/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16141453]

Why is this board so obsessed with learning Latin and Greek? If you want to learn a Romance language, you should go with French or Spanish.
Those can actually help build your curriculum in the future, and it will also allow you to connect with hundreds of millions of people around the world.

[Anonymous No.16141460]

You seem to think learning a language is a practical task.

[Anonymous No.16141461]

>>16141453
To appreciate the classics.
And yes, learn french and spanish too.

[Anonymous No.16141462]

>>16141453
>Greek
>Romance

[Anonymous No.16141470]

>>16141453
>why are weeabos so obsessed with learning chinese
niggers gonna nig

[Anonymous No.16141476]

>>16141453
learning Latin and Greek and reading all the central works in both was the basis of the curriculum for education in Western Europe for centuries. In addition they studied specifically metaphysics and math I think, especially towards the 18th and 19th centuries.

Being educated back then was practically synonymous with having read most of the Latin and Greek works in the original.

[Anonymous No.16141536]

>>16141453
That’s what it means to major in the Classics

[Anonymous No.16141571]

>>16141461
>>16141462
>>16141476

>I use 18th century standards of intelligence in the 21st century because I myself am intelligent
What do you get in return for being a pretentious unemployed faggot?

[Anonymous No.16141581]

>>16141453
What about Andean languages?

[Anonymous No.16141606]

>>16141453
>>16141571
>Monogatari for zoomers

[Anonymous No.16141618]

>>16141606
Based.

[Anonymous No.16141620]

>>16141571
That was what it meant for a very long time, it's really only been a century since the curriculum was abandoned. Anyone who is interested in literature is going to want to know Latin and Greek because it formed the intellectual backdrop for all those centuries of writers. Even up until like the middle of the 20th century most of the biggest writers were educated that way.

[Anonymous No.16141627]

>>16141453
Greek isn't a romance language. Learning Latin helps you understand most romance languages easier. Reading Greek helps you learn a lot of Balkan and Slavic and even Rus languages.
Learning French or Spanish when you could learn something which would give you a jump on French Spanish Portuguese Romanian Romansch Italian is confining yourself to far fewer books.
>people
>>>/soc/

[Anonymous No.16141653]

>>16141453
Depends if you want to learn to communicate with the greatest minds of the last few millenia or with normie retards of the present age.

[Anonymous No.16141660]

>>16141620
>most of the biggest writers were educated that way
Sure, but are you?

Besides, the average person today is probably smarter than any intelligent person from the 18th century because most of humanity's inventions and discoveries took place in the last few centuries.

>>16141627
>Learning Latin helps you understand most romance languages easier
So does learning French or any other Romance language. Native French speakers can easily learn Spanish or Italian because of the similarity.
It's not like you have to learn Old English in order to learn English.

>Reading Greek helps you learn a lot of Balkan and Slavic and even Rus languages.
Except this is literally not true at all holy shit. Who the fuck told you this blatant lie?

>>16141653
The greatest minds in history were born in the 19th and 20th century.

[Anonymous No.16141667]

>>16141660
>Sure, but are you?
No, that's the problem, it means I don't understand the intellectual world they were operating in. That is the point of learning and reading the Greek and Latin.

As for the average person being smarter today I think you are baiting here. Intelligence is not knowledge.

[Anonymous No.16141680]

>>16141667
>I don't understand the intellectual world they were operating in
But you don't have to go back millennia to be smarter. Just grab a good translation if you want to read Greek philosophers. The amount of information lost in translation is so insignificant that it's not worth wasting your time learning the original language. WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF

[Anonymous No.16141682]

German should be the first language a monolingual person in the west should learn, for literature purposes, at least.

[Anonymous No.16141704]

>>16141680
I personally am just the sort of autist that unironically finds learning noun declensions fun, that's mostly why I study languages. And while the translations are fine I guess, it is nice to actually see the exact words people wrote, especially with poetry.

My time is not worth anything anyway, i post on 4chan

[Anonymous No.16141713]

>>16141660
>>16141680
>avatarfagging with zoomergatari

[Anonymous No.16141719]

>>16141680
You're not considering poetry. You cannot appreciate poetry in translation, at least not the original poem.

[Anonymous No.16141743]

>>16141460
this
Language learning isn't for practicality at all. The whole notion of even becoming truly bilingual if you did not grow up speaking your target language anyway is a farce. You will always be lacking compared to native speakers.
Therefore I would argue Latin has much more merit that Spanish or French for example.

[Anonymous No.16141761]

>>16141453
you seem bitter. did you try and fail to learn greek or something? about what you'd expect from a filthy anime watcher.

[Anonymous No.16141763]

>>16141704
>it is nice to actually see the exact words people wrote, especially with poetry.
I kind of understand that, but I'd rather get right into the contents they created. I guess poetry is the exception.

>>16141743
>You will always be lacking compared to native speakers.
Not with that attitude

[Anonymous No.16141813]

>>16141743
If you neither bother to live in your target country, nor dedicate a huge amount of time learning things you won't need anyway, then no. But it's possible; just look at people like matt vs japan, who, while not knowing everything about the languge(which is impossible) has reached a level so high he even trumps naitive speakers in some regards.
I would still agree with you that learning latin is more useful and enjoyable(but that's just my personal opinion).

[Anonymous No.16141848]

>>16141660
>So does learning French or any other Romance language
Lol, no. Native French speakers cannot easily understand Italian or Romanian. Spanish has a lot of mutual intelligibility, but the difficulty in learning Romanian from French is comparable to trying to extract modern English from only Old Norse.
>Except this is literally not true at all holy shit. Who the fuck told you this blatant lie?
Except it literally is. The words for vinegar (Latin root in English, Greek in Russian), jelly fish, beets, cucumber, man I could list words for hours, are all Greek rooted in Russian. Even where English uses a Greek root, Russian will often use a different Greek root as it has not been mediated through Latin (pharmakos Vs apotheke).

[Anonymous No.16141852]

>>16141704
What languages do you speak/ study and why?

[Anonymous No.16141858]

>>16141848
>jelly fish
English really missed out on that one. Why would you not call them medusa?

[Anonymous No.16141866]

>>16141813
>live in your target country
No thanks I love my people and I am not gonna betray my race, no matter how appealing their language may be

[Anonymous No.16141881]

>>16141852
Japanese and Morean

[Anonymous No.16141884]

>>16141858
Ikr. French at least does that one right.

[Anonymous No.16141897]

>>16141453
But I don't want to connect with millions of people, fuck people. Learning latin is a purely aesthetic task for me, I find the idea of studying something so obsolete that only allows me to understand people centuries dead romantic. I think people repair old cars for the same purpose, they never really intend to drive them. In practical terms latin is wholly useless and a waste of time, people who claim to learn it for muh linguistic benefits or to read classics are coping retards.

[Anonymous No.16141898]

>>16141881
>japanese

[Anonymous No.16141900]

>>16141881
I speak Korean too. Is there any good literature from Korea? I never hear Koreans talk about their literary canon (if there even is one) I have tried to ask this question to them before but I just got really normie-tier recommendations

[Anonymous No.16141910]

>>16141660
modernists.

[Anonymous No.16141915]

>underage/intellectually stunted anime posters with garbage opinions
another day on lit

[Anonymous No.16141928]

>>16141915
>another day on lit
agreed, they're all midwitted pseud's regardless of whether their retarded sentiments come along with an anime picture on the left.

[Anonymous No.16141962]

>>16141928
Not always the case, I've yet to find a worthwhile anime post opinion, while there have been plenty of posts and threads with substance on lit, you just have to wade through all the excrement.
I'm convinced it has to do with either the type of psyche anime attracts, or its effect on the psyche - I have never seen one post anything insightful or substantial. Could be because their brains are so over-saturated with dopamine from their anime and hentai porn that they no longer have the ability to seriously engage with any higher cognition (or anything that doesn't offer stimulation), but that's just a stab in the dark

[Anonymous No.16141968]

>>16141763
>Not with that attitude
It will be the case whether you accept it or not

[Anonymous No.16142022]

>>16141962
Something is wrong with frogposters too. Maybe cute aggression related.

[Anonymous No.16142037]

>>16141915
>>16141962
>>16142022
I have anime reaction images saved because that’s 4chan. The only “anime” i’ve ever watched was DBZ as a kid. Most anime fans probably don’t even consider that anime for some weird purist reason.
Do you redditors really think it’s out of the ordinary to see an anime pic on 4chan?
It’s like if you were on reddit and were like, “what’s that arrow doing next to every post???” It’s so basic it should just look like part of the scenery

[Anonymous No.16142047]

>>16142022
frog posters > wojack posters > anime posters

[Anonymous No.16142057]

>>16141571
God you anime posters are the embodiment of pure cancer! Of course you've probably been told that a thousand times on this website, so I'll leave knowing I've made no dent whatsoever. But someone in this thread needed to call you out for being an anime poster, which makes any opinion you hold ten times worse by default.

>inb4 cringe, t. tranny, faggot, based, cope, seethe, dilate, filtered, this is an anime website, ISHYGDDT, you just lost THE GAME, replying with an image that's supposed to depict me in some stupid way, etc...

[Anonymous No.16142127]

>>16142037
>>16142057
Oh you changed your "avatar" style in response to the hate. I usually don't condone giving into peer pressure but in this instance it is totally justified. remove the word "you" from my scathing response fren.

[Anonymous No.16142152]

Why are animefags so ignorantly retarded. I've never seen a single decent take from them. They're the embodiment of coom and consoom, can't understand aesthetics.

[Anonymous No.16143514]

>>16141453

Heinlein says that learning Ancient Latin and Greek helps with learning the sciences and math.

[Anonymous No.16143773]

>>16141743
That's not the case? I'm bordering on speaking with a fluent spanish accent, despite having only studied Spanish for 4 years. It depends on who you are I suppose, since I'm also completely fluent in English accent-wise. There are a million examples of people who speak three languages fluently, Mads Mikkelsen, Tom Hiddleston, Natalie Portman etc. Usually people in sociable professions, so I guess that's why you're too autistic to learn language.

[Anonymous No.16143807]

>>16142047
Well, wojack posters probably know it. I'm not going to make fun of a depressed guy for saying he's depressed.

>>16142037
Yes it's an image board, doesn't mean your images have to conform to /a/ because it's old. I just save things from boards I go to. Like this pic obviously from /ck/.

[Anonymous No.16144178]

>>16141453
but I already speak spanish and french anon. Checkmate, atheists.

[Anonymous No.16144188]

>>16141453
I have been learning Spanish for almost two years now but I still can't read a short story

[Anonymous No.16144191]

>>16142057
What does it mean for an opinion to be "ten times worse"

[Anonymous No.16144375]

>>16141453
imagine not learning arabic and not reading the word of God

[Anonymous No.16144404]

Latin should be official language of /lit/ or maybe 4chan as a whole. There's no other way to preserve it as a free ideas exchange forum without drawing attention of the globoschlomo

[Anonymous No.16144660]

>>16141897
the only good post on this thread

[Anonymous No.16144793]

>>16141571
>>16141453
>>16141660
>muh employment
>muh curriculum
>new good, old bad
Bugman shit lol

[Anonymous No.16145723]

>>16141571
at the start of a battle the standard is the same as at the end,its a fucking standard you moron

[Anonymous No.16145743]

>>16145723
>playing word games

[Anonymous No.16146425]

>>16144404
Verum

[Anonymous No.16146585]

>>16141453
Because I already know French and Spanish, you pleb. Those were the first languages I learned, so now I'm learning Latin to ascend instead of being a pathetic little pleb who want to learn a language to "connect with people around the world" as if there was any inherent value on that over reading the words of the wisest men to ever live.

[Anonymous No.16146795]

>>16141571
Kek brainlet detected

[Anonymous No.16146821]

>>16144404
the only problem would be that autists would quibble over grammar and not actually discuss anything.

[Anonymous No.16147364]

>>16141571
>What do you get in return for being a pretentious unemployed faggot?

says the guy whose pic related is one of the most pretentious try hard anime show garbage ever released

[Anonymous No.16147851]

>>16141453
If you know English you're already what's the point of learning any other language? Do you really want to work in France so bad? Besides, romance languages are easy so why not pick up Latin on the way?

Language learning accrues many benefits for the mind, to me this is the primary reason to learn. If you want a sweet job you should do Finance, CS or Math where you wouldn't gain anything by knowing another language. If you were to choose such a profession, no recruiter is going to care about your French.

Latin and Greek are unique in their "purity" so to speak. These languages are terse, lacking much of the imported terminology and verbal flourish of modern languages. Seriously, compare Latin to French or Old Norse to Swedish and see for yourself.

I honestly have little desire to talk to people in other languages. I have literature from all different periods periods and places and by learning old languages I unshackle myself from my dependency on translators and free my mind to travel time and space.

You also brought up the point that because the last two centuries have been the most fertile for innovation, that we should try to learn living languages rather than dead ones. With this I must disagree.

Going by events recorded in History of Science books, our rate of innovation peaked in 1850. Going by patents, their rates remained steady from their introduction until 1960 then dropped off. In the present day we are back at levels of innovation equivalent to 1600 and we are still in decline.

The period from ~1400 to ~1850 represents an incline for the West. The ideas of those times laid the foundation of our present society and much of those ideas were written in Latin. The Greeks laid the foundation of Philosophy and Science. We would be insane to ignore these things in this age of decline but our education systems have done just that under the assumption that we are wiser than our forebears. Don't make the same mistake.

[Anonymous No.16148157]

>>16141453
>and it will also allow you to connect with hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Why would I want that?

[Anonymous No.16148849]

>>16142037
Let me get this right. You read on reddit that an integral part to 4chan culture is to post anime reaction images, so you downloaded as many as you could find (despite never having watched anime) in order to 'fit in' on a board dedicated to (mostly) western literature. Thanks for the laugh, although maybe try being here for at least a day before you go ahead calling people redditors

[Anonymous No.16148982]

>>16141571
It's not about standards of intelligence or anything so inane, it's about appreciation and the joy of reading Virgil, Ovid, Plato or Homer in their unadulterated form, as any other Athenian or Roman would have, without the contortion of the language into your native form (which is always going to be imprecise by its nature). It's about something beyond your bugman ideals of 'employability', or tempering your thoughts according to the hoi polloi as to avoid being seen as 'pretentious' under their gaze, although I'm fairly certain myself that these have been wasted keystrokes and that you're likely the type of individual who will never understand the essence of any of this, but who's to say.
If it's the case, I can only cheer you on in maintaining your concern with only practical and mundane earthly matters like your career, the latest phone model coming out or the new gaming system/Netflix show. Perhaps in your final moments you might wonder what was missing from your existence, then you will die like a dog

[Anonymous No.16149018]

>>16141915
I laughed at this out of pain for how true it is

[Anonymous No.16149123]

I learned Latin and Greek to the point that I could read texts with some difficulty and I found I wasn't interested enough in reading them to have the motivation to do so. Read lots of classical texts in translation and if it really captures your heart then start language learning.