Why aren't you studying a new language right now instead of wasting your time on Yea Forums?

I already know English.

Fuck off, Amerifat.

started learning french yesterday.

I was in this doubt too, but I speak a romance language. I'd really like to learn German, I believe there are great benefits to learning a distant language, completely unrelated to your native (also because German is beautiful, too), but I'd rather learn the other romance languages first since it's so easy and I'll get better at learning languages, when I tackle German I'll be much more experienced. Already speak Italian and learning Spanish will be a field day, since I can read Spanish without ever studying it.

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Do you not find that most French and German works are already expertly translated by half a dozen different translators?
In more difficult languages you have entire subgenres that have barely been touched and that open the culture up to you in a way that reading Schopenhauer in German simply won't.

I'm interested in Japanese, but it's so difficult. I need to learn their alphabet (or alphabets) and a bunch of other stuff. It's just not worth it. It'd take TOO MUCH time to learn it.

Majority of people learning other language will never be at a level sufficient enough to do anything besides visiting a grocery store and having a circle-jerk plebbit conversation.

retard.
I've learned English, I've read the complete works of shakespeare, all of joyce's books, the entire KJV, GR, moby dick and other great books without any type of problem.
You are just another burger that although have never put any effort into learning a second language holds such a retarded and limited opinion about it so that you can feel less shit about being a lazy, arrogant and proud imbecile.
see

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Wrong. I speak more languages than you ever will. On top of that, no, you will never fully understand Shakespeare if you read it as ESL. Deal with it.

if you are not an ESL how would you even know this? again, retarded american talking shit out of his ass

English is my third language. Stop embarrassing yourself.

not the guy you replied to, but a lot of people learn English very young and are exposed to american culture almost as much as they are to their country's.
That's my case. When I got into literature every single work in English I read I did so with as much flow and understanding as I had reading my native language.
Not to mention English is extremely easy, only harder than Esperanto, probably, and the entire western world is bombarded with shit in English 24/7.

It's still a very different mentality. You can be a polyglot, but that doesn't mean you have that cultural understanding. You can be more or less bi-cultural. I grew up in two cultures as well, but there's still one that I get much more than the other. We can be bombarded with English most of the time, but we will never get why Murricans need to use so many pop references in their speech or why it often so happens that the main protagonist is a clever guy in a team full of idiots. It's not part of my culture, I'll never get that, period.

Ok, so let me get this straight. Although you apparently master several languages you still hold the idea that most people will never reach anything near fluency? And also, at the same time you criticize "most people's" proficiency at language learning you believe an ESL will never be able to understand Shakespeare, or, in other words, that you couldn't, therefore no one can?
all right, chief.

This is typical americanised rhetoric. Nice going there.
Fluency does not equal understanding of a classical writing of different culture. You can master Russian and never really understand what Crime and Punishment means in the Russian context and thinking. Hence, you'd be doing just well reading it in your native language.
Now, try hard and apply this example to Shakespeare so that I don't have to repeat it again. Thanks.

You will never gain sufficient mastery of a learned language (unless you acquired it in your youth) to fully appreciate high level literature. This isn't even taking in mind the cultural context of foreign works.

oh, thanks for reminding me.

Ok, I completely agree with you about culture, but you are mixing two things. First you said no ESL would be able to understand Shakespeare, and that statement points solely towards proficiency of the English language, now you are talking about culture of a country. Choose which argument you are using, because if you choose the first, people in Sierra Leone, in Africa, for instance, would be perfectly able to understand it, but by the second argument, no one born outside of England would be able to understand Shakespeare, not even non-ESL. But then again, Shakespeare was born in the 1500's, do people nowadays really have the same "English context and thinking" of 1500?

I started learning French a couple of months ago, and I try to keep consistent with it but I find it hard, although I try to at least get a minimum of 10 minutes of anything French related into my day

How to learn a language?

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movies with both audio and subtitles in the language you are learning, literally no better way. Pimsleur program can be a nice kick off and complement, can easily be found at the nearest torrent websites. When you get comfortable, start also daily reading news articles in that language until good enough to tackle simple books. Ideally also start building daily a deck of words in Anki and practice it daily.

Language is not to be looked at in isolation. Proficiency does not matter if cultures are different.
Yeah, you can read the words but you cannot understand them in the cultural context. Sure, no one will know what he exactly meant in the context of 1500, but you can know what the current understanding is in the context of English speaking world, and where it plays a role in the collective subconscious (people are rarely as original in their interpretations as they'd like to believe). I mentioned two cultures since childhood in another post.

Unironically Duolingo helps a lot

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Ok. I accept that. Those were just my limited thoughts on the matter, and although what you said about it may very well be correct and the truth, I also believe that what is on the depth of shakespeare's (and many other writers' from different countries) greatness is universal and eternal truth, and I refuse to believe people can't see it, at LEAST partially, for whatever the damn reason.

read your favourite books in language you want to learn. worked for me

>greatness is universal and eternal truth, and I refuse to believe people can't see it, at LEAST partially, for whatever the damn reason
Sure, they can get it on that universal level, which is why language doesn't matter. No doubt there are people who have gotten a tremendous insight from Crime and Punishment while reading it in Danish. Language plays little role in that.

If English is your native and only language, isn’t it better to learn something like German or French first? To develop a skill set of learning cultural contexts and learning languages in general? And then move on to a language and cultural that isn’t as widely explored?
I don’t see why one would dive into a problem so tough without the proper training...
This is my cope for learning German at university next year, and putting off Sanskrit until later on

and out of curiosity, do you believe there are benefits to, say, read shakespeare, tolstoy, voltaire in the original, considering one is fluent, even without the cultural aspect? a guy that has read Voltaire translated, then proceeds to read him in french, do you think he will get anything out of it he didn't already get reading a translation?

Yeah, there is some merit to that. In part, you can take it as a language exercise. I used to read sci-fi in English just for the heck of it and because I liked how it sounded.
I guess if some specific work interests you as much as to read it multiple times, then you may as well go for multiple translations + original. It reminds me of the fact that apparently some Czech author managed to write a book that outlined 300+ possible interpretations of Kafka's Metamorphosis.

I'm learning Chinese pretty diligently, can anyone speculate why?

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Are into Buddhism or just want to go to China to work as a monkey and fuck their women?

Because I'm too busy translating Blüthenstaub to the languages I already know

what else do you wanna do with it

German is truly a sister language to English.
Much easier than learning English as an Italian; those two fundamentally work differently. It'll be a breeze.

t.intermediate knowledge of Italian and German, fluent in English.

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I speak and write fluently: english, swedish, finnish

On top of that I read fluently: german, biblical hebrew, greek

Basic in and learning: coptic

where do you get these movies? I've never found any

piratebay.
I was also able to find tv series in youtube with french subs, but it's fucking absolutely horrible in terms of acting/script.
There are several famous movies in pretty much any language though, in french there is amelie, la haine, untouchable, the passion of joana d'arc, off the top of my head. It's guaranteed you can find any of these very easily in any torrent sites.
For german there is das boot, der untergang, die welle, in italian bycicle thieves, life is beautiful...

i am, op

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If you can't 'get' a work if you're not a native speaker, then imagine reading it in translation. It's a completely different text. Then you have the fact that even if you're a native speaker, you won't 'get' it fully because you're not in the same cultural context. You're retarded if you think a modern day millenial can understand Shakespeare. The 'insights' you're talking about are not really insights from Crime & Punishment because they're not reading Crime & Punishment, they're reading a bastardized text from what the translator thinks the text is conveying. The only way to get as close to what the text is about is by learning the language and immersing it as fully as you can into the culture.

A translation is anything but universal, retard. Try to render a Shakespeare sonnet in portuguese and see yourself having to alter rhythm, syntax, word order, musicality, tone, etc etc. It's a butchering of the text.

nigger, what the literal fuck are you on about? read the post you replied to again, very slowly and paying great attention.
I never said anything about translation in that post you absolute imbecile.

The language I want to learn (Amharic) has no good resources.

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It's such an obvious misquote to that i didn't even bother fixing it. No need to throw a hissy fit and act like a monkey. But well, what can you expect from someone who has 'limited thoughts' on the matter and still thinks he needs to spout his terribly malformed opinion on the subject?

sounds like OP is sad about how he's spending his own time and trying to make himself feel better with this thread

No one, absolutely no one on Yea Forums is happy.

yes, my thoughts are limited on this matter, I'm no linguist or translator, therefore I know my opinion is worth very little, be as it may, if I feel like it I'll continue spouting my opinions, as malformed as they are and you can suck my fat and long penis if you don't like it

Honestly this. There’s a ton of Japanese novels I want to read but I’m waiting till my jp is good enough

You'd have to read all that I wrote in order to respond to that. Not just one message. I clarified on this point, so read it.

You did not respond to anything other than saying some embarassing Petersonian trash about collective unconcious or whatever. Yes, it's obvious that you won't fully get a text if you're not from that culture. Everyone is removed from the text in some way. The point is that translation is removed from the text in so many absurd ways that it's an entirely different tradition. A native speaker is only removed form a text for the fact that he's not from that cultural moment (like for example a soviet citizen reading Dostoevsky), assuming he's a reasonably intelligent individual. A non native speaker is removed both from the context, and the language that he'll never grasp in its entirety but nonetheless can apreciate its masterful use, even if in a limited way.
A non native speaker reading a translation is removed from the cultural context, the language that he doesn't know, word choice, tone, rhythm, syntax, music, form, structure etc, and is led on by a translator who had to impose his own interpretation to carry the text to a different language. In every single page, every single paragrah, every single sentence, a translator has to make different decisions in order to 'translate' a vague, general feeling of the original work. You're not reading such and such author at all if not in his original language.
Obviously this isn't as catastrophic for someone who wants a passing knowledge of literature. Archetypes, characters, plot, etc all survive in translation. But for someone who wants to know more about language, it's a terrible waste of time.

First of all, there's no such thing as Petersonian. Peterson did not come with any of those ideas on collective subconscious, so great start there.
Collective unconscious can simply refer to the fact that people who grew up in certain nation under a certain tradition are different in their thinking. If you don't believe that, we need not continue.
The translated text is not supposed to be the same. Like it or not, it was never intended that way, don't know who told you that. If you read a Chinese novel and know nothing about Chinese culture, writing style of the author, specific expressions, etc. Fine, you're there for the story, not for the fact that the translator butchered the text because there's no other way to convey it for your culture. I mentioned that language does not equal cultural understanding. The reader of a translated text gets something from it for himself.
In addition to this, if you learn another language and read a book in it, you're the one doing the misinterpreting that you attribute only to the translator. The translator is (preferably) not some sort of weirdo who goes off on a tangent to create a new book while translating it. I mentioned this before too. People are way less original in their interpretations than they'd like to think, period. There is some objectivity in translations. You can get some appreciation from it and use it as a language exercise. Again, I said this before. Last part of your comment is some sort of straw man again. I never said you shouldn't learn languages. I said that if you think you should learn Russian to read and appreciate Crime and Punishment more fully, you're sadly mistaken.

>The translated text is not supposed to be the same.
No one ever said that. The point of the 'translations' are a meme is to make fun of people who think they're reading an author while reading a translation.
>I mentioned that language does not equal cultural understanding.
It does not give you full understanding of a culture, but if you had ever learned a language, you'd know that languages aren't learned in a vacuum. You need to engage hard with the culture surrounding a language to learn it. You can't just read a textbook and 'learn' french. It's why so much of the language learning apps revolve around communities, and listening to music, and watching movies and youtube, and generally immersing yourself in the culture. This immersion in the culture by definition enhances the understanding of a work, depending when it was written of course, and even if the culture you're immersing isn't the same as the author; nonetheless it's a descendant of it.
>In addition to this, if you learn another language and read a book in it, you're the one doing the misinterpreting that you attribute only to the translator.
I'm starting to think you haven't learned a language at all because the translation of a work is an entirely different matter to simply reading it. It seems that you think that every ESL when reading english is 'translating' the english to his native language in his head. Thus, he's comparable to a translator who has to distort syntax, word choice, tone, culture in order to convey to another culture a vague sense of the originals. This is ridiculous and if you knew a language you'd know that the process of an ESL when learning english is not that different to a native. A fluent ESL will look at a word in english and immediately grasp its meaning by 'comparing' it to other english words. There's no translation there, the two aren't comparable at all. There's no misunderstanding because he's not translating the text, but simply experiencing it. Yes, there are cultural differences which makes his experience less worthy compared to a native speaker but it's in no way comparable to translating the word to a whole new linguistic system.
>I said that if you think you should learn Russian to read and appreciate Crime and Punishment more fully, you're sadly mistaken.
Which's objectively wrong because when you read in the original you'll have a much more clear understanding of form (mentioned in sentence structure, rhythm etc etc), and that by definition makes you understand the work better than someone who's reading it in translation.

Holy fucking kek.
Yes, you are reading an author, just in a form that's accessible to you, with the assistance of the translator. If what you said was true, it'd mean that a Chinese native does not read a Chinese author because he's been meme'd into thinking he can understand all authors intentions, use of language, personal background etc.
Well, while the language learning does evolve around communities, there's a lot of experience you simply won't get. I had Russian as my second language, but I never went to a Russian school. That experience alone changes a lot in terms of cultural understanding. The way education is approached in cultures, for example, is something you won't get. There's more than that, obviously.
That shit about me never learning a language was funny. Some STEMfag logic applied, I guess. First of all, I didn't say he distorted in on a language level. The lack of cultural understanding is what creates the distortion. So, I'mma make my previous comments sticky and you fucking read it because I said this exact thing before.
Lastly, no. Understanding form of sentences does not help you understand the work of classic literature.

Actually, Italian is ranked as an easier language than German. effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty

Being a romance language native speaker, English as second language and with 4 years of learning German, I would say German is actually quite harder. The Grammar alone, plus the gap between vocabulary and comprehension is WAY bigger than it seems. Yes, both are Germanic, but also Old English is germanic (have you tried understanding it??) youtube.com/watch?v=XOfvCN_F5cg

Funny how you can accept the butchering of language but if i were to say to you for us to 'translate' the Hamlet character into millenial speak full of emojis and fortnite dabs you'd probably be horrified. Yet this is what a translation does, even if not in such a retarded way. No, you're not reading an author, no matter how much you want that to be true.
>If what you said was true, it'd mean that a Chinese native does not read a Chinese author because he's been meme'd into thinking he can understand all authors intentions, use of language, personal background etc.
I have no idea where you got this from. It does not imply this, it simply says that everyone is removed form the text in some way. The more you do to remove that barrier the more accurate interpretation of a work you get. This is simply the implied attitude when someone goes to study an author for an PHD in literature. Translation is a meme because you're almost as dissociated from a text as you can get. All the 'cultural' misunderstandings you say are amplified one hundred times more when reading a translation. Since you can't autistically study every author to get the 'best' interpretation, the least you can do is to learn his language and have the bare minimum of aesthetic appreciation of his form, something he probably worked so much to get down and what literature is mostly about, the deeper you go studying it.
>That experience alone changes a lot in terms of cultural understanding. The way education is approached in cultures...
I feel like the translation meme is autistic but you manage to be even more autistic.
>i didn't get bullied by a russian chad in school so that means i won't understand what Tolstoy is talking about when Anna Karenina decides to leave her husband to pursue happiness!
>i surely can't appreciate Rimbaud's free verse without taking dick in the ass myself

>Lastly, no. Understanding form of sentences does not help you understand the work of classic literature.
It's like 18th century literary criticism but without the naivety. Let me just say something that is obvious to anyone who studies even a little of literature. Shakespeare did not get famous because of his characters or his plot or whatever. He got famous because of the prominence of the british empire who pretty much obliged every intellectual to learn his language and appreciate his work. There's not a single author who got inspired by Shakespeare by reading a translation. Form is everything for a proper aesthetic appreciation and without it, you can't properly convey meaning (search for 'No Fear Shakespeare' and see if it resembles even a little of the original rhetoric of Shakespeare's characters).

>why aren't you doing anything right now instead of wasting your time on Yea Forums?
I am hiding, because I am ugly.

I think he meant to say learning German as an english speaker is easier than learning English as an italian speaker, not that italian is harder than german

Start with the Greek language

i find u just the cutest anonn =)

>learned niprunes
>can read raw manga AND classical literature
heh. scanlators can get fucked. feels good man.
it's trash

based, basado & basé

>'translate' the Hamlet character into millenial speak full of emojis and fortnite dabs you'd probably be horrified
Naturally. That's a deliberate intent to change the play to suit something it's not supposed to suit. The translator does not do the same thing even though he changes the text within the limits of the language he translates it into. Also, if you think you're reading an author just because you understand the words, then we shouldn't have gotten into this conversation at all.
Learning the language is not the least you can do. Unless you happen to be in 10% for whom learning languages is very easy (and you happen to have enough time on hands), then no, learning a language to read a classical piece of work is something you won't achieve. Which is why I went onto a highly theoretical rant in the first place. Don't butcher the meat yourself with bare hands under a bad light. Let someone else butcher it in the form for you. Yeah, you won't get hundred percent, but you wouldn't even if you knew the language. You'd fool yourself through your own cultural background anyway.
There's not a single author who got inspired by Shakespeare by reading a translation.
I'll take this as a Kek of the day and go to sleep. Saying that there's no one ever inspired by Shakespeare when they read him in translation makes me question why you actually entered this. I don't mind having these discussions, but you really bit more than a bullet for this statement. Take care.

My face is beautiful, or at least it was two weeks ago after I last showered.
Inside, I am a retarded child.

Because I already know English. What kind of a stupid question is that?

This is now a Novalis thread

Question: What did he mean by the singer coming to Palestine in the fifth hymn to the night? Was the boy or the singer supposed to be Jesus? Does Rudolf Steiner mention something about this?

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learning chinese can open up new business partnership opportunities esp in the manufacturing business

This sounds childish but this is exactly what people say to God. Except unlike children, their follies are wicked and unlawful and ensnarl them until they're utterly destroyed. I can do what I want is the ethos of liberalism. It pervades most left and right thought of the West today.

Well, how to say it.
It was not the best experience.

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How are they destroyed?

reminder that unless you're relocating to another country or consuming foreign material, learning another language is useless

This

you only read english works?

>he doesn't know

Someone please link this user the greentext about dealing with Chinese businesses.

nope, eng isn't even my first language

>greentexts are truth
i would say you don't know

Shitposting to make my english better. Why are you here?

Yes, Italian is 'simpler' than German. A Chinese would find Italian easier to learn. But it is a different species to English, which makes it harder for English or German speakers to learn.
German is the same species as English, meaning, you already have a vague idea of how Germanic languages work. Not in vocabulary, perhaps, but you have a feel for what German is like already.
Likewise, an Englishman learning Italian has to learn a whole new way of doing things. Don't think I'm saying German is like a dialect of English, though.

Well basically there is this long greentext where a Chinese-fluent user talked about doing business in China and how underhanded/incompetent/deceitful they were

this comes are no suprise. Chinese are literally 50x worst than niggers. They are fucking cockroaches

yeah that's why everyone is getting things made from china because they're so deceitful

You ever tried studying 12 hours a day steady state? Brain needs time to relax.

thoughts on learning 2 languages at the same time?
I'll have a lot of free time up to january and was wondering it I could do it

Actually I have no solid argument for this. We can literally learn a new language within a year if we study it methodically.

Fuck. If I do this I could even be an Altaist in a 5 years.

Too lazy
Want to study French

You really shouldn't pick a language based on what you think will be practical or (economically) benifical. Even if you suddenly gained native level proficiency in a second language there is little chance it would impact you financially. Instead choose what interests you most. You may have to dabble a bit in both German and French to find out what you actually prefer.

I started with French but switched to German after realizing I wasn't really interested in the French language, people, or culture. It was basically a chore, or some strange obligation I felt, being Canadian, to learn both "official" languages. There is nearly 0 practical benefit to learning German for me. There is no economic incentive. Yet I remain motivated and diligent.

This is mostly true, especially for Anglophones. Though there are examples of success: MattvsJapan is one. He studied for over 7 years and has achieved near-native level fluency in a very difficult language. I also think it's a matter of realistic expectations, and learning how to learn.

Casey?