This is embarrassing and I'm aware of it

This is embarrassing and I'm aware of it.

I know that reading translations isn't optimal but for the non-English speakers out here: Do you feel that your own mother language can sometimes be so God damn complex that you'd rather read the English version of a book that was first written in your native tongue?

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my mother tongue has a lot more layered meanings than english. english is a bit like reading a technical manual in comparison. so i understand half of what you're saying, but not the half where it's bad

Right mate, you're fucking nicked.
Kent Allard here to interrupt your trolling.

I'm not saying it's bad. I just feel like it can be a pain in the ass sometimes, having to use the dictionary way more than in English. Language is a tool, a means to an end. I just think that English is way more efficient and less complex, which allows me to reach the message within a book. It's not as beautiful as other languages sure, but surely does the job.

As someone who only speaks English, I'd rather read a book the way it was originally written. I tend to stay away from translated books if possible, as well as modern updates to older books. You lose a lot of meaning by changing the wording of even simple sentences, intentional or not. Reading someone's interpretation of a Shakespeare/Bible quote alongside the original forces me to read the book through the eyes of whoever wrote the additional notes. The same would be true for a book translated to another language.

what am I watching in that picture?

I hope at least is related to some book and not some youtuber shit

>implying any Greek that is not a post doctorate major in ancient Greek can read the Iliad or the Odyssey

I read both in English mate.

a booktuber called ontologicool

English is the greatest language in the history of the world. Euro languages are good for local poetry and not much else. Euro languages are now provincial patois dialects of English.

>The English language was created by poets, a five-hundred year enterprise of emotion and metaphor, the richest dialogue in world literature. French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition.

>The sixteenth century transformed Middle English into modern English. Grammar was up for grabs. People made up vocabulary and syntax as they went along. Not until the eighteenth century would rules of English usage appear. Shakespearean language is a bizarre super-tongue, alien and plastic, twisting, turning, and forever escaping. It is untranslatable, since it knocks Anglo-Saxon root words against Norman and Greco-Roman importations sweetly or harshly, kicking us up and down rhetorical levels with witty abruptness. No one in real life ever spoke like Shakespeare’s characters. His language does not “make sense,” especially in the greatest plays. Anywhere from a third to a half of every Shakespearean play, I conservatively estimate, will always remain under an interpretive cloud. Unfortunately, this fact is obscured by the encrustations of footnotes in modern texts, which imply to the poor cowed student that if only he knew what the savants do, all would be as clear as day. Every time I open Hamlet, I am stunned by its hostile virtuosity, its elusiveness and impenetrability. Shakespeare uses language to darken. He suspends the traditional compass points of rhetoric, still quite firm in Marlowe, normally regarded as Shakespeare’s main influence. Shakespeare’s words have “aura.” This he got from Spenser, not Marlowe.

>use the dictionary more
are you sure it's your mother tongue? even with the multivalent meanings of words in my native tongue, it's rare to find a word i don't understand the meaning(s) of.

This and anyone who has read Spenser can tell you

>you'd rather read the English version of a book that was first written in your native tongue
Absolutely no. Everyone's mother language, at least in the western world, is still more deeply understandable than English, no matter how difficult it is.

>having to use the dictionary way more than in English
I pick up the dictionary far more often when I read in English than in my mother language (actually, I almost never open the dictionary if I'm reading in my mother language). And I'm pretty sure this is not going to change, even though I improve my English, simply because there are always words you don't know and you have to learn.
>I just think that English is way more efficient and less complex, which allows me to reach the message within a book
Ehm, are other languages not able to do that? Of course they are.

Who are you quoting? That speech is potentially valid for any other European language, so it's just pretentious to apply it to English only.
At the end, English is not the greatest language exactly because it's so widespread. If you have studied Latin and Greek and you try to compare them, it's pretty obvious (unless you're a brainlet) that Greek is far richer, deeper and more meaningful than Latin. Latin was more widespread, though, and it was the language of the biggest empire ever existed. English is like Latin. It's the modern Latin. Efficient, functional, direct. But richness and beauty lie elsewhere.

My mother tongue is so retardedly simplistic, that it's actually quite cringe worthy to read in it as opposed to English.

I tried reading Knausgaard's first book in Norwegian, and I just couldn't make myself, even though it was pretty clear that he wasn't a bad writer.

You're Norwegian?

Yeah.

I could only focus on her obnoxious hair but here you go.

youtube.com/watch?time_continue=87&v=2WVQCz_eAC4

I feel somewhat the same,English isn't, for want of best words, lyrical as my mother tongue. It both have good things and bad things imho, Sci-fi and some parts of fantasy in my mother language isn't as good, the ease to copy-paste words of other languages or make new ones with ease it's difficult or ends feeling cringey. While in anything pre-modern it feels more alive, nuanced and proper. It's all sugestive I know, but true to me all the same.

Are you Spanish? I feel exactly the same way. Reading anything that might even remotely have fantasy elements is crying as fuck.

I always thought Norwegian was a noble respectable language. Well, at least you must know English perfectly.

>Do you feel that your own mother language can sometimes be so God damn complex that you'd rather read the English version of a book that was first written in your native tongue?
Yes, but only when it involves an artifical specialized language-within-the-language - so with people like Hegel and Kant, if I don't understand something, I'll read the parts in English. It's not just a much simpler language, they are also forced to explain in lay terms when the original author condensed some complex concept into a new, made-up word.

Pretty much everyone in the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Finland speaks fluent English. Even older folks.

>neologism

I forgot to mention this. Some older texts use and abuse this to oblivion.

I think it's very quaint and riddled with a lot of lower class figures of speech and jargon that doesn't really lend itself to beautiful prose.

But I am open to change my mind, and I've asked several friends to supply me with examples, and the closest to anything that can be called good I've found is Knut Hamsun tbqh.

>Reading anything that might even remotely have fantasy elements is crying as fuck.
I always wondered whether one doesn't feel the cringe because English is more suited to it or just because it's not your mother tongue, so you feel more distance from it (I'm a third, German guy and feel the same).

Another example is when people have speaking names: English people don't seem to mind when the protagonist is called something like Stone or Fencer or whatever while that's unimaginable here.

Al menos no soy el unico.
Creo que la fantasia mas realistica es mucho mejor en Español, pero claro, no es lo mismo Star Killer que Mata estrellas. El utlimo no acaba de sonar bien, es un poco demasiado largo.
Pero, por poner un ejemplo, El que destruye estrellas suena, en mi opinion, mejor que "He who destroys the star". Este ultimo suena mas basto.
Todo esto son pajas mentales claro, pero no puedo evitar pensarlo.