/lit/ - Literature

probably French

>>18957264
German without even a close runner up

Latin
Greek
Japanese

>>18957294
>>18957299
Ignore European languages, pretty soon even the Euros will be monolingual Anglophones

>>18957264
Chinese, Classical Chinese, Arabic (Al-Fusha), and Farsi

Greek>Latin=Sanskrit>French=Spanish=German=Russian=Italian>Ancient near east languages>Oriental languages like Chinese and Japanese

>>18957319
England and the US are not part of the EU. There’s no reason the EU wouldn’t steer Continentals away from English. In fact, I think France is still pitching French to be the official language of the EU and European lingua franca.

>>18957264

Provencal. You should read Pound's ABCs of reading - he's very clear about it.

>>18957319
>pretty soon even the Euros will be monolingual Anglophones
Which doesn't mean anything for hundreds of years of past literary output.

>>18957334
>England and the US are not part of the EU. There’s no reason the EU wouldn’t steer Continentals away from English. In fact, I think France is still pitching French to be the official language of the EU and European lingua franca.
PMC fags speak English everywhere and it has been since long the true working language of the EU anyway. You don't get an eurocrat white collar job unless your English is pretty good, and you have no reason to simp for anything but globohomo cosmpolitanism so why care about your language. This is btw why the EU will never be anything but a bloated trade area of American vassal states.
This is really sad since I actually think France is so self-absorbed and pleased with its own literature and history that it'd be perfect to create a cultural space somewhat free from English-borne idiocy.

>>18957354
European literary output is not important

>>18957264
learn Italian or greek

>>18957393

>>18957390
But both France and EU have been insistent on this. So are you suggesting it’s bullshit or that they’ll just fail due to market forces or whatever?

definitely not dutch

>>18957508
Do Dutch have some noteworthy literature at least?

>>18958041
Gerard reve

>>18957264
English. Don't waste your time.

>>18957264
Aramaic. There is a wealth of untranslated scrolls from early Christianity and general Aksumite texts that are just waiting to be translated. Imagine sitting in the Vatican library transcribing Aramaic scrolls into English, the first to read them in many hundreds of years. Thousands in some cases.

>>18957321
>Latin=Sanskrit
>German=Spanish
>Russian=Spanish=Italian
You may be a retard

>>18957264
Arabic for the Qur'an
Hebrew for the Tanakh

>>18957264
Latin
Ancient Greek
German?
French
Scottish Gaelic
Arabic
Hebrew

>>18958147
this anon has something into that

>>18958147
>s into English,

>>18957319
>Chinese, Classical Chinese, Arabic (Al-Fusha), and Farsi

Latin is on top.
Greek and French are honorary contenders. The main living European languages are not that far (I'll get trashed for singling out French above). (Classical) Chinese is the main language outside of Europe.

>false good ideas
>Hebrew
The old testament seems obvious, but the main pieces available are of dubious value by themselves without older translations, even the apostles didn't care and cited the Septuagint, otherwise you're stuck with the Talmud out of all things. The recent language spoken in Israel is quite different and has little of great value to add.
>Sanskrit
Two epics overly stretched for their own good and a few books of pajeet philosophy (inb4 indiaboo pasta or guenonposting). Of interest to actual linguists.
>Arabic
There is a surprising dearth of writing of any interest in that language, or really of any writing. The odd great piece throughout the centuries, say Khaldun. The most read one in the west, the 1001 Nights, were not originally from Arabic speaking countries and the rewriting by Galland in the 17th century was superior anyway.

>>18957334
There is little chance of that happening. If anything the UK leaving will make English seem more neutral (Ireland is not relevant enough). The current personnel is not geared for this anyway.

>>18957334
Germany will never accept French in any capacity and the French will never accept German in any capacity. So English is the most likely compromise choice.

>>18957334
They would be more successful pitching Latin.

>>18958329
They both just should accept Italian as a compromise. Case solved.

The only language worth learning outside of really specific study is Latin.

Can't go wrong with French and German (if you already know English).

>>18957264
Portuguese

>>18958343
*Finnish, it would be very based

>>18957264
My votes go to Latin, Greek and Russian

>>18958448
Just make Swedish the lingua franca then.

Mandarin for contemporary surprisingly. Then onto Literary Chinese from that for literally the single largest body of historical literature before the printing press.

ich lerne deutsch

>>18958701
I just cannot imagine something like Chinese or Japanese to be worth it, unless you're specifically interested in Confucianism or whethever.

The decade it takes you to get to a level to appreciate literature could be spent on getting to near native level in two or three European languages instead.

>>18958343
Would be a pretty strange choice to promote a language with essentially no significant supra-national status. And while the Italian literary canon is not to be sniffed at, it does not come close to that in French and German. One might fairly protest that Spanish or Polish or Greek would be equally as strongly justified. Meanwhile, English is spoken the world over, including by most educated Europeans - and as another anon noted, the fact that it is not an official language of any heavyweight EU member anymore is a vote in its favour. I can definitely see Europe pursuing a strategy of hating the anglos but loving the anglish. After all, in England, we warred against the French even while it was the language of state affairs for centuries :-)

>>18957310
Based

French, German, Russian, Spanish, Portugoose if you are not autistic and retarded. Japanese is a maybe

Latin, Greek, Chinese, Arab languages if you are autistic and want to make a bad decision.

>>18958147
>There is a wealth of untranslated scrolls from early Christianity
How early are we talking? 1st century? 6th century?

>>18957264
German, French, Spanish (which practically gives you Portuguese and Italian), Russian, any one of Danish, Norwegian or Swedish because one of these three give you the other two, Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

Chinese and Japanese are for weebs and bugs, no need to bother. Any Arab language is a waste of time because the only thing worth reading is their commentary to Aristotle which you can just read in Latin instead.

The West is the best.

Depends on what exactly you're looking for, but I'm thinking German because it covers a wide variety of literature with lots of very important and infuential works. German philosophy on its own is reason enough to learn that language.

If you're a white man you have a duty to learn Greek. It also opens you up to a ridiculous amount of literature.

I think we need to break this into "languages useful for being the guy to translate them" and "languages useful for communication or self cultivation.

In the former we have Aramaic, French, Russian, archaic forms of Arabic, etc. The defining aspect of this category is that nothing new is, or really can, be made in that language. Consider >>18958147: being the guy to translate some text on some ancient Christian heresy is good for your career, but eventually you run out of scrolls.

In the latter category, we have languages like Spanish, Mandarin, English, but also older languages like Latin, Ancient Greek, various forms of archaic Chinese, etc. Not only are these languages churning out new content (and as such you NEED to know them to keep up, you can't wait for translations), but they're also going to fracture into more languages in the future, so you're actually getting in while the getting is good. There's also languages like Latin or archaic forms of Chinese that, while true, get only small amounts of new content, they also are used to write texts of incredible spiritual value wherein the very reading of the text in its native tongue is an act of self cultivation.

>>18958299
There's far, far more than that in Sanskrit. There's still large amounts of Indian philosophy and theology done in it today. It's been THE language of intellectual discussion in India for over 3,000 years, and it has that much content. Now granted, if you have no interest in Pajeet stuff then yes, it's completely useless.

Also, most of the most interesting things in pre-Talmudic Judaism are actually in Greek. When the Romans conquer the Persians and the Egyptians, who were commanding puppet governments in the Levant, the Jews as a people essentially lose Hebrew and end up adopting Greek. You end up with all sorts of incredibly weird Jewish writings due to this fractured state where the Temple cannot enforce orthodoxy anymore (Rabbis are a modification of a type of pre-existing lay scholar to create a sort of mobile mini-Temple concentrated in a single person). The end result is, among other things, a bizarre body of apocalyptic literature where David, who is in a manner much similar to a Mountain Lion, will climb the High Walls of [insert gentile city here] in a fashion akin to that of a Mountain Lion when White Armed Dawn waggles her rosy fingers, and enslave all of the gentiles (as a Mountain Lion Would), just you wait you dirty goyim, as the Jews end up having to write in (very bad) hexameter due to the nature of Greek. So, you actually get a lot of unexpected content out of Greek.

>>18958329
>>18958343
No, Spanish.

>>18958885
>any one of Danish, Norwegian or Swedish because one of these three give you the other two
....but prefer Danish or Norwegian (Bokmål), because in their written forms they are closer to each other than Swedish is to either, and because they both have a stronger literary canon than Swedish.

>>18958041
Multatuli

>>18959016
Make it Basque.

Why is no one taking about Persian poetry.

>>18958187
All of that is correct.

>>18959030
Broder

How to learn Latin?

>>18959295
The same as any other language. Get a textbook and read it.

Bump

>>18959295

lingua latina per se illustrata are great books to get started, you can read all of it basically just off of context and theres a small youtube channel that has a video for each chapter

>>18957319
>Classical Chinese
This. Literal millennia of literature not just from one country but from a whole civilizational sphere.

>>18957264

español

Russian and German

Ithkuil
>Verification not required.

>>18957319
Name 3 works from each of these languages that you have personally read

>>18958299
>Two epics overly stretched for their own good and a few books of pajeet philosophy (inb4 indiaboo pasta or guenonposting). Of interest to actual linguists.
Don't be a retard, Sanskrit has an enormous literary and dramatic tradition, beyond being the classical language of science and philosophy of South Asia. Why give your opinions on something you know nothing about? I'm inclined to agree with you on the other two, though.

I read the Hawkes translation of Dream of the Red Chamber and it made me want to learn Chinese. I've read a couple of other chinese novels and always thought they were trash but that's because the translation was so bad. Reading a book with a phenomenal translation made me realise there may be something to chinese lit that isnt "Confucian nonsense or ping pong fights wing wang and destroys the town of ching chong. x10"

>>18960191
Seconded, they're great. Although the channel you're talking about lately has grown considerably.

>>18959295
I did a little Latin at school and I definitely recommend it, it's fun to learn outside of a little light memorization and it makes understanding Romance languages really interesting, it even transformed my understanding of English.

>>18957310
this

>>18961438
Did you also read the last two volumes by Minford?

>>18957264
LINGVA LATINA

Did no one call out OP for his typo?

Going through a language with few cognates like russian is grueling, it's making me want to pick up french as a wide dish. Don't know how anons studying ones from different families find the will to go on.

>>18962514
Side dish

>>18958948
>If you're a white man you have a duty to learn Greek.
Greek philosophy is great but they are still non-whites

I kind of want to learn German because it's probably got some of the best lit and it wouldn't be that hard to learn but on the other hand German culture in 2021 is extremely cucked and It doesn't seem that useful to have outside of reading because few countries speak it.

>>18957310
yes
yes
replace with russian

>>18957264
Koine Greek + Latin > Hebrew = Aramaic > Italian = French = Japanese > Spanish = German

>>18962925
κοινή you've got some things to read, but aramaic?

>>18960787
What's been written in Ithkuil?
>>18962572
By what possible definition?

Learning an entire language for /lit/ only would be a stupid idea, think of all the doors a language opens you, culture, numbers or speakers around the world, other medium like /tv/. I think unless you do it for academic purpose, learning a niche language would give you nothing practical. Needless to say, the best contender, if you consider these factors, are:
Chinese
French
Spanish

>>18957264
Arabic, Hebrew, and any semitic language

>>18962631
Ancient Greece and Roman Empire are cucked out of existence, but people still learn their languages massively. Moreover, Germanic countries left more literary works in last centuries than those civilizations through thousand years, so it is definitely worth to learn it.

>>18957264
If you want a broad literary outlook and you come from some shithole country, probably English and French. But I think if you speak any of the major European languages natively, knowing other languages is inessential.

>The American with familiarity in French and Latin.

>>18958984
>Jews writing weird shit in Greek
Read an interesting article on this subject in Unz but like most articles on there it was hard to discern what was true among the bullshit. Care to name any names or point in a certain direction?

>>18965343
Forgot to t. instead of >

I can only give specific advice related to East Asian languages, basically LEARN LITERARY CHINESE and VERNACULAR JAPANESE (first). They are the most useful, because:

Most Chinese, Korean and also Vietnamese literature was before the turn of the 20th century written overwhelmingly in Literary Chinese. This means that even though it's the most difficult East Asian language undertaking, you basically are getting the most bang for your buck if you really learn to read it. Vernacular Japanese is the most useful vernacular Asian language, simply because it's been in wider use for longer than its Chinese and Korean counterparts.

(Obviously, for business and actual communicative purposes today, it's a no-brainer to learn Mandarin Chinese first and second Japanese. But for intellectual and cultural interest, the priority should be sharply different.)

>>18965343
Anyone who's asking here on 4chan speaks English already.

>>18965343
>The American
opinion discarded

>>18957264
Russian, spanish, german

>>18965552
No shit Sherlock, but my point is that English and French unlock the widest corpus of literature.

>>18965680
You forgot your trip cumgenius

>>18957264
I hear the Portuguese have some amazing stuff

>>18957310
>Japanese as opposed to literally any European language

>>18968246
Japanese literature is great

>>18957508
On the flip side, if German is too hard to learn at first, you can use Dutch as a starting point since its pretty easy

>>18958665
If you learn one scandinavian language you can pretty much read them all since they are all very similar with alot of crossover

>>18968246
He already listed the only important Euro languages.

>>18968312
German should not be hard at all for english speakers. I'm a shitty ESL and german is quite easy to start.
>>18957299
To read what? Goethe? Hölderlin?

German, Russian, Japanese, French. You can also learn Latin with LLPSI, it’s unironically fun. Maybe Italian/Spanish after Latin.

>>18957264
I'd say the undisputed top 3 are Italian, German and french

>>18957310
>Japanese
Fuck off, weaboo piece a shit

Bump

>>18968614
'Likes Japanese stuff' is not the same as 'weeb'. Weebshit is popcorny pop culture trash even in Japan.

>>18957264
>Which languages are worth learning according to their literary input?
I would add: "And useful in real life".

>>18958299
>There is a surprising dearth of writing of any interest in that language, or really of any writing.
Translation of Arabic at an advanced level is extremely difficult and cumbersome. You need to master the language at a high level in: (1) syntax; (2) morphology; (3) rhetoric. And it does not end here, you are also required to study the science of poetry, know its rules, reasoning, and necessities. You are also required to study the history of the Arabs, know their customs, metaphors, symbols. Simply put, knowing the language alone won't do you much good in knowing what they're talking about. But if you do that, you will get a great literary treasure.

>t. Son of a Orientalist

bump

>>18957264
Just maximize your scope and try to learn one for every language group, you won't be able to read everything in native but you'll get good translation