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Best Languages for Poetry | ||
Tags: Poetry | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| tjw Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6139 days ago 53 posts - 55 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Persian | Message 9 of 29 28 March 2008 at 8:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Any language will struggle to outweigh the English poetic tradition, however, Classical Persian poetry contains much beauty. Poetry plays a very important role in everyday Iranian life, much more so than it does in England. Some of the more famous poets are Sa'da, Hafiz, Rumi and Omar Khayyam.
Medieval Hebrew poetry is stunning. Shmuel HaNagid and Solomon Ibn Gabirol are worth checking out. Arabic poetry has a massive cannon. Three of my favourites are Imru' al-Qais, al-Nabighah al-Dhubyani and Tarafah ibn al 'Abd. There are also long literary traditions in Polish and Russian. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6821 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 10 of 29 28 March 2008 at 10:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Ottoman Turkish, very appealing I think :)
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| Cisa Super Polyglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6419 days ago 312 posts - 309 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Hungarian*, Slovak, FrenchC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin, SpanishB2, RussianB2, GermanB2, Korean, Czech, Latin Studies: Italian, Cantonese, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Hindi, Mongolian, Tibetan, Kazakh, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew | Message 11 of 29 28 March 2008 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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*Oooh.. really, I don´t say it just because it´s my native lang!*
In Hungarian rhytm-based versing can be observed very well. I´ve also seen somebody on Youtube quoting Homer in Greek, that was also really cool. I haven´t heard any Chinese or Japanese poems. Does anybody know a YOutube video etc. where I could listen to some?? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| urubu Pentaglot Groupie Germany Joined 6606 days ago 49 posts - 72 votes Speaks: German*, Dutch, Portuguese, Indonesian, English | Message 12 of 29 28 March 2008 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||
There are a few classical Chinese ones in the multilingual poetry collections on Librivox. For example: Librivox link Michael 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6109 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 13 of 29 28 March 2008 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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[QUOTE=tjw] Any language will struggle to outweigh the English poetic tradition/QUOTE]
Just curious, what do you mean by this? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tjw Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6139 days ago 53 posts - 55 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French, Persian | Message 14 of 29 29 March 2008 at 9:46am | IP Logged | ||
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I am trying to get across that the sheer wealth of poetry in English cannot help but outweigh that of other cultures. I suppose I mean in the 20th century more than anything. Of course, there are hnudreds of brilliant contemporary writers writing in languages other than English, but the amount of innovation and experimentation in the English (american mainly) tradition cannot be outweighed.
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| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6109 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 15 of 29 29 March 2008 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||
Thank you for answering. I wonder if this view is widespread. I'm not going to comment further, because I'm really ignorant of 20th Century poetry, especially in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6665 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 16 of 29 29 March 2008 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Personally, I have always found modern German poetry very innovative and much of it doesn't have real equivalents in the English language (e.g. Ernst Jandl or Eugen Gomringer). Poetry is rarely read in translation and poets who are famous in their own country are often completely unknown elsewhere (e.g. Mandelstam or Apollinaire). How much do you know about poetry in other languages than English? I seriously doubt that it's enough to justify your claims. I don't want to be impolite, but your statement reeks of linguistic chauvinism. By the way, there's a wikipedia article on experimental poetry in German but not in English... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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