/lit/ languages

[Anonymous No.11056014]

Can we have a discussion on languages we're learning for literary/pseudointellectual purposes?
I'm starting uni soon trying to decide between
>hindi
>mandarin
>korean
>russian
>arabic

[Anonymous No.11056054]

at mid-intermediate level german and japanese, but thinking of dropping one and focusing on the other and trying to become completely fluent. no idea which one to pick
>>11056014
i hear Korean is easy, if that makes a difference for you. i guess it depends which you think would be the most useful/interesting.

[Anonymous No.11056084]

>>11056054
German is definitely easier, it has use outside of it's core nation and the literature is more accesible assuming you're a westerner.
>i hear Korean is easy, if that makes a difference for you. i guess it depends which you think would be the most useful/interesting.
I'm really aiming for something useful for international relations, but trying not to be a sinophonic normie

[Anonymous No.11056969]

>>11056014
Russian is best for pseuds, read Tolstoy

[Anonymous No.11056972]

>>11056054
i wouldn't bother with japanese or german
french, russian, spanish, italian, latin are all better

[Anonymous No.11057545]

>>11056014
Why would you learn hindi, mandarin, korean or arabic for literary purposes? Can you name twenty great works of literature written in any of those? They're basically primitive hieroglyphics.

Stick to the Latin and Greek alphabets and the languages which use those.

[Anonymous No.11057665]

>>11056972
most people try to learn japanese cuz the cool japanese media is originally in that language so you willl be able to view it in its RAW form

[Anonymous No.11057697]

How hard would it be to self-teach German or Russian? I've self-taught Spanish before but I already learned French at school so it was easy. With Russian I could practice with my parents since they are from Russia

[Anonymous No.11058592]

>>11056972
I'm not going to drop both and pick up a completely new language at this point, but I plan do on learning another language once I have "finished" either German or Japanese so I will keep these in mind. I will probably pick French.
>>11057665
Basically this, this is 4chan after all, but I'd also like to read Japanese poetry and Noh theater in the original language.
>>11057697
I am self teaching German and I dont find it too hard, although, similar to you, my Dad is from Germany so that helps a lot.

[Anonymous No.11058745]

I think I'm confident to say I reached fluency in Italian, but just recently started reading Italian works, going to work my way to read the decameron, orlando furioso and the divine comedy.
Started with calvino, going to read a lot of his works, later on eco, [some other authors in between] and some books of the bible in italian before tackling the big 3.

Started studying German but 2bh I lost a bit of motivation. Was mainly learning it through German for Reading, which is excellent by the way. I like German a lot, but I fear spending a lot of time studying it and never really being able to even read in German with a good flow.
With the time necessary to barely be able to read news in german I could very likely get a decent reading level in latin and a proficient reading level in spanish (can already read academic texts in spanish without any spanish background) so this thought always kind of bump me out to keep studying german, not to mention there are quite a bit of spanish classics I want to read and spanish is way closer to my reality (its a good advantage in some jobs here to know spanish).
I'll probably ditch german for now and start fresh with spanish, learning languages is a hobby for me so I won't force myself to learn it if I'm not feeling it.
After spanish, plan to learn latin, french, maybe romanian too. Finally, want to learn at least the alphabet and some words in languages like Russian and Greek

[Anonymous No.11058765]

Going to focus on learning Italian by myself soon. If anyone, please, have a good pdf book to learn it, post here.

[Anonymous No.11058779]

german here, ive studied chinese for 3 years ,its very intresting and youll get poetry second to none.

dont learn japanese, all their best stuff will seem like cheap knockoffs if your familiar with classic chinese.

[Anonymous No.11060500]

>>11056014
Go for Russian or Hindi.

Why? Mandarin, Arabic and Korean are languages where you have to put in an extra effort and progress is going to be super slow. The script alone of Mandarin and also Arabic takes a long time to learn; and even though the Korean script is really damn easy, the language is said to be one of the most difficult to native speakers of English or other West Germanic tongues.

If you're more interested in European literature and history, go for Russian. If you'd like a language with less morphological difficulties and over 1 billion speakers, then go for Hindi. Even though the Devanagari script, used for Hindi, looks intimidating, it is actually really easy to learn.

Source: I study linguistics, Latin and German. Swiss German native speaker.

[Anonymous No.11060516]

Anyone who can recommend some good books for learning german?

[Anonymous No.11060536]

>>11057545
>mandarin
>arabic
>not having any "great literature"
>"primitive hieroglyphics"
>muh familiar alphabets

Aight, guess OP's gotta go for Maltese, Erzya Mordvin, Cheyenne, and !Xõo because they are using the Latin alphabet. I'm sure they have a richer literary tradition than even Hindi or something.

[Anonymous No.11060564]

>>11060516
http://4chanint.wikia.com/wiki/German

[Anonymous No.11060598]

>>11060516
Der Einzige und sein Eigentum

[Anonymous No.11060774]

>>11060598
>Der Einzige und sein Eigentum
yeah i want to read that once i'm able.

[Anonymous No.11060781]

>>11060564
>>11060598
>>11060774
but any great german books that are easy to read?

[Anonymous No.11060792]

>>11060564
thanks!

[Anonymous No.11061556]

I'm learning German and Vietnamese

[Anonymous No.11061568]

My Japanese is getting pretty good so I'm starting to think about the next language I'll study. I'm torn between French, German, Russian and Icelandic

[Anonymous No.11061618]

>>11061568
If you learn Icelandic you can learn old norse at the same time.

[Anonymous No.11061637]

>>11061618
That's part of why I want to learn it.

[Anonymous No.11061638]

take russian once you learn the cyrillic alphabet its easy as balls im a brainlet and i fucking love it

[Anonymous No.11062146]

>>11056014
I'm taking Russian in school for edgy pseud reasons but obviously there's a lot of great Russian lit and it's a beautiful language in its own way.

>>11061638
The declensions are pretty annoying imo but I'm probably just not practicing enough.

[Anonymous No.11062199]

French, Spanish, and Arabic are the only languages OTE worth learning for the next 20 years. Although with French, most frogs already know multiple languages including English, so French might not be that useful.
We live in a good time of almost total western domination on the world, so unless you're going to these countries stick with English, they're all being forced to learn it. From my personal experience don't bother learning any of these three unless you plan on living or doing business there full-time (I learnt simplified Mandarin for this purpose, and it's almost useless because majority of the Chinese businessmen who are worth their salt know English). French lit is the only exception, maybe Arabic if you want to read the Koran, that's about it though.

[Anonymous No.11062414]

>>11058592
>my Dad is from Germany so that helps a lot.
He likely still uses a lot of German grammar when speaking English. My grandfather was born in the US but his parents were immigrants and he spoke German as a first language and, in retrospect, he did this. It rubbed onto me a bit so grammar is a little more natural for me.
>I am self teaching German and I dont find it too hard
Learn the alphabet and the basic pronunciation rules. Learn some nouns and verbs. Learn some grammar. Go on /int/deutsch and converse. Get called an idiot a bunch because your German sucks. Improve past the point that they can notice how incompetent you are from your shitposting. Make sure you have a grasp on pronunciation as you progress or all of the time you spend thinking about what you write will be misdirected regarding the aural aspect. In b4 aural sex.

[Anonymous No.11062441]

>>11060516
>Anyone who can recommend some good books for learning german?
Pic related covers use of cognates well with some interesting exercises. This is for English speakers only. If you do not have a solid grasp of English then the book will not help you because you will not have the backstop of English vocabulary for the rapid development of cognate recognition. My biggest takeaway is that, as an English speaker, if the word sounds like what I think that it should be then I should just relax and assume that the word means what I think that it means.

[Anonymous No.11062555]

I'm studying arabic at uni, supplemented with dialectal studies in masri (egyptian arabic); ive only caught glimpses of farsi and urdu but my french is pretty decent too. i'd like to eventually pick up mandarin and spanish conversationally, but the former's pretty daunting. i've got a friend walking me through the tones but god the stroke order and different pinyin possibilities are intimidating.

[Anonymous No.11062785]

>>11061618
How difficult is to go from Norwegian to Old Norse? From Norwegian to Danish?

[Anonymous No.11062797]

>>11061618
Apparently the Icelandics can even half-understand Old English too, far better than native Anglophones can.

Fuck I wish I could read Beowulf without a translation.

[Anonymous No.11062804]

>>11062797
Forgot pic. A side-by-side comparison of Old English and Modern Icelandic.

[Anonymous No.11062859]

>>11062146

They will be second nature within a couple months of sticking to them and daily studying

[Anonymous No.11062899]

Self teaching Russian and Latin here.

Once my Latin reaches a comfortable reading level around where my Russian is I'll probably add another. Considering Irish or old Irish, because I'm frankly ashamed at not being fluent in Irish despite the years in school.

[Anonymous No.11062947]

>>11057545
>he hasn't read Premchand
>he hasn't read Kabir
>he hasn't read Mirabai
>he hasn't read Tulsidas
>he hasn't read Lallu Lal
>he hasn't read Munshi Inshallah Khan
>he hasn't read Harishankar Parsai
>he hasn't read Bharatendu Harishchandra
>he hasn't read Amir Khushro
>he hasn't read Jainedra Kumar
This is just embarrassing. Why are Americans so quick to flaunt their ignorance as pride?
>>11056014
I have a useless bachelor's in Hindi if there's something you want to ask about the language or literature.

[Anonymous No.11063121]

>>11060781
German for reading. Requires no previous knowledge, read 4 chapters (~80 pages) and read 3 big german texts in that while. Close to the end you have to read Kant and Nietxee.
Its very interesting and pretty easy to follow, I recommend, but always it is 100% focused on reading, on the side learn and practice pronouncing and hearing words.
Same author wrote an equivalent for French, French for Reading.
Make sure you read the older edition, there is a more recent one written by a woman that is not as good. You can find it at b-ok . org

[Anonymous No.11063139]

>>11062199
why do your post screams that you are an american?
>you are not planning to live in italia so it is not worthy to learn italian and be able to read calvino, eco, boccaccio, ariosto, dante
>not going to live in portugal/brazil so it is not worth learning portuguese to read pessoa, camões, assis, guimarães rosa
>not going to live in the roman empire so not worth it learning latin to read cicero, virgil, ovid
>not going to live in spain so not worth it to learn spanish to read cervantes, borges, bolano
retarded

[Anonymous No.11063160]

>>11062199
>this is the power of the superior Anglo intellect

[Anonymous No.11063769]

>>11056014
Try mandarin, apparently oriental languages are great for cognitive improvement, at least according to a friend of mine. Anyway once my exams are done I am gonna try to learn Japanese for some literature.

[Anonymous No.11063799]

>>11062785
I speak decent Norwegian. B1 or b2 level not sure.
Reading Danish is very easy, it's almost the same thing really. Listening to it is another story though. If you learn to read Norwegian, you learn to read Danish as well, it's very similar.

[Anonymous No.11063824]

>>11056014
Nihil ex nihilo

[Anonymous No.11063867]

>>11056014
I'm learning Irish, can only read children/early teen books atm but attend to keep learning the language until I'm fluent and can tackle something like pic related(Native speakers have trouble with it, apparently the equivalent of reading The Ulysses in English)

I have mid-intermediate level German and French from school but I'm not really interested in continuing them, German is honestly kinda boring and to similar to English, I might continue French later in life because its nice and a pretty simple language except that the French are such cunts about your accent

am more interested in starting Latin and going on to old Irish when I'm fluent in modern Irish. Also like Russian and Italian but probably never going to learn anything but the basics. Egyptian hieroglyphics is also something I would like to learn a bit about

[Anonymous No.11064446]

>>11063867
Irish guy here, thanks for learning the Language. What drew you to learning Irish? I really regret not sticking with it when we learned it in school, but I'm trying to make up for it now.

[Anonymous No.11064570]

>>11056054
Korean ain't easy. It's basically like Japanese but with a more complicated grammar and fewer Hanja/Kanji.

>>11056014
Definitely don't do Hindi. It's more or less useless outside of India as all well-educated Indians speak English. And beware that Arabic is more like a group of languages than one language - unless you plan to get an MA in it, you'll only ever learn to understand 1 or 2 of the dozen "dialects"/languages.

Korean, Mandarin and Russian are all solid choices depending on where you live and what you wanna work with: AFAIK Russian is better for jobs related to politics/administration/military, wheras Mandarin and (especially) Korean are more suited for business.