Which languages should one be able to speak to be considered /lit/?

>>8311087
allof them . . . .

English, Russian, French, German, Spanish, and Italian.

In that order.

>>8311087
Ingvaeonic, Aeolic dialect of classical Greek, Tenochtitlan Nahuatl, Xi'an Tang dynasty dialect of Chinese, Demotic Egyptian and Latin. Any other questions?

>>8311092
>tfw you fuck up and forget to put latin first

>>8311092
In that order? What does that even mean. Makes no sense saying you should be able to speak English, Russian, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, 'in that order' - (pleonasm!). Why not Russian, French, English, Spanish, English and Italian?

>>8311096
>Aeolic
Uh I think you mean Homeric and Attic.
>Nahuatl
Whatever.
>Egyptian
Maybe if you're a huge nerd.

>>8311096
>Aeolic
>learning lesbian greek
>not ionic or corinthian
you'll never get laid that way, not even by chicks

>>8311087
english
german
french
greek
latin
(optional: russian italian spanish arabic)

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>english

portuguese senpai

>>8311534
English is the most important language in the world.

>>8311542
absolutely

>>8311542
>

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>>8311096
>Aeolic

>>8311087
Greek, Latin, French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, English

These are the only languages worth knowing

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The language of Love, bae

>>8311668
German too

>>8311668
Japanese is better than Chinese

>>8311668
Also Sanskrit btw

Latin. It's absolutely worthless for the most part, but it will certainly make you seem sophisticated and refined.

>>8311693
It is physically impossible for weeaboos not to be fucking pseuds? Kys. All Japanese literature (and the written language itself) is based off the respective Chinese classics and Chinese. Modern Japanese ""literature"" is basically the same shit with Europe and the U.S; Mishima doing his poor imitation of European Fascism and Hellenic master morality and applying it to Japan, and Murakami with his community college sex adventure chronicles

>>8311705
>It is physically impossible for weeaboos not to be fucking pseuds?
Statement followed by question mark. Nice.

>>8311705
Plenty of weeaboos are definitely pseuds, but Japan does have its own unique literary tradition in the haiku, as well as an important classic novel in the Tale of Genji.

Has anyone here self-taught Latin? What was your process?

>>8311743
I used the Teaching Company course Latin 101

>>8311743
Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata by Oerburg. Anyone who tells you to use a different method doesn't want you to learn Latin, he wants you to learn to decode it and translate it into English. Also buy the companion to it, Latine Disco, for explanation of finer grammar points.

LLPSI is slower than many other books, but you will learn the language much more fluently than any other text would teach you to be.

>>8311751
>>8311764

Thanks.

>>8311087
Attic or Ionic Greek, Latin, Mandarin Chinese (an ease of access consideration for the most part), Sanskrit, Arabic. German for philosophy, Italian for music. This is not to say you'll want to read in those languages, but knowing them will let you understand commentaries, trasnlations and interpretative works a lot better.

>>8311521
>russian optional

get a load of this guy

>>8312612
>dis nigga
No no no, you want to learn seven to fifteen languages at LEAST, and they need to be either obscure, dead, or both. Then and only then can you gaze upon the glory of /lit/.

>>8312612
>Italian for music
Completely unnecessary. Hell, you'd be better off with German for music, b/c of lieder and much better libretti

>>8312704
And here you are, using an italian term. I'm arguing for Italian for its utility in understanding and interpreting technical works on the subject, not for anything that was written entirely in it.

>>8311716
Japan does interesting things in the 1800s and early 1900s; that's the heart of Japanese literature and why it stands better than chinese. Soseki is virtually unmatched in Asia.

>>8311087
Currently learning French. What books do you suggest I read in what order to improve my French skills? From easiest to hardest of course.

I've been reading le petit nicholas atm and I'm moving onto le petit prince soon, then l'étranger and maybe le peste?

What do you guys think and what do you guys suggest I read after these? I preferably want to read in a way that'll give me progression while still not being all that difficult in terms of reading.

>>8313126
Reading la Peste now; Sartre's La Nausée is much easier and it's metaphysical focus is refreshing after l'étranger.

>>8313134
Sweet. Were you the guy that mentioned it in the other thread?

So how do they compare to L'Étranger? I read the first half a while back and it felt alright.

I actually went ahead and got Le Comte de Monte-Cristo as well (free on kindle, as with most older French literature), and was pondering reading it, though I don't want to start reading something too difficult too fast, just to then read another book later that would've been more suitable for my current level, you know?

If you are french/italian/spanish/romanian then you should learn latin

if you aren't, skip it.

>>8313184
don't forget us lusophones

>>8313126
Are you using a grammer book? If so which one?

>>8313034
Knowing Italian isn't going to help you with that in the least.

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>>8311521
>arabic

German and Russian

Ancient Greek, Latin, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian.

>>8311106
I believe he was trying to say English is the most important language to learn, then Russian, etc.

>>8311701
Actually Latin is far from useless (outside of speaking it with everyday people). It's a good foundational language that aids in your understanding of syntactic structure, which is a great tool for learning new languages.

>>8313084
>soseki
>unmatched
weeaboo confirmed

>Italian fags get to read divine comedy in its original format
Jdimsa

Everyone knows about the big meme languages but is there any literary merit to learning languages such as Dutch, Swedish, Irish, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Ukranian, Welsh, Hungarian, Czech, Romanian?

>>8313530
If you know Irish you can read the myths in their original language, as well as a considerable amount of poetry and a few novels. It's my opinion that every Irishman should be able to read Irish. If you know one of Danish/Swedish/Norwegian you can learn the others quite easily I think and there is a lot of mutual intelligibility, so that would give you access to some great Scandinavian writers I'm pretty sure.

>>8313530

I studied Latin, Greek, french, and Norwegian - That's about the order of importance for me. Norwegian is nice because if you can read it, you can also read Danish and Swedish.

Ibsen is great so is HC Andersen. Norwegian is also stupid easy even compared to French. So I recommend it.

Hungary has produced some very good writers in the last 30 years but my freaking god that language is a nightmare.

Irish has great epic cycles and myths. Same with Welsh to a lesser extent.

Fuck Portuguese, I don't know anything about Polish and Ukrainian literature; Dutch literature isn't really that great but the language is similar to English so if you want to, it will be easy*.

>>8311092
at least three of those.

>>8313568
>>8313600

So if Danish/Swedish/Norwegian is a three-for-one kind of deal for reading lit, which one should you actively acquire so that the remaining two fall into place easiest?

>>8311087
You only need English, but German and French are useful.

>>8313568
I'm Norwegian, and to be fair it'd be a lot of work for the narrow number of classic authors there are. All though if you learn Danish, you will be able to read the Norwegian classics, and the danish ones quite easily. I believe there's more /lit/erary merit to the danish classics.

>>8313600
I could google this, but just for the sake of bumping: are the scandinavian langs inflected?

>>8313611
Honestly Norwegian and Danish are the most simmilar in written form. So I would say one of those two. I'm the poster above, and as a Norwegian I find listening to Danes excrutiating, but their written language is all right.

>>8313620

No. And pluralizing is retardedly easy unlike German.

Furthermore conjugation is dead simple, here is the verb to be:

jeg er, du er, han er, vi er, dere er, de er

>>8313626
>excrutiating

just subjectively or are there objective linguistic reasons? like, relevant things outside the cultural nuances you people like so much and that only relevant between you.

>minored in Spanish
>enjoy talking with others
>colloquial Spanish, however, is very simple
>every time I read a book I get sick of looking up unfamiliar words and just drop the novel
>end result is that I am able to fluently speak Spanish but have never read a book in the language

What do I do? I recently tried reading Charlotte's Web in Spanish and couldn't do it. I'm fucking sick of having to read with a dictionary next to me.

>>8313649

How can you say you are fluent if you can't even read a simple book?

Ok maybe you can remark that it's hot outside or you know how to run a meme script for booking a hotel room that you learned in your shitty class, but there's no way you are able to fluently express yourself if you are being stumped by elementary school level vocabulary.

>>8313635
Even as a non-Scandy when I've heard Danish in movies it sounds really weird.

>>8313649
which books have you been reading?

Is there any benefit at all in studying modern Greek if my real goal is ancient Greek?

Duolingo is putting the finishing touches on a modern Greek course. I've been wanting to learn ancient Greek so I was considering going through the course if it would be of any benefit.

>>8311096
>Aeolic dialect of classical Greek

Homeric and Attic are objectively superior.

>all these idiots saying English
Obviously anyone reading this thread already knows English, you stupid faggots.

>>8313635
It's not very nice sounding and it's hard to understand. Even Swedes have trouble with it.

>>8311087
English. Everything worth reading is translated into English anyways, there really is no need to learn any other language in regards to /lit'

>>8313950
>Duolingo
Honestly vastly inferior to just learning vocabulary with anki, studying a bit of grammar and reading native materials looking up every word you don't know.

>>8314981

That's not what I asked.
I don't need help with my methodology.
Either answer my question or stop memeing.

>>8311087
You must have ignored all established languages and their literature and developed your own. Anyone reading this has failed.

>>8314981
>learning vocabulary with anki
why you mother fuckers always be jerking off to this shit. you make all of it yourself. it can be any application

>>8315367
>memeing

Your life's a fucking meme.

>>8311087
French is a must

>>8315414
I'd rather use the superior Memrise, too.

>>8315433
Memerise is hardly different than DL.

>>8315437

It's completely different to Duo.

>>8315439
Not at all. It's certainly more tedious. Especially in the beginning.

>>8315442
>he uses the Memrise supplied courses

>>8315445
What, and you sit there making fucking flashcards?

>>8315447
No, I use other user's created courses.

>>8313950
Other way is better; ancient makes modern much easier; modern makes ancient a bit easier

>>8313649
Use an online dictionary you ape. Also, why are you starting with such simple shit? Precise actions are highest level in any language; kid's story have lots of these, but rather simple uneventful stories that make studying not feel worth it.

Find some early modern or modern lit and just battle through it. Or do news about a single subject over a few weeks.

>>8311087
Classical Latin
Aeolic or Ionic Greek
French
German

>>8311743
>>8311764
>Has anyone here self-taught Latin? What was your process?

Orberg is fucking dope. I learned Latin back in the days before Wiktionary and google translate. I never would have learned it if not for him.

>>8313254
H.S. Thompson's suggestion...

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ancient hebrew, ancient greek, latin, french, russian, english (a bit lesser than the others but useful for reading encyclopedias and comunicating). second tier are german, italian chinese, sanskrit. third tier is spanish, portuguese, japanese (great nation but lacking lit wise). fourth tier is the rest

>>8316303
Meh at Hebrew. You can just read the Bible in translation. The translations are more influential anyway. Arabic and Persian, which you don't mention, are more important than Hebrew

>>8316346
sorry yeah forgot arabic and parsi in second tier
Hebrew is important I'd say because linguistically it's (very) interesting (no 'is' verb, for instance, or letters that reverse a verb's tense), it's also very neat to see how translation of the bible are very off from time to time, it's language with the most mutually intellegible versions not coming from geography but time and it has an continous literature that dates some 2500-3000 years, including very interesting medieval philosophy, contemporary poetry, etc...

>>8311087
Dumbspeak and pretentious. Both of them. Although lingua retardada is a plus.

>>8311101
>Speaking latin ever

If you want people around you to die of cringe maybe.

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>>8316303
>Ancient hebrew

>>8311087
Old Church Slavonic

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>>8313635
subjectively, but I imagine it's alot like being from London and listening to a really heavy scouse accent.

>>8316303
you dont need to know ancient hebrew.

Ancient Hebrew is a language for rabbis, historians and linguists. Not for people who want to read literature.

Also, almost all the great western writers who considered Tolstoy and Dostoievsky to be geniuses, read them translated.

I speak 4 languages, and for me, translations are very acceptable, except for poetry.

>>8316765
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky read one another in the original, however.

>>8313530
Hungarian if only for the poetry... we also have great lit. but there is no exciting academia or other reason to learn the language. also not so difficult.

>>8316456

No, I just want them to die.

That's why I like dismissing/trumping people's empty and emotionally charged rhetorical arguments with two words of Latin that signify the fallacy they're guilty of using.

>>8311087
/lit/huanian, of course

>>8316814

You don't consider Hungarian difficult?

>>8317104
God fucking damn, that fucking cringe ridded me of my exhaustion, thank you.

But niğğa everyone has access to the fucking /pol/ sticky, + I think there's a subreddit dedicated to making fun of you

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>>8317127

>>8316814
>no exciting academia
>not reading hungarian mathematicians
>polya, erdos, bolyai, etc

>>8317132
Shit, mother fucker, all you gots ta do is say it like Budapesht.

>>8318474
But Erdos wrote his papers in English and for some reason I doubt you understand their work, you're just a mathematics historian. Like those art historians who have never painted anything you have never proved anything. Hell, I bet you don't even understand Euklid's infinite primes argument, you just know it exists.

>>8311087
Let's be honest for a second, I doubt even .001% of /lit/ speaks even two of the languages being listed in this thread (not counting English), so let's not be pretentious.

I would just find out which countries and time periods have the literature you love the most, and focus on learning those so that you can read them in their original text.

If you enjoy studying language, it really doesn't matter which ones you study - they all provide unique experiences and challenges, complex cultures and history, and any of them will enrich your mind and your life in their own way.

What process should I follow to learn French? I haven't learned a language before.

From what I've read on /lit/ in the past the process is:

1. memorise phonetics
2. grammar books
3. anki
4. news/tv/radio
5. books

>there are people on this board that can't read the OT in Hebrew, the Greeks in Greek, and the NT in Latin/German
Wewladdy

>>8319051

If you are learning just for literature then I wouldn't sperg out too much about phonetics.
A rough idea of how it is supposed to sound will aid in memorization, but French is notorious for being a bitch with phonetics and there are people who spend years trying to learn all of that bullshit and still can't get it right.

fuckin learn none of them. language was a shitty meme that got way too out of hand. people would be better off if they were still jumping around on trees and getting diseases and shit. prove me wrong, faggots.

>>8319273

>better vs worse

wew lad

>>8319274
>he doesn't want to die of a prehistoric disease after eating a banana with hands laden with shit and mud
lmao

>>8319251
I'm learning to speak it as well but I guess I'll just get a decent phonetic base and use that to learn off.

>>8311705
>literally just shitty cultural relativism: the post

>>8311705
>Japan does interesting things in the 1800s
check your history you fucking weeaboo. the 1800s sucked.

>>8313439
to understand the divine comedy you need to be familiar with italian volgare which 90% of italians aren't

>>8313227
I used a French-Swedish grammar book. I've got it pretty much in check at this point though, I just need to start reading to solidify it a bit more, as well as expand my vocabulary.

>>8311087
I speak fluently French, Dutch and English. A bit of German too. Spanish is an important language too but if you want to be /lit/ you should also be able to speak Russian and Italian, Also maybe Chinese or Japanese.

Quechua and Aramaic.

>>8320749
Belgian spotted.

>>8311087
Most /lit/ for an English speaker are hands-down French and German. Latin after those.

Personally: 因為我不是農村人所以我會說普通話。Y entendiendo español también. Plus I can read Babylonian Sumerian.

But other less popular literary languages like Icelandic (read Norse sagas) and Persian (read Middle Persian poetry) are cool.

If I could choose any two additional languages to be fluent in it'd be Russian and Japanese. Both would take too much effort to learn and I've started then given up on both of them as well as Icelandic, Persian, Norwegian, Swedish, Korean, Armenian, French and German. Currently attempting Latin so I can look at old art shit.

>>8311764
I second Lingua latina

>>8313611
The answer is Norwegian Bokmål, its speakers have the highest rate of mutually intelligibility with other north germanic languages

>>8311087
Ebonics

>>8317104
Ad hominem?