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What language has the best literature? | ||
Tags: Literature | Choosing a Language | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| livelearntravel Newbie United States Joined 4625 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 1 of 24 22 March 2012 at 12:27pm | IP Logged |
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Hello all, new to this forum! So far I've gotten a lot out of just reading through the
threads, so I thought I'd post one. Currently I'm already focused on the languages I'm learning right now (Spanish and Dutch), but I was reading today and thought of a question. Which language do you think offers the best literature? As in, if you could learn a language just to be able to read it's literary offerings, which one would you chose? I was thinking about this because some people say that certain books are better in their native tongues, and you can get more out of a book by reading it how it was originaly written. So which one would you chose? Edit: I am re-phrasing my question to ask more along the lines of "Which language is your favorite in which to read literature?" I don't think any one language is the "best", but rather am curious as to what your opinions are on books of various languages. Edited by livelearntravel on 22 March 2012 at 4:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5046 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 2 of 24 22 March 2012 at 12:32pm | IP Logged |
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What criteria should we use to estimate this "bestness"?
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| livelearntravel Newbie United States Joined 4625 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Dutch | Message 3 of 24 22 March 2012 at 12:47pm | IP Logged |
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I was thinking in whatever terms you wanted. If you like a particular language's
literature more than another languauge's, then why? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Gosiak Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5116 days ago 241 posts - 361 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Norwegian, Welsh | Message 4 of 24 22 March 2012 at 12:51pm | IP Logged |
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All the books are better in their original languages. There is no such thing as a perfect translation.
Do you have any particular genre on your mind? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6572 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 24 22 March 2012 at 12:54pm | IP Logged |
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Personally I'm a big fan of popular science books, and in this category, English is better than all other languages combined, which is very unfortunate for a polyglot! However, one might hesitate to call this "literature".
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| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4629 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 6 of 24 22 March 2012 at 1:10pm | IP Logged |
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If you talk about fiction and more specifically "classics" (think Shakespeare or Dickens) I would definitely say that I could study Russian just to be able to read Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy et al in the original language. However, I could not agree to saying that any language offers the "best" literature. There are great authors (old and new ones) in French, Spanish, English, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Italian etc etc.
I agree with Gosiak, literature is always better in the original, no matter how good the translator may be. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5252 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 7 of 24 22 March 2012 at 1:15pm | IP Logged |
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I enjoy reading very much. Knowing Spanish has made it possible for me to read Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda, Isabel Allende and García Lorca in the original. Portuguese has introduced me to Machado de Asis, José de Alencar, Mia Couto and Fernando Pessoa, for which I am quite grateful.
Ah, to be able to read Russian would open up a world of great writers both classic and modern! French literature also has centuries of tradition. If we expand languages to ancient languages- Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and literary Chinese (the Chinese invented paper), any one of these languages would provide a lifetime of literature. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6693 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 24 22 March 2012 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
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It is fairly obvious that languages with not only many speakers but also a fine literacy rate are more likely to produce literary geniuses - and most of the big languages of this world have enough of those geniuses to keep you occupied around the clock, if reading great literature is your thing.
Some minor languages are renowned for one or two internationally known names, but international fame isn't the only yeardstick you can use. For instance I'm sick and tired about hearing about Hans Christian Andersen as if he was the only Danish author who was worth reading. It seems to be a law of nature that when something or somebody has become famous then everything and everybody else is forgotten and the selected one is raised almost to godlike stature and put on a piedestal. The only decent reaction to this is to search deliberately for traces of those infortunate ones who were pushed into oblivion. Mostly this was deserved, but certainly not in all cases. I see this more clearly in music than in literature because I quite frankly don't read much literature (like Ari I prefer popular science materials), so my personal tape collection is brimming with forgotten names while my stocks of works by the usual deified geniuses deliberately are kept down. I apply the same criterion to languages - I search for stuff in the minor ones, even though it may be more difficult to find. Of course I can't read all languages in this world and therefore I haven't a clue about things written in for instance Chinese - but I have every reason to believe that there is a lot of things there which we ought to know as well as usual slew of books in English, French and German. The only problem is that there are languages where the silence is mysteriously roaring. For instance I can't mention one single Dutch author, maybe because I had stopped reading literature before I got interested in learning the language. But then I should have seen a lot of books in translation, and I haven't - haven't the Dutch got literature or haven't Danish translators cared about translating them? The same problem with Esperanto. Volte, Sprachprofi and others have listed books written in Esperanto so there is no excuse for not having read them, but as a matter of fact the only major literary works I have read in the language are translations of Tolkien's main works, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. This is of course great literature (even in translation), but it is also a symptom of the bad habit of sticking to names you already know instead of searching for overlooked gems. Edited by Iversen on 22 March 2012 at 1:35pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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