Book Description

Perrault’s Stories: English & French THIS EDITION: The stories were originally written in French. The French text has been in large part translated anew into English for this dual-language project. Essentially, the stories have been rewritten in contemporary English from the original French. The emphasis is on attaining a high correlation between each set of text fragments. The dual-language text has been arranged into sub-paragraphs and paragraphs, for quick and easy cross-referencing. The reader can choose between four formats: Section 1: English to French Section 2: French to English Section 3: English Section 4: French A methodology for getting the most out of this bilingual format is explained in the book’s Foreword. BRIEF SYNOPSIS: This book is a collection of eight fairy tales that were originally published in 1697. The Grimm brothers rewrote many of these stories. However, in many ways they are remarkably different versions. The full title, as translated into English, is “Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals: Tales of Mother Goose.” The stories include: Sleeping Beauty in the Woods Cinderella Little Thumb Puss in Boots Riquet with the Tuft Blue Beard The Fairy Little Red Riding-Hood AUTHOR: Charles Perrault (1628 – 1703) is often times considered the founder of the modern fairy tale genre. Although, some of his stories follow themes from earlier authors, and he did not coin the phrase ‘fairy tale’. If you are having trouble with the level of difficulty in the text, a suggested path for learning languages is as follows: Familiarise yourself with a basic language instruction book — or re-read the one you have. Once a student has studied the basics, a suitable book about basic grammar can be helpful. The suggestion is that any grammar book be studied more with the intent of recognition and understanding, rather than memorising and obsessive rote learning. Go through as much of the grammar book you feel you can digest — maybe even the whole book — skipping over what is not easily understood. After this, read through a portion of text in a book called ‘French Sentences’, by 2LanguageBooks, looking for examples of what you have picked up (or gleaned) in your hopefully not so arduous study of grammar. Even repeatedly seeing a word that you remember seeing listed as a ‘subject pronoun’ or a ‘third person plural’ verb of some sort is a great help. Then, depending on your inclination, return to the grammar book (or your basic French book), or move on to lengthier bilingual text — like in 2Language Books texts containing conversations, news, or stories, for example —, or find some suitable French text: a simple novel, a French news website, etc. Grammar books will likely have some verb charts. However, there are currently good on-line resources that go further — dictionaries with a verb conjugation ‘search’ option. Many basic language books offer some form of audio support. Internet services — primarily news based radio stations — offer podcasts. Audio from television is an additional resource, and can be formatted for use on various digital platforms. However, if audio is an important component of your interest in languages, electronic devices that support quality text-to-speech (TTS) will likely be appealing. With a library card, TTS technology (in a device that supports the relevant content), and the above mentioned resources, an entire language learning system is available for not much more than a cup of coffee! There is no substantial financial outlay to get you started. Furthermore, there are no additional ongoing fees (and updates), and there are no expiry dates on ‘premium’ content and resources. (A Dual-Language Book Project) 2Language Books