Keskustelujen arkisto

So, I'm an English-speaking American who has now bought lots of Disney comics in other languages. In terms of a language that has the most Disney comic stories published in it, a Scandinavian language would probably be best, or Italian. But (correct me if I'm wrong, you international types) those countries do not have an eBay, or an eBay-equivalent, as far as I can tell. France and Germany both have eBay (eBay.fr and eBay.de, respectively), and I have had almost universally good experience ordering comics from any seller on one of those eBays who advertises as using PayPal and being willing to ship to the USA. You have to register on their eBay, but you get to use the same username and password you use on American eBay, and then anything you put on your watch list while on the foreign eBay site will appear on your one watch list which you can access from the American eBay site (and it will be automatically translated into English, besides, for appearance on your "home-accessed" watch list--so for convenience, I tend to put anything I want to buy from a foreign eBay on my watch list, then go to American eBay and go through the watch list to order it). This all works very smoothly. Between French and German, in general I'd say more stories I want to see are published in German. But there are lots of great stories published in French which we haven't seen in English, and I find French a lot easier to read than German, and not only because I studied it for more years in school. Heck, I find *Dutch* comics easier to read than German, and I never took *any* Dutch in school! German sentence structure is a pain in the neck, not to mention the compound words. If you learn French well, it won't be too hard for you to make your way through an Italian comic, either. (And Italian comics also sometimes show up on eBay.fr.)
But if anyone out there knows of some straightforward way for Americans to order Scandinavian comics, let us know!
Foreign-language Disney comics will occasionally appear on the American eBay, but not often, and even when they do, it's usually cheaper to order them directly from Europe. The Canadian eBay carries more French comics, and I have ordered a few from there, but most of the listings for French comics on eBay.ca are from sellers in France, so you might as well go directly to eBay.fr.
Usually I find the story/issue I want to order on INDUCKS (the new "top stories" on each creator's page is a great help in finding stories!), and then just put that issue name & number in the search engine of the appropriate eBay. Alternatively, you could just look for "lots" of big bunches of comics, which would be cheaper per comic (though such lots will often ship only within the country or within the EU)...but I find it more rewarding to purchase particular stories that sound interesting to me. (There is a ton of mediocre schlock published in the European Disney comics.) I do almost always get a bunch of comics at once from a single seller; the ones who are used to shipping to the USA will all group purchases and give you a reasonable rate for combined shipping.

Ah, I guess I had never checked for an Italian eBay--just looked for equivalent sites for Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. So maybe Italian would be the language for AzureBlue to start with? I don't have much experience ordering stuff from Italian sellers, so I can't comment on that. I think that shipping costs from Italy are significantly higher than they are from France or Germany, though, a factor of the Italian postal system. Again, you international folks, correct me if I'm wrong on that--it may be just an impression I've gotten from the couple of Italian sellers I've ordered from.

Quote from user: MatildaHeck, I find *Dutch* comics easier to read than German, and I never took *any* Dutch in school! German sentence structure is a pain in the neck, not to mention the compound words. If you learn French well, it won't be too hard for you to make your way through an Italian comic, either. (And Italian comics also sometimes show up on eBay.fr.)
That is because Dutch and English are sister languages (Northwest Germanic) which both broke off together from the Germanic root language at the same time (along with Frisian-the closest language to English, and the Plattdeutsch dialects). So, Dutch is the closest major language to English. The Scandinavian languages (North Germanic) broke off first, and thus, are more distant. And, High German (Hochdeutsch-official German) broke off last, and is more distant from English). Dutch has many words that are spelt the same in English, but many of them have different meanings from the English counterpart. Still, for the English-speaking person who does not study any other language, Dutch would likely be the easiest to attempt to understand the gist.

French has worked out pretty well for me. I don't think learning any one language will get you access to EVERYTHING, but French gets you plenty, and there are a surprising number of stories I've enjoyed that have ONLY been published in French outside of Italy. Theoretically, Italian would surely be the best deal, but from my (very limited, admittedly) experience, it looks to me as though ebay.it tends to have less stuff available and fewer sellers willing to ship overseas than .fr (or .de, for that matter). And, of course, if you're talking about as significant an undertaking as learning a new language, you might want to consider whether there are non-comics-related considerations that might influence your decision.

AzureBlue, good luck with French, and may it bring you Disney-comics happiness as it has to GeoX and to myself (as well as other benefits!). Once you learn French, again, you should be able to read Italian comics also with the help of online translation. And I have done a bit of research now on eBay.it, and I conclude that, indeed, the shipping prices from Italy are significantly higher than from Germany or France.
And have you read "Donald Duck and the Count of Monte Cristo"? It's in the British Disney Literature Classics series (with the nice paper and the substandard English dialoguing of that series); it's also been published in the French "Donald et les heroes de la litterature" series, and might be better read there. It's not really a parody of the novel, it's more a sequel to it, with Donald finding some of the Count's treasure which he hid near Duckburg. I really like how the story ends.
Timoro and Germund, thanks for alerting us to the auction sites for Finland, Sweden, etc.

Wow, you're welcome! Amazing--I influenced someone to do something :p I just hope you're not cursing my name while trying to conjugate the subjunctive forms of irregular verbs :D

Well I'm using Duolingo.com and was whizzing through it all until I reached the stupid q-words that mean what and how and where and all that. Exact same thing that used to trip me up in Latin (except in Latin half of them mean therefore)
But not cursing you yet GeoX! Saving that for the conjugations!