Learning which non-English European language would give you access to the best literature?
The French have won the most Nobel Prizes
My plan was to study French then German and finally RussianI figured Italian and Spanish would be free so I might as well study those as wellAnyway I just stopped at FrenchI didn't care enough about German literature to bother I might learn Russian one day
>>24094768How long would it take to learn all these languages to read this canon?
I started reading Pushkin's The Captain's Daughter after 1 year of learning Russian, with looking up like 50 words per page. Dostoevsky after 2 years, but missing a lot of nuance. Now after 4 years, I can even read Gogol and Bunin fluently.
>>24094768I wouldn’t consider someone who knows those languages (except Russian) a true polyglot. Personally, having reasonable proficiency in three and being able to read the other two, I found learning Japanese to be significantly harder and more time-consuming than picking up English, Italian, German, and French combined.
>>24094768>Mid. taste in a gaggle of vernacularsAnd nothing of value was gained.
>>24094850This. >>24094793English. Just stick to translations, for G-d's sake. >>24094840Moг бы читaть и нa aнглийcкoм, кaк вce нopмaльныe люди.
>>24094768I'm fluent in three languages, currently learning Spanish. Which one should I learn next?
>>24094865Pushkin's and Goethe's poetry are hot garbage in English. Then there are authors like Platonov and Schmidt who bend the language itself, making it completely untranslatable. Even for an easy writer like Dostoyevsky a lot is lost in translation. So no, you can't just read everything in English, not even close.
>>24094793French, but German has more soul, and Italian has the highest peak (Dante).
>>24094871For poetry, listen to the original and look at the literal translation. Simple as. For prose, it doesn't really matter, it's all grammar. Post any sentence you think has a different undertone and I'll show you it actually doesn't. >>24094875>Italian has the highest peak (Dante)They can't even read it without commentaries. Romance "languages" are a continuum of rustic dialects.
>>24094881>They can't even read it without commentaries.Is it any harder than reading Chaucer in English?
>>24094881Here is a famous example from The Brothers Karamazov:Быть или нe быть — вoт в чeм вoпpocTranslate it into English and keep the structure without losing nuance!
>>24094885For what I've heard, yes.
>>24094888Great joke, just astonishing! Here it is though:>"To be or not to be — that is the question"
>>24094885No, it's easierItalian is a conlang and so it's less resistant to change over timeCertainly it's not easy to read but it's not like reading Chaucer
>>24094894*more
>>24094891the joke is that быть has a deeper meaning than 'to be' and is tied to the Russian soul. Sein, Dasein, In-der-Welt-Sein or In-der-Welt-sein-als-Russe? Which one is it?
>>24094909No it's not, it's just an infinitive. Think of it as of "tobe" i.e. the same thing but written together.
>>24094910>the same thing but written togetherThis pretty much all difference between more analytic languages, like English and Spanish, and less analytic, like German and Russian. More words being written together, that's it. Language learning is an Early Modern era scam.
Polyglot belongs to that class of word in which I immediately recoil because those syllables and that emphasis must surely be a slur
>>24094871You’re a halfwit
>>24094768The person who wrote the French list is a pseud and knows nothing about French literature.
>>24094793greek
>>24094823if you gave up on german you are not learning russian my nigga
>>24094768basic bitch shyt
>>24094793English, you absolute pseud
>>24094768Thanks
Make a list which includes more than last two centuries
>>24095464Honestly I gave up on German for Old Norse, not because I found German to be difficult since I had only studied it for 3 weeksI just couldn't study it, I didn't care about German literature enough and it felt soul-destroying to force myself to
>>24096311Ugh sir, but everything was in Latin back then...
>>24094846(W)Anki(ng) is not learning a language.
>>24095474I can already read English
>>24096377why don't you care for german lit?
