Books

I also only read English for a long time instead of my own language.

I picked up some books in my native language and was pleasantly surprised.

The language in itself doesn’t matter but I could notice the writer was from my culture. There’re slight cultural references in books written by people from my culture.

In books from American writers theres also these cultural references which I understand because I grew up on the internet but still it’s not my culture.

I would recommend to check if you’re country/culture has some literature award prizes and check out some of the top books. Make sure to try a couple as a well reviewed book might not mean it’s a good fit for you.

I think it's always better to read a book in the language it was originally written in, provided you can read that language, of course. So if it was written in English I'll read it in English. If it was written in a language I don't know I'll also often pick up the English rather than the German translation because I've often found they have a better flow to them.

I have found that my proficiency in my native language is not as high as I would like. Not bad of course, but the way some writers use the perfect adjectives to describe a scene is admirable. If I read that scene description in English I strengthen my knowledge about those English adjectives, but I miss out on exercise in my native tongue.

That being said, /r/hfy is in English and I am very cheap, so for the last few years I have read content exclusively online. Maybe I have to search out hfy stories in my own language.