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Being a good writer in multiple languages | ||
Tags: Language Level Satisfaction | Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4651 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes  Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 9 of 27 20 November 2012 at 9:45am | IP Logged | ||
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There was Joseph Conrad, who wrote excellent novels in English despite being Polish.
And really, you can be a good writer in multiple languages, if you count your mother tongue as one of them... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4639 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 10 of 27 20 November 2012 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||
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There is also Amin Maalouf, Lebanese writer of Arabic mother tongue, who has written most of his books in excellent French.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 11 of 27 20 November 2012 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
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And at a somewhat less lofty aspiration level I would like to mention that my travel club has had polls about the best article of the year in our club magazine, and a Polish lady who came to Denmark as an adult has won at least once.
At an even lower aspiration... OK, let me see that question from another angle. How HARD is it to write something that reflects your personality and your writing style as well as the things you write in your native language (which may be at a rather nondescript level, as noted by Druckfehler). Personally I find that I write in my own style even in languages which I don't know very well - but it may be a hard fight with a mediocre result, and I may have had to make a lot of compromises because I can't express the things I really wanted to write. I remember once during my studies of French that I had written an essay where I had written something about babies not been useful for anything but making howling noises. The teacher had corrected this into something which indicated that babies couldn't do anything but howl, and when I noted that this wasn't the intended meaning she grudgingly conceded that a construction meaning 'babies didn't know how to do anything but howl' theoretically might be feasible. But this was still not the intended meaning, which implied that babies (like bagpipes) only can be used for the production of howling noises. This thought was totally beyond her horizon, but the example illustrates that you can have a clear idea about the intended meaning and style (and world view) without being able to find the right way to express it. On the other hand you may be a fluent writer precisely because you don't have anything special to convey, and you are just producing smooth, inoffensive sentences like a sausage machine churns out sausages. If you can combine the two strategies you are on the right track, and you have to be very careful not to end up as one more promising, but frustrated author. Edited by Iversen on 20 November 2012 at 1:49pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| taqseem Newbie Switzerland Joined 5694 days ago 34 posts - 47 votes Studies: English | Message 12 of 27 24 November 2012 at 10:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Nabokov wrote in English, Russian and French.
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| Olen Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4738 days ago 4 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Portuguese, Latin | Message 13 of 27 24 November 2012 at 11:12am | IP Logged | ||
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Joseph Conrad is my favourite example – English was his third language, and he wrote finer English than most of us. Salman Rushdie is also a polyglot, won the booker prize in 1981 for Midnight's Children, and received a knighthood in Britain in 2007. For his English-language literature.
His first language is Urdu. His second language is Hindi. His third language is English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 14 of 27 24 November 2012 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||
It doesn't make sense to separate Hindu and Urdu in this manner. Their colloquial registers are practically indistinguishable from one another. Based on your information, his first language is Hindi-Urdu and his second is English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 15 of 27 24 November 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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What's more, I think Rushdie's English is pretty much native, yes? It's not like he learned it as an adult. His entire education was in English, as far as I can tell.
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| Veel Tetraglot Newbie Norway Joined 4693 days ago 23 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, Latvian, English, NorwegianC1 Studies: Greek, Estonian | Message 16 of 27 24 November 2012 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Looks like that! :) http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5531/the-art-of-fic tion-no-186-salman-rushdie INTERVIEWER : Bombay has many languages. What is your mother tongue? RUSHDIE: Urdu. Urdu is literally my mother’s tongue. It’s my father’s tongue, too. But in northern India one also spoke Hindi. Actually, what we spoke was neither of them, or rather more like both. I mean, what people in northern India actually speak is not a real language. It’s a colloquial mixture of Hindi and Urdu called Hindustani. It isn’t written. It’s the language of Bollywood movies. And some mixture of Hindustani and English is what we spoke at home. When I went to England for school, when I was thirteen and a half, I would have been more or less exactly bilingual—equally good in both languages. And I’m still very colloquially comfortable in Hindi and Urdu, but I wouldn’t consider writing in them. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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