There is a tag that marks translations, but at the moment you cannot search for books that do not have some specific tag. Also the tag is probably not set for every book that actually is a translation, as it depends on people to set the tag.
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Maybe we could look into this a bit more. If it’s technical possible to automate the original language should be mention in the imprint, which should be available on linked site and could maybe automatically be added. Then a setting for additional filter “native materials only” would be best.
If that’s not an option a “native” tag would be helpful. Then it’s our job to ensure to tag correctly.
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I think people are not good at setting tags for stuff that a vast majority of books/ movies fulfill, just for psychological reasons, as it will soon feel like unnecessary work.
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The Magic Treehouse (La Cabane Magique) books are translated into French and are aren’t that painful to read considering they’re kids books.
After that I gave up reading in French because I couldn’t find any of the other poplar starter books in other languages on Natively that were translated into French 
I am the opposite, I went in comprehensible input listening first and know what people are saying, but why are there so many letters in all these words!?!?
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I also started with listening. There was a time when I could watch NT1, now called TFX, for free via satellite TV. Later I actually read two books, one a SF book “L’orphelin de perdide“, because I knew the movie (animation), the other was “Le petit prince” 
.
After about three years they started to encrypt their program, and I stopped with French 
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Thanks! I will tell them.
When I was a kid, I read a lot of stuff from a collection called “Bibliothèque rose” Bibliothèque rose — Wikipédia
I remember reading a lot of Famtômette and Le club des cinq
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At least they are consistent in their use of letters. Since I learned english mostly through reading, I never talk much, my pronounciation is all over the place and often times wrong. So inconsistent, but with french, when you learned the rule once, you can pronounce any word or write it correctly.
Anyway, hyped for english and french 
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I saved that and will definitely check them out next time I’m back into French learning. Hopefully sooner than French comes to Natively, but you never know…
I am a native speaker and can’t spell and make use of dictionary apps to pronounce new words
English is a mess.
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Well, no. There are silent letters all over the place and a bunch of sounds have multiple possible spellings. That’s why we have “dictées” until junior high, so that we get the correct spelling drilled into our heads. I was terrible at it and, to this day, I am still incapable of writing anything longer than 3 words without spelling mistakes.
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Personal recommendation: the Tintin comics. After that I read a few Maigret mysteries. The advantage with French is you can lean very heavily on your English vocab, so you can often blunder through something a bit above your level.
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You can exclude tags by clicking on them after you’ve added them to the search.
It still depends on people actually tagging things as translations, but that’s a different issue. It seems like this thread is generating a lot of discussion about other features and bugs
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Hey, good find!
Btw: when I searched my Owned and Finished books I found three of 13 that were not marked as translation. So there might be quite some work to be done.
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I have a list of books, movies and TVseries ready to add for when French is available on Natively. I’m not gonna be grading as I’m a native speaker, my best guess at language difficulty in French would be books that I read as assigned reading in elementary school are probably on the easier side, and something like Balzac with the neverending descriptions is harder, probably L35+.
I look forward to seeing what the book club nominations and picks end up being, I wonder if anything I’ve already read will end up on there
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From what I read as a child:
- Chair de poule / Goosebumps
- Le club des cinq / The famous five
- Le bus magique / The magic school bus
- Anything by Roald Dahl
- and indeed, La cabane magique / Magic treehouse
I can also recommend the Le petit Nicolas books, although those were originally written in French.
I had so many of the Bibliothèque rose books as well. And I do remember reading Fantômette, although I think we just didn’t have as many of those as other series.
See this, from reading it one Korean, is a lot harder than I initially thought. Learning French from English though, that makes more sense, since a lot of those more topic specific words will be cognates, diminishing that difficulty.
Concerning comics, I’ll always have a special place in my heart for Tomtom et Nana. I can also recommend Pico Bogue, although that one would be more similar to Tintin in level I’d say. And of course, some classics, Astérix et Obélix and Lucky Luke.
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Taking a stab in the dark here, as I’ve never learned French, but is Asterix any good? I remember reading the English translation as a kid, and it came to mind that the originals are French.
I guess you’d probably miss the character name puns, as I’ve been told the French is as punny as the English there.
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It depends. I liked them as a kid (up to 10-ish years old?), but I kinda grew out of it at that point. It just gets old. Same with Spirou and derivatives (e.g., Gaston, le Marupilami, …).
Past that point, I remember I really enjoyed Thorgal (Thorgal — Wikipédia) and Aria (Aria (bande dessinée) — Wikipédia). Looking at the publication list, the last stuff I read from either are from 1999 I wonder how I would feel reading them today. Apparently both series have recent volumes, but I wonder what “the kids” read these days.
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I also read Asterix in English as a kid, and have read one in French. I would say they are harder than Tintin, because they’re humour, so there’s a lot of jokes and wordplay, whereas in Tintin the dialogue is more straightforward.
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For anyone wanting to get a taste of some of the French comics with some training wheels on, so to speak, this channel has a bunch of videos where he reads through Tintin, Lucky Like, and Asterix comics and explains any grammar points or tricky words. Highly recommended!
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