Who here have shit-tier first language?

Monolingual pleb here.

>when your parents didn't teach you their mother tongues because they fell for the "multilingualism is a myth" meme

I mean i'm pretty glad that English is my first language, but it kinda sucks because it's so dominant in media and literature that it's difficult to immerse yourself in anything otherwise. Almost every big city in countries that aren't shitholes have locals that know a bit of English.

I feel that my low motivation for rediscovering my heritage language in adulthood is because I know I could've learned it with barely any effort if I was a child, but now i'd have to waste time that could've been spent on other pursuits now.

Somehow I passed high school while taking it up as a secondary language, while learning almost nothing of it. So whenever I try to take it up again the novelty of discovery is absent.

>learning a language is a waste of time

yeah I'm sure your other pursuits are more important, like shitposting here

If I learned another language at a barely passable conversational level i'd end up using it to shitpost on their boards.

So yeah i'd rather just shitpost with what I have.

>tfw french

I learned Russian to a conversational level and now only use it to shitpost on двa.ч. Reading actual literature is so far above the level of being conversational that it isn't even funny.

Norwegian, could've been worse, but I don't think it's pretty at all.

I'm pretty sure it applies to all languages in the shit part of Europe, which is all you're getting out of me.

>fluent in english
sure you are

Hungarian is irrelevant as fuck but it's one of the most beautiful and complex language.

Swedish. I'd say it's rich compared to the number of speakers. Translations I get in english for lesser known works from smaller or very distant countries, well known stuff in more familiar languages usually gets good translations here. I read russian and german books in swedish, japanese books are something I rather read in english. French I know enough to read in the original, thankfully.

I think it's strange that Bjorneboe's trilogy have parts one and three translated to swedish, but not part two. I guess I could read Kruttårnet in norwegian but It'd be a slow damn read.

hung these nuts nigg

Sorry, user. Best to concede right now and learn Romulan.

Anglish is more for vocab development and language expansion. If I heard anyone try to speak anglish I would die of cringe

there are too few of us, and the differences between circassian dialects is so big that we barely can understand each other. the vast majority of circassians can't speak the language at all, let alone read and write.
me personally, around 30% of the words i use are hebrew, another 30% arabic, the rest are circassian with a few turkish words here and there.
i can't count to 20 in circassian even though it is the language i use all the time. most of the circassians my age are even worse.

biblical hebrew is GOAT. almost as powerful as arabic, only if it had the chance to evolve like arabic did - it could be even better.

vales verga men , para que quieres hacer saber esto a todo , o no se si es la traducción, con lof io

>native language is spanish
>my country is shit though

Arguably, Vietnamese

Most of our vocabs are borrowed from Mandarin, French and Russian. The language is hard as shit to learn due to all the fucking accents like à á â ả ã ạ ă. We have okay literature, nothing to be celebrated since most reads and feels like French literature anyway. The only interesting literatures I've found is literature written by deeply Southern authors who weren't influenced by French and Chinese academia/literature. Southern authors write from experience and dialectical tones, which feels infinitely more authentic and truthful. Too much of Vietnamese literature is filled to the brim with pretentiousness, romanticism and war experiences. Every other book it's the same shit over and over again

why is Hebrew bad or weak? some grammatical feature? lack of vocabulary?

every western country has some Christians who study Hebrew and Greek to read the/ir Bible in the original languages.
Their arent millions of consumers, but they can help get Israeli literature translated to their native languages.
Hebrew doesnt seem like a bad language to write in commercially, although English is obviously the best language for making money and being read by a lot of people.

C'est vrai que c'est agréable.

>although English is obviously the best language for making money and being read by a lot of people.

That means the market is very over saturated so you need to have either godly talent or godly marketing.

>tfw Swedish

I'm fine with it, but I really should pick up a third language and also improve my English.

it would probably make more sense to just work on your english unless you want to spend a lot of time on languages

Well, I don't think it's completely weak, actually. Biblical Hebrew is GOAT like someone said here, and also there some great poets that I enjoy. It has its aesthetic value with the niqqud and all that, but overall an old language that was revived somewhat recently doesn't come close to the richness of the English vocabulary. Personally I think in Hebrew most of the time and it's easier for me to express myself using it in writing, especially in shorter stuff, but if I want to attempt making good imagery and delve in descriptions I use English.

>speak english and russian
>cant read russian
>even if I could, probably wouldnt understand nuances and literary vocab
Fuckkkckckckck

Why can't you read Russian if you can speak it?
Surely it would be fairly easy to learn if you already spoke the language

This being in response to this guy

I can understand not getting the literary vocab at least. With Russian at least there's a huge fucking difference between it and normal conversational speech

Bc STEM major with no time to do stuff like that

I read it as a kid, and also spoke and read Georgian along w English actually

Forgot to speak and read Georgian and to read Russian just from disuse I guess

I feel you. I'm a stem major also and didn't get time to study any languages until now (I'm unemployed post college).

There's just no time for it

you can get a surprisingly lot done with just 30 minutes of flashcards a day

>never conveys good stories
>Hebrew
o how I chuckled my dear fellow Man

Shameless bump because I want to discuss Hebrew

idk if Korean even has a considerable literature, literally never gave it a thought.

tfw whitewashed second generation

Qué país?
Oye, el mío también es pobre en literatura, sin embargo, la lengua española es tan rica que el poder leer tantas obras de tantos otros países lo recompensa.

sudaca? I bet it's paraguay

Ecuador.
Paraguay at least has Augusto Roa Bastos, who´s an excellent writer.

Another Israkike here, disagree with you. Hebrew is one of the most patrician languages. I know Russian, English and Arab too, but Hebrew is by far the strongest one in terms of it's construction.
It's one of the only languages in which you can hear a word you never heard before and still understand it's meaning 95% of the time. This is caused by both these things:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Hebrew_verb_conjugation
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_(linguistics)
Which are properties of Hebrew that are strongly developed.
Also if you combine modern Hebrew with old and with biblical Hebrew you get that the language is actually very rich.

И в кaких тpeдaх cидишь, м yeбa? Bыyчaт pyccкий и зacopяют мoи двaчи, вoт пoчeмy oн тaк cкaтилcя нa caмoм дeлe.

i don't know mate, even simple plays from moliere or shorts from chekhov, read much better in english than in hebrew.

I am in the same boat pal. Spanish only has el Quijote

Serbian, all modern literature is either communist propaganda, anti-communist thoughts or crying about Yugoslav wars

I mean there are like 10 writers that are readable and that's it. We are one of rare languages in Europe that doesn't have Bible properly translated with to modern language.

I am happy that at we have all Russian and French classics translated.

Regarding philosophy only 19th century hardcore leftist writers have good translations Classic Greek and German philosophers have awful translation and it isn't wonder philosophy students learn German so they can actually read.

Thank God for Belgrade bookfair in October so i can get English books for cheap.

"read better" is already an opinion. One could also say that Bialik and Tshernihovski are better than English poets.

i want to marry your sisters please
>tfw no circassian gf

the plays of Kim Il-sung have been praised

Safe for the fact that your pathetic langue is degenerating by the day. I hear that the average Parisian speaker renders only two out of the high french's five E sounds. Muhhamad for you mes copains.

save*

Korean is garbage. Korean literature does not exist, their prose is on par with only the worst young adult fiction, and it is instantly apparent when reading Korean translations that the language itself simply lacks the capacity to facilitate great literature.

Half of it is onomatopoeia and the other half is culturally indecipherable. We are just lucky that there are so few humans that speak this garbage language.

English is GARBAGE.
>bloated alphabet with useless letters
>retarded pronunciations
>shit and complicated grammar

How difficult is learning Russian if I only speak English?

>complicated grammar
You are joking, right?

Depends on how stupid you are.

>tfw Hungarian

you don't get to experience some of the most beautiful poetry around

Im sorry

Coming from Slovenia with 2 million inhabitants. We're the only independent nation which has dual next to singular and plural and the language is really rich because of many different dialects (it comes from influences by major neighbourly languages like Serbo-Croatian, Italian, German and even Hungarian). The language is rather difficult to learn, and plebian hipsters here always praise untranslated english literature because
>muh Harry Potter, LOTR and TGOT are so much better in english like omg
while they fail to understand the simplest verses with some regional influence from Slovenian greatest poets.
Prešeren to me was a genius, but he was a little behind his time, because Slovenia was so backwards back then (implying it's not anymore :^) ). But Cankar I think is even translated into english and he had a really good knowledge of politics of his time and tailored his sense of humor accordingly. He was less behind his time, globally speaking. We have some more globally know poets like Šalamun, but there still are some hidden gems.
The only one good thing left about my first language is that it's easier for us to understand other slavic languages.
It's weird how it's hard to get widely known if you're from such a small nation and do something with its language, but at the same time it's kind of unique. Žižek and Laibach made it, but they mainly use english.
Trying to write songs in english is hard, I don't think I can even compare to a native english speaker. It sounds funny if you translate.

>swedish
Pretty ok.
We have some good literature, most important non-english stuff gets translated. I do have trouble finding current editions of 19th philosophical works though.
I really should start reading some norweigan and danish though too improve my language skills, also wish i had the time to learn german.

>We're the only independent nation which has dual next to singular and plural
Because aparently, Arabic and Hebrew dont exist

>we can never become a hipster pleb praised language because its actually too difficult to learn and grasp

Lithuanian.
It's an ancient language and people seem to think that's a good reason for a language to have merit. Well, I don't. There's nothing particularly great written in it. There's barely anything of interest being translated into it. I moved onto English about a decade ago and I don't intend to stop there.

>and it isn't wonder [sic] philosophy students learn German so they can actually read German works
gee, that's awful

>We don't have Bible properly translated
>I am happy with how we've translated the Russian and French classics.
>philosophy-wise only 19th century hardcore leftist writers have good translations
>Classic Greek and German philosophers have awful translation
you seem to be awfully knowledgable about translation from all these languages

>"""communist propaganda"""
kek

>tfw Englishman
>tfw won the lottery of life

Hail, Native Language, that by sinews weak,
Didst move my first-endeavouring tongue to speak,
And madest imperfect words, with childish trips,
Half unpronounced, slide through my infant lips,
Driving dumb Silence from the portal door,
Where he had mutely sat two years before...

Portuguese. I think it's okay, there are many translations of great literature works, and when I don't find one I can always pick an english or spanish one.

i heard that slovenian poetry is god tier, care to post some examples?
youtube.com/watch?v=I_BfuCVqV6c

Portuguese is alright as a language, but our contemporary literature is subpar.
Most of our great authors are from the 19th century, and there are some nice writers from the 20th century too. Many works are translated into it, since Brazil is a big consumer market. The similarity with Spanish also allows me to appreciate their literature with minimal loss in translation, or read the original works.

However, most Brazilian literature nowadays is "muh dictatorship" and "muh oppression". The Portuguese aren't much better off, with "muh colonial wars" and "muh April 25th".

Danish.

A good amount of Greek (and to some extent Latin) works have been translated in the recent years as well as many German 19th century philosophical texts plus a few french ones. Only downside is the limited numbers of 1st edition prints and a general lack of reprints once those are sold out.

Decent national literature, I guess. Being able to read Kierkegaard without needing a translation is pretty nice.

>Literal autism
Because apparently, dual is still relevant in everyday life there.
You're splitting hairs, Mr. Goldstein.

Flattered even though you're probably being ironic.
Here's a poem written by my favorite poet, sung by a choir
youtube.com/watch?v=B9rtbMJ1PL0
Here's one recited by Dane Zajc who is by some considered the best of 20th century Slovenian poetry. It's about death, he paints it with vivid imagery of a black bull in the middle of emptiness and in the end he says something like "the sun is sharpening its butchering axe/ cleaver"
youtube.com/watch?v=SJMUG6JLj7A

How do I pronounce Kierkegaard's name? I couldn't figure it out through the IPA guide on his Wikipedia page.

kirkägård

portugese sounds like tongue breaking rape. I like it more than the soft-sounding spanish tho, because of all the soap operas. What are some good Portugese authors? I only read some Brazilians

I am from Poland. There is barely any translations of pomo american novels. There is no DFW, Pynchon (Gravity Rainbow), or Gaddis in polish, also original version are barely available, or very expensive. Basically everything is translated to polish, so i just assume those authors are irrelevant americunt memes not worth a damn

Keer-kah-gore

Yeah, we have a lot of phonemes. It usually sounds better than Spanish, unless it's European Portuguese.

For Portuguese authors, Eça de Queirós, Camilo Castelo Branco, Alexandre Herculano and Almeida Garrett are the classics. Saramago, Antunes and Pessoa are more contemporary.

hey bud, even though the pronunciation of Danish is notoriously hard, I'm trying to learn the language. do you have any good sources to study Dansk? tak!

Kek there is plenty of pynchon and two DFW books (infinite jest in 2017 btw) ogarnij sie ignorancie

spoken danish is probably the worst language ever.

I genuinely feel bad for all the people who are interested in literature but end up reading mostly in English because their first language is shit. Natively speaking German, French, Spanish or Russian is like hitting the jackpot really.

>Thank God for Belgrade bookfair in October so i can get English books for cheap.
Use Bookdepository instead
>We are one of rare languages in Europe that doesn't have Bible properly translated with to modern language.
But you have the Daničić-Karadžić translation. What is wrong with it?