Compilations of various short works for practicing French reading.
Fables, poems, proverbs, stories, etc.
In some of my previous essays I mentioned that I am teaching myself to read French. I’m not fluent yet, but can easily get the gist of most sentences after a year of practicing with reading various public domain books on Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg and iBooks.
Do I spend long hours pouring over French textbooks in order to achieve this goal, as you’d expect a university student to do? Rarely. I instead used a far more casual approach, spending 15 to 30 minutes reading short texts about 3 or 4 days a week, along with the occasional reading through a textbook or dictionary. Day by day, my rather undemanding routine has nonetheless allowed me to parse most sentences decently enough, though the grammar of French still trips me up occasionally.
In this essay, I intend to introduce you all to some of the compilations of French literature that I have been reading for the past year, all of which are free to download. Most of these works are beginner readers, collections of fables, proverbs, or poems.
1- Le Livre de Jade/The book of Jade, by Judith Gautier
This is a collection of Chinese poems, translated into French around the 19th century. It is apparently one of the earliest translations of Chinese poetry into a European language, written by the translator, poet and novelist Judith Gautier around 1867. One of the things I find enjoyable about this work his how “ modern” some of its themes and sentiments feel, though it may be more accurate to say that the content of the poems aren’t bowdlerised and artificial in style as with the various 18th-20th century poems people may have been made familiar with in school.
2- Nouveaux Contes Berberes/New Berber tales, by René Basset
This collection of folktales told by the various Berber tribes of North Africa is a sequel to an earlier collection of the same subject. Its author was a fairly famous “orientalist” who specialised in the Berber culture. Each of the folktales has a similar “vibe” to the various folktales that we have been familiar with since childhood, tales such as “The tortoise and the hare”, but due to their non-western nature it can sometimes be difficult to understand what their intended meaning is meant to be.
3- Chrestomathie Mandchou/ Manchu Chrestomathy, by Julius Von Klaproth.
I should probably begin with an explanation of what “Chrestomathy” means. This is an old term for a compilation of literary extracts that is used to practice reading a foreign language, or to study some particular author or subject. In this case, this is a Chrestomathy of the nearly extinct Manchu Language. It mostly consists of various proverbs and extracts from Chinese texts such as “The Analects” with French translations accompanying the Manchu text and gloss. The author was another orientalist like Basset, who was well-known for writing a compendium of word-lists in various Asian languages called the “Asia Polyglotta”.
4- Infernaliana, by Charles Nodier.
A compilation of ghost and vampire stories, or rather accounts of “real” ghost and vampire sightings collected from various sources mixed in with some fictional tales. They vary in tone from rather sombre affairs to mildly comedic adventures. The author was a novelist and short story writer who is mostly well known for his contributions to gothic literature.
5- Aphorismes du temps présent/ Aphorisms of the present time, by Gustave Le Bon
This compilation of aphorisms was written by one of France’s most famous polymaths, mostly well known for his work in psychology. I find that trying to decipher a proverb in a foreign language is an interesting midway between translating a simple phrase-book sentence and translating a paragraph from a book of literature or philosophy. You get the brief work of the former, combined with some of the mental exercise of the latter. Trying to understand a proverb is a bit harder than trying to understand a request for a taxi or the price of a lemon.
6- Manuel de conversation Franco-Tonkinois/ French-Vietnamese conversation manual, by unknown
I previously mentioned this book in an earlier essay, but decided that I may as well mention it again as it falls under the genre of books I’m currently discussing. It is a French phrasebook and reader of Vietnamese, written by some missionary group during France’s colonial rule of “Indochina”. While the Phrasebook section may get too easy after awhile, the reader sections at the end are more likely to provide interest and exercise for the beginning French reader, being a series of fictional stories about a Vietnamese boy who is beginning his studies in the local French colonial school.
7- Beginner’s French reader, by L. Pylodet
This was one of the earliest French readers that I studied when I began learning to read French. While it is designed for young readers, and thus full of the moralistic and sappy nursery tales typically of 19th century children’s literature, it nonetheless is a very good starting point for practicing French as it is full of short yet still sufficiently difficult stories, songs and riddles that are guaranteed to be a good middle ground of not being too hard or too easy to understand. For some reason, I can’t find any information about the book’s author.
8- Sentences, maximes et proverbes Mantchoux et Mongols/ Manchu and Mongol sentences, maxims and proverbs, by Louis Rochet
This one is similar to the third book in this series, except that it includes some Mongolian proverbs alongside Manchu ones, all with French translations. Oddly enough, its author was a somewhat influential sculptor, who also had a strong interest in the Mongolian language, and taught it professionally in the last few years of his life.
Now that you’ve reached the end of the list, and hopefully found something that you think you would enjoy reading, I shall remind you that you don’t need to study these books for hours on end in order to develop you French reading skills. Simply trying to read a tale, poem or proverb each morning or evening instead of doomscrolling through (insert social media of choice here) can gradually lead you to developing better comprehension skills over time. It will often be necessary to re-read the same text once or twice, ideally a few hours apart, in order to fully comprehend your chosen text. The grammar of French, and its way of phrasing things, can be confusing for English readers, so it takes awhile to get the hang of understanding it. Also, it is a good idea to record each French word you come across that you aren’t familiar with on paper with its English definition, and go over it every now and again until you’ve learned their meaning well.
Also, if anyone reading this essay knows of other French compilations similar to the ones offered here, it would be interesting if you posted links to them in the comments.