/lit/ - Literature

I was wondering... What do you learn languages for? Since we are on a literature board, I imagine most of you are interested in reading books in the original language, so it's mostly a training for reading. For me it's precisely so.
Am Italian and I find myself in the surprising situation of being familiar with seven languages. Suprising because, I have to confess, I only studied two of them. Namely, Latin and Greek, from my classical education over the five years of high school—in Italy called Lyceum, as the Peripatetic school ot Aristotle (though I'd prefer the Academy of Plato to be desu). In middle school I also received a smattering of French, and even though I can't remember much of the grammar, I perfectly know how to pronounce it and I'm able to read in French with the help of a dictionary. Having this solid foundation of Italian, Latin and French, the result is that I have no problem in reading Spanish and Portuguese as well. Most words are literally the same, and this is one of the most beautiful gifts of belonging to the romance sphere. Of course I'm talking about an ability that is purely pragmatic and far from a real mastery (for example I wouldn't be able to speak any of these languages) but since my only interest is in reading—to work with books and printed words—I simply don't care. I just need a dictionary at hand and I can read anything (I suppose) written in those languages. Even with Latin, I'm lucky because my personal interests lead me to Medieval and Renaissance texts more than Ancient Rome's, so everything is simpler. Christian literature in particular is easy as fuck. Ovid and Virgil... hehe, not as much. But it's fun to read the hexameters out loud. In the end the only language that is still inaccessible (again, for reading) is Greek, because it is the most difficult one. But it doesn't bother me, because if anything I would do some translation work just for fun, with short poetry mostly. And if I need to check a word in a bilingual edition of Plato or Plotinus, I know how to use the dictionary. So yeah, in summary Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Greek and English. I would love to learn German but right now I have zero time and zero energy to try... And seven is kind of a perfect number, isn't it?

>>17871297
>dont ask me to read any of the experimental Gruppo 63 shit or the more dialect heavy Sicilian stuff
So basically the best stuff...? You're missing out anon, improve your Italian until you can read Bufalino, Consolo and D'Arrigo. Believe me.

>any ideas? Ideally i'd have an audiobook on one screen the text on the other and could follow along
How about some sweet poetry reading? Poetry is usually read slowly and the words are marked, so that you can clearly hear the sound of each consonant and vowel. Also, the Italian used is not as easy as the every-day version of it, and this will help you enrich and expand your vocabulary. Here is an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl-888LgBnQ