Best fitted langauges for literature

Fucking hell, should I start educating you by listing Russian classic authors? I believe you can manage yourself.

>implying there are more than those
It's a great contribution, but it's not on the same level as England or France. The rest of your lit is meme-worthy

>implying he's wrong
you're just a ruski or a fanboy. fuck off

Spanish.

Spanish, obviously. All literature is but a footnote to Cervantes and Borges.

English vocabulary is tantamount to Russian, but Russian is infinitely richer in endings (e.i. diminutives, augmentatives etc.) which can slightly change the connotation of words, and has a much freer word order meaning it is better than English.

Wikipedia. Now, begin the education.

>free word order = better
Yeah, in English we have tons of words that have different connotations
Kys

You're clearly an idiot or merely pretending to be. Either way, you can impregnate your mother and let her give birth to more spastic retards such as yourself.

Veeky Forums has turned into pure cancer. By now you can't even call it cancer anymore, since there is no healthy flesh left that could be corrupted by your shitposts.

At least half of the replies in this thread have been, while not necessarily quality, spurring the discussion forward on topic (yours is not one of them). Quit your faggot bitching and be productive, or do you actually have nothing to say anyway?

I would wager that American English with all of the dialects and linguistic elements it has managed to borrow from all of the cultures that contributed to the languages growth would be a pretty worthy contender. That being said, other languages such as French, Russian, and Spanish have probably produced more literature on the whole. As far as potential goes, though, I would have to throw my hat into the American English ring.

> American English
So... English then.

Homeric Greek duh

English has the larger vocabulary by far.

How would anyone on here even be able to compare even the literary most relevant languages? Do you think serious polyglots spend their time browsing Veeky Forums? What is even meant by "flexible"? Does "more flexible" mean better literature? Is there even a point to asking these questions? Why are you treating writing like some grindable video game where you can pad your skills by choosing the right language?

>Hear ye hear ye
>cease this discussion at once because you have better things to do
>who me?
>SHUT UP

In the 19th century the only people educated enough to write were nobility/upper class, who recevied high quality education. Writing poetry and novels with actual thought and meaning behind them was part of educational system and almost any gentleman could write-up something decent.

For that reason average quality of literature at that time was much higher than anywhere else (note that 9 out of 10 people in the empire were low class plebs that couldn't read or write though)

Tolstoy (btw did you know that there are 2 different Tolstoy's? Both are classics of that time period), Dostoyevsky and Checkhov are stock authors that are "hip" to mention in casual discussion of russian literature simply because plebs (like you) are unlikely to recognise anyone like Gogol, Turgenev, Ostrovsky, Druzhinin, Goncharov, Kuprin, Griboedov, Lermontov and dozens of others that are actually good for something beside bragging rights value.

The fame of Literary country comes from somewhere else entirely though.
After the revolution and civil wars, communists took course on raising education level of whole country, and they managed to achieve it by the time WW2 hit. In the 50's it was unheard of for even the last of the construction workers, plumbers or farmers not to have read the classics.

Reading communist ideologists was also mandatory.

Reading something that was not approved by the Party however was while not a crime, publically looked down upon.

Forbidden fruit of western and russian dissident literature was alluring, so Samizdat (self-publishing) was born, and works that were not approved were widely shared among the populace.

Reading restricted stuff was deemed prestigeous and so everyone wanted to get their hands on objects of forbidden culture, musical, cinematographic and literal.

During 60-90's the overall portion of regularily reading people was higher than almost anywhere else (about 90% of the populace), hence the reputation of "literary country"

After the fall of the union rise of the bandit culture during mid-90's ammount of reading people dropped rapidly, as people were struggling simply to survive.

That's what I meant. Restrictive syntax, large vocabulary, perfect breeding grounds for creative writing.

What are your definitions of "best" and "flexible" in relation to writing?

Arabic

It isn't significantly larger than Russian one if at all.

This.

Western languages can only wish to have the richness of vocabulary and syntax that Arabic brings to writing, as proven by the greatest work of literature, the Koran.

>waaah why do people talk about the greatest Russian authors instead of my favorite minor authors
Shut up Ivan

Who gives a shit.
There isn't a thing that could be expressed in one language and couldn't be expressed in every other one, all sufficiently developed global languages are equal when it comes to their projection of human thought, everything else is just linguistic masturbation about meaningless patterns and principles

Also, cъeби нaхyй oбpaтнo нa двaчи, пидapac вaтный.

There are three Tolatoys actually, all of them classics.

>There isn't a thing that could be expressed in one language and couldn't be expressed in every other one,

As much as the people ITT are dilettantes, this completely false. Your language always exists within immediate context, so you can be lucky if even just two people can understand each others' thoughts through the same language.

The stupidest argument I've heard indeed.

Go home Wittgenstein, what does an immediate conversation between two people has to do with reading books?

The point is that it is very possible that one language gives you access to certain modes of thinking and another does not. And literature written in one language might very well epress ideas that are literally unthinkable in another language.

Oh boy, the good ol' Sapir-Whorf nonsense, never gets old.

I second this.

This unquestionably. That Russian is Cyrillic, and neither Latinate nor Germanic at root, leads me to suspect that the Russian polemicist may be right. Greek even through koine is far superior to any modern Western language, and renders a feel of slogging through the mud when reading even the best Roman authors, Virgil excepted.

You said three, there was actually FOUR Toltoys

Cyrillic was literally based on greek script, senpai.

Anglocucks BTFO!

Like British English but without all the masturbatory desperation to shower everything with bow-down-to-the-ever-powerful-Latin-language tier obscure cerebral words.

American English also doesn't use 'rather' as much as British English.

Damn, youre right. And fitted to form a few already existing languages. I actually knew this, but forgot. I stand corrected.

What if having the least amount of flexibility in a language requires the most natural use of creative abilities be requiring more effort to achieve unexpected creative results thus leading to higher levels of over all creativity over all? The greater the difficulty, the greater the potential results.

محمد يمارس الجنس مع الأطفال.

Literally all the Arabic you need to know.

Also less 'u's in many words.

Your post gave me a headache.

British English: "Oh, well, that's really rather quite the conspicuous spectacle of unequivocal proportion there my dear fellow, would you not most certainly and unwaveringly concur?"

American English: "Wow"

English has lost as always.

i too second this

Agreed with this.

You have a narrow, media-fed view of British English; it can encompass all that, and the other extreme.

You rather mean 'fewer'.

British English would never use 'quite' and 'unequivocal' in the same sentence; they're oxymoronic together.

American English 'quite' means 'very'.
British English 'quite' means 'a little bit'.

The major difference for me is that British English uses adverbs, whereas Americans seem to avoid them.

English has this ridiculous ability to absorb the vocabulary of other languages

Same can be said about all languages, you dummy.

ridiculous in the case was describing the extent of the ability, not its mere existence

Not him, but if you were to translate that into, say, Russian, you'd see mostly Russian words.

5 out of 12 of those words
> English has this ridiculous ability to absorb the vocabulary of other languages
are not English

Anyways, it's not very good when languages change rapidly because you lose the ability to read literature written centuries ago.

Russian contains thousands of words of foreign origin.

And that guy's point is that English contains far, far more.

Because it has the history of being conquered. Doesn't make it better though.

The majority of the loanwords in English are from their conquered peoples.

Wait, why is this a good thing, again?

"Body language, poses, landscapes, slumber of trees, smells, rains, melting and shapeshifting hues of the nature, all that is gentle and human (surprisingly!), and everything masculine, rough, juicily vulgar turns out in Russian just as good, if not even better than in English. But so common to English things subtle and unspoken, poetry of thought, immediate exchange between the most abstract ideas, scampering of one-syllable qualifiers — all this, as well as everything relating to technology, fashions, sports, natural sciences and unnatural urges — becomes in Russian shackled, multi-syllabled, and often disgusting in the sense of style and rhythm"

t. Vlad Nabokov

This is completely false. Go say that to a linguist and see how he reacts, you relativist moron.

Nabokov says something dumb, more at 11

Say hello to Soros.

I doubt that very much. Especially in light of your (not an) argument.

Yes, that is what I was getting at here

Why do people rate french? Its vocabulary is quite limited and doesnt allow for much nuances

Can you speak it fluently and read books in?

>all these multilingual babbies in this thread
English is the only language anyone should speak

No, that language is Russian, period.

get fucked commie this is a democratic board

----> /b/

As a slavcuck I often find myself perplexed when trying to translate english sentences without any change in meaning and clarity (reverse is also true, ofcourse, but in lesser frequency). Idiomatic structures in english are off the charts. For example, how the fuck do you translate even something as simple as
>A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Russian doesn't use the word 'thing' to mean 'anything that could be identifiable'. The two most popular translations had to change the sentence entirely
>Пpeкpacнoe плeняeт нaвceгдa (What is beautiful captures forever)
>B пpeкpacнoм — paдocть бeз кoнцa, бeз кpaя (In beauty lies unbound joy with edge unseen)

The University of Iowa produced 3 good writers in the span of the 40s-70s (Irving, O'Connor, Tennessee Williams) and Iowa City is now categorized as a UNESCO cultural heritage city for literature (the only one in the United States).

I don't know about should because people can do what they want, but if we HAD to make the entire world speak one language, English is definitely the right choice.

Do you have any argument other than
>muh freedom
... With no actual examples?

And it is the right choice because?

Most amount of words to choose from, both romantic and scientific. It can be expressive, but also extremely precise. Honestly, how could you even argue against English as the best all around language? It's already won.

And you're saying all this being able to speak and read only English, I suppose?

That's not Spanish m8

Look up the word count, you nong.

Ibsen wrote in Danish.

Yes, we can see that's how you got your education.

>Cyть пpeкpacнoгo в вeчнoм нacлaждeнии

This. There is no other answer.

More great works of literature and poetry have been written in English than any other language. Shakespeare wrote in English.

English is the language of literature.

All the other languages are only good for opera.

>English sucked so much dick that Shakespeare had to invent his own words

t.dumb single-language amerishart

He did not

Gogol and Turgenev are widely known and read. I hadn't head of the other authors you listed.

I thought so.

No, I suggested going to wikipedia to undereducated smartasses like you for reference.

English having the vastest vocabulary is a whopper. Don't fall for a mere meme, my dear friends.

If you haven't heard of someone else in your sharterland it doesn't make them minor.