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Books worth learning a language for | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5129 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 17 of 32 24 January 2011 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
What's your reasoning for excluding interpreters? Is an interpreter's use of languages somehow less valuable? R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 18 of 32 24 January 2011 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Just when I don't want to have one ;) Nah, the problem is, I don't share interests with most people (which I understand from both points of view -science and technology or literature vs. I dunno, football?- someone in the 'are you a geek about other things' said most people are 'shallowness geeks' which I see as rather descriptive) so my options are usually to bore someone, being bored myself or go somewhere else. Now, as a theoretical adult, I simply know how to entertain myself on my own (f.ex. here), so the business of calling people becomes highly optional :)
For example, now I speak Spanish and English quite regularly, but rather as a work requirement than something I'd do on own. The unexpected would be that I regularly spoke German, for example, since I'm not in Germany and I have no German friends nearby. OTOH, with ubiquitous language materials, reading or listening to it would not be so unexpected. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4869 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 19 of 32 31 July 2011 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Due to life circumstance, reading is more practical. I live in a sea of English. Hispanohablantes, are—as far as they can—trying to assimilate linguistically. I don't blame them, but it does limit speaking opportunity. Neruda's poetry, on the other hand, is going nowhere. Francophone communities aren't very close. The dangers of living in the middle of the States. It's just easier to go for the reading angle. Not to say it's impossible, but I'd rather the path of least resistance. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Bobb328 Groupie Canada Joined 4584 days ago 52 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 20 of 32 29 November 2012 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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With the obvious choice of Shakespeare for English, I also think writers like James Joyce and F Scott Fitzgerald would be very difficult to translate. Joyce impossible probably, Fitzgerald,
you could get the words right but not the rhythm. EX: "Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine." "Yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes." "The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit." -Ulysses "The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens--finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon" "In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars" -The Great Gatsby I'd also choose Cormac McCarthy books. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| limey75 Senior Member United Kingdom germanic.eu/ Joined 4398 days ago 119 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Norwegian, Old English | Message 21 of 32 30 November 2012 at 8:06pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That's exactly why I started learning Dano-Norwegian :) I can also understand people wanting to learn Biblical Hebrew or classical Arabic so they can read the holy scriptures of approx. 3 billion people in the original. Likewise I've heard of people learning Sanskrit just so they can read the Hindu holy scriptures and epics. Edited by limey75 on 30 November 2012 at 8:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 22 of 32 30 November 2012 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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For me so far, the only author worth learning a language has been Fernando Ribeiro, a musician whom I highly respect. Before my decision to learn Portuguese for his books, I knew nothing about the language/country and I already was sort of curious about Spanish. But it wasn't hard at all to fall in love with Portugal and Portuguese :-)
And it was such a great feeling to finally read his books!!! If in doubt, don't hesitate to read something as early as you want! If you're dying to read it, you WILL reread it many times anyway, so why not start early? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 23 of 32 01 December 2012 at 1:12am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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There are so many! Off the top of my head ...
Works on Islam and the environment, Arabic. I did my thesis on sacred spaces in the urban environment, and came across two references to an Islamic system of environmental protection. I could not find anything in English beyond that these, but I got a sense that there was a wealth of information out there. 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. In terms of literature, I would learn Persian for Rumi, Russian for Tolstoi, Middle English for Chaucer, and ancient Greek (in process!) for Homer, the Athenians, and the Septuagint. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5225 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 24 of 32 01 December 2012 at 9:58am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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). Edited by mrwarper on 01 December 2012 at 9:59am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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