Has anybody of you (native speakers of Spanish included) read or at least tried to read a whole book in Spanish? If so, what does it feel like? Does it seem any more flowery and expressive than, say, when you read in English? I'm actually only planning on learning this language, so I wouldn't know myself. And what do you think of my endeavour in general? Is Spanish really worth learning to be able to read books in?
Reading in Spanish as a second tongue
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Yes it is worth it.
Spanish tends to be more flowery than Ebglish, but it is not a detriment nor does it make it more expressive. It is just different from English.
I have read several books in Spanish. I am a native speaker.
I'm a Spanish native speaker who is also 100% fluent in english and I dislike reading in Spanish very much. I don't know exactly why, suppose I'm just not used to it. Been reading books in English since I was reading books and have read moderately few in spanish (despite living in mexico)
It's all a matter of preference. I simply associate reading with english.
It's a little more musical, I think. English is more technical but Spanish tends to have a lot of phonemes repeat in text, so it kind of has a singsong cadence. At least to me, as an English speaker who learned Spanish as a very small child.
very silly of you considering the amount of riches the Spanish language possesses compared to its counterparts
As Spanish speaker I've read books in Spanish and English... Personally I don't find the language more "expressive," but I've not paid enough attention anyway...
I don't know what riches are you talking about. Could you give an example?
numerous suffixes such as diminutives and augmentatives, and I'm not only talking about nouns, but adjectives also, much freer word order and so on
does it seem worse than English?
I didn't notice that, you're right.
Spanish vocabulary is absolutely tiny compared to English, in terms of grammar it's just a simplified baby version of Latin with some arabic loanwords left from moor gangrape of Iberia
Can you provide an example of said richness?
I'm used to it. But speaking from the English point of view, the only strange thing you could find are the symbols unused in English like 'Ñ', '¿', '¡' and 'á, é, í, ó, ú.'
This said, there is a lot of words very similar to Spanish like: inteligente, creación, información, similar, alien, espacio, esfera, especial, ect. I don't believe it's hard to get used to.
One can't know all the words anyway, besides certain suffixes can slightly change connotation of any word. Spanish just isn't a mongrel like English.
What is the best language to learn for literature?
French? Spanish? Russian?
1. French
2. Russian
3. Spanish
Tried to stay as much objective as possible
French and russian are roughly equal. French has longer history and a larger literary corpus, russian produced better 19/20 century lit and has, subjectively, grander library of raw masterpieces. Spanish is way down the list, somewhere with irrelevant shit like italian or japanese
Every word in Spanish sounds exactly like it reads so you can practice your Spanish reading out loud, that's one real benefit to learning Spanish over other major languages.
Other than that, you'd probably improve in taco ordering and impress some Hispanic girls with some Spanish knowledge, that's about it.
world languages: French, Russian or German...
classical: Greek/Latin.
Neither French nor German are world languages, bozo. Spanish, on the contrary, is.
>french
>not world language
>Europe
>Canada
>half of Africa
Now, compare the number of French speakers in Canada to that of Spanish speakers in USA, retard.
I have read many books in Spanish, since I'm a native Portuguese speaker.
Spanish feels a bit less flowery than Portuguese, since it has less phonemes, but both languages are much more expressive for feelings than English. English has a wider vocabulary, though.
It is worthwhile to learn it, but it would be better to learn Portuguese. You can understand Spanish and have access to many other works of literature. You'll get fucked by nasal phonemes and many exceptions, but it's rewarding.
>Mexican intellectuals.
...
it's a bit overrated as a world language, I'd say German and Russian are more valuable on a business level and hands down on a literary one.
Most of central/south America is negligible. No one in America worthwhile can't speak English. English is just way too dominant, and many elite from these southern countries study in America for college because Spanish is not very important.
Learning Spanish was pretty easy, right? How long did it take you?
When it comes to a literary heritage then French is the way to go. But Spanish at least is a language of Crusaders unlike cuckgerman.
I'm not completely fluent, but I've had some classes in school and read a few books with a dictionary. I could probably be fluent in roughly 1-2 years of regular study.
cuck chicano
Spanish tends more to abstraction than English, since English is a verb-focused language and Spanish a sustantive-focused language. Therefore, English is more fitted to describe action concisely and Spanish is better for ideas.
bump
As a native Spanish speaker who's also fluent in English, I can say it depends on the tone of what you're reading. Poetry, for example, unless it's written with extreme skill, will always read better in English. More visceral sutuff, on the other hand, reads better in Spanish to me, because I read it in a more personal, intimate level. I read 1984 in Spanish and it made a far deeper impression than if I had read the original. Poe, on the other hand, is perfect in English even if I have to grab a dictionary to look up soke of the more archaic words.
The quality of the translations is also very important. I remember seeing, like, 3 versions of 1984 with hilariously mistranslated words and sentences. Same goes for Nietzsche.
I read this god-awful piece of shit in Spanish. One of my worst reading experiences.
That's because you have horrible tastes indiana.edu
I have been wondering this, too. Spanish sounds sexy af.
muh dick
it's Argentinian, though, not Spanish
Spanish is a qt language, too bad it's literary legacy is shit and it's spoken mostly by mexicano subhumans, so there's no incentive to learn
>american education
>Spanish is way down the list, somewhere with irrelevant shit like italian or japanese
Borges, Bolano, Marquez, Naruda, Cervantes. Spanish language literature is fucking God tier.
>too bad it's literary legacy is shit
Where the fuck are people getting this notion? Most of the modern additions to the Western canon have come from Latin America
>american education
>Western canon
>Latin America
Is Latin America not part of the West? It's a New World territory conquered by Europeans, just like North America. It's also predominantly Christian.
Western civilization isn't defined by geography. Third world shitholes do not get to be a part of it, sorry
The best contemporary literature is in Spanish, so yeah
See Harold Bloom, frogshit
I'm not the user you're responding to, but didn't he just refer not only to Geography if at all? Why are you so closed-minded? Not all Latin American countries boil down to a Mexican tier.
youtube.com
here you can hear him BTFO'ing Hesse
It's about culture, language, and history, not geography.
>English is a qt language, too bad it's literary legacy is shit and it's spoken mostly by texan subhumans, so there's no incentive to learn
in that case USA shouldnt be part of western civilization either since they are as retarded and degenerate as spic countries
Who isn't degenerate these days?
According to /pol/, only Trump, Israel, and themselves.
>Spanish vocabulary is absolutely tiny compared to English
Au contraire tho
I think that's factually correct though. English has a larger vocab than Spanish
What does having a larger vocab give you?
It is not "absolutely tiny" in comparison, that's just idiotic.
There's a good argument to be made that the numerous synonyms in English made it a particularly suitable language for poetry
Not only has any language numerous synonyms, but also numerous suffixes that can change changing the connotation depending on your attitude towards a certain noun or adjective, and which English unfortunately lacks.
by any language I meant only European ones
>moving goalposts like a mong
>and which English unfortunately lacks.
That is also a dumb thing to say. English also has suffixes and prefixes, like Spanish.
I wonder which Mexican intellectual is behind these genius posts
On the other hand, english lacks flexible word order and rhyming inflections found in fusional languages
Name me a diminutive form of an adjective stupid then. You're clearly a fucking monoglot.
>the adjective*
fixed
dummy
bozo
dopey
those words you listed have nothing in common with the word stupid
Why are you so buttblasted?
English may not have diminutive form for adjectives, but it has other prefixes and suffixes (e.g. negatives)
Spanish is my mother tongue, pendejete, and I also speak Japanese and Ancient Greek. Don't just assume stuff because your understanding of one language is limited and prejudiced.
Where did I say English is a bad language?
Where did I say that you said that? :^)
i hate my language a-am i cool now?
So even though what I said about English not having diminutives for adjectives turned out to be true, I shouldn't assume what?
Trump isn't going to grant him a greencard anyway.
That it lacks suffixes and prefixes completely, or that others are monoglots for pointing out that. As if diminutives were the only kind of suffixes there are.
I didn't say that English lacks suffixes and prefixes completely. It's just that in terms of suffixes that alter a connotation, but not general meaning, English is very poor.
C'mon man, you clearly said "unfortunately lacks". I agree that in comparison to Spanish it is poorer, but that isn't what you said. Whatever, not that it matters.
Which it certainly does. I wasn't talking about suffixes as such. Learn what the word connotation means before responding.
>Not only has any language numerous synonyms, but also numerous suffixes that can change changing the connotation depending on your attitude towards a certain noun or adjective, and which English unfortunately lacks.
If you want to have the last word, that's fine by me, just be sure to learn how English actually works before responding.
CHI
Knowing how to speak like a fucking vato does not qualify you to be a native speaker, carnal.
Learn how your mom's overused anus works before saying anything ITT.
>being this mad
I'm Mexican, I read in both in English and Spanish. First of all I don't see a point comparing the two languages as "better or worse". Like every language both have an extensive tradition of literature and prose.
Now back in topic, Spanish prose tends to be really flowery (Specially prose and poetry from the golden century), if you really want to learn spanish to read books originally written on it I encourage it really much, i have compared some translations in english from lots of novels and shorts stories and its phonetic quality it's quite dispersed from the original language. This is not meant to say that english translations are of bad quality, most of Edith Grossman's translations respect the meaning of spanish but cannot reproduce exactly the play on words and prose technics that are peculiar to the spanish language. Think about reading Moby Dick in spanish for example, most of the puns and plays on ethimologies aren't reproducible to spanish aswell, english and spanish are quite different gramatically aswell.
There's more relevant literature in Spanish tradition than the Japanese, specially for western literature. The Golden century was even influential to german romanticism.
Portuguese is beautiful aswell, I'm a native Spanish speaker and I read with a grammatic and a dictionary at hand. Learning either language would open the doors to romantic tongues.
Because she's a horrible entry level writter that became famous in a fluke.
Latin, Greek, French, Russian, German,
and from there you can learn whatever you want
Japanese-Brasileiro here. Fuck flowery PT shit: lusophone intellectuals are stuck so many centuries behind it's ridiculous. I'll take Spanish literature anyday.
though I do agree that Portuguese is better to learn because I find that Portuguese speakers speak Spanish better than Spanish speakers speak Portuguese, plus I have more affectation for "people's dialects" in Portuguese, though that may be my own bias and they're almost never written in anyway
Any romance language except Romanian will. I regularly read Italian with a dictionary in hand.
You are right.
Its worth it for garcia marquez alone. But anything that doesnt have spanish as its original tongue its a waste, english is an objectively superior experience.
Have you ever read Don Quijote de la Mancha? Or even something more modern like Paradiso by Lezama Lima?
translations are a waste. if you're used to the process, you can acquire reading proficiency in any reasonably familiar language in three months (this includes Russian)
though I would agree that translations into Spanish (and Portuguese for that matter) are usually terrible. the best translations are often into French.
>translations are a waste
biased
>you can acquire reading proficiency in any reasonably familiar language in three months (this includes Russian)
No, you can't.
not fluency, but enough for a foundation. it's okay to start reading at that point if you don't ever intend to speak (I don't ever understand to speak Russian)
also you'd be similarly biased if you had to deal with Portuguese-language translations
Between Russian and Spanish which is better?
>Spanish and Italian
>Irrelevant
Have fun never being able to enjoy two writers second to Shakespeare alone.
None of America should be considered part of the so-called "Western civilization", then.
brainlet