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Best Languages for Poetry | ||
Tags: Poetry | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| johnm87 Newbie United States Joined 6086 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 29 27 March 2008 at 11:32pm | IP Logged |
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I was hoping to get into some more non-western poetry, but I feel a little bit dirty reading translated poetry. Does anyone have any suggestions for some languages with rich poetic traditions? Particularly, I've become interested in a lot of Indian poetry, but there are so many different languages with such amazing poetry...any opinions on the best of these? Much appreciated.
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| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6148 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes  | Message 2 of 29 28 March 2008 at 12:34am | IP Logged |
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Personally I'd say Chinese and Japanese. Poetry in both languages AFAIK never goes to the length of the epics common in Indo-European though. I believe haiku and the 300 Tang Poems are quite well known in the West.
However, getting to a level where you can appreciate Li Bai can be a bit difficult. The language is Classical Chinese which is quite different from modern Mandarin. If you start learning Classical Chinese however, it'd be definitely easier to progress on to a modern Chinese language later. On top of that, IMO, Classical Chinese is actually more grammatically simple than modern Chinese, the only challenge is learning the characters, many of which are no longer used in the vernacular. Likewise for Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Makrasiroutioun Quadrilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Canada infowars.com Joined 6106 days ago 210 posts - 236 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Armenian*, Romanian*, Latin, German, Italian Studies: Dutch, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 29 28 March 2008 at 1:05am | IP Logged |
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Arabic and Armenian have some truly awesome poetry, in depth, meaning, originality, and every other criterion you can think of.
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| chelovek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6087 days ago 413 posts - 461 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 29 28 March 2008 at 1:40am | IP Logged |
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Yeah, definitely don't read translated poetry. I mean, you can read it :p, but make sure you check out the original version as well.
I generally don't read much poetry, but a good example is the poem from which the quote "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" was taken. The original excerpt is absolutely amazing in English. I read a Russian translation of it, and it just didn't capture the rhythym or the word use at all. I'll go try to find a Russian version of the poem so I can show you what I mean. I'd say in general, all languages can potentially have equally great poetry (I mean, how could we even quantify this anyways?)...it's probably more of a matter of how creative the writers are. Edited by chelovek on 28 March 2008 at 1:52am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 29 28 March 2008 at 1:46am | IP Logged |
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I have read and studied some Japanese poetry (not just haikus) with my tutor, and they really are fascinating. Japanese allows for forms of expression that English does not.
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| monkeyintown Triglot Newbie ThailandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6087 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Thai*, English, Japanese Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 29 28 March 2008 at 1:56am | IP Logged |
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Japanese poems, whilst being quite quirky, failed to appeal to me. there are not much obvious beauty that odinary people could perceive such as rhymes, etc. They are just hard, cold sentences to me. Yes, admittedly Japanese itself is a pretty language, but when it comes to poetry, um... no, they don't work.
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| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6148 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 7 of 29 28 March 2008 at 2:08am | IP Logged |
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Ah, rhymes aren't the only measure of poetic beauty! Meter and the structure of the sentences are beautiful in themselves. In fact, I think rhymes only became popular in Europe with Arab and Persian influence?
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