[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 153 KB, 840x875, Leopardi,_Giacomo_(1798-1837)_-_ritr._A_Ferrazzi,_Recanati,_casa_Leopardi.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15115607 No.15115607 [Reply] [Original]

this is greatest italian writer, either for prose and for poetry. say something nice about him.
philosophically speaking, he was a sensualist.

>> No.15115623

Reading italian writers in translation fucking sucks, I'm currently reading some of them in French but I wanna learn italian at some point too

>> No.15115626

>>15115607
> is greatest
*is the greatest

>> No.15115628

Wops are gangly subhumans who don't bathe and wear sleeveless shirts

>> No.15115648

>>15115623
Agreed. If you know Spanish and French Italian is pretty easy, the plural is the most distinct thing I can remember.

>> No.15115656

>>15115648
This, if you know French already you can learn Italian enough to read texts within like two weeks

>> No.15115663

>>15115623
i think the problem with french is that it somewhat "frenchfies" everything. german is the most "discrete" language for translations, among those i know.

>> No.15115678

>>15115656
is this actually true? Would I even be able to read Dante?

>> No.15115708

>>15115678
Yes, but it will take some work. Read with a dictionary by your side and check every word you don't understand. Try to familiarize yourself with the grammar first though, read some simple prose books (Boccaccio would be a better first read than Dante), watch some italian movies with italian subtitles.

>> No.15115720

>>15115656
I speak Spanish and I can understand about 70% of Italian. I remember the fact that all Borges needed to read the Comedy was a dictionary.

>> No.15115726

>>15115678
You will still have to acquire vocabulary and idiom, but Italian grammar is really easy comparatively speaking, especially if you've already learned a romance language, since the basic structure of things will be very similar even in the few cases where you have to learn something truly new. Italian also shares a shitload of cognates with the romance languages, and with English too. So you get a lot of "head start." Felt like cheating when I tried it desu.

You can at least acquire the grammar base and get through a surprising amount of vocabulary within a few weeks if you are serious about it. I did it with Romanian and honestly, Romanian is a lot more irregular and weird than Italian, so the initial learning curve was steeper. Felt more like French with the irregularities whereas Italian seems more like Spanish. At least standardized literary Italian, obviously speaking, let alone in a dialect, is different.

I wouldn't start with Dante though.

>> No.15115750

>>15115678
dante as everything in poetry until cesarotti is difficult even for unlearned italians. they need sort of a "translation" to understand him. it's quite different from the other european languages, because italian, due to being very artificial, changed much more in the last 3 centuries.an average englishman can easily read robert burton and chapman, but an average italian won't be able to read malagotti and chiabrera.

>> No.15115759

>>15115750
That's fascinating, can you say more about this? I've heard something like this before but your comparisons finally made it make sense to me

I know this is a vague question but really interested

>> No.15115767

>>15115750
>dante as everything in poetry until cesarotti is difficult even for unlearned italians.
you mean "even for learned italians"?

>> No.15115791

>>15115759
Not him, but as he said Italian is artificial, Italy used to be a continuum of romance languages, they pushed an unified language to create the Italian state. Like Spanish, but Castilla took control of Spain in the XVI century or so.

>> No.15115819

>>15115791
But how does that make it artificial? Wasn't it born from Tuscan or something? I'm referring to the language itself, not the political status or whatever.

>> No.15115820

>>15115708
Idk man, Boccaccio seems hard for a beginner in Italian.

>Boccaccio is, in effect, one of the most difficult writer to translate; it's not that his style is obscure, but the sentences themselves are hard to pin down. Due to his exclusive taste for ancient writers, Boccaccio has chosen to follow Cicero's model, that is to say, clause upon clause, long and snake like sentences that meander to their far-off conclusions. It is truly a formidable task to render his interminable sentences that were easily done in Italian, since their language is a lot less strict and precise as ours.

>> No.15115836

>>15115759
italy had and still have many dialects not mutually intelligible. a few yeras ago there was a series in neapolitan dialect (gomorra) of which i would have understand 30% at best, without subtitles.
italian was an eminently literary language, it wasn't made for talking, but just for writing. manzoni for instance spoke his own dialect at home, not italian. only after the ww2 italians started to actually speak italian at home, especially in the north.
so, an average italian will never understand anything written in thr 17th century, because their literary italian and our "vulgar" italian are quite distant each others. only with leoardi (19th century) an average italian can actually understand the text.

>> No.15115851

>>15115767
nope, that "even" was a typo

>> No.15115873

>>15115791
>>15115836
Are those older dialects at least maintained by enthusiasts and local people?

>> No.15115902

>>15115873
i don't know. i personally can't speak not strictly understand my dialect (they say it resembles the occitan language) and i don't know anyone of my generation (22) who can.

>> No.15115916

>>15115902
> not
*nor