Richard Newnham

Meloves a good bilingual book, especially one with one of my favourite stories in German: "Die blasse Anna/Pale Anna" by Heinrich Böll.

Some of the works I urge people to read, if they haven't already. Why? Because they are not like anything else, and each changed me, and for the most part they aren't completely obvious must-reads, at least not today, so I may succeed in steering someone toward a book they wouldn't have otherwise picked up. Böll's is a short-story, so it doesn't exactly fit in this category, but it fits in my category of works that somehow changed me. This is the first time I've read this short-story in translation, and it does not "pale" in comparison with the original. I've written about the pleasure of reading literature in German, when compared to its shadowy counterpart in English (I imagine the same happens when one translates from English into German).

If you're into Post-War German Literature, read the rest of the review on my blog.… (mehr)

Capsule review: If you know a lot about linguistics, this is probably not the introduction to Chinese that you want.

Written for the Westerner who is interested in Chinese, but not necessarily wanting to learn it,. This book tries to introduce some of the complexities of Chinese for an Indo-European language speaker without getting into technical linguistic detail.

Unfortunately for me, I've actually had a few courses in linguistics and the convoluted ways the author used to explain things that are fairly straight-forward if you have linguistics background, drove me nuts and I wasn't able to finish the book.… (mehr)

"About Chinese" by Richard Newnham belongs to the best introductions to the Chinese language. The book is particularly useful to people who want to gain some insight into the Chinese language before deciding whether or not to learn Chinese.

The book is written in an accessible style, introducing many facts about the Chinese language often omitted in books used to learn Chinese, such as the difference between written language and the vernacular. Knowledge of general linguistics may make reading of the book more interesting, but is nor required. For beginning learners there are explanations of basic principles of word morphology and grammar.

The biggest disadvantage of the book is that the publisher did not have or use Chinese fonts to print Chinese characters. All Chinese characters, both simplified and traditional Chinese characters are drawn in pen hand writing. While the pen writings are drawn to resemble print (it isn't Chinese normal handwriting), these representations of Chinese characters are not as clear as print. On the other hand, readers might try to write and come close to such written characters, which they would never if they were presented with printed form of characters only.… (mehr)

Contains 8 short stories written after WW2, published in West Germany:
Pale Anna by Heinrich Boell
Story in Reverse by Ilse Aichinger
The Host by Hans Bender
Woman Driver by Gertrud Fussenegger
Antigone and the Garden Dwarf by Gerd Gaiser
At the Trocadero by Wolfdietrich Schnurre
When Potemkin's Coach Went By by Reinhard Lettau
Thithyphuth or My Uncle's Waiter by Wolfgang Borchert
The German and English translations appear side by side on the page as an aid to students of German.… (mehr)