle will take you to Wikipedia for the language you're reading in--not the English version--so be prepared. Often it's enough just to know that it's a plant, or an animal, or a location. This will only work if you're online, of course. Otherwise, highlight the sentence so you can find it later.
5. Sometimes the issue is basic grammar. You simply didn't realize that this particular verb had an irregular past-tense form. That would be a good time to consult with the grammar outline (or your old college text book). Maybe even do some exercises. You will have a very hard time reading if there are aspects of the basic grammar that you don't really understand.
6. Other times the dictionary fails you because it doesn't support compound words or because the inflected word happens to look the same as a different word. A good English example is "carving". If you wanted the definition of "to carve" it won't help much for the dictionary to show you a definition for the noun "carving." In those cases, you open the dictionary as a book and manually look the word up. This is a defect, so consider submitting a complaint to Amazon.
7. If all the words seem to make sense individually, but you're not sure how they work together, then it's time to consult the reference grammar. The reference grammar is especially useful if you're pretty sure what the sentence has to mean but you're not sure how is can mean that. For example, as mentioned above, you would probably know from context that Avrà potuto nuotare had to refer to a past event, but couldn't figure out how the future tense verb fit in there. A quick look at the future tense section of the reference grammar will explain it clearly.
8. If none of that worked, try the Bing translate feature. Select the sentence and see what Bing has to say. If you did all the work described above, you'll have most of the sentence figured out, so even if Bing makes some hilarious errors, you have an excellent chance of finding what you need in the parts it gets right. For me, this is especially helpful when I have made some assumption about a word that just isn't correct. For example, you might not have known that esperar can mean "to wait for" not just "to hope," and you didn't even think of looking it up. The Bing translation will likely call your attention to it.
9. If all else has failed, go ahead and look at the English translation, if you have it. I cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of doing this only in the last extremity. It is very easy to look at the translation, look back at the original, and say to yourself "Oh, I get it," and keep on reading without realizing that you still don't know how to read that sentence. So if you do resort to using someone else's translation, at least get the most out of it. Now that you know what the sentence means, dig into it and be sure you understand exactly why it means that. Is it a collocation you didn't know about? Or an obscure grammar rule? Was it as simple as misreading a word entirely? Whatever it is, figure it out.
10. For things that you can't figure out to save your soul, highlight the sentence, bookmark the page, and bring it to a native speaker for help. I really recommend meetups for this, since it gives you a topic to talk about, but there are online forums you can use as well. 

Obviously you don't have to do all these steps all the time. Even when I'm reading extensively, I do steps 1-4. When I'm reading intensively, I sometimes highlight problems for later study rather than doing them on the spot. Remember that extensive reading will improve your language a lot all by itself; only do intensive study when you're in the mood to do it. Don't let it spoil the book for you!

Highlighted words

So what do you do with the things you highlighted? Install the free Kindle application on your PC or laptop and open your book there. (You can have the same book on five or six different Kindles without having to pay extra.) You'll be able to see all your highlights. This makes it easy to use WordReference, Linguee, or other online references to look words up. This is a good time to use Anki to create a few flashcards. If you bought the Kindle version of the reference grammar, the online app is generally a better place to read it than the e-Reader Kindle because reference grammars usually contain big tables.

I usually process highlights backwards from my current place in the book. Don't let it overwhelm you. Do as many as you feel like and then just let the rest of them go.

Final Thoughts

I'm usually motivated to thoroughly understand a problem sentence when I think I've seen the same problem two or three times in a row. For example, when I was reading my first novel in Spanish, I realized I was confused about the clitic pronouns le and les. When I dug into the reference grammar, I realized that I had never understood how to use them properly, and a half-hour's reading clarified things considerably. This made the whole rest of the book much more pleasant to read, so it was well worth the effort. With practice, you'll figure out when it's worth it and when it's not.

Better Reading on a Kindle

Last week, I explained how to use a bilingual dictionary on a Kindle to read novels in foreign languages. This week I'm going to talk about strategy for using the dictionary, how to switch back and forth between the bilingual and the monolingual dictionary, and how to use the translation option.

When to Use the Dictionary

As a rule, you want to immerse yourself in the text in the target language, making as few lookups as possible. The more you can immerse yourself, the better the reading experience and the more you'll learn. So you should guess at unknown words, where possible, rather than looking them up--at least at first. Sometimes the next sentence will clue you in, so try to finish the whole paragraph before going back to look up words you couldn't figure out. (Don't overdo this, though; there's no point reading if you're not understanding.)

If your command of the language is strong enough, try using the monolingual dictionary instead of the bilingual one. That gives a better immersion experience, but it's also more of a challenge. My own experience has been that when I am first trying to read in a language, I use the bilingual dictionary almost exclusively, but as I get more and more practice reading, I make more and more use of the monolingual. Do what's comfortable for you. (I'll illustrate how to switch between them shortly.)

How the Dictionary Can Fail

When you do look up a word in the bilingual dictionary, you can fail either because there was no entry at all or because none the available entries made any sense in the sentence. If you are looking up a common word, there may be so many entries that it takes too long to find the right one. The monolingual is likely to be much larger than the bilingual, but it can fail for the same reasons, plus, it can "fail" because you're unable to make sense of the definition.

For illustration purposes, I'll use the book Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate). You don't need to speak Spanish, since I'll explain everything along the way.

The first chapter is called "January: Christmas Cakes"

The first page is the ingredient list for a recipe. The entire list is readable without trouble except for the very last word, although sardines, sausage, onions, oregano, and chilies do seem like odd ingredients for a Chrismas cake. But when you try to look up teleras, you get this:

When the Kindle can't find a word in the dictionary associated with a book, it automatically tries to find that word in Wikipedia. This is almost always the wrong thing to do for a foreign student who is just beginning to read the language, but it does make a certain amount of sense for a native speaker. The monolingual dictionary is meant to be so large that anything it doesn't have is probably a proper name.

You Don't Always Need to Figure it Out Right Away

At this point, you need to decide whether it's worth it to research the word now (or at all). In this case, it makes a certain amount of sense to say "Oh well, it's some kind of food" and skip over it.

If you think you'll want to come back to it later, tap "More" and you'll get this screen:

Then tap "Highlight". The highlighted text will be easy to find on any Kindle device or Kindle app--including one on your phone. (There's an option to go to note/marks.) That's lets you either come back to research it yourself at a later time or show it to a native-speaker friend.

Machine Translation is Limited

If you look at the previous screen again, you'll see there is a "Translation" option, which automatically invokes Bing translate, provided you have an Internet connection. Machine translation is flaky at the best of times, and it is at its worst when dealing with single words. In this case, here's what it gives you:

Whatever teleras means, it has to be something you can eat, so this result is useless to us.

Using the Monolingual Dictionary

Normally, when you press on a word, the Kindle shows you a definition from the current dictionary and offers you the option to switch to any other dictionary. For some reason, Amazon does not let you do this when the original lookup failed. You must look up some other word and then you can change dictionaries. At one time, it would automatically default to a second dictionary, but apparently that feature has been removed.

To switch dictionaries, then, simply look up any other common word, cebolla (onion) for example.

Down at the bottom right, it gives the name of the dictionary, "HarperCollins Spanish-English College Dictionary". Tap that and the Kindle offers you a choice of dictionaries:

The monolingual Spanish dictionary is el diccionario de la lengua Española (usually just called the "DRAE" or even just the "RAE"). It is the authoritative dictionary in the Spanish-speaking world, it's enormous, and it's free on the Kindle. Select that dictionary and we get a much, much longer definition for cebolla.

By doing this, we have changed the default dictionary for the book. Now we can close that entry and press on teleras. This time we get a definition! Of course, it's entirely in Spanish, and it's also very long.

There are a total of ten definitions, and, depending on your level of Spanish, it could be quite challenging to actually read all of them, but the first one clearly is about something made of iron, the second is something made of poles, etc. We know it must be something you can eat, so we can eliminate nine of the ten definitions without fully understanding them. In this case, the very last one is what we want:

A reader with intermediate Spanish ability should be able to figure out from this that a telera is some sort of bread, that's it's large, oval shaped, and usually eaten by workers. For most readers, that should be sufficient and they can continue with the story.

Using the Monolingual as a Book

Suppose you're not "most readers" and you really, really want to know what bazo means in that definition. In that case, you'll want to open the monolingual dictionary as a book and then use the bilingual dictionary to read it. Start by tapping "More".

Notice that there's a new option: "Open Dictionary." Tap on this, and you've opened the DRAE as a book, positioned in the same place.

Now you can select bazo and look it up.

The reader can probably puzzle out that it's an adjective meaning "brown verging on yellow." The second definition seems to say something about the viscera of vertebrates and something that's dark red, irregular, and usually to the left of the stomach. We hope that's not what goes into the Christmas cakes!

If you switch to the bilingual dictionary at this point, it simply offers "spleen" as a translation, which is consistent with the DRAE's second definition, but obviously (we hope) not applicable to the recipe.

Finally, at the very bottom of the screen, the DRAE tells us that pan bazo is a collocation. That is, the two words together mean more than "brownish-yellow bread."  Much as "brown sugar" means more than just sugar that someone has dyed brown. To explore this further, we should actually be looking at the definition for pan (bread).

Translation inside the Dictionary

Since we already have the dictionary open, we can search for pan just by pressing on the word, but before we do that, it's worth trying to use the translation option again. We select the whole sentence this time.

We tap "More" and then "Translate," as before.

Once you stop laughing, notice that it actually got the correct meanings for all the words except bazo; it simply messed up the grammar. (Figuring out what's the subject and what's the object is one of the special challenges of reading Spanish.)

This actually highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the translation option. It can find a lot of information for you, even though the result is comical. It helps the most after you have already taken a stab at understanding the sentence on your own. Sometimes it supplies that one bit of information you were missing.

In particular, it excels at finding collocations, even though in this case it comes up dry.

If we go ahead and look up pan, we'll find an entry for pan bazo which explains how to prepare it, but I'll stop here. As a general rule, trying to hunt down the exact names of local foods isn't a great idea. The truth is, the best translation of telera into English is probably "telera."

Summary

I've illustrated how to switch back and forth between the bilingual and monolingual dictionaries, how to use the highlight and translation options, and how to open the monolingual dictionary as a book. 

In next week's posting, I'll discuss how to use online resources besides the Kindle to research hard-to-translate words. For example, if we google telera we immediately find that it looks pretty much like we expected it to.

How to Read a Foreign Novel on a Kindle

The Challenge

If you speak a foreign language well enough to puzzle out newspaper articles, you have probably at one time or another attempted to read a novel.

And it kicked your butt.

If you got five pages into it, you did very well indeed. Even five paragraphs is more than I think most people could manage, unless they had a copy of the English translation at hand.

The reason for this is that a strong student finishes a two-year college language program knowing about 2,000 "word-families." (Run, runs, runner, running, runny, etc. are part of one word family.) But to read "authentic" novels (written by and for adult native speakers) one needs a knowledge of about 6,000. The "beginners paradox" states that you can only learn those extra 4,000 word families by reading, but you can't read until you know those 4,000 word families. You end up needing to check every fifth word in the dictionary, and that effort defeats you. One in fifty is thought to be the limit for pleasure reading. That is, you must know 98% of the words on the page without a dictionary--not counting words you can guess from context. (You can find a good summary of current thinking in Paul Nation's "How much input do you need to learn the most frequent 9,000 words?" [Reading in a Foreign Language, October 2014]).

I have spoken fluent (B-level) Spanish for forty years, but despite multiple attempts, I never got past the first page or two of a novel until September 2013 when I attempted a Spanish novel on a Kindle and was astonished to polish it off in four days. In the following twelve months, I have read six Spanish novels, two Italian novels, and I'm 50% of the way through the French novel Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon) by Jules Verne. In this post, I'm going to outline how to do it.

Choosing a Kindle

For my reading, I use a Kindle Paperwhite e-reader. This is the version that says "Amazon" (not "Kindle") on the back. I read my first Spanish novel on a Kindle Touch, and, of course it does work, but it's a bit more limited and it's not what I'll be describing here. Update October 22, 2014: I have tested it with the new Kindle Voyage, and it works exactly the same way the Paperwhite does.

A Kindle Fire will not work, nor will any of the Kindle apps for PCs, tablets, or phones. The reason is that, at this writing, none of those allows you to use a bilingual dictionary. As will be clear below, it's the bilingual dictionary that makes this work. Update October 22, 2014. Several people have reported that this does work with the iPad Kindle app. It still does not work with the PC app or the Windows Phone app.

To repeat, you must actually buy one of the dedicated e-reader devices--those black-and-white things that can only be used for reading books. None of the Kindle apps for more sophisticated devices will work for this purpose. (Update: one person claims the reader for the iPhone will now let you choose a bilingual dictionary. Someone else told me about a way to hack an Android device to change the dictionary, but I don't think most people want to hack [and possibly break] their devices.)

Choosing a Book

(Update: I have since written a much longer post on finding foreign novels to read. This section is still a good summary, though.)

Because reading in a foreign language is challenging--especially for the first novel you attempt in a language--it's important to pick something exciting. It will be very, very tempting to give up during that first chapter. For that reason, I like mysteries or thrillers. Literature, even if it's your goal, is not the place to start.

Second, I personally avoid novels for children; the grammar is no simpler, the vocabulary will be filled with words of limited use to adults (e.g. tug-of-war), and the dialogue is apt to contain slang expressions found only in the Urban Dictionary. On the other hand, the pictures probably do help.

Third, I avoid translations of English novels. This point is debatable, if your goal it to make it easier, since translators use a simpler vocabulary than native authors. (For example, words like azure, cobalt, or cerulean are apt to become just "blue" when translated.) However, as I mentioned above, I'm going for the "authentic" reading experience, so, for me, translations are out. As are books that were specifically written for foreigners studying the language. I only consider books written by and for native adult speakers of the language.

Fourth, I usually choose contemporary novels, since historical works often use obsolete words and even obsolete grammar. (It will be obvious that Cinq semaines en ballon breaks several of these rules. More on that in a later post.)

Amazon sells quite a few foreign-language books for the Kindle, and although archaic publishing laws mean that recent best sellers may not be available (another topic for a future post), there are still hundreds of thousands of books to choose from, many at prices under one dollar.

As soon as you buy any book in a foreign language, the Kindle will offer you the options to set up the device for reading it. Those options are not available before you do this. If you want to do the setup before settling on the book you really want to read, pick any of the many books available for free in that language. Once you've downloaded it, the Kindle will recognize you as a bilingual reader and you can finish setting up the device. (Update November 19, 2014: It is no longer necessary to do any special setup.)

Choosing a Dictionary

A bilingual dictionary is a dictionary with entries in one language and definitions in another one. As I mentioned above, a good bilingual dictionary is essential, I have had good success with the Collins products for Spanish, Italian, and French, which I'll describe in more detail in later posts. The most important thing is to remember that although a physical bilingual dictionary is really two books in one--Foreign-to-English and English-to-Foreign--the Kindle bilinguals are sold separately. Be sure you buy the Foreign-to-English dictionary (definitions in English), since you will be reading in a foreign language; you are not trying to write your own novel in a foreign language!

Note that the bilingual dictionary does not count as a foreign-language book. As we'll see later, the Kindle considers it a book in English, since that's what the definitions are written in.

As soon as you downloaded that first book in a foreign language, the Kindle should have made a huge monolingual dictionary available to you as well for free. For example, a French dictionary with definitions in French. You will actually make use of both dictionaries at one time or another. As you become a stronger reader, you will make more and more use of the monolingual dictionary, but in the beginning, you will only use it for words that are not found in the bilingual dictionary.

Setting up the Kindle

Update November 19, 2014: If you have the latest version of Kindle Voyage or Paperwhite, you should be able to skip this section entirely. If you have an older Kindle, you may still need to do this.

Begin at the Kindle home screen:

Click on the menu (the ≡ button in the upper right) and choose "settings."

Second from the bottom, click "Device Options"

At the bottom of the screen, click "Language and Dictionaries"

You should see an entry for every language represented on your Kindle. Press on the entry for the language you're planning to start reading.

The Monolingual dictionary will probably be selected, but you don't want it to be the default. Instead, click on the bilingual dictionary you just bought. Don't forget to click "OK" or else it won't take effect.

Now you're ready to read your novel!

Reading on the Kindle

The basic idea behind reading on the Kindle is very simple. When you see a word you don't know, you press on it and the definition from the bilingual dictionary pops up. For example, here's a page from Cinq semaines en ballon:

Let's look at the first paragraph. "The night became very dark." No problem there, although literally it seems to say "The night made itself very dark." (I'll discuss how to learn more grammar in a later post.) First part of the second sentence is okay, up to the semicolon: "The doctor had not managed to check out the countryside:" but the second part of the sentence has an unknown word in it: "he had [verb] to a very tall tree, a confused mass in the darkness, which he barely identified."

So press on accroché and Kindle pops up the definition:

The second definition is clearly the one we want. The professor tied the ballon up to a tall tree.

Update November 19, 2014: If you tap on the name of the dictionary in the dialog box ("Collins French-English Dictionary and Grammar" in the example) Kindle gives you a list of dictionaries to choose from.)

Update December 15, 2014: Be sure the "Vocabulary Builder" option is turned off. There appears to be a bug in it which causes your Kindle to get slower and slower and eventually lock up, forcing you to reset it.

With this, you now know enough, in theory, to read a novel on the Kindle. I have a number of tips for how to make this work better and for how to learn more about the language in the process, and I'll discuss those in the next post. One should actually try reading at least a few paragraphs or chapters now. The suggestions for improving the process will much much more sense once you're done a little reading on your own.

You should definitely be able to read more than five paragraphs this time.

Reading in a Foreign Language

I have studied Spanish on and off for over 40 years (since September 1973), but until last year, I had never managed to read a novel in Spanish. I could struggle through a newspaper article, but the effort to look up words made even that unpleasant--much more difficult than conversation. Every few years I would make another attempt at reading a novel, but no matter what I did, I never got more than two or three pages into one.

In September 2013, I was sick for a week, and during that time, I decided to try the experiment of reading a Spanish novel on a Kindle e-Reader. I selected Ojos de agua by Domingo Villar because a) it was available on the Kindle b) I like police stories c) it won three prizes in Spain, d) it was only 188 pages long.

Then I bought the HarperCollins Spanish-English Dictionary for the Kindle. This was very important because it meant that if I found an unknown word, I could press on the screen and immediately get an English definition for the word. I found myself looking up one word in ten or more, but it was so fast and easy, I didn't care. I was still able to immerse myself in the book. I laughed, I cried, I sat on the edge of my seat.

And I finished the whole thing in four days.

That convinced me that, for students of foreign languages, e-readers like the Kindle are game-changers. Since that time, I have read five novels in Spanish, two novels in Italian, and I've just started reading one in French. That last is impressive because I didn't start studying French until January 2014.

The purpose of this blog is to document my progress, to describe what methods are working for me, and to identify problems with the tools I use and propose ways around them. This post serves as a introduction. Writing a blog is a new experience for me, so we'll have to see how it goes, but I'll try to update it regularly.