This post is kind of specific , so…
For those fellow readers from all around the world, how it was your first encounter to a book that was NOT in your native languague. How did you feel? How the impact of reading a “new” language influenced how you looked books back then? etc.
I speak ‘Português’, so obviously my first book was in the same language.
However when i read a Spanish book things did not change as much as the way it was to when i read an English book.
What i’m saying is: The formatting of books are different along cultures and languages.
My first book in Spanish had a Em dash — to represent Dialogue, as well as it is in Portuguese. My friend had a french book and it was also —. (i dont speak french, tho)
But then I discovered that it was not a common thing when i read a book in english, along with other few things that are small but still relevant. At first I thought that it was “wrong” and that it didn’t make any sense to use “quotation” to… speak?! I mean a quote was to quote, right?
Anyways, right now i’m used to reading english format, so the question is: if you find a book, lets say, written in your native language but formatted like the german books, or written in english but formatted the way its done in your native language,
How would you feel?
To me, I think that it would take me some time to understand and get used to it, but I wouldn’t dare to not learn this “new” way of reading and would even look for other kinds of books that way.
What bout you guys?
When I started reading Japanese books in my twenties, I was surprised at how frequently my eyes accidentally jumped to the wrong line when moving back to the top of the page. Reading the correct line was completely automatized in my horizontal reading, but for a while when I first started vertical reading I needed to put a notecard or bookmark on the page and use it to mark the line I was on. I got used to it, though, and now it’s automatic again in both horizontal and vertical text.