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I studied Latin, Greek, and Syriac at a few different points in my academic career, and now I want to learn something for the sake of having something to read for pleasure--ideally a lot. For those of you that are bilingual or multilingual or who are in the know, what contemporary living language has a burgeoning and/or strong literary scene? Does your country or a country you know have a literate culture? I want to learn a new language that has a literary culture that has parity with English--I say this innocently enough...I don't mean to privilege one language over the other. By that I mean, my criteria are that people are freely writing novels, they're publishing poetry and short stories in literary magazines, writing for the stage and the screen, censorship and community morals aren't a (major) problem, etc. I'm considering one of the following--Arabic, Cantonese, Czech, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, and/or Turkish. Basically, my end game is that I want to be able to enjoy a language and its culture. Any insight is appreciated.
I know right off the bat there might be issues with Arabic in terms of censorship and community standards, but maybe there's a greater literary culture in Tunisia or Morocco versus Saudia Arabia, etc. I don't know. Maybe you do. I can't speak to Turkish. My hunch is that French, Japanese, or Russian might be a good choice. Anyway, I'm interested in what you have to say. Thanks.
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>>9935079
>Cantonese
Any reason you list this but not Mandarin? I'm not well versed on the state of contemporary Chinese lit but I have to assume the Cantonese market is much smaller.
Anyway, one thing you would want to keep in mind (and I know that this sounds obvious but still): some languages are much easier to learn than others. Assuming your native language is English, any of the Indo-European languages on your list would be much easier to learn than Arabic or Japanese. With dedicated study (i.e. a few hours a day, every day, and a teacher or friend you can speak the language with) you could be reading German very comfortably in under a year. Not Nietzsche, but well-respected novels would be within your grasp, for example.
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Learn French.
You know English and you've studied Latin. This means French will be fairly intuitive and you also can easily branch out to Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.
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>>9935079
Classical Chinese. There are probably tons more Chinese Classics than Latin Classics because of how much they valued keeping historical records. It's to the point where their academic have yet to analyze all of it, and there are still works being unearthed.
But, if you're focusing on contemporary lit, then probably Japanese.
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>>9935260
Reasons I'm too tired to articulate. I have to learn German anyway if I want to go to graduate school. I probably will anyway. That's a strong literary culture certainly. I don't know what anyone is publishing right now, but one of my favorite short stories is Der kleine Herr Friedemann by Thomas Mann. Herman Hesse is also sexy, but these guys are dated and dead lol. I can't think of any really hot contemporary German-language authors. Das Parfum was written in 1985 and Patrick Süskind is in his 60s now. Otherwise, Günter Grass and Herta Müller come to mind and one of them is also dead lol.
>>9935344
French is something I will also have to learn for graduate school. Negritude is (or so I've heard) hot in French literature scholarship in America or at least was. Otherwise, I'm a fan, but I can't really name anyone alive that's writing. But, I presume like German that French lit is very alive and well. There's a lot there.
>>9935391
I'm not sure I would study anything classical anymore, at least seriously. The only exception might be Ugaritic or Akkadian, but I don't think that's in the cards. I guess my only fear about learning Japanese would be the learning curve and the time it might take to get anywhere, but I think it would be worthwhile for sure.
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