Books worth learning a language for (Books, Literature & Reading) Language Learning Forum

Books worth learning a language for
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Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading

32 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3 4

Ari
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Message 25 of 32

01 December 2012 at 9:58am | IP Logged

kanewai wrote:

Academic works on feng shui, Mandarin. One of my advisers was an expert in feng shui
/ geomancy, and he said that it was a legitimate academic discipline in classical China
... and that it has little to do with the New Age-type 'face your sofa to the rising
sun to capture the dragon breath' stuff we get in English. In fact, he said none of the
classical texts had been translated.

Well, if they haven't been translated then learning Mandarin to read them would seem like a waste, since they're probably not written in Mandarin but Literary Sinitic (Mandarin has about a hundred years of history as a written vernacular language, after all). There are people who can read LS but not Mandarin and most people who can read Mandarin can't read LS.
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reineke
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Message 26 of 32

01 December 2012 at 4:34pm | IP Logged

Iversen wrote:

I have read somewhere that the English composer Delius learned Norwegian to read Ibsen, and some American scholar whose name I have forgotten learned to read Danish because of HC Andersen. However it has always struck me as strange that anybody would learn a language to access the most famous works. The real benefit is to be able to seek out the less wellknown sources, and a more congenial access to the 'big names' just comes as a bonus.

If you look at literature as a sum of facts that need to be crammed for an exam, sure. Of course, one of the benefits of knowing a language is being able to read lesser-known authors. Something a scholar might do. Even the big names are not always 100% available in translation. If you like Akutagawa, you would have had to wait till 1980's - 1990's and most recently 2006 to read some of his short stories - in English. The author of "Rashomon" died in 1927.

You could also easily say that the real benefit lies in great art which is true to itself only in the original and more obscure works are just a bonus.

Joyce and Wittgenstein learned Danish and Norwegian in order to read Ibsen's plays. Rilke learned Danish to read Jacobsen and Kierkegaard. Miguel de Unamuno learned Danish to read Kierkegaard. William Dean Howell learned German to read Hegel (and felt liberated by the experience). Taine learned German to read Hegel. Erasmus learned Portuguese to read Gil Vicente. Sir Walter Scott learned Italian to read Ariosto and Spanish to read Cervantes whose novels inspired him "to excel in fiction". T. S. Eliot learned Italian to read Dante. Keats learned Italian to read Dante. Wordsworth learned German to enjoy German poetry and philosophy.Pushkin learned English to read Byron and Shakespeare in the original.

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Ari
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Message 27 of 32

01 December 2012 at 6:00pm | IP Logged

My Swedish teacher told me about someone learning Swedish to read Dvärgen (The Dwarf) by Pär Lagerkvist in the original. Can't remember who it was, though.
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Gosiak
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Message 28 of 32

01 December 2012 at 6:50pm | IP Logged

If I was ever to learn Russian it would be for Mikhail Bulgakov and his 'The Master and Margarita', Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov' and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago'.
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Serpent
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Message 29 of 32

01 December 2012 at 7:08pm | IP Logged

Ari wrote:

I recall my Swedish teacher telling us that some guy learned Swedish to read Dvärgen by Per Lagerkvist in the original. I haven't read it myself so I can't comment on whether or not it was a good decision.

You said this two pages ago haha.
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Ari
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Message 30 of 32

01 December 2012 at 9:39pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

You said this two pages ago haha.

Mutter mutter damned thread necromancy. Two pages ago was two years ago!
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Wayawa
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Message 31 of 32

07 March 2013 at 8:22am | IP Logged

Gosiak wrote:

If I was ever to learn Russian it would be for Mikhail Bulgakov and his 'The Master and Margarita', Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov' and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago'.

The Master and Margarita would definitely worth it.

Edited by Wayawa on 07 March 2013 at 8:22am
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kanewai
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Message 32 of 32

07 March 2013 at 6:20pm | IP Logged

mrwarper wrote:

kanewai wrote:

[...]One of my advisers was an expert in feng shui /
geomancy, and he said that it was a legitimate academic discipline in classical
China... and that it has little to do with the New Age-type 'face your sofa to the
rising sun to capture the dragon breath' stuff we get in English.[...]

Would you mind expanding that a bit? I can't help thinking in that 'sofa/dragon'-type
New Age BS whenever I hear about it, but a former legitimate academic discipline sounds
genuinely interesting even if discredited by modern findings (think of phrenology, for
example).

I wish I could expand on it, but all I know is that it was a more formal discipline
related to architecture and planning. Greece, Rome, and Egypt all had their own
shcools. Ari's note that the works might by literary Sinitic makes sense, because if
they were in Mandarin then we could assume that somebody would have translated
something by now!

But I came here to add André Gide's name into the mix. I've read two shorter works of
his in French this past year, L'immoraliste and La Symphonie Pastorale. Both were
fluid, sensual, and poetic. The English translations I've seen have been stuffy and
awkward. Gide in French feels modern. Gide in English sounds 19th Century.

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