#buber and arendt love lengthy sentences that span whole paragraphs | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

please-dont-pet-the-okapi · 2 years

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A serious recommendation to younger English majors in need of help determining what foreign language to take: If your college offers it, take German.

Yes, we borrow a lot of words from Latin and French and Greek. Definitely learn some basic roots from those languages. But English is ultimately a Germanic language, and the older the stuff that you’re reading, the more that linguistic history is going to be more noticeable.

Middle English texts like The Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are infinitely easier to read in the original language when you're already familiar with German. Same with figuring out the meanings of different Old English words in Beowulf.

People are going to tell you German is not a useful language unless you plan on going to Germany, but 1) usefulness is not the only thing that makes language-learning worthwhile and 2) that’s flat out not true because I use my German constantly.

So, if your college offers it, take German.

#gonna tag this with things to help people find it #english major #college life #academia #(i guess?)#also! i recommend german to philosophy majors as well #buber and arendt love lengthy sentences that span whole paragraphs #and that sounds like it'd be Bad Writing(TM) or hard to get through #and it is hard to get through!#but it's not bad writing. that's just how german texts are #and reading them in the original language helps you get used to that and even embrace it #deutsche Sachen und deutsche Sprachen #words words words

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