Read Don Quixote in Spanish

Well, I decided that my Spanish isn’t getting any better because I’m not in school anymore, its only getting worse from no practice, so I decided there is no point in putting this off any further. So I got out my copy in Spanish and started in Chapter One. Its kinda slow and I’m not understanding all of it, but its about like me reading Shakespeare in English, I get the basic idea. There are 1080 pages in my copy, so if I can read 4 pages a day, then I will be done by June 27, 2009. Wow, that is a long time, but maybe I can do more than 4 pages a day. There are a lot of foot notes so the pages aren’t actually too long. We’ll see.

I already own a copy in Spanish and I know quite a bit of Spanish and with the help of a dictionary I started it a while back but it was such slow going. I’m thinking of reading it in English first so I have a better grip on the story before I tackle Snr. Cervantes’s masterpiece in the original language.

That is a higher priority goal than this, which is admittedly long-term. I think I’ve wanted to do this since I was studying Spanish in high school – it seems a lot like climbing the mountain because it’s there.

I got a copy of Don Quixote in English and did a side-by-side with the Spanish version to see how far I can get. My main problem is that the Spanish version had Much better footnotes than the English and I kept getting sidetracked by the extra details and confused. I think that if I can get two good versions in both languages I’d do a lot better. My Spanish is good enough that I could understand a lot of what was being written, but without English to double check I get confused quickly.

Also, my vocabulary isn’t so great.

Um…I think I need to learn Spanish first. I want to, of course. I’ll add that as a goal and put this one on hold. But I will read it one day.