<p>For Ancient Greek and Latin.</p>
<p>For German. For Russian.</p>
<p>This is just a quick question that I’ll delete when answered. I only want to learn a language to read the authors in the original but there is no point if I have to rely on Ebay or Amazon or whatever…</p>
<p>Hi, I’ve run into this problem before and have to say that Ebay/Amazon is probably your best bet. Don’t shun the internet retailers; they’re actually pretty useful!</p>
<p>That said, here are some other places I’ve found foreign language books:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>used bookstores. Smallest chance ever, but if you have a good secondhand bookstore by you, you might want to check them out to see if they have a German/Russian/whatever section anyway. I once found a copy of Aristophanes’ The Birds and some Demosthenes at such a place - both in Ancient Greek, of course. If you hope to have ANY luck with classic languages with this method, I recommend finding one of those really old rare books places - depending on what you find, your books might actually not set you back that much after all, and I find that these places are better for classics. However, it must be said that this method is really one of luck, so don’t go in with high hopes for pay-off.</p></li>
<li><p>Online. If you’re willing to scroll through websites rather than flipping pages, there are multiple sites online where you can find books in foreign languages, especially classic texts (no copyright on untranslated Sophocles!).</p></li>
<li><p>But by the far the best place I’ve found for foreign language texts is your local university. This trick works best with well-funded, large universities - I’ve had bad luck with small LACs, for instance, and very good luck with Ivies. Check out your local university’s campus bookstore and see if they have any foreign language books. I live near an especially prestigious Ivy, and they have a huge room filled mostly with Romance language texts and a wall of Loeb (which is probably what you’ll look for for Classic languages). University libraries are also a good place to check books out, if you have those privileges.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I hope one or more of these suggestions are of some help, but I’m afraid that in the end your question is a hard one to answer without living in and knowing the particulars of your area! I wish you luck.</p>
<p>If you are looking for just any book in Latin or German or Russian, your local college library will probably have some. If you are looking for a specific one, Amazon is probably your best bet. That’s how I got my English books when I was overseas, anyway.</p>
<p>Perseus is your friend for texts in Latin and Greek. :)</p>
<p>[Perseus</a> Digital Library](<a href=“http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/]Perseus”>Perseus Digital Library)</p>
<p>What the hell is wrong with people? Why aren’t there texts available in-hand…I don’t want to read books online!</p>
<p>If you don’t like free online copies, then go and buy the hardcopies you want. People were suggesting free online copies because you made the impression that you did not want to buy the books…</p>
<p>But to answer your question: it is a lot easier to distribute material for free online than to send a paper copy to every library in the world, don’t you think? Someone would have to pay for the printing, and you don’t seem to want to pay for it. Why should others pay for you to read books in different languages?</p>
<p>Powells. Which would be more helpful if you were in the pacific northwest, but the website is pretty good too.</p>
<p>It isn’t just for me. It’s for people who are tired of allowing technology and modern advancements to do everything for them. I want to do what Leo Tolstoy did and read Plato in Greek. I want to do something intellectual. And the point of this thread is that the hard copies of books in the original are very hard to find. It seems like I’ll have to rely on Amazon for whatever selection is up there, go to the actual country, much less find The Republic without English on one side or at all. I plan on going in 10 days to choose a classics major and a foreign language major for this purpose alone. </p>
<p>I will be going to the University of Oregon so I will be in the Pacific Northwest. Sorry if I seemed angry but modern society annoys me.</p>
<p>
There are not enough people interested in reading Kant or Plato in a foreign language to make the expense worthwhile for most libraries. If it was for me, public libraries would carry graduate-level math textbooks but I know that I am not going to find them there.</p>
<p>That being said, most college libraries will have the standard literature provided they have a department in that field. If your college has a Greek department, their library will most definitely have a Greek copy of Plato. If they have a philosophy department, you will most likely find Kant in German. However, if you want to read something more exotic in its original language, you might have to rely on online resources or buy the books yourself.</p>
<p>I did a search on my school’s library site and there are at least 200 books in Ancient Greek that are available (as in not checked out) at the moment when I searched ‘Plato’ only. I’d suggest looking at your schools library site.</p>
<p>Ebay and Amazon don’t have very many books. I’ve been looking for books in Russian - Amazon has zero basically and Ebay has a ton of harry potter and teen books. The only good thing about Ebay is that you might get lucky and find a lot with multiple books in whatever language you want. But german books are easy to find on amazon just go to the german amazon site.</p>
<p>If you want something for free and can’t find it in a library you are going to have to deal with it and use internet resources.</p>
<p>Also I did a websearch for ‘Russian bookstore’ and found a lot of sites that sell books online.</p>
<p>The problem with using Perseus and all the other free online Greek and Latin texts is that you wouldn’t have commentary and suitable glossary. Unless your Greek and Latin are amazingly good, you NEED commentary and glossary. Even the Loeb Classical Library is deemed inadequate for learners because of this. You want something like these:</p>
<p>[Cambridge</a> Greek & Latin Classics - Cambridge University Press](<a href=“Home”>Home)</p>
<p>and books like those aren’t usually sold in bookstores. Most libraries don’t have them too, because they are more like textbooks than reference/research books. To get them, your best way would be to order them online or to buy them from campus bookstores when a professor assigns them for a course.</p>
<p>Ah thank you so very much. I think I have my answer now.</p>