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The depressing truth about learning foreign languages
Topic Started: Sep 17 2014, 02:41 PM (314 Views)
Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
In the last days I read a couple of articles written in English. It's not interesting what they are about. It is interesting how well they were written, however: Quite beautifully. Contemplating a little about the huge gulf between my writing and that of a truly good writer, I suddenly realized that, no matter how hard I'd try, there is a level of language proficiency that is impossible to reach unless you soaked it up as your mother tongue.

Are there any great writers who wrote in something different from their mother tongue?

I wonder whether the difference is in how we learn a language as an adult vs as a child, or whether the difference can be attributed to the different structure of a child's brain.

In any case, the notion that there is a ceiling made of concrete in foreign language learning is a bit depressing.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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jon-nyc
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Cheers
Klaus
Sep 17 2014, 02:41 PM
Are there any great writers who wrote in something different from their mother tongue?
Nabokov. He wrote in French and English as well as his native Russian.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
jon-nyc
Sep 17 2014, 02:58 PM
Klaus
Sep 17 2014, 02:41 PM
Are there any great writers who wrote in something different from their mother tongue?
Nabokov. He wrote in French and English as well as his native Russian.
Wikipedia says this about him:
Quote:
 
The family spoke Russian, English, and French in their household, and Nabokov was trilingual from an early age. In fact, much to his patriotic father's chagrin, Nabokov could read and write in English before he could in Russian

I'm not sure whether he counts.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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jon-nyc
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Cheers
Yeah. But the mere fact that he produced enduring literature in 3 languages is pretty rare.

In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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jon-nyc
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Ok, Joseph Conrad. He didn't learn English until he was an adult. I think he wrote in French too, though he may have learned that growing up (along with his native Polish)
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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Copper
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Shortstop
Klaus
Sep 17 2014, 02:41 PM

Are there any great writers who wrote in something different from their mother tongue?

There is an endless list of great writers who wrote in Latin.
The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy
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brenda
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..............
Klaus, you have no reason to feel anything but happiness with your proficiency in English. I wish my German was as good as your English.
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
~A.A. Milne
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George K
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Finally
I wish my English were as good as his English.
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
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Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
Jack Kerouac's first language was French.

And of course Irish writer Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot originally in French.
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
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jon-nyc
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Jack Kerouac was a ****ty writer. He was even a ****ty adventurer. You had to be some boring ass 50s dude to think 'on the road' was exciting.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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Horace
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HOLY CARP!!!
f'n hippies.
As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good?
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Aqua Letifer
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ZOOOOOM!
jon-nyc
Sep 17 2014, 05:58 PM
Jack Kerouac was a ****ty writer. He was even a ****ty adventurer. You had to be some boring ass 50s dude to think 'on the road' was exciting.
+1.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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brenda
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..............
Aqua Letifer
Sep 17 2014, 06:04 PM
jon-nyc
Sep 17 2014, 05:58 PM
Jack Kerouac was a ****ty writer. He was even a ****ty adventurer. You had to be some boring ass 50s dude to think 'on the road' was exciting.
+1.
Yes! :clap:

You are my people! .
“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”
~A.A. Milne
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Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Copper
Sep 17 2014, 03:52 PM
Klaus
Sep 17 2014, 02:41 PM

Are there any great writers who wrote in something different from their mother tongue?

There is an endless list of great writers who wrote in Latin.
If you think about Caesar and the like, their vernacular language was also an informal version of Latin.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
brenda
Sep 17 2014, 07:50 PM
Aqua Letifer
Sep 17 2014, 06:04 PM
jon-nyc
Sep 17 2014, 05:58 PM
Jack Kerouac was a ****ty writer. He was even a ****ty adventurer. You had to be some boring ass 50s dude to think 'on the road' was exciting.
+1.
Yes! :clap:

You are my people! .
Tell me more about it. I haven't even heard of the author.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
From wiki:

Quote:
 
On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across America. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry and drug use. The novel is a roman a clef, with many key figures in the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs (Old Bull Lee) and Allen Ginsberg (Carlo Marx) represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself, as the narrator Sal Paradise.

The prose style of the book seems cliched, self-conscious and tedious now, but it was revolutionary when the book was first written. I disagree with my esteemed forumites: I found the book to be a touching and melancholic work about a man searching (unsuccessfully) for life's meaning while trying to flee his own mortality. To me, it actually seemed reminiscent in theme, if not in style, to Remarque's Im Westen nichts Neues.
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
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Aqua Letifer
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ZOOOOOM!
Basically, it's the template for and archetype of every single hipster road trip movie that's ever been made. So yeah, because of that it's an important book to know. It has influenced quite a few people.

But the contribution here is the premise and format, not the prose.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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schindler
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Fulla-Carp
For Klaus: "I don’t see how one can ever know a foreign language well enough to make reading poems in it worthwhile. Foreigners’ ideas of good English poems are dreadfully crude: Byron and Poe and so on. The Russians liking Burns. But deep down I think foreign languages irrelevant. If that glass thing over there is a window, then it isn’t a fenster or a fenętre or whatever. Hautes Fenętres, my God! A writer can have only one language, if language is going to mean anything to him" - Philip Larkin
We're all mad here!
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