/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.8740645]

Who else here hates reading in their native language? My native language is spanish, but reading in that language always feels like a chore and i don't enjoy it at all. Maybe it's because i've spent my entire teens on the internet browsing english sites that i read more fluently in english than is spanish, but i never really liked the spanish language to begin with. I am currently learning french and enjoy reading in that language alot more, even if i'm not as proficient in it as i am in spanish.

[Anonymous No.8740729]

I'm from sweden and it's the same for me. I read swedish authors in swedish but pretty much everything else in english.

[slow reader No.8740744]

Yup, same here.

My mother tongue is tagalog, and I've virtually forgotten how to speak it over the years. It sounds, and reads like shit.

[Anonymous No.8740749]

I read plenty in English, but have to say I understand stuff better in Dutch (i.e. the native language).
What is funny is how I can understand English words and concepts without being able to translate, or explain, it in Dutch.

I have trouble with that during English exams. Though I have also become aware that the English I write is heavily infested with Dutch.

The English I speak is still notably Dutch, but not as horrible as my classmates (or president). Very Americanised.

[Anonymous No.8740750]

>>8740645
Spanish is a frycook language so I don't blame you

[Anonymous No.8740755]

ITT
-----

>>8740729
>>8740744
cucks

>>8740749
a youngster on the right path

>>8740645
faggot

[Anonymous No.8740762]

>>8740755
>Nationalism

[Anonymous No.8740809]

>>8740645
I like English for basic communication, but when it comes to reading and high-level language I actually much prefer my native German.
Do you dislike Spanish itself or are you just more comfortable in English?

[Anonymous No.8740827]

>>8740809
>Do you dislike Spanish itself or are you just more comfortable in English

Both, i enjoy reading more in both a language that im more comfortable reading in (english) and a language that i still haven't mastered yet (french)

[Anonymous No.8740891]

>>8740645
my native language is Arabic, and besides some classics and politically approved material, everything written in it is either state propaganda or books about shariah approved sex positions. But yeah I've never read anything in Arabic in my entire life, nor do I plan to.

[Anonymous No.8741374]

>>8740645
My native language is Hebrew, and I only read it if it's the original language of the work (but I usually don't read Hebrew books) I prefer reading in English, even if it's a translation from a third language.

[Anonymous No.8741391]

do different languages excel at different parts / methods of expression?

is there something that english particularly succeeds at?

[Anonymous No.8741448]

>strong grasp of the english language despite it being my 2nd language
>speak my native language like a 6 year old

[Anonymous No.8741468]

I can barely speak in russian anymore, I rarely communicate with my parents or anyone at work, english is more fun to read and there's a greater wealth of literature to enjoy.

[Anonymous No.8741479]

>Tfw you think in English more often than in your native language
I'm cucked on an existential level

[Anonymous No.8741509]

>>8740645
You're cancer, anon.
Not only this mindset might end up killing beautiful languages like yours but it's also a really close-minded way of seeing your language. The Spanish language is extremely rich and, I hope, learning other languages will make you appreciate that by the connections established by words (you'll notice the parallels as you expand your French knowledge)

[Anonymous No.8741541]

>>8740645
I'm very much the same. My native language is Dutch, which is a shitty version of German in and of itself. French, German and English were mandatory in school and I've learned Russian on my own. I enjoy reading in any of these languages a lot more than reading in my native language.

Don't know what causes it. Theorizing without any empirical proof is useless anyway.

[Anonymous No.8742106]

>>8740645
Don't you dislike the nasality of French a bit?

[Anonymous No.8742113]

>>8740891
>b-but muh purity

srsly english is the elite lang. but id be lying if I said I never get tired of the adulteration on a constant literary basis

[Anonymous No.8742116]

>>8741509

enójate mas, anon

[Anonymous No.8742255]

>>8741448
me too anon. 12 year olds speak better polish than me.

>>8741468
no good russian lit to keep you interested?

[Anonymous No.8742272]

>>8740645
I genuinely enjoy reading in both Spanish and English. Although the only reason I do read in Spanish is because I buy pirated prints of books for real cheap down here in Mexico.

[Anonymous No.8742275]

>>8740645
Read some Cela and then go and tell me something bad about reading Spanish. It's all about a good writer. Cela is one of the greatest writers of all history of literature but he's not the only one. Baroja, Unamuno, Valle Inclan, Cervantes, Becquer, little known writer called Eugenio Noel, they're all great. I love reading in english too, it's a beautiful language, but we have some of the greatest writers of history and not only that, but there's a vast production in South America filled with great, wonderful writers too (Cortazar, Rulfo, Borges, Garcia Marquez, Bolaño). Just go and find them, friend.

[Anonymous No.8743228]

>>8740645
My native is slovak so if I want to read classics or science related books that are popular in the world I need to read it in english anyway as they are either none translations available, they are of unknown quality or are even more expensive in slovak/czech than imported english translations from across the world.

[Anonymous No.8743251]

>>8742255
>no good russian lit to keep you interested?
I was born in 1990 right after the collapse of communism, so the entire century of russian literature is about as alien to me as it is to your average american. Now to mention intensified cultural revisionism that was enforced by the government since then, and a completely fucked up schooling system. Someone thought forcing little kids to read War and Peace and cram Lermontov is a great idea. Modern russian literature is mostly unreadable political garbage.

[Anonymous No.8743284]

>All media I consume are in English
>Still can't hear song lyrics, I watch movies/tv with english subtitles
>Still can't read serious books in English, kindle dictionary helps a bit. Only things I can read smoothly are YA novels.
>My native language skills are deteriorating, I think and dream in mixture of Polish and English.
>Halting conversations because of searching for equivalent words in Polish

I would be grateful for some tips how to improve understanding of English, especially literary.

[Anonymous No.8743286]

>>8741541
Stop hating your own language, mate.

[Anonymous No.8743323]

>>8740645
i love reading in my native language(italian) desu

[Anonymous No.8743359]

>>8740645

Is aoibheann liom é, léigh mé as gaelige gach la.

[Anonymous No.8743362]

>>8741479
same here dude

anglo influence is corrupting us all

[Anonymous No.8743697]

Since I am only fluent in 2 languages for now, I try to balance my reading on English and Portuguese by reading translations in the closest language, except when it is very far from both. Example: Portuguese translations of Cioran/English translations of Jünger.

I enjoy reading in both languages, but I try to explore their strong points. It works nicely, but I can read much faster in my native language.

[Anonymous No.8743959]

>>8743284
embrace Polish language or become ultimate cuck.
nigdy nie stworzysz nic wartościowego po angielsku, nie jesteś Conradem. pokochaj polski i zacznij tworzyć i czytać prawdziwą literaturę.

[Anonymous No.8744062]

>>8741374
What are some worthy Hebrew works?

[Anonymous No.8744067]

>>8740645
Faggot, spanish is nice.
spaniard translations are fucking trash

[Anonymous No.8744122]

>>8740645
Why would you hate it?
I read in Spanish if the book is original in Spanish or it is translated from another Romance language since it should be closer to the original.
I read in English if the book is originally in English or if it is translated from anything but a Romance language since there is more available stuff on English.

[Anonymous No.8744246]

>>8743284
>Halting conversations because of searching for equivalent words in your native language

HOLY SHIT

in french you have so many fucking word that describe so many fucking thing but it lack the broad "feely" description of english

even if you group together multiples french words, the english equivalent is still broader

[Anonymous No.8744255]

My cousin has this problem as well. I think this is caused by a certain sort of "sincerity" that a mother tongue possesses. Foreign languages are felt through this sort of a barrier that slightly distances you from the meaning, and words become more abstract and "cool".

We see this love of "cool" foreign words everywhere. It's the most common thing today to hear people using a clumsy English word even when there's a well-known equivalent in their own language. Russian 19th century nobility also had this problem, which you'll notice if you've read Pushkin or Tolstoy.

This whole problem is a matter of habit. Go read books in your language, original or translated. "Liking" and "not liking" a language is meaningless anyway, a language is, in itself, only functional. A writer can use it to write beautifully or not, but that's unrelated.

[Anonymous No.8745716]

>>8744255
>Russian 19th century nobility also had this problem, which you'll notice if you've read Pushkin or Tolstoy.
I haven't. Where specifically should I look inside of their bodies of work?

[Anonymous No.8745953]

>>8745716
>Tolstoy
I haven't read W&P but in AK there are countless phrases in English, French, German and Latin thrown around.
>Pushkin
He explicitly criticizes such behavior in Eugene Onegin. Tatyana writes a letter to Eugene at one point, and it is written entirely in French (but the narrator "translated" it for the book).

I've noticed examples in the literature in my native language as well. Ivo Vojnović in his trilogy of dramas describing the fall of Dubrovnik nobility (written 1895-1901) uses a lot of Italian phrases, while Miroslav Krleža's trilogy about Zagreb nobility (1928-1932) is similarly overflowing with German passages. Characters in his works who like to accent their (fake) nobility also write their names as if they were Hungarians, not Croats.

This problem is far from being the crux of these writer's works but it is clearly present and they work as examples.

[Anonymous No.8745977]

>>8743359
>Non latin alphabet

Stop it. Irish is shit enough as it is without fucking changing the the letters to greek.

t. Sean

[Anonymous No.8745980]

>tfw Anglo masterrace

[Anonymous No.8745991]

I just hate reading

[Anonymous No.8746002]

>>8745953
hvala frend

[Anonymous No.8747114]

>>8743284
I seriously recommend finding a speaking partner to practice with. Will make movies tv much easier, and if you speak about serious things should help with literary topics as well as you build up a more nuanced vocabulary

[Anonymous No.8747117]

>>8745716
>>8745953
Seconding this. There are approximately 30 pages of French throughout W&P if you add up all the lines of French. It's fucking pretty French, too.

[Anonymous No.8747121]

>>8740645

Maybe I've been reading too much in other languages, but it seems I've somehow become "desynchronized" from the standards of my own tongue. Like, a book might read like a half-assed high school essay to me and then later I see critics shower it with absurdly overblown praise. Or, I might think some expression is unnatural and when I ask someone else, they're like, "huh, sounds perfectly normal to me".

No, I'm pretty sure it's the other people's standards that have gone to hell.

[Anonymous No.8747210]

>tfw native bilingual
feelsgoodman.jpg

Fuck, I can't imagine being so cucked by anglo influence that you prefer reading in English rather than your own native language. I know this is easy to say as a native English speaker but have some goddamn pride in your language, anons.

[Anonymous No.8747362]

>not reading chronicle of a death foretold in spanish

absolutely disgusting

[Anonymous No.8748063]

>>8740645
>reading in any language other than french

Yeah, no. French is the only /lit/ language

[Anonymous No.8748096]

>>8747114
two non-native speakers practicing speaking with one another is a recipe for disaster

[Anonymous No.8748152]

>>8740645

I love reading good translations in my native language, Portuguese.

For example, Shakespeare. I read him in English, generally together with the translation of the play that I am reading at the moment. The funny thing is: when the translation is well-made I actually enjoy him more in Portuguese than in English.

I do not blame it on the nature of English. The fact is that, when I read something in ma native language I feel more connotations jingling in my brain. When I read a word in English it makes my imagination fire in a smaller scale than when I read in Portuguese. Shakespeare’s metaphors, in Portuguese, make me imagine new imagery, new clouds of ideas and memories. I think that this is normal: my vocabulary and sensibility are far wider in Portuguese.

I also like Portuguese more because of its sound. Brazilian Portuguese and Italian are very pleasant to the ear. I wish I knew Latin, for it too (from the videos I seen) is quite musical and marmoreal.

As for English, I appreciate is simplicity and flexibility, the easiness of creating new words and new expressions on it. Portuguese is more resistant to sculpting.

[Anonymous No.8748155]

>>8740645
I'm definitely more comfortable reading in English than in my native Portuguese, for various reasons.

1) I'm just used to English in general so it's easy for me
2) It's easier and cheaper to get books in english online than to buy books in Portugal most of the time
3) When it comes to books written in a language other than those 2 I will probably choose an english because there's a bigger market for english translations and so I think those will tend to be superior. Also a lot of shit is not available in portuguese often.

But my biggest reason is that reading (and writing) in Portuguese just feels awkward to me, words writen in my native language instantly put me off because it makes them become somehow part of the mundane. Also I feel like the rhythm of the phrases is much better in english.

[Anonymous No.8748180]

I honestly think there are some Anglos here making posts pretending to be speakers of other languages.

[Anonymous No.8748191]

>>8748155
>3) When it comes to books written in a language other than those 2 I will probably choose an english because there's a bigger market for english translations and so I think those will tend to be superior. Also a lot of shit is not available in portuguese often.

Maybe you should buy translations made in Brazil. We actually have a great book market for classics, a lot of great translations directly from Russian and Japanese, for example.

[Anonymous No.8748200]

>>8748180
tu sucé ma penis de ta mère le pute

[Anonymous No.8748739]

>>8744062
God's diary desu

[Anonymous No.8748752]

>>8748155
To this day I remember you guys translated DBZ from the american version.

And portuguese is best language, idiot.

Also, how are you used to english but you find portuguese mundane?

BTW:
Machado>Dostoevsky
Pessoa>Every other damn poet

>Runs away quickly

[Anonymous No.8748772]

>>8748752
I'm pretty sure we translated it from the French version, maybe it was the Brazilians who used the US version? Anyway Portuguese can certainly be really nice but the Brazilian who posted above me summed up what I think better than I did, Portuguese tends to be a rather stiff language and I find that it's easier to mold another language to English than it is to Portuguese. English is just overall more versatile and maleable, and that is something I like in a language.

[Anonymous No.8748774]

>>8748772
Portuguese is solid, but not stiff, you just need to get rid of the accent.

[Anonymous No.8748797]

>>8748774
I have a substantial northern Portuguese accent and everything sounds like I'm picking a fight with someone if I read it with my internal Portuguese voice.

[Anonymous No.8748816]

>>8748797
Exactly the problem, the portuguese accent is the most autistic thing known to man. Notice the pronounciation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOQShDfOwuI

[Anonymous No.8748847]

I think Portuguese sounds too clumsy and poetic to read philosophy in.

[Anonymous No.8748885]

>>8748797
No offense, but your accent makes a beautiful language sound like a pathetic mixture of French and Spanish.

And ceasing your subvocalization could help.

[Anonymous No.8748893]

>>8748885
None taken, you are absolutely correct, However it does allow for fantastic shit talking.

[Anonymous No.8748929]

>>8748893
Oh, it does. I'm living there, and it is always amusing to listen to the small quarrels at the market.

[Anonymous No.8748943]

>>8740645
>I am currently learning french and enjoy reading in that language a lot more

I don't understand the French meme. French has one of the most retarded and needlessly bloated orthographies out of all the languages on this planet. There are so many bizarre and excrescent spelling rules, many of these rules having no grammatical justification at all. I can't begin to fathom why a non-native speaker would find French writing at all enjoyable, unless it has some totally arbitrary "artistic" value to you.

I don't know very much Spanish, but your language is incredibly simplistic compared to French or English. The orthography is mostly pure and phonemic, there are few irregular verbs and the lack of complex sounds or consonant clusters makes Spanish almost ideal as a second or auxiliary language, no matter what your first language may be. That kind of simplicity would make perfect literacy much, much easier to acquire. In theory, couldn't a preteen school child read the most sophisticated Spanish literature with little or no problems?

[Anonymous No.8748958]

>>8748929
Bolhão is a magical place.

[Anonymous No.8749006]

>>8743284
>I would be grateful for some tips how to improve understanding of English, especially literary.

English is a bastard language made up of vocabularies from a number of sources, mostly Latin and Germanic. The origins of some English words aren't even purely Latin - they might have been taken from French instead, which in turn may only be based on Latin. As a result, we have a ton of duplicate words that can be used to express or explain similar concepts. We also have a lot of variant spellings, some of which aren't tied to any specific dialect.

My advice is not to assume that every similar term you come across has a specific function or situational use, because it likely doesn't. A lot of synonyms share the exact same context and are used on a completely arbitrary basis.

[Anonymous No.8749301]

>>8748152
I think it's totally fair to prefer reading Shakespeare in Portuguese. After all, reading Shakespeare today in Modern English is already a translation from Eqrly Modern English.

To the naysa

[Anonymous No.8749306]

>>8748180
J'accuse moi ser EnglÍs?

En Garde!

[Anonymous No.8750291]

>>8748096
right, I meant a native speaker. I thought that was obvious by context, sorry.

[Anonymous No.8750300]

>>8748943
Not him, but I get a chubby when I read French poetry sometimes, it's a fucking hot language

[Anonymous No.8750964]

Non-native speaker here. I want to read stuff on Pynchon and Joyce, but my understanding is not good enough to properly read them (at least on a level in whichI would fully appreciate their stuff). How can I fix this?

I've read most major Japanese and Russian authors in English, but those were pretty simple.

[Anonymous No.8751086]

>>8741448
>>speak my native language like a 6 year old

>that intense self-consciousness whenever you make small grammatical mistakes

[Anonymous No.8751090]

>>8740645
>native language
>illegal alien
Kill yourself and your freeloading family

[Anonymous No.8751156]

>>8750964
Pls respond

[Anonymous No.8751182]

To people who speak in a second language. How did you become so fluent/proficient in it. Im impressed at all of the europoors in pol, lit etc who speak English, desu.

Is English compulsory for everyone at all levels of school, or is it a mix of early English education and self-teaching from watching a lot of movies and TV shows in English for years?

I'm trying to learn French, and i'm starting to get 'pretty good' at understanding a lot of what I read in French, but I still find myself translating it/subvocalising it in English.

[Anonymous No.8751185]

>>8741468

Your country has the greatest classic literature of all, and its not even close.

[Anonymous No.8751191]

My english isn't good enough to read literature. I try to read in english, but not fiction.
I don't have problem with reading in my native language.

[Anonymous No.8751194]

I'm Finnish and I don't like reading in Finnish. It's a neat and flexible language and has some good works, but it just feels weird reading something dramatical in it, there's no immersion for me. I like reading and writing in English.

[Anonymous No.8751210]

>>8751182
Honestly? By listening to a lot of native English speakers. If you learn a language by eating a book, from front to back, sure, you'll have a pretty good understanding of the language, but it'll sound pretty fucking stilted; you need to talk/read/listen to Native speakers.

I always laugh at the amount of Americans that learn Spanish and speak it in this cute, formal, by-the-book way. Sure, it's gramatically correct, but it sounds awkward.

[Anonymous No.8751218]

>>8751210
I'm just using Duolingo at the moment so I can get a base knowledge of French.

I plan to finish it, then try watch/read a lot of French media and see if that improves my understanding. Maybe I'll start like kids learn to read - with basic books, then progress slowly. While I do this, i'll try watch a lot of French TV shows and movies with subtitles.

[Anonymous No.8751571]

I feel infinitely more comfortable when speaking and reading spanish. My english is lacking, and my vocabulary is that of a 6 yo, when I read Blood Meridian I had to look up 1 out of 4 words

[Anonymous No.8751625]

>>8740729
Fucking knew I was going find this post, and it's the first one. Reading books in swedish is ultimate comf, grow out of this phase and gain some appreciation for our glorious language already.

[Anonymous No.8751659]

I read in both traditional Chinese and English. The two languages are vastly different and in fact stimulate different parts of the brain. Despite English being my second language, I find that I can read in English faster than in Chinese -- but it is easier to construct a mental model of the ideas when I read in Chinese. I think it is about the nature of the languages themselves rather than my abilities. So I read in English when speedreading and read in Chinese when I study a topic in depth.