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Consejos Sobre Don Quixote

Fedora

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Hace tiempo que quiero leer Don Quijote, la llamada mejor novela de todos los tiempos, pero la edad de la gran obra me da que pensar. Soy estudiante de español después de todo, y me pregunto si algunas de las palabras, estructuras, y locuciones arcaicas no me pondrán fácil de entender como estudiante. Por otro lado, recuerdo haber leído que el español en el siglo XVI es más similar a su forma moderna que es el inglés. Así que ¿me recomendarían la novela o no?
 

InTheCloud

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Early modern Spanish is closer to modern Spanish that their English counterparts. Spanish has less changes.
But there are some words that has either changed or fell into disuse. Often there are glosaries or notes in the some editions that explain that words. Get a Edition that has those notes and you will be OK.

I read the Cantar of Mio Cid, the medieval poem of the famous knigth Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar (Spain was the first place in Europe were second names became common). It was written in the 1000s, almost a millenioum ago and is fairly readable. Spanish has changed far less than English in the same period. Probably because Latin, Spanish's parent language was the language of the Church and scholars and hepled fix the language.
 
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Fedora

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Believe me it would be easier that for a Spanish speaker to read Shakespeare.
I'm reading John of the Cross from about the same era.

Or Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in Middle English, which only dates to the 14th century. It's amazing how I could read a Spanish poem dating to the year 1000 A.D. when at the same time Old English/Anglo-Saxon was spoken on the Isles. It's amazing what a little invasion will do to a people and their language.
 
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InTheCloud

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Yes Modern English is a weird hybrid of Western Germanic and Normandic French.

In the same time of the Norman Invasion Spanish was just a modern dialect of Latin.
The first notes in Spanish were notes on Latin Bibles.

One of the reasons Protestantism caught in Northern Europe and not in Southern Europe was that translating the Bible from Latin into Spanish or Italian would see to be undignified. Is like puting the KJV into skater slang or ebonics.
I guess that the story with Greek and Syrica/Aramaic would be similar.
 
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InTheCloud

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Fedora, this is a good example of Medieval Spanish. The Song of My Cid (El Cantar de Mio Cid). Written in the late 1100s, early 1200s. (http://www.laits.utexas.edu/cid/)

This is an example of early modern Spanish, like the one used by Cervantes in the XVI century, see that is not too different to today's modern Spanish:

 
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greenboy

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don Quijote Incluye a toda la humanidad, los pesimitas materialistas y los optimistas epirituales, que la humanidad se divide en dos. Si te pones a leer Don Quijote palabra por palabra y no coges la idea completa te vuelves loco. es como leer el King James original y buscar cada palabra. Saavedra nos dio lo mejor que tenia y es en verdad un gran libro. Espero que lo difrutes. Greenboy (lo lei tres veces durante mi vida)

 
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