Monoglot here; what's the best second language for literature, and how would I go about learning it to a decent level?
French. Take classes, learn grammar, use Anki and read.
Latin
>>7411277
What language do you already know?
>>7414265
he's writing in english i think
German
>>7411277
that picture is insane. Whoever painted that must have been on something heavy
>>7414327
>How would I best learn it for reading? Buy a grammar book, dictionary, do duolingo, and read basic German books, and watch basic telly?
yeah do all those things.
I learned french and spanish really easily, I am working on russian now and the progress has been slow but rewarding. After this I will probably work on german. Also it helps if you find a buddy who speaks the language to help you with some things. Maybe head over to /int/ and ask if any germans want to skype you and help you learn or join an existing group.
>>7414332
Gustave Moreau my man
>>7414332
Cheers my man
Why is it called polyglot and not polylingual?
>>7414775
polylingual is the adjective, although multilingual is more common i think. polyglot is the noun.
>>7414775
Glotta is Greek for tongue
>>7414806
Ah I should have figured.
>>7411277
Probably English
Since you speak only English, all languages will be somewhat difficult, so just go with Latin.
Other than that, you can learn French.
After you learn one of those, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese will be moderately easy to learn.
I'm a Portuguese speaker and, even though the only language I have actually studied is English, I can read Spanish with fluency, Italian with moderate easiness, and even some French. It would probably take me less than a year of serious study to be able to read Dante and Flaubert in the original without dictionary.
>>7414852
Cheers but I'm probably gonna go with Deutsch. I remember bits of it and it's quite a similar (aside from verbs and word-genders etc) language to English as they're both germanic.
>>7414852
you're learning modern italian to read La Divina Commedia written in volgare in the XIV century?
well i have some bad news amico
>>7414265
>>7414869
He's learning latin, you illiterate.
>>7414873
studying latin to read Dante, known for writing in volgare and not in latin like most of his coevals?
thats fucked up
OP here, I won't be studying German for a while due to other commitments, but I'd still like to know: are there any worthwhile poets in the German language?
>>7414869
My friend, I have never even studied Italian and yet I can understand about 30-50% of what Dante says. It's different from modern Italian but it's not like you won't be able to understand it if you know only the modern language.
>>7414873
I'm not. I suggested OP should learn it. I studied a bit of Latin when I was 14 and haven't touched the textbook ever since. I'm a lazy cunt.
>>7414902
Worth it just for Goethe
>>7414909
it probably has to do with the fact that italian and portuguese are pretty much the same thing. i mean i saw a clip the other day of a bunch of cokeheads in brazil and they all sounded like drunk italians to me (ps im italian)
>>7414327
Get a kindle, seriously. You touch any new word, bam, dictionary popup. And it saves it automatically to a flashcard.
>>7414852
I heard the best romance language to start with (if you are planning on catching them all) is Catalan :^)
>>7414852
Is it worth learning Portuguese for literature?
I already know Spanish and can read French intermediately so Portuguese would be easy but I have never heard of anything noteworthy from you people.
On the other hand, I have noticed some boss Brazilians in the academics.
>>7414902
Rilke, Goethe...
Kafka wasn't a poet but he's considered difficult to impossible to translate because of his Flaubertian lexical precision & inimitatable structural talents
>>7415184
>I already know Spanish and can read French intermediately so Portuguese would be easy
Trust me, not that easy.
>Is it worth learning Portuguese for literature?
Absolutely, there are so many great Brazilian poets... anyone would be impressed.
Also in prose, of course. But unless you know or want know *more* about the historical and social context of the time, I wouldn't say it's worth learning Portuguese so, not aiming the prose. Portuguese is really complicated, especially when you are talking about 19th-century literature. Machado de Assis is hard to face even in graduation, it is practically impossible do a truly read without consult a dictionary or catch all at a first reading.
Anyway, totally worth it for the poetry. For the prose... you'll be good with a translation.
Btw, I'd say the same about German. Goethe will reward you.
>>7415408
Well in terms of Europe, I wanted to branch to Italian and German for literature and make French speakable and understandable audibly to myself.
I'll decide about Portuguese when and if I learn Italian and German but with all of these other languages I see at least one figure to look forward to reading but not with Portuguese.
I am into history so I don't mind learning it to read Portuguese in depth. But it doesn't seem as exciting or rewarding as other languages would be.
The main appeal is the ease. How is compared to learning French and compared structurally to Spanish? Spanish was native as was English.
greek obviously
