/lit/ - Literature

>>12879081
Italian.

French.

>>12879081
both are equally as patrician

>>12879081
Russian

>>12879081
Lithuanian

Speaking as someone who did both ( though my french has almost disappeared now) Italian is just so much more pleasant.

It's simple, clean and beautiful but there just isnt a rich literary tradition like there is in french.

Sure there are plenty of great writers (and poets) but even with it staying almost exactly the same since the time of Dante you'll find it to be pretty slim picking after about 30 books.

Portuguese

>>12879081
Renaissance era: Italian.
Modern era: French.

20th century: Both.

>>12879160
bazuotas ir raudonpiliuotas

>>12879081
Italian:
>You can read The Divine Comedy, which is worth a billion times more than the shitty French literary tradition
>Much more pleasant
>AESTHETIC
French:
>Niggerspeak

hard decision

>>12879098
B-b-b-b-based BREAKER.

>>12879081
French has Casanova. Checkmate Italians! Seriously though I'm gonna learn both

>>12879250
The Italian great writers may be few, but they're absolutely indispensable.

Are you sure there isn't a rich tradition though? Have you read Leopardi? Some claim he's even greater than Dante. The philosophers? Italy had a lot of thinkers and mystics in the Renaissance, and in the 20th century there's a rich landscape whether you are a commie or a fascist.

>>12879081
Both garbage. Learn Latin.

>>12879081
French easily

What the fuck have the Italians literally ever done?
>muh Rome
Italians aren't Roman

>>12879081
Russian

>>12879081
How are you gonna read this masterpiece if you don't know Italian?

Can anyone recommend some novels in italian for an intermediate level speaker to read?

>>12879709
Italo Calvino, Giorgio Bassani, Carlo Levi and Dino Buzzati are very easy.

>not speaking both french and italian

>>12879386

There's no argument that Leopardi is great.
So is Montale and Manzoni and D'Annunzio and even Pasolini (not to my taste maybe but he was a true talent) .

What im saying is: after the explosion of Dante and Petrarch and Boccaccio the whole literature suddenly goes quiet, or, at least, get;s replaced by this massive explosion of enthusiasm within the plastic arts.

Yet in English the inheritance from Shakespeare is this imminence parade of great poets that dosent really stop until the current day.


Buy yeah by all means, what's there is terrific .

Kys if you think italian is better than french. French is the language of descartes, pascal, rosseau, your wife's boyfriend, voltaire, proust, maupassant etc. Italian is the language of greasy pizza stained wifebeaters and turkish mutts

The best languages are Esperanto, Lojban, Basic English, Sanskrit, Latin, Cantonese, Plains Indian Sign Language.

>>12879331

Casanova was Italian, you degenerate pig.

>>12879081
Epic reddit maymay XD!!

>>12881785
He wrote his memoirs, Histoire de ma vie, in French

>>12879081
French sounds like a mock language someone with a speech impediment created. Like nigga pronounce your fucking Rs
It also has zero intonation who the fuck thought this was a good idea? Bland ass language

>>12881828
Epic twitter nigger speak XD!!!

>>12880291
>after the explosion of Dante and Petrarch and Boccaccio the whole literature suddenly goes quiet
Yeah, I remember Pound's opinion on that: he said that no Italian author was able to match the greatness of Dante.
However, as much as I love Pound, it's like saying that water is wet.

English literature is in the same situation (Shakespeare), Spanish literature is in the same situation (Cervantes) and German literature will soon be in the same situation (Goehe). But, just like several people tried to endorse the opinion that Joyce, for instance, is even greater than Shakespeare, there have also been people claiming that Leopardi is greater than Dante. This should make us stop and think. When such a genius is born (a unique event in the space of an era), a new tradition does start, necessarily. Literature cannot but be renewed. And, in fact, Italian poetry from the late 19th century to the late 20th century has been one of the richest and most complex literary scenes in the western world. Carducci, Pascoli, D'Annunzio, Campana, Montale, Ungaretti, Zanzotto, Caproni, Rosselli, Sanguineti: all these amazing poets would never have existed without Leopardi. So yeah, Dante and Petrarch and Boccaccio may be unmatched, but most likely the truth is that Italy is in a different era now, and thus there should be a new basis for comparison. Think about the postmodernists. Their role model is Joyce, not Shakespeare. Equally we can say the modern Italian poets are in dialogue with Leopardi, not with Dante. That's why they're not understood, they're not studied, they're not translated enough. People outside of Italy are probably misunderstanding their language. And that's why Pound's opinion exists.

>Yet in English the inheritance from Shakespeare is this imminence parade of great poets that dosent really stop until the current day.
The inheritance from Dante gave us Poliziano, Boiardo, Pulci, Michelangelo, Ariosto, Tasso, Marino. It's quite a bit.

>>12879250
>Italy
>there just isnt a rich literary tradition
>Italy
>there just isnt a rich literary tradition
>Italy
>there just isnt a rich literary tradition
>the country that literally started the renaissance, the most important moment in the cultural history of the West since the Greeks
>there just isnt a rich literary tradition

>>12879081
Fuck off with your viral marketing

is duolingo a decent way to learn languages? i started learning Japanese on it so i'm not stuck with translations of japanese novels. been thinking about trying to learn german italian and french over the next couple years also

>>12881879
Go ahead and name some actual examples. We got Dante, Virgil and?

>>12881879
I saw a guy in another thread who thought Ariosto wrote in Latin. And yes, he had read him.

People just don't know shit.

French, since it sounds better and has better literature
>>12881879
there really isn't one. you're delusional

>>12881910
>Virgil
based retard

>>12879286
*Modern era: Mandarin
ftfy

>>12881879
Epic dank twitter nigger maymay XD!!

>>12881916
yea we all know he wrote in ink

>>12881833
>twitter
nigga

>>12881910
>We got Dante, Virgil and?

>>12881920
>you're delusional
Or maybe you're a dumb fuck that hasn't opened a book on the history of literature in his whole life.

>>12881910
Eco?
Anyways, quality > quantity. Dante shits all over french lit

>>12881879
>>12881961
that didn't take long at all, 6/10 bait. in future endeavors, try to avoid breaking the illusion too soon; the best bait is that which anons do not realize is bait until they've already been arguing for at least thirty minutes

>>12879081
Unless you're really into reading novels (I mean long ass 19th century novels), you should pick Italian. Better sound, better poetry, better music.

>>12881825

The hell does that mean? I'm replying in English; does that mean English is better since it's not even my mother tongue?

>>12882003
Dude calm down, literally no one was trying to insult Casanova or whatever

>>12881977
Seriously, man, read about the history of literature. /lit/ is so uninformed and limited in this regard it's sad.

>>12882029
(((stop replying to bait boogeyman)))

>>12881855
>Cervantes

Did you ever read Borges IN spanish?

>>12882053
You just completed my reasoning. There are people who claim Borges is better than Cervantes. I know. The whole point is that Modern Age is too different from Renaissance, you can't continue to compare everyone to Dante/Shakespeare/Cervantes.

>>12882003
how can you type with your moms tongue?