/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.6349289]

Hey /lit/, what language should I learn?

[Anonymous No.6349293]

English.

[Anonymous No.6349294]

German, French, Russian, Ecclesiastical Latin

[Anonymous No.6349388]

If you're american, Spanish then Mandarin

[Anonymous No.6351503]

>>6349289
Brilliant photo. Pulitzer tier photo.

Also Ancient Greek probably has the most amount of literature I wish I could read in the original language.

>Homeric Greek
>Athenian Golden Age Greek
>New Testament Greek

If I ever become financially independent I will do it.

[Anonymous No.6351509]

Create you own isolated (non-english or whatever roots) language.

[Anonymous No.6351531]

Esperanto

[Anonymous No.6351551]

>>6349289
If you're serious, the question is more complicated then that. Why do you want to leaner a new language? It's always good for the mind, but is your purpose to read certain books or communicate with certain groups?

The list of most speakers per language goes:
1. Mandarin
2. Spanish
3. English
4. Hindi
5. Arabic
6. Portuguese
7. Bengali
8. Russian
9. Japanese
10. Punjabi

[Anonymous No.6351572]

I don't know how much stock to put in language 'families', but personally I'd like to learn ones from as many different branches as possible.

[Anonymous No.6351577]

>>6349289
>>6351551
And if you want to leaner a 'weird' language for coolness then learn Basque or some other language isolate.

[Anonymous No.6351598]

>>6351577
choose Hungarian then. It has awesome literature.

[Anonymous No.6351603]

>>6351531
Jes, gxin lernu!

[Anonymous No.6351606]

>>6351572
Language families is a pretty well respected theory in linguistics. Of course there are always some disputes due to the geopolitical nature of languages.

By number of native speakers we have:
1. Indo-European
2. Sino-tibetan
3. Niger-Congo
4. Afroasiatic
5. Austronesian
6. Dravidian
7. Altaic
8. Japonic
9. Austroasiatic
10. Tai-Kadai

[Anonymous No.6351615]

>>6351598
Hungarian is part of the Finno-ugric subclass of the family of Uralic languages. Not an isolate, but still pretty rare compared to other languages.

I don't know much about Hungarian literature, but if you say it's good, I'll believe you. After all, I'm part Hungarian.

[Anonymous No.6351638]

>>6351598
Any suggestions? Hopefully with good translation.

[Anonymous No.6351842]

>>6349289
For literature - German
For practicality - Spanish

[Anonymous No.6351847]

>>6351842

Americans really shouldn't be allowed to contribute to threads about language learning.

In fact, they shouldn't be allowed full stop because they're shit. OP isn't going to learn another language, it's just timewasting.

[Anonymous No.6351936]

I've tried Russian many times, but I do not lie when I say it is a monster of a language. Changing endings on so many different sentence particles really put me off of it, and the vocab tends to be harder to space out for me. Good luck to anyone who attempts to learn it, though. I recommend the New Penguin Russian Course, it's pretty nice.

[Anonymous No.6351958]

>>6351847
Wow, you're narrow-minded.

[Anonymous No.6351977]

>>6351936
>tfw I already speak a Slavic language and learning Russian is easy

Feels good.

[Anonymous No.6351994]

>>6351977

>being a slav
>feels good

[Anonymous No.6352031]

>>6351994
>tfw you'll never get drunk while doing the slav squat with your comrades

[Anonymous No.6352054]

>>6349388
Already know both. Should I go for Armenian or Russian?

[Anonymous No.6352056]

>>6351606
Afroasiatic is really bigger than Austronesian? Naaaaaaaahhhhhh is it?

Also, prominent historical linguists ike Lyle Campbell say Niger-Congo is complete bullshit

[Anonymous No.6352058]

>>6351606
Sorry read that wrong, yes Afro asiatic is bigger than austronesian

[Anonymous No.6352060]

>>6352031

Thank god. The only time I even flirt with the idea that immigration is a bad thing is when I see cirlces of squatting poles and czechs drinking cheap vodka in the park.

Although they usually sit on a bench tbh, the squatting seems to have been assimilated out of them lately.

[Anonymous No.6352076]

>>6352031
The 'slav-squat' is extremely popular in south east asia. just take a moto round any city or province anywhere and all the locals (especially the girls) are squatting. They squat to make food, to drink, or just squat for the love of squatting. We even have a phrase here, roughly "onkoy'jong'howng - litch'sow'mao" which approximately translates to "pussy hair that sticks out the sides of girls underwear while they squat"

[Anonymous No.6352083]

>>6352076

When I was a kid, if you sat like that, it was called Vietnamese Sitting. Or the viet nam squat.

[Anonymous No.6352100]

>>6351994
>>>/pol/

And stay there.

[Anonymous No.6352101]

I want to learn something old as fuck, that actually has enough texts worth learning for. Any suggestions? Or is Latin/Greek the only ones worth learning?

[Anonymous No.6352126]

>>6352101
Latin
Greek
Hebrew
Sanskrit
Chinese

[Anonymous No.6352244]

Russian. Not only does it cover a huge expanse of land, it's also understood in Central Asia due to soviet control for most of the 20th century.

[Anonymous No.6352381]

>>6351638
Miklós Banffy
Miklos Szentkuthy
Sandor Marai
Sandor Ferenczi
Imre Kertész
Géza Csath
Gyula Krudy
Frigyes Karinthy
Dezső Kosztolanyi
Attila Jozsef
Laszlo Krasnahorkai

[Anonymous No.6352393]

>>6352101
>not learning Sanskrit so you can make your own translation of the Bhagavad Gita so you have something to quote when your bomb explodes

[Anonymous No.6352394]

>>6352101
>>6352126

the guy who replied to you is 100% correct. Start with greek, no joke, it's actually pretty fucking easy to learn. Latin is horrendously hard. I assume the other three are hard as well.

[Anonymous No.6352409]

>>6352394
>Latin is horrendously hard
The worst part for me is all the false/partial cognates.

[Anonymous No.6352410]

>>6352101
Arabic hasn't really been mentioned in detail yet, but that would be my recommendation. A lot of eclectic works can be found in Arabic; the kind that introduces you to branches of knowledge which are unknown to all but a few individuals. I am working on learning to read now so as to comprehend the grimoire in my possession.

[Anonymous No.6352429]

>>6352394
Why do you think Greek is easier than Latin? The most annoying part about Greek is the absurdity of the verb forms (illogical nature of principal parts being the worst). It's certainly a better language though.

[Anonymous No.6352451]

>>6352031
>>6352076
It's a natural ape thing, kids do it. It's westerners who learned not to do it.

[Anonymous No.6352921]

>>6351503
>Brilliant photo. Pulitzer tier photo.
it is, it's amazing, innit?
>tfw no one will ever be doing that about a book

[Anonymous No.6352928]

>>6349289
music

[Anonymous No.6352931]

>tfw already know lots of french
>tfw american so learning spanish makes the most sense
>tfw all of my fav lit is in german

what would u do in this situation

why couldnt the mexicans speak german or french FUCK

[Anonymous No.6352972]

I'm going to leave this link here.

Click it if you dare pour over these volumes of forgotten lore by the midnight oil, wandering souls.

This is the culture of the ancients, dead for four thousand years and sustained in essence in but a binder on my desk. We are as the gods of these deceased men and women.

https://mega.co.nz/#F!D1BxgbRC!RaGObiDwNNY3WhBxIskJpQ

[Anonymous No.6352979]

usu digir-ga ni-ga ba-til.

[Anonymous No.6352983]

>>6352921
That's because, generally, good music inspires raw emotion and good literature inspires thought and introspection. Although I'd be lying if I didn't say that reading Hemingway didn't release any endorphins.

[Anonymous No.6353004]

>>6352429

really, the main obstacle for me was learning the alphabet down cold. The words themselves make completely logical sense and it takes no time at all to build a large greek vocabulary. Sure the grammar is a bit tricky, but it's not nearly as bad as latin, which is seriously all over the place.

It also looks extremely cool when you write in it.

[Anonymous No.6353014]

>>6352972

*pore

[Anonymous No.6353032]

>>6349289
Why? Travelling, reading, business, what? Where do you want to travel, and what kind of literature are you interested (limit this to particular authors, periods, areas, doctrines, etc.).

This is a question you can answer yourself pretty easily.

However, if you are actually serious about a language, you'd best be prepared to spend quite a bit of time in a country that speaks the language. Otherwise, just don't expect to get anything out of it other than basic conversational level. Don't expect to be able to understand anything complicated.

[Anonymous No.6353041]

>>6352931
Learn french, then spanish. Learning spanish will be easier then, since they're both romance languages, and you'll have overcome the mental barrier of learning a second language.

[Anonymous No.6353126]

>>6351531
What's the poit of learning esperanto in this day and age? Hasn't it kind of failed? Who could you talk to in esperanto, and how would you even recognise an esperanto speaker? is there any relevant esperanto lit?

Not criticising, just trying to figure out why anyone would bother learning esperanto over any other languange.

[Anonymous No.6353140]

AAVE.

[Anonymous No.6353166]

>>6352101
>>6352410

Either arabic or farsi or both, most amazing middle eastern poetry is in farsi.

[Anonymous No.6353168]

>>6349289
Turkish.

[Anonymous No.6353175]

>Hey /lit/, what language should I learn?

probably American since American is the most popular language on the planet. :)

[Anonymous No.6353181]

>>6352393
naw nigga learn Old Avestan
Zoroastrianism 4 Lyfe nigga

[Anonymous No.6353185]

>>6353175
American is so popular even British people speak a version of it.

[Anonymous No.6353187]

>>6349289

isiZulu

[Anonymous No.6353221]

>>6352381
lol this stuff is not for beginners who are just starting to learn the language. Stop namedropping stuff like Szentkuthy.
I recommend István Örkény, and specifically his stories called One Minute Stories (Egyperces novellák). They are short, absurd and quite funny. Also they are in public domain: http://mek.niif.hu/06300/06345/06345.htm#16

Fun fact about Hungarian: by a weird coincidence the language is perfectly suited for creating hexameters. For example the Hungarian translations of the greek epics work perfectly. Never had a problem with it like in English and prose translations are unheard of. We also have our own national epic modelled after the greeks. It's called Szigeti Veszedelem by Miklós Zrínyi and it's about battling the Ottomans.

[Anonymous No.6353244]

>>6353221
No idea about translations though. Sorry.

[Anonymous No.6353789]

>>6353140
my nigga

[Anonymous No.6353814]

>>6349289
Latin, German, and French.... and ancient greek if you are up to study a lot.

[Anonymous No.6353825]

>>6352054
Russian, think of all the good lit!

[Anonymous No.6354020]

>>6353814
How difficult is learning German compared to Latin?
I know English and French already.

[Anonymous No.6354947]

>>6349289
interlingua

[Anonymous No.6354953]

>>6354020

German is a bit easier for English speakers. Still hard, of course, but it'll make a lot of sense pretty quickly. It's the next step up in difficulty from French. Latin is maybe a step or so past German, just because of the horrendously unforgiving and eclectic grammar.

[Anonymous No.6354956]

>>6354020
It's significantly harder than French and, as someone who took 5 years of Latin, I'd say only slightly easier because word order is more fixed.

[Anonymous No.6354975]

>>6353181
Avestan is just Vedic Sanskrit with a phonological shift.

[Anonymous No.6355500]

>>6353126
It is a little bit lofty in that it aims to connect the world under one language, and maybe not useful in everyday life, but it's very useful to use when talking to people who otherwise don't speak English. You can get on Skype and have conversations with other speakers around the world and have an intercultural exchange. It's incredibly easy to learn and makes learning other languages slightly easier.

Plus it's a good conversation starter.

[Anonymous No.6356301]

>>6355500
wouldn't other conlanguages such as >>6354947
be easier to learn and accomplish essentially the same things though?

[Anonymous No.6356448]

>>6349289
Monégasque

>>6352101
Ugaritic.