/lit/ - Literature

>>4871638
Non-governance

>>4863232
>yfw a lot of /lit/ probably doesn't actually understand this

>>4825033
I WARNED YOU ABOUT THE NAMED BRO!!!!!
I TOLD YOU DOG!!!!

>tfw not doing

"Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness."
Zhuangzi

>Do you like poetry?
>Do you like philosophy?
If so, consider Mandarin. German is indubitably the best for philosophy, but China has a long a rich philosophical tradition as well, which makes it worth it to learn the language and access their wonderful moral and political philosophy to give you counterpoint to and thus a more complete perspective on Western philosophy.

Now, bear with me here, because this may seem intimidating, but Chinese is that way at first. But trust me, learning it pays off, and you pick it up quickly if you learn with discipline (which the structure of a university course provides).

Why I ask if you like poetry is simply this:
Chinese is the best language that I have encountered for lyric poetry. Here's why. Each character is only one syllable, and words in Chinese are usually only one or two syllables long, mostly one syllable in classical Chinese, mostly two in modern Chinese. Further, you do not have to agglutinate (essentially: add syllables) to change the meaning of words (although Chinese is somewhat agglutinative...a topic for another thread), you can modify the meaning of a word with other techniques, such as changing the tone, or changing the initial consonant, i.e. from 請(qing) to 精 (jing). See how the right part of both of those characters is the same? In changing the left glyph, you modify the tone and the initial consonant, and change the meaning of the word, but don't have to add syllables. This also means that, for Chinese to create the same number of unique words as a language with agglutinates more, you require fewer unique phonemes, and fewer unique morphemes. Couple this with the fact that instead of changing the final (pronunciation of the end of a morpheme), you usually change the initial, and you'll note that Chinese rhymes much more often than other languages. Because of the small subset of vowel and consonant sounds used, also, spoken Chinese has a lot of assonance and consonance.

These characteristics make it perfect for lyric poetry. In fact, Chinese poetry in its original form is so beautiful, that it has overtaken my favorite poetry in other languages, including Spanish and English, my two native ones. It's just exquisite.

Another feature of Chinese, especially classical Chinese, is that each phrase is stuffed full of connotation since phrasing is usually very concise. Even when a writer is more verbose, the long recorded literary and historical tradition (literally millennia) means that every character has deep connotation, and you can say so much with subtext and allusion.

Chinese is often misunderstood by Westerners because it is prohibitive to learn, but once you do, you realize what a treasure you've found.

Cool discussion about East Asian lit we have going on with a Japanese guy over in this thread:
>>4537975

>>4247577
You are actually this mad.

And your arguments are unsubstantiated.

>>4225142
Platonist detected

>>4183530
>because chinese society is shit
>and all of their original philosophy is about societal organization
>just read european philosophy it's a lot better

>>4121233