Easy language to broaden culture (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

Easy language to broaden culture
Tags: Cultural Identity \| Choosing a Language \| Mandarin \| French
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42 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Michael K.
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5538 days ago
568 posts - 886 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Esperanto

Message 41 of 42

24 April 2011 at 12:46am | IP Logged

My 2 cents:

Spanish and French may be the best bets for an "easy" language to broaden horizons, and also to hedge your bets in case a non-Western culture is just too difficult for you to embrace. Most people who speak Spanish & French aren't European, but either South American (for Spanish) or sub-Saharan Africans (for French). Also, the fastest-growing communities of speakers for those languages are in those two regions. The Peace Corps also asks on an application for Spanish, French, or other, so you can see how important those languages are (or how often they're taught in US schools, but that's another matter).

Also, if you learn either language, you'll also have access to the rich literature in those languages.

Anyway, I see it as a win-win situation. You can learn more about familiar Western cultures and can explore other, more exotic cultures as well.
2 persons have voted this message useful

JasonE
Groupie
Canada
Joined 4879 days ago
54 posts - 78 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: French

Message 42 of 42

25 April 2011 at 7:04pm | IP Logged

Sprachprofi wrote:

Marc Frisch wrote:

In larger languages, thousands of books are published each year.
There is no way you could read all of them anyway. Now if you only look at the number
of translations (see the Index Translationum), you'll still find that even for small
languages there are still hundreds to thousands of translations available in English or
French and the best books are most likely to be among those that are translated.

I do not believe that the situation is as rosy as that. Sure, Goethe has been
translated into lots of languages, including Esperanto (some of them translated by
Zamenhof himself). However, Goethe is high literature that you forcedly read at school
and few people remember much afterwards. Goethe's influence on an average German's life
is negligible - a few expressions that entered the German language, that's all. A
writer who had a much bigger influence is Karl May. Karl May's books have been standard
boys' reading in Germany much like the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
are in America. You'll be hard pressed to find someone who hasn't read him. And this
has single-handedly caused the great fascination many Germans have for Native
Americans. Even hiking through remote parts of the Black Forest I came across a pow-
wow, organized by a group of several dozen *adult* Germans whose hobby is to study and
preserve Native American traditional crafts and rituals. Such groups are not uncommon
all over Germany, and Karl May is to blame for the most part. Yet has anyone heard of
him abroad? Of his 91 "collected works", none of them has been translated to English
(for part of two books there are public-domain "translations" that change everything
about the books including the name and character of the protagonists). If translators
can miss such a big part of German culture, I'm not holding my hopes out for less
accessible cultures like the Chinese one. I've been looking for English translations of
popular Chinese authors in order to be able to create parallel texts; they are hard to
come by (English authors in Chinese is a lot easier). For now I'm creating a Chinese-
Esperanto parallel text of Ba Jin, which also has the advantage of being closer to the
original.

I took an aboriginal history class a couple of years ago that was taught by a German professor. He was a great
prof, but I did find it a bit curious having a German guy teaching an aboriginal history class. I'm guessing that
Karl May was an influence on him while growing up.

I think that the problem of selection bias is key in regards to the usefulness of translations. Translations cost
money to produce, and are made because the publisher thinks that the book will sell in the foreign language. I
want to get an idea of what is going on in the minds of other cultures today, and if my experience with English is
any guide, they aren't reading the classics of their literature much more than we are of our own.

To perhaps give some conclusion to this topic, I think that once I reach a more advanced level in french I will
start looking for more information about the francophone culture in Canada, as well as the french speaking parts
of Africa. I'm not sure what there is for African produced french content online, but I'm hoping that it will be even
more available in the years to come.

Spanish is also looking like a good candidate for my third language. If I continue past two foreign languages I
will seriously consider Persian, but by then it might other contenders based on other factors. Learning Esperanto
isn't likely to happen however.

Thanks everyone for the help.

Edited by JasonE on 25 April 2011 at 7:12pm
1 person has voted this message useful

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