Public Research: First read
 

Part of Public Research Project. The main question being: what language you've read Tolkien in first? Was it English or your mothertongue or some other tranlation that hooked you in? Did you come to learn English because of Tolkien? etc...

edit: Of course, if English is your mothertongue, you put it down to English. The other two options by definition mean 'if other than English' (as I suppose cases for native English speakers of reading Tolkien in, say, Japanese would be rare) /end of edit.

This poll is public

But English IS my mothertongue!

Just kidding... I put down English...

But it still IS my mothertongue...

I am yet to read Tolkien's work in English... I have started, but at the time I was FINSIHING a re-read in Spanish and so finishing it up took precedense over starting it all over again :p

I must say, at least with the Spanish translation I have, while whoever translated it did an excelent job overall, there are things that just can't be translated... from the little bit I read of his work, it really is much better in English. As well the songs and general poetry in the books were translated into Spanish but not re-arranged so that they rhymed what so ever... and thus all the songs (that are quite beautiful in English) are an eyesore.

Still, it is an overal great work of translation...

HI, this is perhaps a stupid question, but what if your mothertongue is English?

Polls should be monochrome, the rainbow of colours must be distracting...
 

It will obviously lead to common good if people start reading opening posts of the poll-threads, not only polls, as introductions usually tend to contain some commentary upon the subject :p

My apologies, read the post when it first went up and didn't reread after the edit. Brain is now in gear.

I'll be darned if there ever is a Filipino translation of any Tolkien book...and I pity the translator. (Don't get me wrong, I mean that Filipino is a complicated language, and translating LotR, let's say, in Filipino would be a hard job.)

Besides, despite being Filipino for the most part, English is my first written language.

The more I participate in these polls, the more boring I seem! :p

English-just English

Well, I live in Canada and the main language is English. Can you put two and two together? :p

Mind you, I wouldn't mind reading LotR in French. I just need to find one...

I am in agreement with you, Lhuna. I doubt anybody would ever bother translating LotR into Gujarati, simply because it would be so annoying, difficult to translate, and pointless (I doubt think many Gujarati's would be much enamoured by British Fantasy).

Even if they did, I'm long past being able to read it...

Though I must say, it looks quite Tengwar-y to me, so I'm quite fond of it. I think it's the way vowels are placed above and below letters that does it.

Edit: Eventually I want to read LotR in French.

I've first read it in English, although that isn't my mothertongue. (That's because I discovered Tolkien later in life when I had already read much English literature.) I've read the German translation afterwards and was very disappointed by it!