7 ms·

> it is the language of great literature The overall sentiment of your comment is good but I took issue with this particular statement. English is _a_ language

> it is the language of great literature The overall sentiment of your comment is good but I took issue with this particular statement. English is _a_ language of great literature. There's great literature written in basically all languages, you're just less likely to know unless you speak them.

geff82 8y ago
I agree of course that there are many languages in which great literature is produced. I just happen to find that books, be it fiction or non-fiction, written by English or American authors, have a very refined way of pleasing the reader.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wozniacki 8y ago
  ... written by English or American authors, have a very refined way of pleasing the reader. Perhaps you could elaborate on that by contrasting how other languages say German authors writing in German approach the reader. Are they more curt or write in a matter-of-fact manner? How about other non-English language authors? Please expand if you've had the good fortune of reading fiction / non-fiction in various languages.
  - kaybe 8y ago
    I have the impression that basic German is quite technical. You can be poetic, even very poetic, but it is not easy. You can, however, easily describe the relation of one thing to another in detail. English has about 3 times the vocabulary compared to German. It is easier to use basic sentences compared to German, but the extended vocabulary is where the fun starts - so many beautiful words for poetic things. It is easy to write an uplifting motivation for any topic. However, I find English harder to use in a technical area. Some part of that may be gaps in my knowledge, but.. things have many names and names point at many things (what is 'gear', for example?), and I lack precise verbs. Just my impression..
    - yorwba 8y ago
      > English has about 3 times the vocabulary compared to German. According to which method of counting? Wikipedia says [1] that "One most recent 2016 study shows that 20-year-old English native speakers recognize on average 42,000 lemmas, ranging from 27,100 for the lowest 5% of the population to 51,700 lemmas for the highest 5%." and "For native speakers of German average absolute vocabulary sizes range from 5,900 lemmas in first grade to 73,000 for adults." In general, I'd expect all languages to have roughly similar vocabulary sizes, since they are mostly limited by the ability of native speakers to remember them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary#Vocabulary_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary#Vocabulary_size
      - kaybe 8y ago
        Hm, that was supposed to be the total count, not for single speakers. Checking for myself my information seems to have been wrong. As we say here, I take everything back and claim the opposite.. That will teach me not to check my facts I hope.
        rwnspace 8y ago
        Hm, I also seem to remember that German has a thinner dictionary. I suspect that lemmas in German are difficult to count, as there are so many compound words. Apart from the joy of teasing fellow Britons for their stupidity, I don't see why an average German adult should recognise 40% more lemmas when the languages are so related.
      - bunderbunder 8y ago
        You're citing information from two different studies that could very well have used different methods for counting lemmas. The text in between the two bits you quoted illustrates the extent to which this is the case: Alongside your study of 20-year-olds finding that they recognize ~42,000 lemmas, there's an earlier study of people about the same age finding that they recognize between 12,000 and 17,000. The magnitude of that difference (250-300%!) should serve as a stark illustration of just how hazy these estimates are, even within a language. Between languages, it gets even more difficult. It's very hard, possibly impossible, to come up with a single standard for what counts as a word that doesn't favor one language over another. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if you could engineer a comparison that says that English has more words, and also one that says that German does, simply by changing how you deal with agglutination. Or, if not that, then certainly agglutination and polysemy together.
- andrepd 8y ago
  I don't mean to be rude, but how many other languages do you speak? There's an almost ineffable depth to nearly every language on this earth, and there are hundreds of them with very large literature corpuses. Naturally, maybe speaking two languages, you are familiar only with literature in those languages. Also, remember that English, being spoken by so many people, its literature is naturally more divulged and widely known. Nonetheless there are truly unique characteristics to almost any language, so much that you could fill a lifetime of study in any one of them.
  - Sir_Substance 8y ago
    >I don't mean to be rude Hrmmmm.....
  - pjscott 8y ago
    The person you're talking to is German, so the answer is presumably at least two. :-) I'm a native English speaker, and I've noticed that English writers got much better over time -- ineffable depth be damned. When I read people writing in early modern English, they tend to be... not pleasing to the reader, not near as much as recent authors. And it's not a matter of changing dialects, because I have no trouble fluently reading stuff from a few centuries ago. It just feels like progress has been made in writing techniques. How many other languages, I wonder, have had the chance to undergo this same evolution? (I have no other languages to compare this to, so take this with many grains of salt.)
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      Could it instead be that the language that people find pleasing changes over time, so that, as a modern reader, your tastes are naturally more attuned to modern writing?
  - fooker 8y ago
    I speak 4 languages and have read literature for 3. The depth and diversity of modern english fiction has no parallel, at least for the genres I enjoy(sci-fi, fantasy, alternative history, thrillers).
travisjungroth 8y ago
You're critiquing a very narrow interpretation of a sentence written by someone in a second language.
- cja 8y ago
  Unlike some languages, German has articles, so his meaning (the language) is likely clear.
brendyn 8y ago
There are some 7000 languages i the world, and maybe half of those even have a writing system at all, let alone libraries full of literature.
- pjscott 8y ago
  There are a few heavy-hitters, though. I'd expect China, for example, to have written some great literature over the years. (Epistemic status: I don't actually know anything about Chinese literature, and I welcome correction on this point.)
  - lunaru 8y ago
    Most discussions regarding Chinese literature would start with the big four (novels): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels
    - pjscott 8y ago
      I'm queueing up one of these as the next book I'll read. Thanks for helping me out!
      - lunaru 8y ago
        I recommend Journey to the West out of the four. Kind of like an RPG-esque journey about a monkey and his gang traveling in search of Buddhist scriptures. You'll get to learn about Sun Wukong, who is the basis for a lot of Chinese, Japanese, and (I believe?) Korean spin-off characters, like Goku from Dragonball[1] Another good option is Romance of the Three Kingdoms which will cover a good portion of Chinese history (in a mythological way). A lot of the characters like Zhu Geliang [2] are still highly influential in modern Chinese culture. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Wukong#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Wukong#Influence [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuge_Liang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuge_Liang
  - oh-kumudo 8y ago
Cyph0n 8y ago
Agreed. As a native Arabic speaker, I would argue that Arabic is the language of poetry.

geff82 8y ago

I agree of course that there are many languages in which great literature is produced. I just happen to find that books, be it fiction or non-fiction, written by English or American authors, have a very refined way of pleasing the reader.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wozniacki 8y ago
... written by English or American authors, have a very refined way of pleasing the reader. Perhaps you could elaborate on that by contrasting how other languages say German authors writing in German approach the reader. Are they more curt or write in a matter-of-fact manner? How about other non-English language authors? Please expand if you've had the good fortune of reading fiction / non-fiction in various languages.
- kaybe 8y ago
  I have the impression that basic German is quite technical. You can be poetic, even very poetic, but it is not easy. You can, however, easily describe the relation of one thing to another in detail. English has about 3 times the vocabulary compared to German. It is easier to use basic sentences compared to German, but the extended vocabulary is where the fun starts - so many beautiful words for poetic things. It is easy to write an uplifting motivation for any topic. However, I find English harder to use in a technical area. Some part of that may be gaps in my knowledge, but.. things have many names and names point at many things (what is 'gear', for example?), and I lack precise verbs. Just my impression..
  - yorwba 8y ago
    > English has about 3 times the vocabulary compared to German. According to which method of counting? Wikipedia says [1] that "One most recent 2016 study shows that 20-year-old English native speakers recognize on average 42,000 lemmas, ranging from 27,100 for the lowest 5% of the population to 51,700 lemmas for the highest 5%." and "For native speakers of German average absolute vocabulary sizes range from 5,900 lemmas in first grade to 73,000 for adults." In general, I'd expect all languages to have roughly similar vocabulary sizes, since they are mostly limited by the ability of native speakers to remember them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary#Vocabulary_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocabulary#Vocabulary_size
    - kaybe 8y ago
      Hm, that was supposed to be the total count, not for single speakers. Checking for myself my information seems to have been wrong. As we say here, I take everything back and claim the opposite.. That will teach me not to check my facts I hope.
      - rwnspace 8y ago
        Hm, I also seem to remember that German has a thinner dictionary. I suspect that lemmas in German are difficult to count, as there are so many compound words. Apart from the joy of teasing fellow Britons for their stupidity, I don't see why an average German adult should recognise 40% more lemmas when the languages are so related.
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      You're citing information from two different studies that could very well have used different methods for counting lemmas. The text in between the two bits you quoted illustrates the extent to which this is the case: Alongside your study of 20-year-olds finding that they recognize ~42,000 lemmas, there's an earlier study of people about the same age finding that they recognize between 12,000 and 17,000. The magnitude of that difference (250-300%!) should serve as a stark illustration of just how hazy these estimates are, even within a language. Between languages, it gets even more difficult. It's very hard, possibly impossible, to come up with a single standard for what counts as a word that doesn't favor one language over another. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if you could engineer a comparison that says that English has more words, and also one that says that German does, simply by changing how you deal with agglutination. Or, if not that, then certainly agglutination and polysemy together.
andrepd 8y ago
I don't mean to be rude, but how many other languages do you speak? There's an almost ineffable depth to nearly every language on this earth, and there are hundreds of them with very large literature corpuses. Naturally, maybe speaking two languages, you are familiar only with literature in those languages. Also, remember that English, being spoken by so many people, its literature is naturally more divulged and widely known. Nonetheless there are truly unique characteristics to almost any language, so much that you could fill a lifetime of study in any one of them.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  >I don't mean to be rude Hrmmmm.....
- pjscott 8y ago
  The person you're talking to is German, so the answer is presumably at least two. :-) I'm a native English speaker, and I've noticed that English writers got much better over time -- ineffable depth be damned. When I read people writing in early modern English, they tend to be... not pleasing to the reader, not near as much as recent authors. And it's not a matter of changing dialects, because I have no trouble fluently reading stuff from a few centuries ago. It just feels like progress has been made in writing techniques. How many other languages, I wonder, have had the chance to undergo this same evolution? (I have no other languages to compare this to, so take this with many grains of salt.)
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    Could it instead be that the language that people find pleasing changes over time, so that, as a modern reader, your tastes are naturally more attuned to modern writing?
- fooker 8y ago
  I speak 4 languages and have read literature for 3. The depth and diversity of modern english fiction has no parallel, at least for the genres I enjoy(sci-fi, fantasy, alternative history, thrillers).

travisjungroth 8y ago

You're critiquing a very narrow interpretation of a sentence written by someone in a second language.

cja 8y ago
Unlike some languages, German has articles, so his meaning (the language) is likely clear.

brendyn 8y ago

There are some 7000 languages i the world, and maybe half of those even have a writing system at all, let alone libraries full of literature.

pjscott 8y ago
There are a few heavy-hitters, though. I'd expect China, for example, to have written some great literature over the years. (Epistemic status: I don't actually know anything about Chinese literature, and I welcome correction on this point.)
- lunaru 8y ago
  Most discussions regarding Chinese literature would start with the big four (novels): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Chinese_Novels
  - pjscott 8y ago
    I'm queueing up one of these as the next book I'll read. Thanks for helping me out!
    - lunaru 8y ago
      I recommend Journey to the West out of the four. Kind of like an RPG-esque journey about a monkey and his gang traveling in search of Buddhist scriptures. You'll get to learn about Sun Wukong, who is the basis for a lot of Chinese, Japanese, and (I believe?) Korean spin-off characters, like Goku from Dragonball[1] Another good option is Romance of the Three Kingdoms which will cover a good portion of Chinese history (in a mythological way). A lot of the characters like Zhu Geliang [2] are still highly influential in modern Chinese culture. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Wukong#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Wukong#Influence [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuge_Liang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuge_Liang
- oh-kumudo 8y ago

Cyph0n 8y ago

Agreed. As a native Arabic speaker, I would argue that Arabic is the language of poetry.