(Part 2) Best children foreign language books according to redditors

Yeah, I'm doing a degree in Russian and French!

I'd say start by learning the alphabet, it's really important because all the [best] resources you're going to find are going to be partly in cyrillic. We learnt it in two weeks at uni, it's really not that hard if you're consistent about it. It's a really phonetic alphabet, meaning that (generally) one letter = one sound. In fact, for me that makes Russian pronunciation WAY easier than French.

After, I'd probably pick up a good textbook and try to work a bit on it every day. Russian is REALLY different from English, it doesn't have the same grammar rules at all (word order and cases is one of the biggest difference). So it's good if you take it in little by little and just try to do even 30 mins every day. In my course we've been using Colloquial Russian , it's pretty nice and covers all the basic grammar points. Of course, we still get loads of resources from our teachers, but you can find that online or in other books.

Also, duolingo now offers a russian course! If you want to start by taking it really casually and "light" it can be a good option for you. (to type in Cyrillic I just use my on-screen keyboard option and turn it into russian [on windows]).

More importantly, it can seem really overwhelming, but you just gotta remind yourself why you're doing it, and keep going. After a few months you'll be amazed at how much you've improved!

Catullus

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Betrayal-Catullus-Bruce-Arnold/dp/0130433454/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?crid=22K0V9X7X9C74&keywords=love+and+betrayal+a+catullus+reader&qid=1558536403&s=gateway&sprefix=love+and+betrayal+%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1-fkmrnull

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Ovid

https://www.amazon.com/Love-Transformation-Reader-English-Latin/dp/067358920X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28WT9VPC88Q7S&keywords=love+and+transformation+an+ovid+reader&qid=1558536463&s=gateway&sprefix=ovid+love+and+trans%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1-spell

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https://www.amazon.com/Ovids-Amores-Book-One-Commentary/dp/0806141441/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=amores+book+1+ovid&qid=1558536435&s=gateway&sr=8-2

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https://www.amazon.com/Ovid-Metamorphoses-VIII-Latin-Texts/dp/1853997226/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=ovid+metamorphoses+8&qid=1558536602&s=gateway&sr=8-11

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Cicero

https://www.amazon.com/Cicero-Pro-Caelio-Marcus-Tullius/dp/0865165599/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=cicero+pro+caelio&qid=1558536500&s=gateway&sr=8-1

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I really enjoyed Ovid at your level, which is why he is over-represented in this list. I know Perseus has commentaries on all the Catullus poems except the more risque ones. Unfortunately, those are also left out of the book I posted here. I would probably go with the Catullus one or the first/second Ovid books, just because I think love poetry is entertaining. The Cicero was definitely more difficult, but had a lot of juicy insults and was also quite fun. I used all of these and they definitely helped me improve my Latin, so whatever you choose will be good, just pick something you'll have fun reading. Good luck and enjoy!

Firstly, this torrent has a ton of things to help you learn Dutch. I own a hard copy of a grammar book, Dutch: A Comprehensive Grammar. It's very good. There's some workbooks in the torrent but I haven't really looked at them. There's also some kids books with their audio versions included.
For vocabulary I use memrise mainly, but there's also some flashcard sites: dutch flashcards, anki. A good grammar site is this. Here's a podcast to help you learn Dutch. And here's some other sites: http://www.2bdutch.nl/, http://www.lingq.com, more resources, more resources, Mango (I used this when I was a beginner because I got it free through my school. You might be able to get it free through your library), lang8, and that's all I've got. Should be enough :p Good luck!

For reference material on grammar try the following:

• A Short Reference Grammar of Standard Slovene (Marc Greenberg - also free to download from Duke University's Slavic and Eurasian Language Resource Center)
  
  
• Slowenische Grammatik für Deutsche: Inhaltsverzeichnis & Übersicht (since you understand enough German, you may find this freebie handy and a good complement to Greenberg's .pdf)
  
  
• Slovene: A Comprehensive Grammar (Peter Heritty - a book for you if you really want to geek out on grammar. The 2nd edition is more expensive and thicker than the 1st edition that I listed)
  
  If on the off-chance you're sniffing around for a self-instructional course for English-speakers, the best one available is the new edition of Colloquial Slovene by Marta Pirnat-Greenberg (avoid the editions by Andrea Albretti as they're terrible based on personal experience). Pirnat-Greenberg includes dialogues in each chapter showing both formal and informal Slovenian in use and covers basic grammar.
  
  Srečno!

I'm a fan of Colloquial Russian. I think it's more accessible/less dense than the Penguin course and has free audio online for the dialogues.

I like these novels chosen to be accessible for beginners and with some extras: https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Beginners-Exercises-200-Word-Vocabulary-ebook/dp/B01BN8F714/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=spanish+for+beginners+novels&qid=1568685736&sr=8-4

Sure!

Amebis translator, better than Google Translate for Slovene

Forvo has 8k pronunciations

Linguee has some contextual translations, but they are mostly discussions from the EU parliament and are not everyday language

Sublearning, this site gives you a line from a movie and asks you to translate it. It has lots of out-of-sync subs

Slovar Slovenskega Knjiznjega Jezika, a standard Slovene dictionary, entirely in Slovene

Pons is a classic English-Slovene dictionary, with some examples

Learnslovenian.net was made by some volunteers, I haven't used it

Termania is a beast of a dictionary and is my go-to dictionary whenever I need something

This site helps with noun case modifications

This site has a list of resources

And there's this site, created by the Faculty of Arts

This is an older book on Amazon, written in the 90's I believe

Colloquial Slovene is a good one that I've used

Aaaand that's about it. There are some Memrise courses as well, but I haven't been hearing good things about Memrise as of late.

To be honest, it's hard to read real texts with just one semester of Latin. Any real text will have a lot of forms in that you haven't learnt and can't just figure out. Take second semester, and then buy yourself a graded reader. We started reading this one during our second semester class.

Depends on what you're looking for:

• Grammar approach: Wheelock's Latin. If you like grammar and syntax (which I do), you'll be right at home here. This is a rather popular college textbook.
  
• Reading approach: Ecce Romani - want to read a story and learn the language more inductively? Hit up this textbook. It does have a decent grammar backing, though you may want some more explanation at times. Very useful with cultural and historical explanations. A high-school text.
  
  
• Immersion Approach - Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata - want a book that is purely in Latin and will slowly teach you how to read Latin? Choose this. Like Ecce, tells a story, but no English explanations whatsoever. Immersionists and oral Latin folks are big fans of this. I'm told this has been used at the American Academy at Rome.
  
  
• Grammar-Lite Approach - Jenney's Latin - a bit off-put by the enormity of Wheelock? Still want grammar? This is a high-school level text that is grammar-centric, but won't smack you over the head with it. Note: hasn't been updated in a while, might find this one in older Latin programs.
  
  
• Immersion-Lite Approach - Cambridge Latin Course - not a big fan of total immersion like in Lingua Latina? This text will have the story and English explanations of Ecce, but with much more Latin around. This textbook probably does the best job of teaching history, culture, and mythology as well. You might also be an Anglophile if you choose this book, as it's huge in the UK.
  
  These are the big ones that I know of. I'm sure there are more out there, so other folks, please comment! I'm also sure that some of my own biases might have come out in the post. I've personally used all of these in my classroom (high school Latin teacher here) to some extent except for Cambridge.
  
  Best of luck to you in your pursuit of learning!
  
  edit: clarity

Routledge has their grammar books for a great number of languages, in both their "Essential" series and "Comprehensive" series, and Modern Greek is in both series.

https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Essential-Grammar-Routledge-Grammars/dp/1138930687

https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Comprehensive-Language-Routledge-Grammars/dp/041559202X

Not cheap, but very detailed explanatory grammars.

I'm answering this with regards to Spanish, which is the only language I feel comfortable saying I can essentially speak now, but anything I say applies to all the languages.

1. At first I thought you were asking about if we try to learn more than one language at the same time. I don't think that's what you were asking but just in case, no, I don't. Especially if the two languages are related. I completed the Spanish tree before doing French. Now I'm focusing solely on French before moving onto anything else. If you were talking about the skills tree, which I think is what you meant, I usually try to invent problems for myself based on whatever the skill is. If I can solve them fairly easily I move on. If not, then I google around a bit for an explanation of whatever it is that's tripping me up (and some courses will have explanations below the lessons, but others won't). Just try and think of things to say related to the lesson and translate them into Swedish. If you can't, or you're afraid something is wrong with what you've done, then dwell on that skill a bit more--but not just on Duolingo (since the amount of sentences in the lesson are limited), but Google it and see what else you can find.
   
2. I'd definitely check out the resources on the language specific subreddit for Swedish: /r/Svenska. In order to boost my Spanish I did two main things. The first was listen to the News in Slow Spanish podcast. I recommend finding some sort of podcast or audio thing with slow speakers and listening to it for about 10 minutes a day. Duolingo is really good in terms of improving reading/writing skills, but not so much listening/speaking skills. The second thing I did was buy some parallel English/Spanish books. So I got an English/Spanish parallel Bible and an English/Spanish collection of short stories. The short stories were probably the most helpful, because they were arranged in order of difficulty (plus I was learning about the culture since they had been selected with non-natives in mind). Here's a Swedish/English Parallel Short Story Book, and here's a free online Swedish parallel Bible. I don't recommend the Bible for religious reasons, but because usually the stories and verses are so familiar to people already, it's easier to translate at a beginner's stage.
   
3. I was able to get to a B1 proficiency (on the CEFR scale) using those resources alone. Then I tried 1 month immersion, which helped me vastly more than any of those resources. I don't think you can achieve true language learning with those resources alone. Perhaps you could, but it would take a lifetime. Once you finish the Duolingo tree and feel comfortable with everything in it, and can understand the gist of what stories are about (including News articles) without needing to translate them (Even if you don't understand every word or don't understand some sentences) I'd say it's time for full immersion.

Are you searching a grammar book for Italian or one for foreign learners?

About the vocabulary, you should check this book; you can read children's fairy tales at The Fable Cottage and
The Italian Experiment(not only tales but even some idiomatic expressions) .
If you can, talk or char in Italian with a native.

Here are two relatively easy books that I've picked up:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1456439871/ref=oh_details_o05_s01_i00

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0844242810/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i02

Granted I'm American, and have used these to learn, but they should be of decent help to you.

The New Penguin Russian Course is amazing and includes everything you need to know about Russian grammar. A book I am reading right now for beginners is First Reader in Russian. It is a very basic Russian book that has exercises and a dictionary in the back. The only bad thing about it is the dictionary doesn't include all of the words from the book so I usually have to go to my Russian-English English-Russian Dictionary. This dictionary also lacks many important words, but it hasn't given me any problems. Another good Russian reading source is Russian Stories: A Dual-Language Book. If you just look around on amazon you will find many good resources.

how about hakumusume?

http://hukumusume.com/douwa/pc/jap/index.html

It's an online site with easy to read folk tales, many of which have illustrations and audio.

It has one story for every day of the year so about 365. More than enough to sharpen your Japanese.

I've also got a few books that I wrote with some help from japanese friends to check grammar etc, English text side by side with Japanese and a running glossary.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016DWZTEA?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

http://www.amazon.com/kaguya-japanese-reader-Holly-Plyler-ebook/dp/B016LS6KKS/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1449342441&sr=1-3

Here are the only three books I'd recommend to learn to speak the language:

• Modern Persian: Spoken and Written, Volume 1
  Despite the picture of a CD-ROM, it's a real book and real big. There is a volume two to it as well. Also, I would imagine it would be tough to learn on your own with this book, but if you could find a tutor or class to go through this with, it may work well. May (or may not) come with CDs.
  
• Colloquial Persian It's a decent book and could be used for self-study.
  
• Persian Language Teaching, AZFA Bar-none, one of the best textbook series out there. May (or may not) come with CDs.
  
  On the question of learning both spoken and book Persian - it's possible, but you'll really confuse yourself. Learn one first and then the other. The vast majority of people learn book Persian first and then try to learn the spoken form second. I think this is backwards and would recommend learning the spoken language first.
  
  On the question of newscasters - yeah, things can be very different. Let me give you an example that happens - my wife is a native Farsi speaker. She struggles significantly with understanding the Dari (Afghan) and Tajiki (Tajikistan) colloquial accents. But she can listen to newscasts from Afghanistan and Tajikistan with almost no problems, because they are all in book Persian, which is highly consistent across Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. So this is to say that the colloquial manner of speaking can be different from the standard book Persian. They each have their purposes - but if your purpose is to communicate verbally with people, learn the spoken language. I wish I had a good comparable story with spoken and written English, but I don't really.

These books are for kids and explain Swedish culture in both English and Swedish:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G9MP1DZ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JMZF82D/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07QBDLWTV/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i3

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

Yes! As for books these one's have really helped me:

• Everything Learning German This one is super great for grammar. It has exercises at the end of each lesson so you can practice too :)
  
• Collins Complete German This one is probbbbably my favorite. I love it, it has a guide for pretty much everything you need to know in the grammar, it explains everything well, and it has verb tables so you can study the conjugation. It has some vocabulary in the back too.
  
• Graded German Reader This one is also really awesome. You can find a used one for 10 bucks on amazon, just the new ones are really expensive because I don't think they are made anymore. This starts with simple reading passages and gradually gets more difficult while adding new words- but it's at a perfect pace so you don't get overwhelmed, and you will probably be able to completely understand.
  
• Cafe in Berlin Another german short story book. This one is great too.
  
• German Pre-Intermediate Reader Another reader- this one incorporates the top 1000 words in German.
  
  I know I have more but these are my favorites! As for movies/shows.. when I watch like youtube videos (try 'easy german') or kids shows I tend to watch them without subtitles. If I'm watching an adult movie/show I pretty much have to use subtitles otherwise I can't pick up anything. I usually put the subtitles in German though, because I read better than I listen!
  
  Let me know if I can help you with anything else :)

You can preview it on the Amazon page. Seems like it's the same.

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https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Grammar-Wiki-BOOK-Elementary-ebook/dp/B01CHNZ75A/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1503307962&sr=8-1&keywords=grammar+wiki&linkCode=sl1&tag=allset-20&linkId=29d8e8f51e1c1697fe3b66207d609c1f

Unfortunately I'm learning Latin in high school right now, so I don't really know of any do-it-yourself Latin books (though I'm sure they exist). The text we're using, if you're interested, is the Cambridge Latin course - amazon link

There's a chapter on kathareouvsa in this book. https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Comprehensive-Language-Routledge-Grammars/dp/041559202X

I have a copy of an earlier edition, will have a look once I get home from work.

EDIT: I've looked now. There's not a chapter on katharevousa, but they mention it several times throughout the book. Lots of page references in the index.

Thank you for the recommendation! Is it this: http://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Persian-Abdorreza-Rafiee/dp/0415157498/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1454111971&sr=8-1&keywords=colloquial+persian

Or this:
http://www.amazon.com/Colloquial-Persian-Abdi-Rafiee/dp/0415560454/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1454111971&sr=8-2&keywords=colloquial+persian

Forget software! That's only helpful for a first few words (A1).

For anything higher, you'd want to get a good grammar book (like this one and a language learning book. I used 'Taal Vitaal', but that's for German-speakers, which mean I can't really recommend one for English-speakers.

Maybe you can even do a language course. I always found them to be too slow for me, so I stopped and learned the language using books.

Good luck and have fun!

P.S.: If you're planning on working in the Netherlands, learning Dutch is probably one of the best things you can do. As you've probably seen in the two years you were in Utrecht, you can come by with English only, but you never get to dive in and not be regarded as a foreigner.

Also having a native-speaker around you to practice with helps a lot.

My focus is Koine, so I use Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, which has been enough so far. It also mentions some other, more specialized works that I may pick up one of these days.

But Attic is much harder IMO (having done both myself), so I would really recommend something focusing specifically on it if that's what you are studying. Plus there are various levels -- when you say "advanced," it's important to know what you mean exactly. Would something like this be enough?

A really good book for basic beginners Greek is Greek to GCSE. I actually can't remember whether it starts from the very basics though. Primer of Greek Gramaer is great for a slightly more advanced learner as a grammar reference point, whereas Morwood is simple and well laid out. The basis of all Greek language is Homeric vocabulary so books like this which has basic reading notes and vocab in the back are really good for broadening your grasp of Greek.

You're not too stupid. You can do it. It's just taking it step by step and setting little targets and goals. Everyone was at some point at your stage at the beginning of learning a language. Which books have you looked at so far?

Holy shit. I saw this post while procrastinating from reading more of this:
http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Spanish-Reader-William-Tardy/dp/0071428062

So... yes. Yes I would read a book like that, if I wasn't on reddit too much. If anyone here wants to read spanish, I highly recommend this.

Also! It's not vocabulary that makes it tough, it's grammar in a language with a lot of conjugation possibilities. Spent some time with Lithuanian... Good God it was impossible to choke down all the different forms verbs/nouns/adjectives could take.

Here are some things I found on amazon:

Vocabulary:

1. https://www.amazon.de/dp/3190094705/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_z7sQCbPQN42A7 (especially for forgein kids)
   
2. https://www.amazon.de/dp/3190079218/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_h9sQCbA1PKQBG (a picture book for adults)
   
3. https://www.amazon.de/dp/3468489536/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_qatQCbKRG0YN9 (these are cards with pictures and the fitting words on them; I used something like that with a russian kid (didn’t speak german at all) at my elementary school myself and had great experience)
   
4. https://www.amazon.de/dp/3125160855/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_QgtQCbZW367FD (in my opinion the best one; have the same for russian)
   
   Grammar (and Vocabs):
   
   
5. https://www.amazon.de/dp/0008141789/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_fftQCb06X0H77
   
6. https://www.amazon.de/dp/312562858X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_DjtQCbJZ6ZWXE
   
   There are also some good allrounders from the publisher „PONS“ or „Langenscheidt“

Get these:

http://www.amazon.com/Madrigals-Magic-Key-Spanish-Creative/dp/0385410956

http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Spanish-Reader-William-Tardy/dp/0071428062