I know this isn't the standard thread in /his/, but I recently started studying philosophy and have the opportunity to study a language on the side. Which would be useful for philosophy? I hear German is neat because you can read many western philosophers in their native tongue, but I also have thought chinese would be cool to be able to read all the ancient chinese things (i.e. Art of War) untranslated. What does /his/ think?
Greek and German are only languages you need to read philosophy, fuck everyone else
Chinese is overly complicated, plus German isn't that hard if you already know English. You might want to take a look at French and Italian too.
Could also learn Latin since it's easy and there's some cool stuff in it but it's, well, a dead tongue.
>>1265448
Is there an argument against Chinese other than it's hard? Learning languages is pretty easy for me.
>>1265479
Not really, it's very useful and you'll find no shortage of people who speak it.
>>1265440
Latin, Arabic and Persian are useful, too
>>1265500
Arabic at my uni is online and garbage at best. Can I do without? Also is Persian still alive? What uses does it have?
>>1265507
Yes, it's the national language of Iran and it's called Farsi.
>>1265507
Arabic and Persian are useful for Islamic philosophy and the Grecoroman translated texts
>>1265500
Persian is more for poems than philosophy
>>1265479
>learning languages is easy for me
>can't even decide what language to learn
Dude, you are obviously a retard. Just for reference, read this and give up on Chinese
http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
English.
>>1265602
>Not having preferences makes you stupid.
Wow, neat.
>>1265432
>but I also have thought chinese would be cool to be able to read all the ancient chinese things (i.e. Art of War) untranslated.
You'd have to learn classical chinese which is very cryptic and difficult.
>>1265479
>>1265432
How about Academese? You know some philosophy is such verbose it is a whole 'nother language itself, mate.
