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/lit/ - Literature

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3360387 No.3360387 [Reply] [Original]

- Most beautiful language to express yourself through writing.
- Most effective language to express yourself through writing.

Justify your choices.

>> No.3360423

English because Shakespeare.
English because Shakespeare.

>> No.3360429

- Latin
- Greek

>> No.3360433

Japanese

>> No.3360447

>>3360429
Why is greek the most effective?

>> No.3360458

>dat subjectivity
>dat nonsensicalily

>> No.3360467

>>3360458
*lity

also, i would answer to both questions: a language completely, i.e. both culturally and linguistically, strange to your mother tongue and that you can manage to master fluidly. that would be a beautiful and effective language to write.

>> No.3360479

Yeah, thread is nonsense.

The language you dominate the most (usually mother) is the one that will be the most "effective" to express yourself. Most "beautiful"? I don't even know what that means, it can't be beautiful if it doesn't have that cathartic effect, that illumination, that sense of "that's it!" and this comes with "effectiveness".

>> No.3360480

Arabic
English

But mostly this:
>>3360458

>> No.3360842

>>3360387
French
German

It's intrinsically true. And the cause of at least two wars.

>> No.3360859

Personal opinion, of course:

>Dutch
>Spanish

>> No.3360955

In gibberish;
Speaking in tongues;
Writing in tongues:

ihhjhjhjhpwdsiwdjokj
jddddddddddakJK
AHHHCHTSHIHHj'HHih
ttatttttttttttcjyllllllll


So much poetry therein, that all would have to frolic if one could, you know . . . communicate it to another,

Or you cold go with this guy:
>>3360423

Because.
Because the Shakes wasn't influenced
Or threw any Spears at anyone!


Ever(e) was the word of a Veil.

>> No.3360993

French and English are god-tier. Spanish has a beautiful simplicity.

>> No.3361030

>>3360387
>beauty is subjective
>language is subjective
>efficiency is relative

This whole thread is pants on head retarded.

>> No.3361498

English
English

Im not even English motherfuckers

>> No.3361513

>>3361030
Are you seriously that stupid? If you are able to write those sentences, you are able to give YOUR opinion. No one asked you for the objective truth.

>> No.3361517

>>3361498
yeah, your murican like me

>> No.3361536

>>3361498
self hating yurop detected. probably from small shit country

>> No.3361547

-italian
-english

>> No.3361559

Japanese, or maybe German
English

those are really the only languages I know

>> No.3361619

>>3360387

They say Irish is a beautiful language.

This is from an Irish poem. I'll give you a rough phonetic and you can tell me. This is old Irish so it's a bit funny to me, so it might not be 100% correct.

Dairinis thiar, iarla níl aici én chlainn uír,
i Hambury, mo chiach iaaaarla na seachach sioch subhach-
seana-rosc liath ag dianghol fá cheachtar dípbh súd
fá deara dhom triall riamh ort, a Vailintín Brún.

Darenayris theer, earla kneel ahkey ahn(I've never seen that word before.) clown uer
eh Hambury, muh chi-ock earla nah shockock seeoch suvock-
cheana-rosck leeh egg diangal fah shacktar deepv soothe
fah dara dum treeal reev ort, a Valinteen Broon.


Translation.

Demish ravaged in the west, her good lord gone as well,
Some foreign city has become our refuge and our hell.
Wounds that hurt a poet's soul can rob him of renown:
I have traveled far to meet you, Valentine Brown.

It's not a great translation.


I find Irish to be unncessarily complex. It's got a lot of rules. It's more like Spanish or French than English.

>> No.3361628

French
Polish

american btw

>> No.3361668

>>3361619


I found someone reading an Irish poem for anyone interested.

As you can see from a purely aestethic point of view, Irish sucks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I4Dd7frDN8

>> No.3361670 [DELETED] 

- probably a language other than English; but really most languages can be beautiful, depending on the instance and on the writer.
- definitely English, seriously if you don't choose English, well, you're probably wrong.

English has the advantage of a huge technical and scientific literature, and a shitton of technical vocabulary. Latin and Greek existed before we had several hundred years of Fucking Modern Science, even though most of our technical vocabulary is derived from those languages. In fact the reason we can have latinate technical vocabulary is because we don't have to use those words to describe quotidian shit; for example in modern Greek "metaphor" means a moving van. Last of all, Nabokov (in the preface to the traslation of Invitation to a Beheading) says English is more economical medium than Russian for what I think are these same reasons, and Russian is hardly a backwater language like modern Irish, a language I speak with a fair degree of fluency.

I'm assuming your usage isn't equivalent to "to express oneself".

I'd say that, for most writers in those languages, French is more than English. Pound says something about how in English an idiosyncratic style is good (Joyce exemplifies this in my mind), whereas in French a more 'invisible' style (my adjective) works well (like Beckett's writings in French, wherein he tried to write 'without style'). Obviously, that's pretty general, and I'm not a native speaker of French, but it would explain my observation in the first sentence of this paragraph.

>> No.3361673

>>3360993
Clearly you don't know a shit about Spanish

>> No.3361679 [DELETED] 

>>3361670
>French is more than
meant "French is more beautiful than"

>> No.3361688

>>3361673
Not him, but why do you say that?

>> No.3361729

>>3361628
>not picking English as most effective
>american btw
Figures.

>>3360429
>>>/lit/

>> No.3361877 [DELETED] 

>>3361619
>I find Irish to be unncessarily complex. It's got a lot of rules. It's more like Spanish or French than English.
You're right. That's because it's an analytic language (it has two genders, four cases, four surviving morphological tenses, etc.). The flipside is that Irish actually has an extremely regular phonetic spelling system, though the rules are very alien for an english- or french-speaker; and 2 conjugations with only 11 irregular verbs. Still, on top of that you've got five declensions for nouns, another five for adjectives, plus irregular forms, and then you've got all that stuff with the initial-consonant mutations, so yeah I you're right; I agree with you, it's a pain in the balls. I'm just viewing it through rose-tinted glasses because I'm not getting graded on it anymore.

>>3361668
I don't think that a language's aesthetics are identical to its acoustic qualities, and I don't know how you'd judge a language's acoustic qualities; it's subjective I suppose. But I do think Irish has some writing of aesthetic value. I'd post something from poet and famed pederast Cathal Ó Searcaigh, but since I can't find any good readings, here's another good one from Seán Ó Ríordáin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGCwqXK2bmo

>> No.3361934

>>3360387
- probably a language other than English; but really most languages can be beautiful, depending on the instance and on the writer.
- definitely English, seriously if you don’t choose English, well, you’re probably wrong.

English has the advantage of a huge technical and scientific literature, and a shitton of technical vocabulary. Latin and Greek existed before we had several hundred years of Fucking Modern Science, even though most of our technical vocabulary is derived from those languages. In fact the reason we can have latinate technical vocabulary is because we don’t have to use those words to describe quotidian shit; for example in modern Greek “metaphor” means a moving van. Last of all, Nabokov (in the preface to the traslation of Invitation to a Beheading) says English is more economical medium than Russian for what I think are these same reasons, and Russian is hardly a backwater language like Modern Irish, a language I speak with a fair degree of fluency.

I’m assuming your usage is equivalent to “to express oneself”.

I’d say that, for most writers in those languages, French is more beautiful than English. Pound says something about how in English an idiosyncratic style is good (Joyce exemplifies this in my mind), whereas in French a more ‘invisible’ style (my adjective) works well (like Beckett’s writings in French, wherein he tried to write ‘without style’). Obviously, that’s pretty general, and I’m not a native speaker of French, but it would explain my observation in the first sentence of this paragraph.

>> No.3361949

>>3361619
>I find Irish to be unncessarily complex. It's got a lot of rules. It's more like Spanish or French than English.
You're right. That's because it's a synthetic language (it has two genders, four cases, four surviving morphological tenses, etc.). The flipside is that Irish actually has an extremely regular phonetic spelling system, though the rules are very alien for an english- or french-speaker; and 2 conjugations with only 11 irregular verbs. Still, on top of that you've got five declensions for nouns, another five for adjectives, plus irregular forms, and then you've got all that stuff with the initial-consonant mutations, so yeah I you're right; I agree with you, it's a pain in the balls. I'm just viewing it through rose-tinted glasses because I'm not getting graded on it anymore.

>>3361668
I don't think that a language's aesthetics are identical to its acoustic qualities, and I don't know how you'd judge a language's acoustic qualities; it's subjective I suppose. But I do think Irish has some writing of aesthetic value. I'd post something from poet and famed pederast Cathal Ó Searcaigh, but since I can't find any good readings, here's another good one from Seán Ó Ríordáin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGCwqXK2bmo

>> No.3361960

Spanish
Romanian
German

>> No.3361963

>>3361729

>>3360429
>>>/lit/

I laughed

>> No.3361964

>>3361729
Sending to /lit/ when this is already /lit/...

>> No.3361972

>>3361934
>Russian is hardly a backwater language

uhhhhhh....

>like Modern Irish

Okay I guess you are right

>> No.3361991

>>3360387
- French (english close second)

- English

>> No.3361995

French, because vowels
German because Heidegger

>> No.3361999

>>3361619
gag reflex.

even danish sounds prettier than that.

>> No.3362001

Spanish.

>> No.3362004

Slang
Greentext

You know it's true.

>> No.3362006

>>3362004
>>>/pol/

>> No.3362018

>>3362006
pol? what the fuck

The premise of the thread was stupid, but the results are fucked.

>> No.3362022

>>3362018
>>>/pol/
Stay there you pleb

>> No.3362027

>>3362022
>>>/r9k/

>> No.3362035

Most beautiful - Russian
Most effective - FOL

>> No.3362043

C++ are you guys even trying?

>> No.3362054

- Lingvam latinam, nam romani saepe (si non semper) scribebant bene.
- English, because it is my native tongue.

>> No.3362055

>>3362043
>implying C++ is more effective than FOL
come at me bro

>> No.3362077

>>3362054
Latin just sounds like a terrible mix of italian and spanish. There's a reason romans learned greek.

>> No.3362093

I like Japanese/chinese because of the writing system, which allows you to understand a sentence by just looking at the characters as if they were drawings instead of letters, and isn't that the case that we are able to remember visual images better than words? I mean those people that go to memory contests and memorize thousands of cards just associate fictional stories to each card, to make them easier to remember. So I guess a language whose characters are already like stories should be easier to understand.

As for beautiful, I'd go with English

>> No.3362104

>>3362093
There are huge problems with logographic and logosyllabic alphabets, they're just not practical to learn or use in comparison to phonetic alphabets.

>> No.3362112

>>3362077
>There's a reason romans learned greek.
There's also a reason why people were still communicating in Latin hundreds of years after the fall of the Roman Empire

>> No.3362117

>>3362112
catholicism and the great schism.

>> No.3362419
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3362419

>>3362117
You neglect that Renascence authors started to detach from medieval latin and began to write in classical latin based on the writings of Cicero.

>>3362077
The reason they learned greek was because they were obsessed with greek culture. It had nothing to do with preference towards either language.

2/10
Vos plebes estis.

>> No.3362430

i. English
ii. MATLAB

>> No.3362451

Chinese is the most beautiful living language, aesthetically.

English has the broadest audience and is therefore the most effective.

>> No.3362507

The language you are most familiar with

>> No.3362525
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3362525

>>3362112
Western Roman Catholic's were the Mexicans of the Byzantine era

>> No.3362534

-Español
-Deutsch

Because.

>> No.3362539
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3362539

Italian, maybe Farsi
English

>> No.3362544
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3362544

>>3361934
I applaud your thoughtful answer

I only speak English and Chinese and I would say that if you wish to express yourself then it depends on what exaclty you're expressing. English as above stated has vast utility and draws upon multiple cultural influences depending on the angle you want to express but Chinese (Asian in general acutally) have different linguistic structures than western linguistic direction. For instance a relatively short sentence in Chinese, perhaps consisting in as many as five characters, can have a tri layered meaning with in intrinsic corelation that is much more easy to understand if you are familiar with Eastern culture. You don't have such opportunities in English however if you wish to write for a western audience then why would you bother with that level of complexity when it can be layed out in a more accessible format to a western mind?

I fancy myself a direct person who enjoys getting to the point without too much dicking around but can still maintain a semblence of culture in whatever point I'm trying to make. English fits this so far

>> No.3362549

>>3360387
>Latin
>Ithkuil

>> No.3362550

>>3361960
>spanish
World's ugliest language.

>> No.3362561

>>3362544
Also Chinese is one of the least romantic languages ever to be heard by the human ear. God lord is it akward.

>> No.3362563

>>3360387
The answer to both is English, because I am capable of fully expressing myself in it, unlike any other language. Pragmatism.

>> No.3362566

>>3362561
"Good lord is it awkward" I just woke up ..

>> No.3362574

>>3362566
True, though not as grotesque as Vietnamese.

>> No.3362596

>>3361688

not the guy you quoted, but spanish is not simple, english is the easiest language to learn and "master", while the spanish language is huge and is not so simple, but not as fucking annoying as gay language (french)

>> No.3362735

>>3362544
How is the phenomenon you describe in Chinese unique? English has short idiomatic phrases that can display layers of meaning that are related to Western culture. As do most languages, I'm sure.

>>3362550
Why do you say this? It may be a bit more blunt than say English or French, but to me Spanish has a distinct flair that gives it a unique excitement and poignancy.
lrn2magicalrealism

>> No.3362741

>>3362735
>lrn2magicalrealism
>unique excitement

you mean how they watered down oral traditions to make it appeal to white people?

>> No.3362743

>>3362596

but monsieur, what is your problem with the french?