/lit/ - Literature

>>15453469
So we should learn 15 different languages to read what we can get translated? Fuck no.

>>15453469
itt op is a monoglot shitter

>>15453473
Did you even read the OP? LEARN THE GODDAMN LANGUAGE. Jesus fuck.

>>15453469
>worst mistake other than marrying my wife

I like how common this sentiment is even though the implications are so dark and ominous.

>>15453473
>So we should learn 15 different languages to read what we can get translated?
Yes.

no

>>15453469
>LEARN THE LANGUAGE ANON'S, SAVE YOURSELVES FROM FAKE SELF INDULGED "KNOWLEDGE".
prove that the substance of a work can only be acquired in its original language

typical frog confuses poetry with philosophy

Why? I definitely agree when it comes to poetry. Usually you lose a lot of value on translations.

>>15453476
Maybe I'm not the keenest linguist but I speak 4 fluently (doe to conversational practice) and know enough of 5 other languages, enough to understand or read, maybe not to speak it myself that well.

>>15453488
It's regrettable. I fell for the meme. I love her but she's insufferable and never shuts up, neighbors have called the police just because of me shouting for her to shut the fuck up. She's cute doe, works as a museum curator.

>>15453489
Thanks chad.

>>15453501
>>15453506
>>15453514
I apologize for the sudden rant but I was reading the pensées, and some of the emerald tablet and other occult books and... idk it just hit me, when I went over the translated copies I owned I just saw some many translation flaws it infuriated me. I agree that for most STRICTLY EMPIRICAL works translation isn't usually and isue, but everything else... even Lolita's Russian version (RUSSIAN FOR FUCK'S SAKE) is translation-misled.

>>15453514
maybe some but its negligible compare to wasting 300 books of time to read a few works in an original language. if you really meant what you said in the op, youre an idiot who will die leaving nothing of value

>>15453469
learning languages is a waste of time considering how widespread and accepted english is.

>>15453550
what are the worst offenders that occur in translation between languages in your opinion?

>>15453469
BASED BASED BASED I'M ON MY SIXTH LANGUAGE AND I CAN'T STOOOOOOOOOP

>>15453469
don't do it, bros.
>t. translator who only reads books in their native language

>>15453567
abstract ideas or ideas that strictly exist on some languages. Also on some languages, mostly dead one, some words can have several meanings, and translators often just choose whatever works fro what they deem "contextual" it's happen several times on several works to the point I started marking them, then realized it was a waste of time and energy getting angry over it and every time I've accumulated enough texts of enough importance on certain language, I just learn it and then go to the books.

>>15453554
>>15453565
I understand how some people have trouble learning a language. Most of my friends from hs do. But not the case for me, albeit the post was directed to those that can acquire a new language with ease.

>>15453550
what is a "translation flaw" for you?

>>15453550
well I see your point, guess there's no fiddle on arguing that. carry on, polyglot OP

>>15453592
yes but which words specifically. this wouldn't be a big issue if translators took more care in noting important linguistic discrepancies in footnotes.

>>15453614
Agreed, although the usually don't, this is the issue.

>>15453592
I actually challenge you to translate anything, anon. It's way easier to criticize these works than to actually be in the translator's shoes.
Also, think about all the things that translation has done for our society, like every single book before the internet, softwares, instruction manual, etc. I'm pretty sure that you've benefited immensely from the work of translators during your lifetime.

>>15453592
>it's happen several times on several works to the point I started marking them, then realized it was a waste of time and energy getting angry over it

curious why you're bothering to post about this if it's a waste of your time noting these differences.

also, eat shit you pseud. you literally cannot learn every language just to read a text in the original. you're either arguing for never reading anything outside your mother tongue (incredibly stupid hill to die on, even if you're a native english speaker) or that you must somehow learn dozens of foreign languages before interacting with a text in any way.

in either case, stop being so willfully retarded and learn to interact with the imperfections.

I'm not going to learn 15 languages. Stop being a retard. You'll get most of it from translation.

>>15453629
well you can do your part in jotting them down in a compiled list.

>>15453550
just treat it as a different book and trust the translator to plagiarize the good stuff

>>15453565
Angloid brainlets like you need to be gassed.

MONOLINGUALS ARE EQUAL TO NIGGERS AND MUST LEAVE MY BOARD REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>15453554

I'm not saying to be perfectly fluent, it is just that things are so easy. I can just download some language audio course and learn how to pronounce words in a language in less than a month.

Think of it as learning how to sing in another language. People do it all the time. It is just that I definitely value the sounds and rhythm in poetry. I sincerely enjoy listening to rap songs in languages I don't understand.

But whatever, I don't care. I used to be like you. Fuck sounds, it is all about meaning.

>>15453698
He's kinda right. Well, right in the sense that English makes life too easy if it's your native tongue and makes learning other languages feel superfluous since the onus is on others to learn the language.

>>15453469
Love these fucking retarded threads were you write a paragraph saying nothing. Know how to actually convince people to learn languages? Make a positive contribution, a demonstrative one, like trying to compare languages or closely examine a passage from a classic. It's boring posting otherwise
>>15453614
any good author, you would have to footnote every sentence. read Steiner

>Fluent in Russian and English
>Work as a translator
>Barely can make myself read shit and constantly apathetic and/or depressed
Well fuck

>>15453742
stop working so hard then.

>>15453567
This, but specifically for the occult books you were reading. Tell me all about the Emerald Tablet too.

Correction to OP: Translations are marginally okay for philosophy. Anyone who reads translated poetry is wasting their time. Novels are a toss-up, it depends on the author.

>>15453718
t. angloid bugman

>>15453469
Dear diary, today, OP was based.

>>15453550
You yell at your wife so much that the fucking cops get called on you? I’m not surprised you have irrationally strong opinions about translations

>>15453635
Yes! OP! loisten to me! be a good goy and embrace globalism! learning languages BAD!!!

>>15453792
Dear diary, today, anon was based

>>15453815
LEARN THE GODDAMN LANGUAGE KAREN

>>15453550
>I was reading the pensées, and some of the emerald tablet and other occult books
lol you're a moron

>>15453469
>>15453489
Alright, then tell me how to become perfectly fluent in any language with minimal effort and in less than a week of study per language. That is my condition.

>>15453469
A language isn't scripture, relax autismo

>>15453919
keked so hard at this.

It is neither the best nor the worst in a book that is untranslatable - Friedrich Nietzsche

>>15453919
>Be OP
>Wakes up
>The birds are singing
>the flowers are blooming
>my books untranslated
>my wife peacefully reading
>what a beautiful day for beating my wife for reading translated literature.
>Good morning Karen, I've been awake for 20 whole seconds and I haven't yelled at you yet.
>It's time to hope pseud throne and machine gun fisthammer my bloodshot death-punch your STUPID LAZY FUCK FACE!
>*Looks at the book she's reading*
>I-s...is that a TRANSLATED BOOKl??
>HMMGH*,* I-I MUST- REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE**
>OH GOD (PUNCH PUNCH POW POW) FUCK
>LEARN THE LANGUAGE KAREN, SAVE YOURSELVES FROM FAKE SELF INDULGED "KNOWLEDGE".
>KAREN YOU STUPID BITCH
>(POW POW) AW FUCK ITS EVERYWHERE, BLOOD EVERYWHERE.
>Aw fuck, aw fuck.
>*hear sirens outside*
>FUCK NOT AGAIN THIS IS YOUR FAULT KAREN
>THE ANONS ON /lit/ WILL KNOW ABOUT YOU YOU STUPID LAZY HARLOT
>oh jesus.
>ahh
>there you are
>my crumbling untranslated first edition of Plato's The Republic!
>my son, my son...
>Well, it's time to get breakfast...
>well a little beating Karen senseless again wouldn't hurt.

>>15454554
cope

>>15454554
Dangerously translationpilled

>>15454554
goodness gracious anon.

>>15454554
lol

>>15454554
>my crumbling untranslated first edition of Plato's The Republic!
my sides

>>15454554

>>15454554
this thread took and interesting turn.

>>15453742
How did you start working as a translator? Is a translating degree essential?

>>15454636
>Is a translating degree essential?
Not really, you just have to have prove of fluency on the languages you're going to translate. Some jobs would just interview you in both languages, but it's easier to get the job if you have some sort of proficiency test result with you, depends on the country tho.

>>15454554
This pasta made me change my mind. OP is actually based.

>>15453469
I always knew this, OP. My only personal exception to this rule are the greeks.
No way I'm gonna learn Attic greek or I don't know what just to read Homer/Plato, fuck this shit.

>>15453765
>Correction to OP: Translations are marginally okay for philosophy. Anyone who reads translated poetry is wasting their time. Novels are a toss-up, it depends on the author.
This guy here is right.

>>15453550
Well done for having a knack for languages. I'm not particularly good at picking them up myself, but there are still books I'd like to read by foreign writers. Im not excluding a whole world of literature for pseud points. You sound like a someone who makes pretty poor life choices anyway, anon, so I'm.not going to be following your example and sinking hours I could be enjoying life into learning ancient Greek just to flex about reading the Iliad in Homer's tongue

>>15453778
t. mad

>>15453489
t. probably speaks only one

You can (and should) learn multiple languages and even get decently fluent, but you're unlikely to gain a deep, nuanced feel for more than three or four. I can read and understand text in eight, but I know I can only appreciate prose in four of them. As for the rest, I'd rather leave it to professional translators.

>>15453580
How do you do it. I feel like a brianlet only reading English.

>>15453469
I spent 500+ hours learning spanish and it has been completely useless other than impressing people. There's no reason to learn another language if you speak English natively. You could use that time relaxing or putting it towards more beneficial studies.

>>15454827
That means you're dumb and lazy, son.

>>15453473
You should know at least English and French plus your mother language, and latin and greek for the classics. You can delay learning the other twos in high school, but you can achieve knowing these languages by your early twenties.

no
>CONTEXT MAY BE LOST IN TRANSLATION
ok, it's fun to read different translations. especially in poetry.

"Ah, why did I not bear a serpent's nest entire,
Instead of bringing forth this hideous Child of Doom!
Oh cursèd be that transient night of vain desire
When I conceived my expiation in my womb!"

vs.

—‘Rather than have this mockery to nurse
Why not a nest of snakes for me to bear!
And may that night of fleeting lust be cursed,
When I conceived my penance, unaware!

>>15453567
Not OP but in my experience of literary translations, the main problem is that translators are very often not writers. Lots of innuendos can be lost in translation. For instance, I have read Ulysses a couple of times in the original and now I am reading it for the first time in my native tongue - italian (don't have access to my english copy due to corona, too lazy to buy another one on amazon). I know it's a very difficult book to translate, but I can assure you that a professional translation by a team of academics does not even come close to the language of the original. I got the very best and most recent translation in italian, and I believe it is a very good edition, with notes and everything, but it's the small literary details that simply get lost. One of my favourite expressions from the book is when Stephen says that god is "a shout in the street". In my edition it was translated as the italian equivalent of "a shout from the street" (un grido dalla strada). The difference is subtle, but you see that it can give you a completely different impression. I read the original and thought: this is a beautiful way of saying how god is present in everyday things, i.e. is everywhere. While the other translation can mean other things, like god "calling" you from the street, for instance, or god originating there and going somewhere. It transforms presence (x in y) into movement (from x to y).
I think this was a slip, because it is possible to translate "in" differently from "from", in italian (dio è un grido in strada, dio è un grido per strada - both would have been better). But can you imagine how many slips are contained in any translation? How many expressions are translated, by mistake, as something they are not?
If you read anything greek (or german), especially philosophy, you can see how the translation problems become even worse when discussing ideas. Do i render "eide" with Form or Idea in Plato? Is "dunamis" a "faculty" or a "potentiality" in Aristotle? And so on and so forth. So, learning languages is always better. The use of these words in their original context makes it easier for you to understand the concept, once you get to the point of thinking in another language.

>>15453469
Learning another language is literally letting yourself get cucked by some nigger faggot who lived a thousand years ago. If you don't read in your mother tongue then how can you be proud of your national and ethnographic identity? You are literally admitting that your own language that's been with your culture since its inception is inferior and cannot express the deepest sentiments of the soul. If this is what you think you are a retarded traitor and you should off yourself. I am fortunate enough to have the greatest language of all embedded within my soul, which allows me to grasp and delve into the very fabric of reality and beauty. You faggots will never know the feeling of being at one, truly and forever unified, with your culture through language passed down through generations of genius. Go suck an italian man's dick, or lick the anus of a greek fucking nigger, you absolutely pathetic, weak-ass excuse of a man.

>>15453765
>Translations are marginally okay for philosophy.
What the fuck are you on about? Did you somehow miss the last two millenia and a half of people arguing about how we should translate 'logos' 'aletheia' 'techne' 'ousia' and a long etc?

>>15453644
Nice try, skeletor.

Garbage opinion. You probably know your mother tongue and one other passably at best. Stop pretending to be Mr worldwide, I'm not going to learn Spanish just because I want to read one book about a autistic knight with a fetish for windmills. Get a fucking grip you waste of a cumshot

>>15454114
Ahem
I'm waiting >>15453469

>>15455182
brainlet cope lole

>>15453473
Reading functionality is not the same thing as fluency - eg. You don't need to be able to read the whole thing in German, but you won't be able to understand a thing in texts of German Idealism without delving into the German words and shit.

>>15453815
This
/thread
Monolinguals are retards, but also learning more than 4 spoken languages is retarded, i mean for reading books. You won’t fully get a book if you don’t know the culture of the author.
Just find a good translation.
English, italian, russian + latin and greek
Bonus: farsi

>>15454554
FUCKING LOST
put me in the screencap

>>15455057
>very best and most recent

Ed è qui che sbagli
Prova la traduzione di Giulio De Angelis

>>15453489
Literally not even uber talented polyglot authors know that many.

>>15454554
some funnier anon should remake this

>>15454788
then you should come to terms to the fact that you will never be an expert, and not be mad when someone 'flexes' on you by knowing more

you are not entitled to wisdom, and it will not be given for free

>>15456234
Based

>>15453469
Most people simply don't have the time nor incentive.
The amount of time it takes to learn a language would be much better spent learning more about your career field or code or maths or pretty much anything for westerners, as the entire rest of the world has learned English for our convenience.

>>15453473
Expect nearly all the books that matter are localized around Latin, Greek, German, and the Romance Languages which basically count as one because they are so piss easy after learning Latin.

>>15454554
based

>>15454554
What do you call a woman with two black eyes? A woman who knows neither Greek nor Latin.

>>15453473
The original tone in which it was meant to be read is gone after translation. Instead of feeling the drama in the character's lines you just read some random autistic shit, translations read like a robot.

>>15454554
*son walks in*

Son: Mom, what's wrong with Dad?

Karen: Mason, go back to your room...

OP: NO, NO, LET HIM STAY. HE NEEDS TO HEAR THIS. DO YOU WANT TO END UP LIKE YOU MOM, READING TRANSLATED LITERATURE LIKE A FUCKING CUNT?

Son: I...uh...n-n-

OP: YOU DON'T, DO YA SON? YOU'RE NOT GONNA GROW UP TO BE A BAG OF SHIT LIKE YOUR MOM, RIGHT? YOU'RE GOING TO LEARN THE LANGUAGE, RIGHT?

Son: I... am...gonna...uh...

OP: SPEAK UP SON

Son: ...learn the language

OP: LEAR THE LANGUAGE, THAT'S RIGHT. YOU'RE GONNA LEARN THE GODDAMN LANGUAGE. UNLIKE YOU'RE PATHETIC CUNT OF A MOTHER.

*sirens get louder*

>>15453469
Hard disagree. I learned two foreign languages beginning at 15 years old. I'm 33 now and mastering these languages has been my goddamn quest. From 17 to 24 I was desperately trying to replace my native language with the two others. I managed to move to a new country in pursuit of this dream. I can fool native speakers for about 30 seconds. Then they notice there is something wrong and I'm not a native.

You cannot internalize something to the same degree as if you were to read it in your native language. It will be like looking at a painting behind a glass wall forever.

The trick is to find a good translation. Usuallly one doesn't exist. But when it comes to something like The Odyssey then it's just a matter of getting lucky and finding the right one.

>>15453718
English makes life easy. And if English is your native language then it's harder to learn others. Fucking everything is in English. Hollywood is in America. Educational materials are written in English even if the author is not anglophone. Every university student in Europe has to learn English and publish in English.

What am I supposed to do? Read Don Quixote? Fuck. Instead I watch dubbed versions of American tv shows.

>>15453469
TFW Been trying to learn Spanish for 2 years but have dyslexia

>>15457432
dab on him. dab

>>15454554
Goddamn that was great.

>>15457825
This. You can never really learn another language as an adult.

>>15457854
Bruh, telenovelas are fucking based and there's 6 gorillion of them.
Also, make spanish friends.

>>15453469
>just learn russian bro
>just learn greek bro
hey eat my dick

>>15454554
what a great effort post 10/10

>>15454984
>>15457434
You'll never get fluent enough in ancient Greek unless you have 2 or 3 years to spare of studying it extensively.

>>15454984
If you're already an adult it becomes very hard to even learn one, let alone four.

>>15455106
Basée et pilulement rouge

>>15457945
Not everyone is a brainlet.

>>15457973
based
this anon didn't let the language part of his brain get smooth during his adult years

>>15457825
>>15457909
This might be true for the minority of people who have very low aptitude for language acquisition, but for most people, putting a sustained effort into learning the vocab and grammar of a language and maximizing immersion for several years is enough to achieve a very high degree of fluency. You're probably right that you can't internalize it to exactly the same degree as your native language, but you definitely can to the point where reading a work in its original language becomes more rewarding or at least offers different rewards than reading a translation. As for passing for a native, I've met many ESL speakers who could pass if it wasn't for their accent (even though their pronunciation is still often quite good), and I've even met a native spanish speaker in Paris whose third language was english, but he had such a convincing general american accent that I didn't realize he wasn't american/anglophone until he told me. His speech was very formal, absolutely no slang, and his grammar wasn't quite right (I specifically remember for future tense he'd always say "[subject] + 'will to' + [infinitive]," e.g. "We will to cross the bridge" instead of "We will cross the bridge"), but his accent was so good I just assumed living in France had fucked up his native English. So anyway you absolutely can learn another language as an adult or at least most people can.

>>15458057
You're comparing apples to oranges. Most people in Europe and Asia study English intensely as a child because they'll never make money otherwise. It's incomparable to a monolingual Anglo learning a language he is never forced to use as an adult.

>>15458089
I was responding to the proposition that adults are incapable of 'truly' learning a second language, which is clearly false. My uncle speaks native spanish and didn't start learning English until he was an adult, but for my entire life he's spoken English to a degree of fluency indistinguishable from a native. If he didn't have an accent I literally wouldn't have known.
>It's incomparable to a monolingual Anglo learning a language he is never forced to use as an adult.
It's completely comparable. Obviously English's status as the global lingua franca means people have an incentive to learn who wouldn't bother to otherwise, but the fact that they're able to testifies to its feasibility if you possess enough motivation. If you aren't motivated to learn a language if it isn't forced on you, then you probably won't, but plenty of people are motivated for a variety of reasons.

>>15458057
> "[subject] + 'will to' + [infinitive]," e.g. "We will to cross the bridge"

That is a basic mistake. You have been fooled by his accent. There are three pillars to learning a language; vocabulary, grammar, and pronounciation.

A layperson judges a foreigner almost completely based on just their pronounciation. I promise that what you perceived when you listened to him speak was an illusion. Your brain is projecting something that is not there. Behind the facade he was experiencing English in the same way I described. Like communicating with someone through glass.

>>15453469
>>15453489
>he thinks modern Greek is applicable to the Iliad

>>15453469
There is no point in learning a language in which you are not, and will never be able to converse. Learning Russian because Gorbatjow? Yeah, if you converse regularly with Russians and/or are able to engage with authentic axpressions of their culture. If these conditions do not apply, how will you know what these people refer to? They refer to the world around them and cast a spell on it in order to control it; if you are not engaged in that moment when that expression is relevant to catch the speaker's/ethnos' intuition of the event, you are not learning the language: you are super-structureing your native tongue with a duplicate of meaningless symbols. Some with Ancient Greek: have you heard a warrior sing the hero's praise and his eternal glory on his cither? Have you witnessed the despair of a seer when he sees a god's omen in a snake's eyes? No. You do not *get* Greek and you are only layering your native tongue with fabricated sounds.

>>15458350
Based

The only thing that you can’t read in translation is poetry and poetry is gay anyway

>>15454554

>>15453644
Lists? What am I, buzzfeed? Fuck outta here skeletor.

>>15458294
My point was that there’s no aspect of fluent speech I haven’t observed in an adult ESL, even in my very limited experience. Obviously that guy wasn’t fluent, but I’ve known others who were save the accent. Unless you think you can master one or two of your three pillars, but all three at once is impossible, clearly learning a language fluently as an adult is possible.

>>15454554
based and domestic violence-pilled.

screencaps are for faggots

This is true, when I read Borges, Bolaño or Cervantes in Spanish, which is my mother tongue, I feel enriched and overwhelmed by what I read.
I'd recommend to translate by yourselves any book or visual novel (even better) you want by paragraphs to understand its context.

>>15453469
I agree! I find the ideia of reading translations fucking disgusting. That's why I've been studying ancient Greek for two years. Later on I intend to learn German too.

>>15455217 see >>15455879

>>15457746
I got heavy rick and morty vibes. OP is rick confirmed.

>>15460468
>>15460701
I'm glad there's actually smart people on this board, sadly most of them are just brainlets who can't be bothered to stop sucking schlomo's cock.

>>15454554
OP has opened my eyes. Time to hit my wife.

>>15456234
It's a modified coomer pasta, i think is perfect-

>>15457918
They're horrible and moronic. Latinos prefer foreign media unironically. Picking up major languages is indeed useful though by improving your capacity for interaction and communication with other prominent cultures in the world.

>>15453473
>>15453490
>>15453501
>>15453565
>>15453640
>>15453654
>>15454114
>>15454162
>>15455106
>>15455182
>>15457432
>>15457945
>>15454554
FUCKING BRAINLET MONOLINGUAL NIGGER RETARDS WILL GET BTFOD BY OP'S DOMESTIC-VIOLENCE-PILLED FIST OF FURY ON 15 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.

>>15453469
Bonjour mes amis, so I've finishd Pimsleur 's French. What do I do now? I want to be able to read Proust eventually.

this whole thread is cringe

>>15462352
sandberg fucking sucks and is a slog but if you do it you can read french pretty quickly

french is like 40% made of idioms. read non-literature for several months before trying big boy lit if you can, it has less florid vocabulary

>>15462370
french is gay and stinky.

>>15462370
Thank you, Sandberg looks good. i was thinking of reading some bi-lingual poetry editions as well; Baudelaire for example. It's always a grind not having access to native speakers, though.

>>15462352
Get a French and English edition of the same work and translate a page of the French into English as best you can, then check it with the English version to see if you made any errors. Then translate the next page of the English into French and continue for a set amount of time. Do this every day you can. You'll want to get a Fr->En dictionary, and I find it works best when the book is nonfiction, as there are fewer instances of figurative language. Alternatively, just start reading a French book (The Stranger is pretty easy as it avoids literary tenses for the most part), and when you encounter words you don't know, put them into Anki. I actually find the translating method expands my vocabulary faster though, as well as a lot more naturally.

>trying to read Kafka
>no matter the translation the language seems wrong, I think I understand the sudden surreal effect intended but the language seems wrong
>it seems more wrong the more I compare various translations, they all seem mediocre
What the fuck do? What versions do anons prefer? I will say this, the Schocken version is by far the worst imo. Crick is ok but overly simplistic, something is really lost in the clearness of his renditions. Neugroschel seems the best but does not satisfy, I sense faults, there are points where the other translations are stronger, though overall they are inferior. What the hell is one to do?

>>15453469
I can read all "big" romance languages except Romanian, plus English and Latin. I am also on my way to start reading German. So I'd say I'm good, being 24 y.o. and not a Humanities student.

With that being said, learning languages is important, but stopping to read translations is imbecilic. Are you going to learn Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Sumerian, Babylonian, Polish, Czech, Farsi? Then you won't have the time to become a writer.

Most writers knew a few languages, but not more than six or seven, and rarely more than five.

From my head I can remember:

- Borges could read English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Latin (he later forgot it, and only read Lucretius in translation) and German. Only started reading Italian in his 40's or late 30's, and old Germanic languages even later. He never knew Greek. He loved Homer and the Arabian nights, but read them in translation.
- Pessoa: if you look in his library, he read almost only in Portuguese, Spanish, French and English. There are a few Latin and Italian books, which I assume he could also read.
- Keats: knew English and Latin. I think he must have known French. Died before learning Italian, I think. Loved the Greeks, but met them in translation (Chapman) and through a Frenchman's book on mythology.
- Tolstoy: only learned English in his mid-20's, and Greek in his 40's.
- James Joyce: didn't actually know Ancient Greek, apparently, only modern.
- Maiakovsky: it is said he was monolingual.

Thousands of academics can read Greek, but how many of them can write about Homer, or the Minotaur, as well as Borges?
Millions of people know Russian, but how many of them can be influenced by Dostoevsky as deeply and productively as Conrad, who read him in translation, was?

So you should learn languages, but don't become a boring academic: focus more on writing than on erudition.
Anyone can learn Mandarin. My friend knows a high-level prostitute who became fluent after only one year in China. But how many people can write a profound and influential work of literature after Chinese influences? Very few. Pound could - but he wasn't fluent, far from it. Can my friend's prostitute write one? No, she cannot.

>>15457963
>If you're already an adult it becomes very hard to even learn one, let alone four.
I'm 30, i already know vasque, spanish and english, i've just been learning french with good results for 4 months (i can read almost anything as long as i expand my vocabulary while reading) and i'm learning german now.
I don't study languages more than 1'5 hours daily.
If it becomes hard it must be because of the lack of time/dedication, not because neurons get rusty.

>>15454554
This has a lot of potential.

>>15463284
>Maiakovsky: it is said he was monolingual
Well he didn't write about Homer neither. More than that, he despised all classic literature, being the pleb he was.

>>15453473
I think having English as your mother language then learning German and spainish is relatively okay but fuck learning moon rune languages or slav speak

>>15455182
this desu

>>15463509
Пoлнocтью пoддepживaю твoю тoчкy зpeния.

>>15457746
Based sequel

Are you really this smart?Every time I read something in English I feel like I got a toddler's vocabulary.And English is by far the language Im most fluent in.Reading Dubliners I had to stop very frequently to search for a word,and even though I can infer what it means by context,I feel like I would miss a lot just skipping by it.
Now, I "learnt" other languages but as I said ,my knowledge of them is nowhere near what I have in English, and I think it would be terrible to try and read something in them for my personal enjoyment,having to decipher the phrases would drain any fun out of it.