I bought 100 books in languages I don't speak

I've bought over a 100 books in languages that I don't even speak why well this is the lifeline book fair it comes to my city twice a year with around 100,000 books each time and even more in the larger cities they sell donated books to raise money for a 24/7 Crisis Support Center and the first time I went their foreign language section was an absolute gold mine for me because literally half of it was made of Swedish books ever since then I make sure to get there and even though it's never been quite as good as it was that first time it's always a fun trip for a language nerd so this time I thought I'd try to take you guys along but long story short this mic doesn't work and I found that out after I recorded this and got back home and put the footage on my computer and everything so allow me to dramatically reenact what I was saying here hey guys I'm trying to be cool and record a video in my car like I'm a vlogger pretty pointless to do this bit in the car anyway but uh let's go check out the book fair all right see you there this particular Fair the Autumn of 2024 book fair wasn't the best from a foreign language books perspective but I did want to share with you some of the cooler finds that I've had over the years I'm proud to say that my Swedish has progressed a little bit beyond the level of this book but my son is about to turn four and he understands Swedish pretty well so I thought this would probably be worth the 50 cents that they were asking for it the last couple of times they've had a lot of Danish and I mean a lot of Danish one of them I grabbed was this this uh which is called the chestnut man in English now I've already read this in Swedish so I thought it would be handy to have just in case I ever wanted to learn some Danish vocabulary I could totally do that by reading this book because I already know the story this is also the original the original language is Danish by the way that's a language hack that you may not have heard before if you know the original story of something that you're then going to read in a target language you can read at a much higher level than you normally would be able to now obviously it's not going to work for stuff like Mandarin if you only speak English but for something like Danish from Swedish I mean obviously that's very very close but even if this was say in Dutch or German I'd probably be fine also as a side note this book is really good I recommend it in whatever language you can find it in or want to read it in if you can't be bothered with the book The Netflix series is actually almost as good I would say they're pretty much on a par the Netflix series is a good watch by the way if you're not amiliar with immersion learning it's basically the idea of putting yourself in situations where the language carries some level of meaning for you to allow your brain to get better at piecing together that meaning which will eventually lead you to be able to have thoughts and express those thoughts spontaneously in the language without referring to a translation or some rule that you've memorized about the language it's generally accepted in the research to be how we all learn languages anyway but we've become kind of convinced of this idea that we have to consciously study the rules of a foreign language in order to actually learn it probably took me around 2 years from when I first heard the idea to actually come around to that way of thinking so if you want to know more about how you can become an effective emotion learner a company called refold have put together a comprehensive video course on just that now I know you might be thinking something like this sounds like a scam someone called coffeezilla just hang on with that because it's only a 30-day course but there is a 60-day money back guarantee so even if you complete the course and then later think not that wasn't worth it which honestly I doubt but even if you do do that you can still get your money back and also I know these people they are super nice guys they are really into language learning themselves I stayed with them and the topic of language learning and effective language learning was on like most of the time we were there Ethan Ben Alberto they are all super nice guys but also they are like very effective and knowledgeable language Learners too they are just nice people I mean that matters but it doesn't matter as much as what they know and what they can teach you so as a company I highly recommend them but also as a course to learn as much as you possibly could about emersion learning and how to become an effective learner so that you can learn your language well I do recommend their ultimate emersion course so the link for that is in the description or at the top of the comments and it might be easier to access one or the other depending on what what kind of device you're on if you want to use that it does help me out if you don't want to that's fine back to the book fair the prices are always written in the top corner of the first page which is Handy to just remember that that's where I got it from and if some of the prices that I say or that you see in this video seem cheap to you yeah that's pretty much Australia we're very lucky in that regard when it comes to Used Books they are very cheap this skit by Fair buan films sums it up really well uh unfortunately that one's not on sale so that's going to be $2 $2 yeah sorry no that's that's unbelievably good value oh if you say so and then consider that for a lot of these books I'm actually picking them up on the Sunday the last day which is when everything drops to 50% off 11 minutes by Pao coo I've got two copies of this one in Danish and one in Spanish and even though it's reasonably common to come across Portuguese books here in Australia finding Paulo coo in his original Portuguese it's become like the Ark of the Covenant at this point this is one of my wife's favorite books but it's in Norwegian I haven't read it yet but I really like seeing these I'd say more Niche books translated especially into smaller languages like Norwegian Finnish stuff like that because it's kind of a reminder that even in places like that where the level of English is really high the local language or the native language is still valued and I would even say preferred and needless to say I don't like the attitude that it will all just be replaced by English because at the very least it's a very boring way to approach your life but I also think it's pretty dismissive like oh it's like your little language doesn't matter and just because I can't be bothered to learn it and speaking of less widely spoken languages I'm not going to say what the language is because one day I want to do a whole video on it but this is one of the most amazing finds from the book fair ever it's a Bible as you can see but translated into a very very endangered language it's also really really beautifully presented it's got lovely print nice binding as far as I'm concerned this is a work of art this title right here sums up why the foreign language section that these Book Fairs is so much fun for people like me we've got a Swedish author with a book called The Italian shoe in German from the perspective of what you might call guided immersion or material that is for a native speaker but with help for non-native speakers I've got far more Spanish than anything else quick tour 12 short stories to improve your vocabulary I didn't pick this up from the book fair I actually went and picked it up from the author himself he's a Spanish linguist the complete poetry of a certain now shamed Chilean author side by side Spanish on this side English on this side and although yes what he did is obviously horrible I am personally of the opinion that that should not mean that no one ever reads his poetry again this is an opinion that I share with Chilean and feminist author Isabella yende speaking of whom I do have a couple of her books mostly in Spanish I do have some in English as well I would probably need to listen or read in English or Swedish first but she is actually really widely translated so that's definitely a possibility uh I do have a lot more Spanish I can't show it all to you we'd be here all day so moving on when I asked you guys Which languages you felt had a greater number of Learners than the amount of material available to learn those languages with would reflect I.E Which languages have more demand than Supply one of the most common and I would say well-founded answers was Modern Greek and lo and behold the next day I come across this it's huge now obviously a book like this is much much more traditional classroom learning skill building than it is Mass immersion style but when it comes to a language like Greek where there isn't going to be that much comprehensible input for you to actually learn with there's just no world in which I can picture that this isn't worth paying $4 for these five German books were a curious find from the last book fair and even though I'm not learning German and I don't speak very much German I bought all five because they look like a really kind of comprehensible input level for a lot of German Learners I feel like adult Learners who are at about maybe B1 could really get something out of this at this most recent one I also picked up a German copy of The Hobbit now don't ask me why but in the German title they feel the need to specify that he is a little hobbit I'm not sure why this is but one language that is there with new books like different books in this language every single time is Hungarian now I have never Bor any of it except for this Hungarian dictionary which doesn't really count I guess but I've come to be able to recog Hungarian on site one thing that was there this time but hasn't been there before is Romanian and look I'm sorry but these 1,1 to do before you die books have gotten completely out of hand if you're not familiar with this series it started like 20 years ago with 1,1 movies you must see before you die then it got less realistic there were things like 1,1 golf courses you must play before you die but I do own some of the more sensible versions of those books like a,1 songs to hear before you die yes okay you can listen to a th000 songs that's possible a,1 days that shaped the world that's fair enough you can read about the days and broaden your knowledge knowledge but by far the stupidest one of all of them is this one that I saw yesterday 1,1 bikes to dream of riding before you die no they're push bikes they are push bikes you're overthinking it don't be stupid I'm not learning erdu but normally when they say pocket phrase book or pocket dictionary you know it's not fitting in anyone's pocket there's no way you're getting those books in a pocket but when Norwegian or erdu say it they mean business baby one of my favorite formats is these quality landscape photography books not just because I'm really into photography but because even if they're in a language that I speak nothing of the book still serves its purpose but if like this German one I can understand some of it it makes trying to read the captions this kind of little dessert on top of the beautiful photos I've got some finish just because I can't resist languages from the north don't speak a word but I do like it these three are my Dutch collection I guess at least one of these is available on storytale in Dutch so I think with my Swedish and everything pretty sure scuba diving from day one would be possible but also this one here is translated from Swedish so I know that it is on storytel in Swedish speaking of Belgium and I guess around into the French speaking part of the world I still do have a lot of French left over from when I was learning it and just picked up a couple of times since because if I ever do want to get back into learning French I've got things that I can get started on straight away with that like emus foul I would assume that that would be at a very decent level for my kind of French and finally I've got a much smaller amount than I would expect of Italian here and there on my shelves I say a much smaller amount because it's actually the second most spoken language in my city but given that fact it's really not that common to find Italian books at these kinds of Book Fairs and op shops in fact this copy of Aragon in Italian actually came from Mexico City because I was an idiot I was in a secondhand book shop in Mexico and didn't actually think to check what language it was in I was just like yep that's Aragon it's in Mexico it's in Spanish it was not in Spanish and then just yesterday I also picked up the first book I think of a series of unfortunate events in Italian so next time I won't be as much of an idiot I promise and I will actually check that my microphones are working and I'll try and take you guys along for the adventure and we can see what we find together that sounds lame but you know what I mean I'm really into this kind of hunting for material side of language learning in fact I'd say it's my favorite aspect of language learning let me know what you guys have found at this kind of stuff at op shops and Book Fairs and whatever over the years I'm actually interested to hear it and as always [Music] loo [Music]

Channel: Days and Words

Views: 17,676

Keywords: language days, language learning, langauge learning, how to learn a language, learn a langauge, days and words, lamont languages, how to read books in foreign languages, learn to read in foreign language, how to read in spanish, how to read in swedish, how to read german, how to read in italian, learn a language through reading, learn language reading, how to read first spanish book, learn languages 2024, learn languages 2025, how to read books in other languages, fluyo

Id: 1F_OqPA5d04

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024