Learning language through book reading

They say the best way to learn a language is to simply get a book on the selected language and read. What are good, simply written novels to read if you want to learn French and German? I guess Camus for French and maybe Bernhard for German?

Can't learn a new language without a brain OP.

You tried?

>Camus
You can go a bit easier than that. If you want something really basic try Le Petit Nicolas or Le Petit Prince (why do the french love little boys). The biggest obstacle is always grammar, vocabulary can be acquired by being exposed to it numerous times, but if you can't understand the sentence structure you're lost.

>They say
They are retarded. You need to learn grammar, read books and actively practice speaking.

>daily duolingo for a while, write down every single new word and its meaning
>when decent notion of sentence construction is achieved start reading/translating song lyrics (and then compare your translation with a ready translation of the lyric)
>keep at duolingo, after a while also start to read easy books or short stories
>keep at duolingo, after a while start to try and write stuff, anything really.
>keep going to duolingo, writing and reading stuff. months of this will be enough for decent writing and reading comprehension
>for pronunciation
>1st movies/series with your native tongue and learning_language subs
>2nd learning_language movies with your native tongue subs
>3rd learning_language movies with learning_language subs
>4th learning_language movies with no subs
>also podcasts and audiobooks when you can understand movies with no subs

keep doing duolingo until you finish all units. write down the most important units and come back to them after you finish all units.

If you want to read something german i can give you my diary desu

Definitely find someone to practice live speech. A foreign-born neighbor, an exchange student, someone on Skype. I know countless autists who didn't and turned out to be like dogs - understand everything, but can't say shit.

This. I would also suggest Tintin. Astérix is too full of puns and cultural references that even native speakers don't get, but Tintin should read pretty easily.

Learning poetry by heart and reciting it also helps with intonation.

>tudäi abdul tuk mei weif in vront off mi tweis
>ze käitsch on mei bratwurst häz nehwer velt so teit
No, thank you.

tintin is a great call aha

Have you tried Lingvist? I completed the Duolingo tree in french, but i wa still struggling to read literature. Then,i used Lingvist coouple days nd it greatly improved my reading comprehension.
I don't know if it was solely thanks to Lingvist, but you should definetly consider it.

What is some basic reading for Italian?

German: Stefan Zweig, Schachnovelle. Stories or novels by Joseph Roth.

>t. lazy person who thinks he can make gains without real effort

ive make a thread about it, i link it here later on but they recommended calvino. they say he writes in simple, modern, transparent italian

>read books
But that is what "they" say. Also it would be pretty hard to actually try to read a book if you didn't know basic grammar.
Speech practice is only necessary if you intend to speak.

Have you actually tried to read a book in a language you barely know, you retard?

It's important to get something that is slightly above your level. Something like The Little prince as suggested is way too simple. You will probably just breeze through it if you already have basic knowledge and learn nothing.
If you have free access to books in French and German try out several that sound interesting and pick the one that you feel comfortable with. It's important to be able to intuitively understand the structure of the sentence and make a competent guess about what it means even if you don't know most of the vocabulary.
Just read a page without stopping and ask yourself how much of it you understood. If you think you can tell what it was about then it's good for you.

is it possible to get fluent at german without actually practicing in person with anyone (but actually practicing writing and pronunciation, watching movies and listening to podcasts, etc)? I have a friend who had german classes for 6 years and didn't reach fluency (he said he didnt put in much effort), so I am a bit afraid of spending a lot of time for nothing. can I do it by myself? was he a dingus?

fucking checked

Pick up l'étranger for Camus or listen to the recitation on youtube if you're learning, avoid Le Mythe de Sisyphe

also I'd recommend listening to Camus' french interviews to improve listening comprehension, first with subs and then without

not even bro

you have to have someone to speak to, to get the feel, the rhythm, the whole way of life.

even after that, reading you will fail to see half the subtleties, reading in the original is a meme, it takes years of work integrated in whichever community to really appreciate anything, translations will serve you better, or at least bilingual editions, but dont let that stop you,whenever i read in my other languages i end up translating to the point of having fully translated various short stories and its not recreation like for a native but its a damn good exercise

>tl;dr fuck original language memers

depends how you learn. classes usually have a heavy focus on grammar, sentence structure, verb endings or whatever, and that stuff is pretty dense, and you can spend years in classes but not even get close to fluency. But even so, while somebody like your friend didn't reach fluency after that, I guarantee you with a couple of months, maybe even just a single month, submerged in Germany (no english speaking at all) he would reach conversational fluency very quickly, and speak at a higher level than somebody who didn't have that foundation.

But if your goal is just "fluency" (what kind of fluency.. like everday conversations or specialised discussions?), you can reach it in well under 6 years, if you submerse yourself properly while learning.

I've been working through some old French science fiction from the sixties. I also grabbed a copy of the stranger to lean into the meme. Rimbaud also works for this purpose.

Really I'm hoping to work up to Baudelaire, Proust, and George Perec.

You are retarded. The best way to learn is to read books in the language.

>The best way to learn is to read books in the language.
>responding to someone saying you should read books in the language
>calling them retarded

Fluent in what?
Fluent in speaking?
Reading books , watching movies etc. only develops your passive vocabulary.
Writing develops your active vocabulary but you still have the time to carefully formulate your thoughts.
Reading and writing can dramatically improve your speaking skills but to be fluent in speaking you need to speak.

The best way is being a 10yo and watch PG-13/R movies in foreign languages and research the bad words you hear so you can say it to your friends, as that is the door that opens the interest into the language.