I want to learn a new language, but have no interest in actually using that language other than to read certain texts in their original language.
Which one should I learn? Latin strikes me as the one which would be most useful, as many important texts were written in Latin.
Second would be Ancient Greek, then French, German and then Italian.
Japanese.
Learn French or Italian, and afther that you can go for the other Romance languages, senpai.
This desu.
Portuguese is my first language and I can read italian/french with a dictionary and spanish without one.
And don't learn latin, that's autistic.
Ancient Greek is patrician. It also makes you able to read Modern Greek without much of a problem.
Why would absolutely anybody want to read Modern Greek you fuck?
Odysseas Elytis is pretty good.
>latin
>ancient greek
Stop getting yourself memed that hard, retard. Learn a living language.
Among those listed, Latin and Italian are arguably the most beautiful, and "Ancient" (by which I suppose you mean Attic) Greek is the hardest. Really though, it depends on which literature you're most interested in. I'm surprised you didn't mention Spanish. It has a larger corpus of great literature than German and Italian, and arguably even French. It is also the easiest language to learn in the world. But if you're big into philosophy rather than creative literature, German would almost certainly be the best choice. Only learn Italian if you're a huge Dante fangirl.
Which non-european languages are actually worth studying? All of them seem to be interesting linguistically, but also belong with retarded cultures that can hardly produce anything interesting, like chinese socialism, or islam, or animes
Russian
Spanish lit is fucking garbage though
Eastern Yurop is still Yurop, baka
Russia is literally in Asia
Italian is the closest language to classic Latin (well, apart from Sardinian... but no one studies it). It's wonderful to learn how the language developed through Latin, Volgare and then Italian. If you apply a bit, you can basically learn three languages in one, going from Virgil and Lucretius to Dante and Petrarch, and from them to Leopardi and Pasolini.
He fell for the meme.
Pali.
Same remark can be made with Latin.
Learn Latin in the first place... and then Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese will come easily. And that's a nice bundle.
From Ariosto to Pasolini, there is more to Italian literature than just Dante.
>Spanish lit is fucking garbage though
Fuck off.
t. not even a Spaniard
>china
>thousands of years of culture
>nothing worthwhile
Italian literature of the twentieth century has a huge heritage of great works, to be fair
Just don't learn Russian. It's my native and it stinks as a pile of shit.
Weird, right? It's almost like the imperial chinese government made conscious effort to keep the population illiterate
How retarded can you be honestly?
Пиздyй-кa ты oбpaтнo нa cocaчик
y вaты бoмбaнyлo, бoяpышникa пpими)
Not sure if retard or top troll?
Well, certainly. But you must recognize that Dante has an even more obscenely outsized influence on Italian literature than Shakespeare, Cervantes, or Goethe. And I'm not sure if there's really enough reason to learn Italian if you're not going to read Dante, which is not something I would say about Shakespeare or Cervantes: learning English or Spanish is still worth the trouble even if for some bizarre reason you have a vendetta against the greatest authors in those languages.
Then again, what do I know? I don't speak Italian. As I said though, on a purely phonetic level Italian is one of the most beautiful.
Choose the one you want to learn
I personally want to learn Japanese, and if i'm succesful i'll move to French
The only one i could want to learn after those is Russian
Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, Leopardi, Machiavelli, Petrarch... all are top tier authors. It would be justified to learn Italian just for them, without Dante.
In the 20th century, Svevo, Pirandello, Pasolini or Calvino are very important.
Also consider you'll be able to access a large chunk of the Renaissance culture + all those old Italian movies + operas of course.
(Plus major resources regarding Roman law, Catholic history, etc.)
You mentioned Shakespeare and Goethe. Well, you clearly don't know anything about Petrarch and Leopardi. Petrarch is the greatest sonnet writer ever imo, and Leopardi is arguably one of the most prominent figures of Romanticism and 19th century's literature in general. Both make Italian worth learning even if you cleanly skip Dante
I know Latin, Chinese, and German and I'm learning Italian now.
I am similar to OP in that I am usually attracted to languages based on what I can read in the language once I have come to a proficient level.
Latin stuff is important to me mostly because I am a Roman Catholic. There are some cool things to read from ancient Rome (Tacitus, Horace, Seneca, Virgil), but I am much more interested in medieval stuff (Scholastic philosophy, Hildegard von Bingen etc.). I personally think ancient Greek stuff is way cooler, but I don't know any Greek yet. Obviously I would like to read the Bible, but also the Church Fathers. I think anyone that picks up Latin or Greek is kind of destined to learn the other, because most likely your interests overlap into literature written in both languages. Another cool ancient language to learn would be Syriac.
I started learning Chinese because I wanted to learn a non-Indo European language. Speaking it is very interesting, but I am also a hobbyist China watcher, and it helps being able to read Chinese news to do that. Modern Chinese history especially since Deng Xiaoping is an interest of mine. I don't know any ancient Chinese but I have heard it's quite rewarding for someone who studies modern mandarin.
I actually only am learning German in case I need to read some academic article that happens to be in German. I guess it would be cool to read Goethe or Kafka idk.
I'm learning Italian because my family is Italian and I feel like I owe it to my ancestors. Dante might be cool to read too.
I often fantasize about the languages that might be worthwhile for me to learn. Really, it comes down to your own ambitions and interest.
I would love to learn Shanghaiese or Levantine Arabic. I think those languages sound wonderful.
I really don't care for French, but alot of things I like are in French sadly (Lacan and Pascal in particular).
Yep. I'm reading Leopardi's Zibaldone right now. The thing is so massive I have no words, honestly.
You're learning too many languages at once! I'd go from easiest to hardest, but one by one. Italian, then French (because it's easy to acquire when you already "own" Latin and Italian), then German or Greek, then Chinese.
I feel the same about french. It comes off easy, but phonetically it is hideous. German, on the other hand, is a pain to learn, but i like how it sounds
I read Latin and Chinese in my free time, so I haven't done much formal studying of them lately.
However, I am trying to learn Italian and German at the same time which does kind of screw with me. I sometimes hallucinate Italian having a genitive case when I see a plural Italian noun. Actually I feel like the hardest parts of Italian and German combine to make Latin.
I agree. Shame on people who say German sounds violent or whatever.
Lovely to hear you're engaged with the Zibaldone. I have an old edition of it and use to read some random passage every evening :)
I live in the US, specifically the South. It's hard not to just learn Spanish because I'm surrounded and grew up with hispanic people, but I don't particularly care for the culture or becoming fluent in it, or even visiting South America.
My top choices are German, Russian,or Chinese. Is there a one out of these that will open more doors than the others? Like in reading literature, visiting abroad, that sort of thing.
>I want to learn a new language, but have no interest in actually using that language other than to read certain texts in their original language.
Ok that's pretty retarded but whatever
>Which one should I learn?
IDK nigger if you're only learning a language to read "certain texts" how about you choose in function of what YOU want to read?
>IDK
bad smiley dude
Where does one acquire a redhead qt like that?