Infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso

>tfw you want to learn Italian just for Dante
>tfw you're currently learning German just for Wagner
being a patrician is hard fucking work

germany will collapse within 18 months

skip wagner and learn italiano

I learned German just for die Kritik der reinen Vernunft, but then discovered sp,e great literature and poetry.

Sanskrit for some obscure tantra text I even forgot the name of, and ended up discovering that classic India had the best theater.

The season is different,
We are far from -- from --

This one is p great

If anything, it's the other way around. Italian needs more syllabes to say the same things as English and other languages.

Tieni una traduzione della Divina Commedia a portata di mano.

Trova un'edizione commentata (ne esistono tante in italiano, e le puoi scaricare da internet). I commenti sono indispensabili per capire a cosa si riferisce Dante, e anche per tradurre in italiano moderno qualche frase difficile.

It's good but this line from Lycidas is better:

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?

I'm fluent in Spanish and spent some years studying French and Portuguese in school. I've continued to improve and refine my skills in both in both languages so that I can read them with fluency. Consequently, when I read a classic work originally in Italian, I read it in either a Spanish or French translation. Should I just go ahead and learn Italian? I know I should, but is the payoff gonna be worth the years of work until I can reach the same proficiency I have with the other languages I know?

Pick up a version that's full of commentary, you'll need it due to dialect differences.
It's called "Not being either fucking french or fucking english or fucking german and actually pronouncing all the letters in words because you're not retarded";

Because English doesn't have shit line O' MORNIN' ?

If you start with Latin and observe Italian, Italian doesn't look incomplete; If anything, it looks line a richer version of Latin. Be glad you don't have macrona over every other syllable. English is a half-assed form of Latin and Italian.

What resources are you using to learn German?

Italian shouldn't take years of work if you already know Spanish and French.

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

Similarly going to learn french just for Proust and Baudelaire

but thats not the opening line of the iliad

Genesis 1:1-5 desu

user, portuguese is more similar to italian than french.
Portuguese and spanish are so similar going from one to the other doesn't actually count as learning a language, it's more like learning how to fake an accent.

like*
macrons* phonepost

no lol it's an average pun that appeals to pseuds like you

GUESS WHERE MILTON GOT THE LINE FROM YOU FUCKING IDIOT?

I want to learn a second language properly but I'm torn between German, French and Italian. it's a difficult choice as they all offer great things

Learn them all, pleb

List of must-know literary languages:
English
German
French
Spanish
Italian
Ancient Greek
Latin

English looks like a bunch of disjointed consonants and rough sounds with a lot of flecks of spit. Italians pronounce every word exactly as it is written, with clear syllabes and liquid sounds. And what's best is that they don't spit on your face.

Not really. It's the conclusion of the best canto of Divine Comedy and it's powerfully evocative. Like... you literally see the scene and it's so great, so perfect. Lord's will occurring on man and nature. Wow.

in all seriousness how long would it take to be able to read classics in all of these languages..? 10-20 years? would you study one language at a time?

why is that a good line?

longer than that I'd say, a commitment like that is a lifelong affair. you can only learn so much in a day and given the timeframe you'll have real life things to do, keeping you from studying. reading (real) lit in another language, and being able to actually appreciate it, is one of the most difficult things to do in terms of language learning imo. next time you read some lit in your native tongue think about how many different words are used, the connotations of the words, wordplay, rhythm, allusions, and all the rest that's going on and think about trying to read something as complex in a totally different language. certainly one or two languages wouldn't be too bad but to do all the ones on that list would take incredible dedication (yes even though three are romance languages plus latin)

>One in the pink; two in the stink
Could there be a more definitive, a more boundless, a more perfect line in the poetry of all time?

>line
Savages.

>German
>French
>not Russian
>not Irish
>not Sanskrit

Daily reminder that Shakespeare advocated suicide.

There is an idea that once you learn a second language, learning every subsequent one is easier. I may be mentally special, but as someone who speaks four languages, learning the 3rd and the 4th was just as painfully difficult (granted, I intentionally avoided doing easy modes like english-to-spanish-to-italian). Reading fluency usually takes around 1000 hours to achieve, so if you're willing to practice few hours every day, a little more than a year for each.

My favourite bit of the commedia remains:

L'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci,
volgendom' io con li etterni Gemelli,
tutta m'apparve da' colli a le foci

But I couldn't diminish it to a single line, so you can have this victory.

The Durling-Martinez editions have opposite-page prose translation which is extremely well done (then with notes at the end of each canto).
I'd say that about Portuguese as far as romantic languages go.

Feel free to disregard my post if you aren't looking for an English translation, since I realised just as I posted that you don't say what your first language is.

In my experience it takes:

-one year (if you study it in a smart way focused on reading) to learn a language to the point you can actually read fiction without stopping so often that you lose the flow

-another year - not of active study, but of extensive usage in reading - to become actually proficient in it (i.e. reading without dictionary, understanding shades of meaning better than if you had just read a translation, etc.)

The fact is, in the second year it's just passive exposure - for example, you could simply switch to that language for all your reading. That means that, if you have the time, you can already start to learn another language.

Besides, you should consider that as you go forward you become better and better at learning (better strategies, you know what works for you, you know how to make an efficient plan, become better at mapping the characteristics of a languages etc.). All in all, someone smart and motivated could reach (reading) proficiency in that list of languages in 10 years or even less. Being able to read in those languages was pretty much a given for most educated persons until the recent past.

>L'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci,
>volgendom' io con li etterni Gemelli,
>tutta m'apparve da' colli a le foci
Absolutely wonderful.

Is there any literature in Sanskrit?

I studied Sanskrit in high school so my memories are a bit fuzzy, but I remember a lot of very good theater plays, which alone would make it worth. Besides that, I only remember fables and a lot of very good nonfiction on a lot of subjects that may still be of interest (yoga, linguistics, theory of knowledge, etc.)