/lit/ - Literature

welp, i said "/int/" my bad. Meant to write /lit/.

>>15814998
My first language. It's always harder in English

>>15814998

Bilingual, I find my other language more precise than English so I prefer the former when reading technical material

>>15815016
Same. It gets progressively easier though, maybe once I'm 40 I'll be able to read Moby-Dick without looking up words every 30 seconds.

>>15815016
Strange, i personally always prefer reading in English, its a much richer language than my mother tongue.

>>15814998
My first language is Finnish and reading in it both hurts my intellect and lowers my self-esteem. Awfully long words.

>>15815114
Can I ask yours? I'm learning Spanish but haven't heard Apologia for it and considering I want to learn latin I feel like one for Spanish should be important but I'm not sure.

I want to finish my chinese as well but im not fluent enough to make a y meaningful comparison

>>15814998
If it’s originally in english I read that, same with french and swedish. If I don’t speak the language I just try to find a good translation in my first language (swedish) if available but that isn’t always the case, and then I go for english. French I leave for actual french works mostly, but some authors I like better in french than in english, Zweig for example.

>>15814998
My first language is spanish. In the case of most literature I prefer to read in spanish when a version in that language is available. I find it more comfortable that way, but in the case of internet articles (news, wikis, blogs, etc.) I find almost no problem reading in english, and I actually prefer it most of the time because in a lot of topics information in english seems more complete than that on spanish.

>>15815321
Besides comfortability is there any tradeoff?

>>15815331
Is there some time you prefer Spanish over English outside comfort or pragmatic reasons?

>>15815334
For what exactly?

>>15815280
my first language Norwegian. Spanish is a beautiful language, and i would assume it has much more use than Latin. I would stick to that if i were you. Im considering learning Russian at some point myself.

>>15814998
Grew up speaking English, took two years of French in high school, now 9/10 times I read books in French.

>>15815348
In terms of does any language have a benefit over the other objectively? I know English is precise and technical, which pushes me to Chinese I think because it's analytic. Is there justification for more synthetic languages like Swedish?

>>15815352
It is but why and where does it pick up over English (Norwegian or Spanish)?

>>15815371
Not exactly sure what you mean by that, sorry.
>>15815356
Any big benefits to reading in French?

>>15815424
The biggest benefit is being able to read the immense amount of untranslated works from the past. Next benefit, my English vocab has improved a great deal. Lastly, I don't have to wait years for the translations of their contemporary /lit/ or scholarship.
Oh forgot to add, it gave me another pair of eyes to look at things.

>>15815360
No, not in that sense. It has everything to do with the quality of the translation, it can be great or terrible in any of them. I personally don’t subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or anything like that, languages are tied to cultural context for sure but studying said context won’t lead to any revolution of the mind. Languages don’t have any inherent advantages over each other in that sense.

Also, analytic/synthetic in linguistics isn’t meant to describe how apt a language is for analysis, it just describes how sentences are constructed. If meaning is conveyed through conjugation and compound words -> synthetic. Through particles and articles -> analytic. It’s also not binary, languages fall on a spectrum between those two, with finnish being far to the synthetic side and chinese to the analytic side, but there’s nothing that can’t be expressed in both languages if a translator is familiar with their history.

Well I like reading English, German and Russian in their respective languages, they're all very expressive and have a distinct style, of which English is the most boring to be honest.

French though, horrible in written form, it's mucher nicer in the spoken form. All French books I read in English, or German if I can get it.

>>15815537
Sure I think I just jumped the gun. I think analytic grammars have extra descriptive power by nature of the words being separate and explicit vs conjoined and implicit.
Also for words to be separate they must have more stopping power at the start and end of every word giving more emphasis I imagine.

>>15815537
>there's nothing that can't be translated
Do you consider than a sin for human languages in that they are differently descriptive enough as say English is to math if math was quotidian?

>>15815803
Can you rephrase that?

>>15815861
No go fuck yourself esl

>>15815875
Fine, I will.

>>15815893
Math is a language but different than English. Spanish is not different from English like Math is to English.
Is that a failure of languages?
There u go bucko

>>15814998
If the original is English, I read it in English.

My first language is a Latin language so if the original is in a Latin language that I don't understand very well, I read it in my native language. Though I always make an effort to improve there.

If the original is in a language like say Russian or Japanese or German, whatever the best translation I can get either in my language or in English.

>>15815280
Stick to Spanish.
It is not a very hard language and it has rich literature and beautiful poetry barely translated.

But the best thing is that it will give you an incredible head start for portuguese and italian (less so with french but it will help a bit too) if you ever go into any of the two, and with Latin too of course (again less than italian and portuguese). But to capitalize on the similarities you really need to be fluent in it.

>>15814998
>me, reading world class up-to-date academic translations of philosophy in English
>left, what I am reading in my second language trying to get to the point where I don't need translations

American humanities education is such shit.

BeatenDownPepe.png

>>15815321
I really like the idea of Zweig but I was just thinking about how the translated prose isn't very good. I'm literally a 3rd grade reader in French, but should I give it a try?

>>15815280
Stick with Spanish bro. It's a beautiful language, very important internationally, excellent literature, and it's extremely useful in many places (much more than a more populous language than Chinese). I spent a year learning Attic Greek and I wish I spent it learning Spanish instead (even though I *love* Ancient Greek)

>>15815510
I have baby french any book recs?

>>15815537
High iq post

>>15815861
Lmao that was a borderline illiterate post and you were so polite about it

>>15815915
What's your native language? If its a smaller one (Romanian, etc.), how robust is the translation market?

>>15815016
What's your first language?

>>15816036
>What's your native language?

Portuguese. We've got some good translators for Russians and Argies.

>/int/

wrong board you illiterate spastic

Any other ESLs find it difficult to read fiction in English but have no trouble with non-fiction?

>>15816036
>I have baby french any book recs?
Voltaire, Maupassant, Marguerite Duras. These three wrote in a simple, elegant style. I'd recommend a kindle since it has a built-in dictionary and translator to smooth out your reading experience.

>>15815916
I want some language with innate benefits not contingent

>>15816036
Le Jouer d’echecs by Zweig was the first ”book” that I read Cover to cover in french for enjoyment and not purely as a study tool. It’s A novella of course but I got it in a single volume. Highly recommended.

It depends. English is better for post-modern and surrealist shit.

Portuguese is better for romantic, modernism and magical realism

>>15816307
Can you expound upon that?

>>15816307

> Portuguese is better for romantic, modernism and magical realism

Also for poetry and music (not hip-hop though)

I'm German and I always try to read/watch things in the original language, whether it's books or movies. I think I might even be more proficient in English than German.

>>15816321

There's an obvious uniqueness about the way you can create neologisms and nonces in English that lends itself to a contemporary prose and dealing with current events in a literary fashion.

Portuguese, being latin and having a very specific and rich background to it, is charged with a kind of nostalgia and overall deepness in each word that can be explored to the umpteenth degree.

See Saramago's and Pessoa's work in both prose and verse. Samarago especially is comparable only to James Joyce in his sheer mastery over the deep meanings of words and phonems by itself.

>>15816362

Portuguese can also be much more unwieldy and it's damn hard to write in a colloquial way without sounding plain dumb with it as well.

>>15816151
Yeah, non fiction goes definitely easier to me in english, was reading the lime twig that was shilled on lit month ago and didn't get much

>>15816118
That's neat. I'm a fucking idiot so what is an "Argies"? Im trying to figure out if it's Port. for German (which seems to be Alemão) or just slang for Argentina (but why wouldn't that just be Spanish?) or...? Sorry for being a moron.

>>15816151
Fiction has a weirder cadence, and has more focus on varying forms than being clear; you're more likely to have words elided or unusual grammar constructions. I've noticed this in other languages too.

>>15816167
Thanks for the recs! I'll check them out. Would not have guessed Voltaire was easy. If I have $$$ in the future I'll look into a kindle too.

>>15816180
elaborate on that

>>15816272
Thanks for the rec! Will check out

>>15816151

I think that grasping a well-written fiction in any language is a sign of mastery of such language, so that's only natural.

>>15814998
I personally don't care much.
If the book was originally written in English I'm definitely not reading a translation.
And if the book written in Dutch I'll read it in Dutch.
Books originally written in other languages than those two, I tend to read in English, simply because Dutch translations aren't always available and when they are a cheaper English translation is often to be found.

>>15814998
I almost always read in English since
1. There's a lot more available material in English
2. The translations are usually better
3. I have a bigger passive vocabulary in English compared to my native language ._.

>>15814998
It doesn't matter. I read the originals on my language and I tend to prefer translations from French, Spanish, Italian and other romance languages to my language. And translations from German I usually go for English. I'm a native Portuguese speaker.

>>15814998
I'm finnish and I prefer english for both physical and audiobooks. Finnish is such just a fucking autistic language for books.

>>15814998
You should know that it’s poor form to inb4 as op.

>>15816142
read the first post. Sorry for any confusion :^)

My second and third languages are Tibetan and Nepalese, but I cant read or write in both of them. If I were able to read then I would probably pick up some books In them but there isn't any good Nepali literature I know of and Tibetan is really fucking hard to read and write.

prefer english but i feel like it impoverishes my native german

>>15816036
Uh just so you guys are clear. I love cock. Love it. There is not a single day where I don't wake up with my prostrate pulsating with desire for penis. If there is a heaven it's me being spit-roasted by 2 massive portuguese men. I live for cum. It is my Philosophers stone. Through white spunk I become immortal. Animal. It awakens in me my ontological faggotry that I try so hard to suppress. I literally turn into a madonna whore with a penis. BTW straights, men suck crazy good penis. Like its incomparable.

>>15816799
What so hard about Tibetan?

>>15816842
A couple of things. Mainly that the spelling is totally different from how you pronounce the words 99% of the time, for example, the Tibetan script is spelt "Dbucan" but pronounced as "Uchen" Some different words have the exact same writing. The main reason is that written Tibetan hasn't changed for a thousand years whilst the language has, so it's lead to it becoming really difficult.

>>15815352
aye, I'm Swedish and also consider my mother language poor

My native language is greek. Most of the stufff I read is in English--I study in England--but it somehow does not get registered in my brain. Compared to Greek, I find English lacking in depth of meaning and ressonance. When I read in Greek my brain processes things diferently and draws more relations between the concepts. I only find English better when it comes to neologisms.

To give an example, I read Heidegger for the first time in English and I managed to capture most of what he said. Also, the prose flowed better due to many neologisms. Yet, when I read it in Greek I fully grasped the meaning of Heidegger's thought. It is like words only have a meaning in Greek.

I have the impression that greek words actually mean and refer to something, there is a reason behind each word having the name it has. Contrary, English words appear arbitrary and meaningless. I think this is probably because most of the english vocabulary comes from Latin and German and I know neither--while I do know some ancient greek which gives a new dimension to Greek.

>>15816959
It's because Greek is a philosophical language like German but English hasn't been one since 1066.

>>15814998
English. Latin languages I try to read in the original, everything else I get an English translation. Portuguese ones are generally stiff or poorly done.

>>15816828

>>15816939
its unfortunate, im quite good at formulating myself in english, but im so mediocre at it in Norwegian. Gets really annoying when talking to real life friends and non foreigners. You ever feel this way fellow skandi?

>>15816903
That's interesting to know, was thinking to learn it to be able to read classical philosophical works written in Tibetan, so it might be much more difficult then i thought it gonna be at first