From a native English speaker's perspective...

>From a native English speaker's perspective, no other foreign language yields a better return for literature than French.

Is this claim disputable? Can German or the classical languages even compete?

Having known french the portuguese was easy for my comfy reading

Anything other than French or German is a bad return on effort concerning books. But there are other reasons for learning languages, like I don't know, living in a foreign country, work opportunities etc.

I'm not denying that. I've learned a bit of Spanish for travel, but I've gotten great returns on French by being able to read the poetry and short stories; I doubt I'll ever be fluent enough to read a whole novel.

Obviously Italian would be best if your specialty was Dante or even Elizabethan theater since many of their sources were originally Italian.

I'm just curious if anyone can counter that claim. I rank French even higher than German because they've got more and better stuff starting in the middle ages continuing on today. But obviously if you prefer philosophy knowing German might be more important.

The language of the true intellectual elite has always been Estonian

Novels are easy reading
Paradoxally Proust is very easy to read in french
Kivirahk detected

En effet.

I guess the "yield a better return" part comes from the fact it is relatively easy to learn for an Englishman, as nearly half of the vocabulary is shared.

French is richer than the classical languages because not many ancient works survived. French is richer than German because its literature started way before the end of the 18th century (also, the French spirit offers more variety, and France was simply three times more populous than Germany until the 19th century).

If anything, I'd argue that France has the weakest literary tradition of all the major European nation. Weakest musical tradition too.

>Proust is very easy to read in french

"Et la charmante femme à la parole vraiment amoureuse des colorations d’une contrée nous parle avec un enthousiasme débordant de cette Normandie qu’ils ont habitée, une Normandie qui serait un immense parc anglais, à la fragrance de ses hautes futaies à la Lawrence, au velours cryptomeria, dans leur bordure porcelainée d’hortensias roses, de ses pelouses naturelles, au chiffonnage de roses soufre dont la retombée sur une porte de paysans, où l’incrustation de deux poiriers enlacés simule une enseigne tout à fait ornementale, fait penser à la libre retombée d’une branche fleurie dans le bronze d’une applique de Gouthière, une Normandie qui serait absolument insoupçonnée des Parisiens en vacances et que protège la barrière de chacun de ses clos, barrières que les Verdurin me confessent ne pas s’être fait faute de lever toutes."

>France has the weakest literary tradition of all the major European nation

wat

How can you even justify this opinion?

>au chiffonnage de roses soufre dont la retombée sur une porte de paysans, où l’incrustation de deux poiriers enlacés simule une enseigne tout à fait ornementale, fait penser à la libre retombée d’une branche fleurie dans le bronze d’une applique de Gouthière
Putain... cent fois oui.

They have a lesser number of genuinely great works than than those of other European nations, and the quality of their greatest works is considerably lower.

Just compare Shakespeare to Moliere, and you'll see what I mean.

>france is better than germany just because they learned to apply themselves in the arts, valued it more and cultivated themselves before the germans did it!!

Africa has a larger population than france, why havent they created anything of value?

An African wrote one of the best novels of the post-war era.

I'm not even trying to fight that claim because it is very subjective (Tartuffe or Dom Juan are more seminal characters than any Shakespeare one).

France has more quantity and variety than the other European nations. Who is the German Voltaire? Who is the English Léon Bloy? Who is the Spanish Rimbaud?

When you take the literature of Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia together I'd say Spanish is a better investment for literature than French or German or Russian

...

What I can agree with, though, is that France can be lacking in utter masterpieces (no great epic poem, while the Italians have a handful of them...), but that is easily counterbalanced with the large quantity of very good and original works that have no equivalent anywhere.

who is the French Cervantes? the Parisian Dickens? the Corsican Nietzsche?

Are you sayig that this nigger has more value than the whole of france?

putain c'est beau

Dubious claim

your mother sucks big fucking nigger dicks, and that ain't dubious

If you say so. I feel nauseous after about 10 pages of reading in a foreign language.

This is a good summary of why I consider French to be the best foreign language for Anglo readers of literature.

>weakest literary tradition
You must be joking, trolling, or just plain dumb.

For Europe, I consider the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Russia to be the major producers of culture (maybe Netherlands, Poland and Greece too, but let's leave them out for the sake of my argument because they're not particularly known for modern literature).

Of them, I would consider Russia by far the worst because all they have are a few 19th century novelists who have achieved fame outside their country, whereas France has a rich, widely-imitated literary tradition going back to the Middle Ages. In fact, most Russian authors had a chip on their shoulder over the achievements of the English and French intelligentsia, hence Dostoevsky's constant polemics against Western rationalism.

Even Ireland has a richer literary tradition than Russia! A small island of less than 10 million people! Yet you dare say France's literature is the worst!

>weakest musical tradition
Again, if you consider the aforementioned nations, France is far from the worst. Obviously Germans and Italians dominate the field, but France has plenty of great composers. It's here that Russians probably give the French a run for their money once you get to the Romantic period, but again, the French have a richer musical tradition going back to the Middle Ages.

As far as pop music goes, maybe I'm biased from learning French, but the only pop music I like outside of the Anglo world is in the classic chanson style of France; I certainly see plenty of comments in languages other than French for their music on youtube. Nonetheless, obviously American and American-derived music is what dominates the charts.

I'm not proud of that, no need to rub it in jerk

>implying Corsica is France
The French Cervantes is Flaubert and the Parisian Dickens is Balzac. Or Maupassant. Or Zola. Or Stendhal. Except ten times better. You'd have to stoop as low as Dumas to get the real french Dickens.

>The French Cervantes is Flaubert and the Parisian Dickens is Balzac.
hahahah nigga what

>Tartuffe or Dom Juan are more seminal characters than any Shakespeare one.
Hamlet is the perhaps the greatest character in the western canon. The only serious competitors are Don Quixote qnd Odysseus.
>Who is the German Voltaire?
Heine or Nietzsche
>Who is the Spanish Rimbaud?
Garcia Lorca maybe.
>the Corsican Nietzsche?
That's a little unfair. France did have a writer that strongly resembled Nietzsche enough, and you know it.
To be honest, I prefer Things Fall Apart to any French novel I've read.

Balzac, Honoré de. Mediocre. Fakes realism with easy platitudes

Maupassant, Guy de. Certainly not a genius.

>I doubt I'll ever be fluent enough to read a whole novel.

Why? If you're already reading poetry and short stories, why wouldn't you be able to read a novel?

It does strike me as dubious that you can understand poetry in French but novels are a challenge since poetry is generally harder to understand in another language.

What are good books/poems/essays to read in French if you are learning?

Spanish is better, there are many under appreciated Spanish writers in Spain and Latin America

French is just France (and French literature declined in the 20th century) Belgium and some Swiss lit

>Lorca is Rimbaud
brb need to puke

>Italian music is superior to russian music

Rachmaninov, Tchaikovski, Chostakovich, Scriabin, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, all the jewish russian interprets (Heifetz Milstein Oistrakh Stern Horowitz Rubinstein Gilels) and fucking Richter; all these alone are worth at least the entirety of Italian music

bait

I'm not baiting, Balzac is worse than D.H. Lawrence, a pretty meh writer

Anyway who wants to seriously read a writer called ballsack

>Latin America

How hard is to learn to read French? Just reading, I don't care about ever speaking or hearing French from another human being.

Not too hard honestly

for all of the literary history of France, they never produced someone who could write short stories as good as Borges

Whether you like Italian music or not, the vast majority of classical music has Italian origins. Personally I don't like opera much, but I prefer baroque and medieval Italian composers to the Russians. I'm not a great fan of music after Beethoven, to be honest, so that leaves out the Russians for me, but I don't downplay how great their composers are. You shouldn't downplay Italians either even if you don't like opera or music before the classical period.

>French literature declined in the 20th century
Proust? Céline? The Surrealists? More Nobel prizes than any other country?

And French literature has always been more than France, since foreigners wrote in French too (from Potocki to Cioran).

Not him, but Maupassant is a much manlier and better writer than Borges and his cutesy children's fables.

Casanova's memoirs (in slightly maccheronic French) are immense too.

hahah fuck off Maupassant isn't half the writer Borges is

actually my favorite composer is by and large Bach. mind sharing some baroque italians? All I know from them is vivaldi and verdi and proto-mozarts and frankly it's shit

>Proust? Céline? The Surrealists? More Nobel prizes than any other country?
pretty sad output for a century

also who cares about the nobel prize, half of them aren't remembered at all today

>Just compare Shakespeare to Moliere, and you'll see what I mean.
You're really comparing apples to oranges here. I know their names are used similarly in metaphors, but their work couldn't be more dissimilar. They're both good at their own things.

Moliere is shit

Haha, I should have know what I was getting into. Well, have a good day user.

French literature is overrated rigmarole

His comedies are better than those of Shakespeare and the tragedies of Racine are better than those of Shakespeare.

>French Cervantes?
For the fatherly influence over the entire literature and the first great novelist: Rabelais. For the modern equivalent of the Quixote: Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

>the Parisian Dickens?
Balzac or Dumas are easy substitutes, but Balzac is actually better. So, go for Dumas.

>the Corsican Nietzsche?
Napoléon Bonaparte is the Übermensch, baka.

Read Racine you pleb. Even Marivaux is better than Molière.

>le ballsack man

>inb4 maximum butthurt from "people" who have never read Athalie in French

That's like comparing Flaubert and Pynchon; both wrote novels, but why would you compare them?

Obviously Shakespeare is superior to Moliere, but they had completely different aims yet succeeded in both their endeavors. The fact that Moliere's plays are still performed all over Europe and America is still pretty impressive despite the fact he obviously doesn't have the same gravitas as Shakespeare. Moliere also followed classical models for his plays unlike Shakespeare who scrapped the rulebook, so not only do they differ in aim, but also in method.

dude let it go, French literature is not as great as you think it is

I could read French adequately after 1 year of university classes, although I went above and beyond what most of my peers did. Most university courses in foreign literature start after 2 years. For French poetry, you definitely could become literate in a year if you really worked at it, but you'll really want to polish up pronunciation and learn their rules for meter. Just as an example, the alexandrine sonnet is the most common style of poem while iambic pentameter is virtually unheard of.

Baroque, right off hand I usually think of Monteverdi. Then for Renaissance, Gesualdo. There are others but I can't name them right off hand.

>headphones are superior to running shoes you pleb
>I disagree yoyos are better
>let it go, poneys are by far the superior animal
>but how do they compare to a banjo

>forgetting Palestrina

Saint-Exupéry? Camus? Apollinaire? Sartre? Debord? Beckett? Genet? Cioran? Malraux? Jarry? Morand? the entire Oulipo? Gide? Aragon? Robbe-Grillet? Gracq? Cocteau? Houellebecq?

>inb4 "literally who lol", if you don't know Sartre, Houellebecq or Saint-Exupéry, it's your problem

I love Palestrina. Thanks for reminding me!

In my opinion, the best things to read for a beginner in French are the classic aphorisms (La Rochefoucauld, Pascal, La Bruyère, Vauvenargues, Chamfort...), as they're very short, accessible, and written in a very pure French.

>inb4 "that African is named Albert Camus"

I actually read a lot of Rochefoucauld and Pascal as a beginner, so good advice! I'll have to check the others.

Voltaire, Mérimée, Flaubert, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Nerval, Morand, Balzac, and even Baudelaire wrote excellent short stories, among many others.

Glad to see the French getting in this thread. I want to see more appreciation for the French on this board over the Russians. Enough Brothers K. and more Madame B.!

I meant Achebe. Should have been more clear.

What about Frescobaldi? Who have been source of influence to Bach even

I did not imply there were no other Italian composers. I just couldn't think of any others offhand to mention to the guy who asked. Frescobaldi is great.

Borges is much more intelligent and lettered, as well as a better poet, but Maupassant wrote better short stories (as short stories).

The Argentine doesn't narrate that well, and he's always retelling the same stories in a different manner:

>here's the entire world summed up in one thing-place-word-symbol lol
>he was me and I was him all along!!!
>now let's talk about funny biblical stuff
>dude... gauchos
>look how I'm juggling with time, MIND = BLOWN

It quickly becomes predictable.

git gud and read Proust

Scarron. But it seems to me you're just looking for modernism.

That's in effect what I think of both writers, hence my preferring Maupassant. Maupassant wasn't an intellectual like Borges, but he was a great craftsman.

Portuguese speaker here. I can't read French for shit.

I feel you, my fellow spic. There are still many good things to be discovered. Couple weeks ago i met this argentinian qt in a second-hand bookstore, she talked about a poetess i've never heard of, though when i mentioned Juan Rulfo she had no idea who he was (it was a 'recommend me something from your country' kind of deal).

If only i wasn't such a fucking autist, i would've gotten her number

>give me your number and I'll introduce you to my patrician friends on Veeky Forums

Best pickup line I know, desu

Yes, we also need more Manon L. desu

the fact is I knew a little spanish at that time
hehe
so you don't need latin to undersand all romanic languages. to be honest, romanian and italian are the worst for me

I am British and think Spanish is a better language for literature

Who did you support in Tordesillas

I'd prefer an another Peterson, pepe or pizza guy thread to this pleb apotheosis.

i'm worried you're right.
learning spanish right now and im thinking maybe i should drop it to learn french instead. nothing good has come out of spain outside of a brief period 400 years ago. it doesnt help either how there is literally no good spanish music or television for motivation either

Jesus fucking Christ, what is with all the hate towards Russian. Just because you don't have enough Brain power to learn it and are forced to stick to simplistic languages similar to your own doesn't mean you have to be such a whinny little bitch.

I wish it sounded pleasing to my ear and that it had a good orthography. I'd rather learn a language with a new alphabet like cryllic so long as the spelling was phonetic, less painful. Plus, are there any fun features that aren't in English such as the option to drop the subject pronoun or the use of cases?

>drop the subject pronoun

Only in Medieval French, which was very convenient for poetry.

>he doesn't know who Borges learned that from

Ethnocentric anglo subhuman detected

So your response to an actual argument is just to warp their position and call them a whinny little bitch all the while calling them stupid. Perhaps you want to actually try to do the smart thing and attempt to argue against his points.

somebody please outright say they think german is better than french so we can get that user who always posts that pasta in here

Not him, but that other user went too far putting Ireland above Russia. You can't answer seriously to that.

German > French.
Cases > No cases.

French has great media beyond books. Personally I loved their music from the 50's to 70's. Obviously the cinema is great too.

I don't hate Russian culture, in fact, Russia has great composers and painters, but their literature is vastly overrated. I'm merely calling out the plebs here who need their taste to be leveled. Nothing says "starter pack to highbrow literature" like Crime & Punishment.

No, Ireland does have much better literature than Russia. Joyce alone is a much better writer than the entirety of Russian literature combined yet Ireland still has great authors who crush Tolstoyevsky and his gang: great authors such as Swift, Wilde, O'Brien, Yeats, Heaney, Sterne, Shaw, C. S. Lewis, etc. and the list goes on...

What's even sadder is that even Scotland has produced better literature than Russia. Russia hasn't produced any philosophers as brilliant as Adam Smith and David Hume (is there such a thing as a Russian philosopher? Lenin? Trotsky? LOL!). Tolstoy had a huge hard-on for Sir Walter Scott. And Robert Burns is an incredible poet, popular everywhere, while Pushkin is read only by nerds. Has any Russian author produced a character in the popular imagination as grand as Arthur Conan Doyle did with Sherlock Holmes?

Only the crudest pleb would think otherwise. You have just no idea how backwards Russia is from a literary standpoint.

Why should anyone compete for the Anglos. The Pakis have already won them.

>French is richer than the classical languages because not many ancient works survived
文盲 detected

You retard, I'm talking about anyone who was born speaking English.

What makes you think he is Chinese?

Effectivement.

I didn't.