What is the most crucial language to learn to read books authentically? German?
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What is the most crucial language to learn to read books authentically? German?
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What is the most crucial language to learn to read books authentically? German?
CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
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CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
Comments are closed.
English, you frogposting tard of an OP
I am already a master of english
You're mid at best.
Yes, it's German, at least until Indo-European geniuses use AI to semi-automate translating major libraries into Sanskrit.
What is your evidence for my facility, one way or the other, in the Queen's tongue?
>the Queen's tongue
If you're a native English speaker I'd suggest French
There is a world of literature awaiting you in French and it is among the easiest languages to learn to read
I have no interest in philosophy and so German did not seem like the obvious choice for me but maybe it is for you
1- Greek
2- Latin
3- Russian
4- French
You learn German if you want to make business with German companies. Other than Goethe, what is there to even read in German? Bad philosophy? Engineering books?
>Bad philosophy
Hot take. I was thinking of learning it for Hegel Heidegger and Wittgenstein.
Based on my research, German philosophical writings are a lot more difficult to read in German than the English translations would lead you to believe
German companies mostly trade in english and chinese. Don't learn german unless you plan on living in Germany.
German literature is frequently overlooked and nowhere near as popular as French or Russian but German philosophy is second only to the Greeks.
Philosophical thinkig has been perfected in German, and I don't mean shitty German philosophy. It's the best language suitable for philosophical thinking aside from Sanskrit.
1- Greek
You can't perfect thinking in it without severely modifying what remains we have of it.
2- Latin
Another good choice but comparitively limp
3- Russian
This is basically slurry swamp German
4- French
Lol
what's your background with greek?
moronic wehraboo, a hint of Sanskrit in the most obscure of eastern texts is worth more than your entire language
Also the Greeks had it all figured out when your people where living on mudhuts without written history
Your post actually makes a decent argument for literacy as a symptom cultural degeneration
>moronic wehraboo, a hint of Sanskrit in the most obscure of eastern texts is worth more than your entire language
Are you moronic? You seem like a chronically butthurt poo, but I pointed out Sanskrit is superior earlier.
well kafka for starters. imo the greatest of them all
>Other than Goethe, what is there to even read in German?
Way to out yourself as an educationlet. Lessing, Schiller, Kant, Novalis, Holderlin, Schopenhauer, Heine, Hoffmann, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schlegel brothers, Grimm brothers, Jean Paul, Kleist, Wagner, Nietzsche, Rilke and so many more. Also translations of any Scandinavian writer into German are superior to those into English.
Not to mention it's the language of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.
A bunch of literally whos
>Bad philosophy
Was already mentioned
Schopenhauer was a great prose stylist, Fichte wrote lectures on German nationalists that have had an intellectual life entirely separate to his philosophy, Hegel's analysis of history has also had its own influence and Schelling, well, his mysticism influenced writers. They cannot be boiled down to 'durr philosophy silly'. But of course the only reason you call it bad is because you're too dumb to understand it.
Also philosophers are a minority on that list.
>Way to out yourself as an educationlet. Lessing, Schiller, Kant, Novalis, Holderlin, Schopenhauer, Heine, Hoffmann, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schlegel brothers, Grimm brothers, Jean Paul, Kleist, Wagner, Nietzsche, Rilke and so many more. Also translations of any Scandinavian writer into German are superior to those into English.
Wrong, most of these authors are pseudcore wank. Also, you haven't read them, pseud.
The culture's stock in German culture has been tanking, because it becomes immensely clear how deficient German culture is upon scrutiny.
The best in your list are Kant, who fails to bottle metaphysical claims with sophistry that gets tangled with itself, and Hegel, whose system allows anything to be true, and who Schopenhauer and Goethe correctly identified as a charlatan pseud. Goethe himself was a brainlet at philosophy who was too simpleminded to understand the best of Kant, and avoidably, wasted a whole third of his life doing bad science following his own amateurish principles.
Germans are mid in the order of cultures.
>Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven
Music was their language, dipshit. How many of their lyrics are as important as their pure compositions? That's especially true for a schizo half assed aesthetic philosopher like Wagner.
That you get stuck sucking German's dick shows you haven't read Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Goethe, who correctly rebuke the state of the German language.
Basically yes.
You're mentally ill, or 14 years old. Not only do you outright devalue the entirety (without specification 'most of' has to mean all) of German literature without having read it, while accusing me of not having read them, you actually believe you can sum up and refute two different philosophies, in their entirety, in one sentence. It's laughably narcissistic. And I'll point something out, of the many things you overlook: Hegel's philosophy, apparently, preventing anything from being true, does not negate the truthfulness of his historical observations, many of which have become commonplace. It's not surprising you choose NOT to mention whatever those good qualities are in German literature, or in Kant, which elevates him to the status of best German writer in your view; since that would qualify your negative statements and would require some actual knowledge of German literature.
I don't know why you have this obsession, bordering on psychosis, with denigrating German culture, but there has to be some personal cause behind it.
>Music was their language
Yet they are a product of German culture. Or do you think language isn't something essential for understanding a culture?
>Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Goethe, who correctly rebuke the state of the German language
While all claiming themselves, at least in Goethe and Nietzsche's case, to have enormously advanced it. And Schopenhauer, as is well known, thought Germans had produced literature to equal any other nation Western nation. What drives someone to bring up such specific quotes (since we both know the exact statements they are), and misconstrue them in such a way as to be the basis of an argument completely foreign to them, and which they were not making? And you add a further argument, that reading Goethe or Nietzsche means that you will believe German culture is an inferior and underdeveloped culture, and if you don't believe that then you must never have read them. Now, ignoring the obvious lunacy of assuming someone couldn't have read anything, or even a lot, from these authors without having come across those quotes (further proof of the obsessive nature of this poster's mind), it is absolutely untrue that Nietzsche or Goethe thought Germany's cultural products were 'inferior' to those of any other nations. It is easy to be misled by Nietzsche in this regard, but anyone who actually understands him will see his high estimation of German literature.
This only confirms my suspicion, that your motivation is entirely personal. For a normal individual, they read these quotes and they understand what they're saying about the historical evolution of the German language, but you, you amalgamate and misconstrue them into a larger attack of German culture, motivated by whatever weird motivation you have.
>you actually believe you can sum up and refute two different philosophies, in their entirety, in one sentence.
I can tell you don't spend much time thinking. I could do this in detail by deleting the periods and replacing them with ;s and ,s.
>Goethe thought Germany's cultural products were 'inferior' to those of any other nations.
Goethe literally said this, and his literary career was based on it. That you don't realize this shows me you haven't read him. If you don't believe me and want me to quote him, prepare to be humiliated and watch your naive wall of text crumble down, in its entirety, from one quote.
Anon he was joking. He doesn't even take himself seriously. How could he? He failed to learn those languages he had lined up.
No response from the German defender.
I accept your concession.
There you have it folks, the pinnacle of German defenders on lit. Perfectly exemplifies the German character: Builds bloated edifices on the shaky foundation of ideas he barely understands, and so trapped, surrounded his pseud efforts, that he considers any semblance of clear pinpoint thought to be narcissistic.
You responded to none of my criticisms by the way. You only insisted on your misinterpretation of Goethe's views. You did not respond to the many other things said by Goethe and Nietzsche, including their own development of German culture, or their respect for Germany's artistic achievements. You didn't explain what good you thought there was in German art, either, since that would clearly have shows the insanity of your beliefs.
>I can tell you don't spend much time thinking.
Obviously more than yourself, since I know you can't sum up a philosopher's worth, an idea which only teenagers or morons get when they read to many pop-phil introductions to philosophers.
>his literary career was based on it.
This is a vital misunderstanding. Goethe's (and Schiller's) constant search for form, is not about the worth of the art itself, but the desire to have a new and complete artwork that answers to the inherent worth in Germany's artistic history. Otherwise Mozart's melodies must be worthless because Beethoven was not satisfied with the forms in which they were written in. What Goethe was confronted with was the total lack of Germany's own artistic culture, resulting from the wars of the Reformation. So Goethe went back to the native Hans Sachs in this process, creating high art out of popular art. And as for the possible lack of development in the language itself, that did not stop Goethe, at the end of his life, from putting the Nibelungenlied next to Homer. But from the middle of the 18th century until the end of the 19th, from Lessing to Stefan George, Germany more than made up for its centuries of cultural disenfranchisement. Lessing, obviously no rival to Lope de Vega or Schiller, but a great playwright and in no way someone who could be called 'pseudwank' The latter case stands for most of Germany's writers, which you somehow wish to denigrate below their level.
Agree on German. Finds the roots of your own Germanic language, covered over with French. And Germany is famous for obsessing over the 'essence' of things in their culture and art.
Test.
French and Latin, just like Humbert Humbert said
You can’t read books authentically unless you are completely 100% aware of the author’s intentions, which are closed off by historical and psychological considerations.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Friedrich Schiller
Gotthold Lessing
Freidrich Hölderlin
Heinrich von Kleist
Friedrich von Hardenburg
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Eduard Mörike
Theodor Storm
Gottfried Keller
E. T. A. Hoffmann
Jeremias Gotthelf
Adalbert Stifter
Friedrich Schlegel
Georg Büchner
Heinrich Heine
Richard Wagner
Friedrich Nietzsche
Theodor Fontane
Stefan George
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Rainer Maria Rilke
Hermann Broch
Georg Trakl
Gottfried Benn
Franz Kafka
Bertolt Brecht
Arthur Schnitzler
Frank Wedekind
Karl Krauss
Günter Eich
Thomas Mann
Alfred Döblin
Hermann Hesse
Robert Musil
Joseph Roth
Paul Celan
Thomas Bernhard
Heinrich Böll
Ingeborg Bachmann
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Walter Benjamin
Robert Walser
Christa Wolf
Peter Handke
Max Frisch
Günter Grass
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Johannes Bobrowski
Who is missing? Who shouldn't be here?
you will never perceive it the way native speakers do, there won't be anything authentic about it
and your brain won't do a better job for you than a professional translator could, so just go with a good translation
this is a gay made up meme that morons on here repeat constantly. if any impressionable youngster is reading this do not let this guy fool you he is lying and tricking you
what amazing about this kind of meme is that almost no one takes it seriously and the ones that do eventually realize their gullibility, yet the meme led them on their path to becoming autistic ubermen.
>your brain won't do a better job for you than a professional translator could
You are such an intractable moron. Do you not understand the difference between reading in two different languages? And you would have to be literally moronic, or have no experience learning another language, to think you're constantly 'translating' words in your head when speaking a foreign language. Van Gogh grew up speaking Dutch but later became more used to French because he spoke nothing but it. You can, relatively speaking, easily become 'native' in a foreign language if you speak nothing but it for years. And without become native level, you will still understand a foreign language naturally and will not have to compare the meaning of words to your native language.
> German
Only if you want to get into depressed materialistic sophism
Learn Latin and Greek, G*rman is a waste of time unless you actually like it
French probably
France and the French-speaking world have been in the top 3 in every field of culture since the Middle Ages. There are also many myths and distortions about France in Anglo-Saxon culture. The French also approach history more objectively and rationally, while researchers and English historians seem to be some kind of propagandists or advertisers compared to them. Additionally, many translations into French are at least good as I heard
German maybe for Hegel, Stirner, Kant and more professional literature. German poetry in the original is apparently very good, but this is said about the poetry of every country.
Italian seems cool too. They have some nice novels, it's the language of opera, it sounds nice. But I value Italian culture primarily for its visual arts
Spanish is recommended here, but apart from Cervantes, I can't think of any authors. Maybe it's my ignorance
>dead languages
They seem cool, but they are not used for communication and is there really anything that loses a lot in translation into the above-mentioned languages?
Are you seriously saying a romance language has better translations from German than the most popular language in the world.
No, I don't. Literature from all over the world, not only from Germany and Austria, is translated into French
Why not just read the English?
Because OP asked what language to learn. And some translations in English are terrible, e.g. German philosophy or Russian literature, and this is because historically England and the USA have little in common with the cultures east of the Danube River, so they won't have the same grasp on these cultures as they do even on exotic Japan or India. It is not a matter of language group but of cultural context. France has been an example for the world practically continuously since the Middle Ages, and the English language and English culture cease to be a peripheral culture only around the 19th century. Besides, the Anglo-Saxons talk such nonsense about, for example, Napoleon, that they don't even understand the neighboring countries very well. Finally, English is a strange creole language that sometimes lacks the tools to encapsulate concepts and abstractions in the language, so it constantly invents new buzzwords or evolves in strange directions and he has to fix it very quickly, like freaking you and you all, or no diminutives. It is a necessary language in the modern world, but that does not mean that you should limit yourself to it
>Maybe it's my ignorance
its definitely your ignorance but you have a point about the good of the french path of knowledge.
Honestly I'm wondering whether I would be better off learning Italian instead of German
They seem to be about even (personally I think Italian has more) when it comes to literature and Italian is much quicker to learn
But then German is a germanic language so that's interesting
It’s French for prose, Italian for poetry, and Spanish if you want to travel.