Greetings intlellectuals

Which country has the best literature? If you wanted to learn a foreign language or two, in order to consume the best possible literature in addition to your already existing mental library (I assume English), which would you chose. Please answer

Glorious Nippon!

French, latin or russian

French sounds like ass, though

Italian and Russian

Why is this a question?

Pyccкий язык

Chinese literature and poetry has a rich history, though the language has evolved so much you'd have to study quite a bit to get all of it.

Japanese as well. I've actually studied translations from a few Japanese philosophers. Very fascinating stuff.

El español es el idioma que produce la mejor literatura, gracias a sus sutilezas estructurales y a las singularidades que puede introducir cada país en él.

Because I already read and speak English, Polish and Italian, and want to learn another language.

French, Spanish or Russian come to mind because of the similarity to the languages I already speak, so it'd be way easier than Norwegian or Chinese for example.

Curious how other bookworms see it

spanish or portuguese

Poetry: French
Philosophy: German
Prose: Doesn't matter
Is anyone up fir a lit-like board in Latin? Let's revive this beauty

Japanese poetry is better

France
/thread

Deported from lit.

Russian.

>Chinese literature

is that even a thing? the only famous Chinese lit i know of is Journey to the West. I'm sure, of course, that people wrote books in ancient china but unsure if it is worth reading any of them

Most of their books are really long character dramas.
Or power struggles.
Worth reading in my opinion.

By language
>Prose
1) French
2) English
3) Spanish
4) German
5) Italian
6) Portuguese
7) Russian
Poetry
1) English
2) Italian
3) Spanish
4) German
5) French
6) Portuguese
In quantitative terms:
1) English
2) Spanish
3) French
4) Italian
5) German
6) Portuguese
7) Russian

oh for fuck sake

this, it's only like ching chong ping pong etc.. same stuff all over

The French haven't produced a single good book in their history.

>is that even a thing?
Yes. Their stuff is repetitive stylistically but very, very well executed.

...

There was nothing funny abou that

pleb

Journey to the West is one of the so-called four great Chinese novels. The others are The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, and Dream of the Red Chamber. They're far from the only ones though, and there's also one of the most extensive poetic traditions of any language.

Spanish.
Two centuries of golden literature in prose poetry and theatre.
Those who answered french are cucked beyond saving
Those who answered german sre trying too hard
Those who answered russian could have a point about prose but its heavily influenced by taste
those who answered anything else are plebs

Cultural revolution destroyed literature in china. The classical works require learning old chinese, which is quite different from mandarin

>portuguese higher than russian in prose
kek
kek
kek

Chinese, hands down.

I'd say Persian is better than French or Japanese

French without a doubt.

Latin and Japanese

They are not written in modern chinese. Nothing worth reading is written in modern chinese. All the classics you know use some older form of the language.

Germany, Russia, Britain

French is the only right answer.

Mo Yan is pretty great desu

УУУ CУКA pyccкиe в тpeдe

If you are not sure about how long you're going to have motivation and spare time to study, then go with French, Spanish or Portuguese, as they will be the easiest and you will be able to start reading real literature really fast - hell, you can probably already understand some French and a lot of Spanish and Portuguese just by knowing Italian. You will likely be reading real books in a few months.

Next would be German. A lot of great stuff to read in it, and the effort is only a bit higher. Since you already know English and Italian, you may even get a lot of German without studying any grammar (not that I recommend it, but the structures are really similar). Expect maybe one year of study before you are reading real literature.

I have no idea about how much Polish would help you in learning Russian, but I can't imagine Russian would be easier/faster than any of the already mentioned languages.

And just forget about Japanese, unless you enjoy the challenge. I know people who have a degree in it and still can't read japanese books. On average, you need 4 years of study just to be able to read newspapers.

I'm going to university to study French and Russian. Did I choose well?

>the structures are really similar
No.

I learned German when I already knew English and Italian, and it was pretty intuitive for me.

For example, the way you build composite tenses is basically the same (of both English and Italian) and the rules for the choice of the auxiliary verb to use are very similar to Italian.

The choice of case for declination is also pretty straightforward (compare this to Russian or Polish, where the use of cases seems almost random)

The subjective use of modal verbs is, for a lot of cases, basically the same.

These are just a few points off the top of my head.