Learn French, German, Latin and Greek

[Anonymous No.21745968]

Literally just learn them. For the effort expended (a few years at most, and you'll still be able to maintain a social life and read in English), the rewards are immense. You'll get to enjoy a lifetime of reading in them. A hundred years ago every educated man could read them. Not to mention that learning to read other romance languages will be a joke after this.
>hurr durr i dont have time
Then stop cooming and watching tiktok and browsing 4chan
>but i will miss out on reading by studying them
No, most of the learning of these languages is reading in them to build up to fluency
>i can just read translations
ok, your loss, lazybones

[Anonymous No.21746048]

>>21745968
>German
I am literally choking while trying to pronounce
>French
Retarded language with retarded pronunciation
>Gr*ek
No way I am learning gayr*ek
>Latin
Based, this is good.

[Anonymous No.21746067]

>>21745968
German is my native language. I've learned English and French in school, it was worth it. The next language I'm currently starting to learn is Polish. Is self-studying Latin worth it? I've never been linguistically talented, therefore it's going to take some time. Probably more so than for the average Latin student.

[Anonymous No.21746392]

im french native, i can read science books in english but when it's about novels im struggling very hard. im so slow. but i keep going because the reward that i could read everything in the world is so huge. but it's hard

[Anonymous No.21746443]

>German
got basic fluency though I left it behind for the following two and I'm still not proficient enough to easily read literature
>Latin
fairly fluent
>Greek
fairly fluent
>French
nothing but being native in another Romance language + Latin would make it an easy process I guess

[Anonymous No.21746454]

>>21746392
Learn to write properly. Baby steps.

[Anonymous No.21746461]

>>21746067
Learning an ancient language is different from learning a modern one, but if you can grasp Polish, no reason you can't do Latin.

[Anonymous No.21746705]

>>21745968
I studied Ancient Greek in college. Just so people know, I learned the easiest author to begin with is Aristophanes.

[Anonymous No.21746725]

>>21745968
Translations are better than the originals. It's the same tradition of Homeric epics. They're stories retold from others but made better by relating more to the current reader.

[Anonymous No.21746738]

>>21745968
You cannot learn French, German, Latin, and Greek well enough to read literature in "a few years at most" Raymond Gauss says it'll take 3 or 4 years to learn Ancient Greek.

[Anonymous No.21746747]

>>21746725
This is sometimes the case, but translations can also be a huge downgrade. I remember reading English translations from Nietzsche out of curiosity as a native German speaker and they were pretty terrible. Some of their interpretations/"translations" gave the written sentences a whole nother meaning and not in a good way. If this was supposed to make his writing more relatable to the average American reader, it would've been an insult to those readers.

[Anonymous No.21746753]

>>21745968
>>i can just read translations
>ok, your loss, lazybones
notice you have no argument for why translations are bad?

[Anonymous No.21746893]

>>21746753
>hurr durr why are translations bad

[Anonymous No.21746908]

>>21746893
lol

[Anonymous No.21746919]

>>21746738
The dude literally admitted you could learn Greek well enough in a few years to be able to "follow along". You just shot yourself in the foot.

[Anonymous No.21746921]

>>21746893
just get a translation made before poz

[Anonymous No.21746929]

>>21746738
>you need to spend your entire life trying to understand me, because you, you, YOU JUST DO OK?

[Anonymous No.21746938]

I took the OP to mean that you could learn all 4 languages in just a few years. If he really meant 12-16 years, then I do not object.

[Anonymous No.21746943]

>>21746938
Meant for >>21746919

[Anonymous No.21746968]

>>21746938
I am claiming that though. I'm assuming one will study each language for 1 hour or more everyday. If you can't start reading closely related languages like these after a couple years of study, idk what to say. The claim wasn't that you'll be fluent after a few years, but that you be able to pick up and read most things.

[Anonymous No.21747124]

>>21746938
>If he really meant 12-16 years

You can learn Ancient Greek in 2 or 3 years tops with a good method, and you can certainly learn two or three languages concurrently. Back in the day, rich kids learned them in school and were expected to be able to read real literature in those languages by early to mid teens. You can certainly learn those languages in 2 to 3 years of consistent study.

[Anonymous No.21748142]

>>21745968
Why French and not Italian or Spanish for example?
>>21746067
>The next language I'm currently starting to learn is Polish
why?

[Anonymous No.21748201]

>>21745968
What books do I read to do this?

[Anonymous No.21748395]

>>21748201
Here are my recs, since I practice what I preach. For French, get French with ease by Assimil and you can get the English version of the book I have for German — German with ease.

[Anonymous No.21748465]

I wish I knew French. There's an incredible trove of untranslated work, but I dislike the language to be honest. 20th century French lit is mostly crap, I have 0 interest in Absurdism or Semiotics, it's an intellectual wasteland as far as I'm concerned. 19th century France looks way better, French Annales looks quite good, just need to research them more.


Greek is an undeniable necessity

Latin is tricky. The Romans were terrible philosophers but great poets. Will probably learn it just for that.


German is... eh. Their period of cultural flowering was relatively short, you'd probably have only a few great authors to read.

Overall, French is most important for an Anglo to learn

[Anonymous No.21748557]

>>21746738

You read it with the assistance of a dictionary. You really only need to master the grammar and declensions. The rest comes naturally through exposure. And there's only so many important works you will care about unless you're completely obsessed with it. I took ancient Greek in college and was lazy student. We were translating actual Greek passages by the end and your fluency increases dramatically the more you muscle through it. But you have you actually care about it enough to focus. 3-4 years is only true if you aren't intelligent and you treat like it's unimportant

[Anonymous No.21748653]

>>21746753
>“Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.” - quote translated from Don Quixote

[Anonymous No.21748683]

>>21746392
Le français est ma deuxième langue et l'anglais la troisième, mais j'ai toujours trouvé que l'écart entre langues écrites et parlées est généralement beaucoup plus grand chez les romanciers anglophones que francophones.

[Anonymous No.21748839]

>>21745968
Realistically can a person ever expect to truly read a language without the immersion of living in a country that speaks the language? When I read French I mostly translate it to English in my head as I'm reading, and I'm sure I do a much worse job of translating than an actual translator would. In that respect it feels a little silly to keep reading in French. I'd probably get a much more accurate understanding of the text by reading an English translation translated by someone who spent their life studying both languages.

I still read in French just because I enjoy learning the language, but I don't feel like I'll ever progress past translating in my head without true immersion.

[Anonymous No.21748890]

>>21747124
what's a good method?

[Anonymous No.21748895]

>>21745968
>French
Deja fait
>German
Dying language, nah
>Latin
Dead language, I can make due with the smattering that I already know
>Greek
Imagine the smell

[Anonymous No.21748911]

This thread is pseud as fuck

[Anonymous No.21748927]

>>21748890
Not him but what are your goals? Just start taking either French or German ASAP. If your goal is to be able to converse, you can start out small with a couple of months of some Pimsleur stuff and talking to people online. If you just want to read, then just start doing as much of something like Sandberg's or Jannach's French/German for Reading per day as you can stomach.

You can do Latin+Greek simultaneously, people often do with classes but that's because classes guarantee structure. If you want an easier time of things, pick the one you care about more, ideally Latin because it's easier early on, and just start doing Wheelock/Cambridge/Reading Latin/LLPSI/whatever one you like best.

Your goal should be to progress while being wary of two extremes: trying too hard to be perfect and remember everything on the one hand, and being lazy and skipping ahead before you understand. If you do the latter, you'll hit chapter 20 and not really know anything. If you do the former, you will never get past chapter 10 because you'll turn learning conjugations into this unrealistic lifelong quest. You need to find the right balance of just moving ahead and having fun, reviewing, while having a basic faith that you are learning and absorbing things even if you sometimes feel like "how could anyone ever remember all this?" The most mediocre average intelligence person will learn all this shit if he just does it repeatedly. Trust in this and just go.

You could theoretically do all four at once but if you're some autist I'd probably recommend doing maybe either French or German + either Latin or Greek (preferably Latin). With the modern/living languages you can afford to be sloppier than with Latin/Greek, so just plow through something like Sandberg. Better to do Sandberg three times than spend 10 years agonizingly trying to do Sandberg "right." You will just have a click moment at some point where you realize you don't need the book anymore and you can sorta read French/German enough that you're ready to fake it til you make it with real writings.

The key thing is to just start and don't stop no matter what. Failing for 3 years to learn German = succeeding at learning German. Start now and never let a day go by where you don't do 30 minutes, and you will learn it.

[Anonymous No.21748946]

>>21745968
As someone who has learned French I can't imagine a more retarded waste of time than learning a new language if you already speak English.

>Buh buh.. the translations might not be accurate!

So go pick up a dictionary and look up the few words the translator may have got incorrect you dipshit. 99.99% of the translation are going to be correct enough that you can't do any better by learning the language. Learning a language is hard, learning it enough to read literature is even harder.

Think about it. All's your doing is relearning the exact same shit you already know but with different sounds. It's the equivalent of learning to type again with a Dvorak keyboard.

Only learn a language if your social life depends on it. Imagine learning a language for 4 years just to forget it because you never used it outside of reading "Le Petit Prince"

[Anonymous No.21748957]

>>21748946
Ce n’est pas faux ca

[Anonymous No.21749061]

>>21745968
You don’t speak any of these languages. Speaking all of them is pretty common in real academia (Europe)

>>21746048
Latin is the most larpy among them and if it was up to me I‘d defund 80% of philology position

Speaking a dead language is probably the most analytically cucked thing you can do. The only valid function of language is ritual, is art in literature and song and any conversation. If you don’t use a language in that capacity you have fundamentally failed in learning it and you would‘ve been better off not learning it at all.
Even chatting in that language, with people in real life mind you, as useless as that is with any language: „hey, look, guy, I speak your native language, how cool is that“, is still better than studying the classics in a purely academic capacity. No ritual - no conversation - no life -> no use

[Anonymous No.21749074]

>>21746443
Kys zoomer
>another romance language
Gee I wonder
Are you brown or shitalian, well, it doesn’t matter, the same way what you think doesn’t matter. You will forever be tainted by your barbaric middle eastern or native indian admixture. You have lost in this life. Better become Hindu and try again.

[Anonymous No.21749396]

>>21748890
>what's a good method?
In college, we used the Ancient Greek textbook by the Joint Association of Classical Teachers. Our method was the following:

First you would learn very introductory concepts and read an Anglicized version of Ancient Greek. At first, you just have to be able to recognize some words here and there in the texts. Then, by the time you learn the 1st and 3rd declensions, you are supposed to be able to translate full sentences.

They then switch to actual historical Greek, and you have to work on bridging the gap between your abilities to translate Anglicized Greek and actual Greek. Mainly that gap exists because participles that are way more used in Greek than in English.

Then it's mostly about following a structure of "topic of the day + text translation" every class until you get into advanced topics, that are mostly geared towards translators and you really don't need them if you aren't gonna be one.

[Anonymous No.21750449]

>>21749074
Is life really just a game for you to be won anon? What are the win conditions?

[Anonymous No.21750502]

>>21749074
not sure how exactly did I trigger so much asshurt but I enjoy your jealous tears

[Anonymous No.21750509]

>>21745968
Omegabased.
I learned German, French and Latin. Would learn Greek too if I had the time...

[Anonymous No.21750516]

The only languages I care to learn are French, Ancient Greek, Persian (or maybe Arabic instead?), and Mandarin. French, I'm already halfway through. Mandarin is just too much of a time investment so I'll probably never learn that. What should I learn after French, Greek or Persian?

[Anonymous No.21750518]

>>21749061
shartmerigoylemutt take

[Anonymous No.21750558]

>>21748946
You're a stunted idiot who already lost all hope in life. Not even you
care about yourself, so why should I care about what you say?

[Anonymous No.21750598]

>>21745968
>just learn 4 languages.
The average person can at best with some effort learn two. Anyways horrible choices.
>German
Actual orc speech. Aesthetically disgusting language. "Duuuur kiner bin bon schafen". Too many consonants, no sense of rhyming or porportion in this language.
>French
Verbal diarrhea that has no relation to the spelling of words.
>Greek
Squiggly line alphabet. Too many k's in their words. Worthless language.
>Latin
Only worthwhile language listed.

[Anonymous No.21750615]

>>21746929
>this exact same post but with gigagchad Nietzsche instead of Nietzschjak

[Anonymous No.21750627]

>>21748839
Yeah you can, though I suppose it depends on the language. After a certain point you forget the English equivalent of a word but still intuit it's meaning from seeing it over and over. When I see a basic verb like "puede" in a spanish text most of the time I don't really even need to translate it in my head anymore

[Anonymous No.21751222]

>>21748839
>When I read French I mostly translate it to English in my head as I'm reading
Then you're doing it wrong. Keep reading and it'll stop happening.

[Anonymous No.21751232]

>>21748946
Faggot amerishart. Opinion disregarded.
>>21749061
Another amerishart. Tais-toi, sale cochon

[Anonymous No.21751242]

>>21750509
Based lad

[Anonymous No.21751314]

Does anyone know where to find a book VII-onwards equivalent to https://archive.org/details/virgilsneidboo00virg ?

[Anonymous No.21751341]

>>21745968
>French
B2 in French
>Latin
I watched a shit ton of that bald guy on YouTube and read the first 3 chapters of LLPSI
>German
I've watched a few of Hitler's speeches with English subtitles.
>Ancient Greek
I started with the Greeks and have eaten Souvlaki.
How am I doing?

[Anonymous No.21751516]

>>21745968
I’m learning Russian on duolingo right now. I hate myself for not starting sooner.

French is next on the list since I’m a ouiaboo.

[Anonymous No.21751562]

>>21751516
I wish I had the will to do Russian. Seems like a cool language, and I like Russian lit, but having to learn a different alphabet sounds monumentally more challenging than learning a Romance language.

[Anonymous No.21751592]

>>21751562
Learning the alphabet is like 0.1% of the work of learning a language, unless it's Chinese or one of those meme alphabets. It took me about 3 days to memorize cyrillic and another month or so until it was completely ingrained in my mind just through starting to do the grammar exercises and reading little dual texts. Took 3 years before I could read Russian literature without a dictionary(I was pretty lazy about studying though, you could get there faster than 3 years).

The harder part with Russian is the cases and the weird verb system. Even that is still much less time than just learning vocabulary though, which literally never ends.

[Anonymous No.21751661]

>>21751341
Are you me?

[Anonymous No.21751839]

>>21751592
Maybe some day I'll try my hand at learning it. I have my hands full learning latin atm, and I already know spanish.
So I'm not sure how much more I can realistically fit into my noggin.
Memorizing the alphabet might not be hard, but it still seems like it adds a level of difficulty since the words have little connection to your own language. Latin being the ancestor of a lot of English & Spanish words makes it a lot more intuitive to me.
For example I can look at a word like possum ("I can") in Latin and intuitively understand it based on my knowledge of analogous words in spanish & english that likely descended from it:
Possum -- Poder -- Power -- Possessions - Potentency
Russia's distance from the languages I already know makes it like starting at square one to learn it.

[Anonymous No.21751846]

>>21746048
>>21750598
Guarantee anyone who says Latin is the best language is an unironic "Millions must die" Evola/Spengler reading gigachud

[Anonymous No.21752127]

>>21746893
>I opted to translate everything incorrectly

[Anonymous No.21752272]

>>21751562
I don't know any Russian, but I learned to read it in 1 week after I found a cheap textbook at a thrift store.
It had a list of Russian words that were the same as their English counterparts, and I just practiced reading those. Words like this:
Интepнeт internet
Кoнтpaкт contract
Кaмepa camera
Пapк park
It's fun being able to read Russian words in TV and movies, even though I'll never learn more.

[Anonymous No.21752696]

>Not learning Persian

NGMI

[Anonymous No.21753212]

>>21748927
it would be nice if we had a study group for all those beginning to learn romance languages

[Anonymous No.21753230]

>>21748839
I read in english and I've never been to an anglo country so yes it's possible. At one point you start to think in the target language and don't need inner translation anymore.

[Anonymous No.21753472]

>>21745968
>French
Almost done. I'll be taking the DALF C2 in the coming months.
>German
I studied it for four years in high school, but I never really had much use for it and as a result, my skills have atrophied. I can't speak it, but I can still read it a little.
>Latin and Greek
Maybe one day. Once I'm done with French, I'll be starting Russian and once I have a good grasp of that, I'll do Japanese. If I'm not dead by the time I learn those two, then I'll learn Latin and Greek.

[Anonymous No.21753646]

>>21745968
Reminder to use Michel Thomas for German and French

[Anonymous No.21753690]

>>21753646
seconded

[Anonymous No.21754392]

>>21748395
Oh, you meant modern Greek? Why on earth would I learn that?

[Anonymous No.21754523]

>>21745968
>french
already know
>german
learned in school, couldn't be bothered. Will learn if I work there someday but not that probable
>greek
rather learn italian
>latin
rather learn Pascal or some other dead language

Russian is one I would perhaps try to learn someday but it's such a time investment I don't see it happening. Italian is probably more feasible since I already speak french and spanish and I wouldn't mind retiring there

[Anonymous No.21755678]

>>21754392
>>21748201
>>21745968

idk that guy is retarded. heres the real way to learn latin and greek:

learn latin first, with a combination of LLPSI and looking shit up. if you really need it, use moreland and fleischer, or wheelock, whatetever. for me, i kind of just looked up what all the grammar meant and the pronunciation, then jumped into familia romana without doing the exercises. Now im fluent.
I recommend using anki decks as well, because its way faster to accumulate vocab that way, until you reach a point (around 3-5k words, possibly) where the returns diminish to a point where its not worth it.
for greek, use a combination of both the english and italian versions of Athenaze with hansen and quinn, while looking some stuff up in Smyth's greek grammar where necessary. for learning the inflections, memorize the wiktionary page called "ancient greek grammar tables". dont be lazy, just stare at the conjugation for λύω for an hour straight without looking away and youll memorize it.
my french is shit because i took it in school so i have no advice for that

[Anonymous No.21755995]

do any of you motherfuckers have jobs? i barely have the energy to read after work, i can't imagine sitting down and concentrating on ancient greek.

[Anonymous No.21756004]

>>21755995
you work so I don't have to fren

[Anonymous No.21756023]

>>21755995
tu travailles donc je n'ai pas à le faire, fren

[Anonymous No.21756203]

>>21756023
wait till you hit 30

[Anonymous No.21756616]

>>21756203
what else would I do

[Anonymous No.21756624]

>>21746968
>If you can't start reading closely related languages like these after a couple years of study, idk what to say
Maybe try an apology and buy me a coffee for my wasted time.

[Anonymous No.21756637]

>>21745968
I can half do french already because of unrelated romance language experience.
With enough work, I could also do Italian.
What's the point of reading kraut though? I don't care much for philosophy so it's not like I will be losing much by not reading "Der Klagen von poopenfarten esch wille" in it original pomeranian, I guess being able to access historiography in german would be nice.
Greek and latin and self explanatory plus probably grant access to primary sources you wouldn't be able to read other wise.
How ever I've heard ancient greek is hard as fuck, any reccs regarding that, any reccs for latin too?

[Anonymous No.21756644]

>>21756637
I guess I could coast off latin with a dictionary, given I am functionally illiterate in Spanish.

[Anonymous No.21756675]

>>21746893
Nabokov a G for creating Charles Kinbote

[Anonymous No.21757136]

>>21746048
>French
>retarded pronunciation
You talk in a language who writes "bear" and "beard" in the same way and pronounces them differently. Have you ever wondered why basically only English speaking countries have spelling bees and almost no one else on the planet? The way you write and the way you pronounce are so lacking in coherence that the only way to learn that is by memorizing how every word is written.

[Anonymous No.21757301]

>>21757136
I think anon is just talking about pronunciation without care about writing. French triggers some plebeians, especially anglos, largely because it makes extensive use of nasalised vowels, which are almost absent in English (except some recent French loanwords).
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_vowel
Which is why when they attempt at mocking French it will run something like "han, han, han, hon, hon, hon, hin, hin, hin".

[Anonymous No.21757346]

I learned Spanish, French, Russian and Portuguese. I'm having trouble learning another language since getting out of prison, how do other anons do it outside of the penn? I wanted to learn Arabic and German while I was in but they didn't allow those books at the prison I was in. Any tips?

[Anonymous No.21757432]

>>21751562
It takes less than an hour to learn to read Russian alphabet.

[Anonymous No.21757804]

French and German are no-brainers. They are really easy and they maintain themselves just by reading a few minutes a day. Once you know French, Spanish and Italian are basically free too.

Latin? It's probably worth learning because it's relatively low-hanging fruit if you already know the main romance languages and English. But Latin is really boring, to be honest. The community is full of autists too.

As for Greek? Meh, it's a lot of work. I'd rather learn Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, or Arabic. Ancient Greek has been studied and translated to death and the modern language is irrelevant. But to each his own.

[Anonymous No.21757822]

>>21746067
>Polish
Why not Russian, if you're going for a Slavic language?

[Anonymous No.21758048]

From your list the only language I care about is Latin

[Anonymous No.21758085]

>monolingual Latin speaker