Best European languages for reading novels

[Cavesa]

I don't think the amount of translations has anything to do with the best european langauges for reading novels. What gets translated is mostly matter of marketing, not any objective quality.

I'm sure the position of Latin on the list at number 10 is entirely due to the marketing efforts of those powerful Roman publishing companies, and nothing to do with the quality of the material available in the language.

The data is just a place to start. Numbers matter, if you're looking for a wide range of choices. If your goal is reading literature, then probably Kabardian is a bad place to start. Once you're done with the Nart sagas, that's pretty much it. And many languages don't even have any significant literature at all.

If it's a personal recommendation you're after, I'll recommend Russian. There's classic literature, tons of modernist and post-modernist stuff, and lots and lots of detective novels and science fiction. I don't know about romance novels, but I'm sure they have those too.

Do you really need a table with numbers to figure that out?

Latin is a bit different case, as the books to be translated have accumulated over a few thousand years. But at that time in history, export of Roman culture, with the langauge and literature, was quite important. Latin is quite a unique case. It got into the point at which Europe could either tranlate a few thousand years of history mostly from Latin, or forget it. Again, do you need any table with numbers to find this out?

Russian is on my list for the fantasy and sci-fi novels. Their classics never appealed to me the same way the other big literary traditions did. Perhaps I'll find something I haven't encountered in translation.

The general numbers are useless for this purpose for one more reason. They tell us nothing about what is being published. Again, everyone knows there will be many more books published every year in French than in Polish. But these numbers tell us nothing about the fact that in some genres, the Polish books certainly won't be ashamed by the comparison both when it comes to quantity and quality.

[Random Review]

One of the reasons I keep coming back to German is that so many of my favourite books are translations from authors writing in German and sometimes I dream of learning Russian just to read Tolstoy in the original.

[kanewai]

My experiences, all US-centric -

French - Tons of classics (pre-1920) available for kindle. Used paperbacks are easy to find for modern literature.

Spanish - I'm finding a good choice of modern novels in digital. I haven't moved on to physical books yet.

Italian - I haven't found much in digital content, but Elsa Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet is on kindle and it's a great work. I've had to order paperbacks online at market prices.

[lingua]

amazon.com has 1000's of Italian & French books. I can't speak for the french books but a significant number of native Italian authors are on amazon. I personally have purchased dozens of them. Try searching Kindle store using "Italian Edition" or "French Edition" in quotes. Amazon could do a better job with their advanced search. For the longest time they had a language drop down for only Spanish and English. They currently have French and Germans as well but no Italian.

[garyb]

amazon.com has 1000's of Italian & French books. I can't speak for the french books but a significant number of native Italian authors are on amazon. I personally have purchased dozens of them. Try searching Kindle store using "Italian Edition" or "French Edition" in quotes.

Indeed, I've been able to find almost everything I've wanted in Italian in the UK Kindle store. French books used to be difficult to find there, but in the last year or so many more have become available, which is great news for learners. I don't know about in other countries.

Personally I like reading in French and I enjoy the style of philosophical novels that France is famous for. I gave up learning spoken French a while ago but I still enjoy a book from time to time. I'm not familiar enough with the rest of Europe's literature to say which language I think is the best, though.

[Ogrim]

The best language is obviously Romansh .

Seriously, in terms of quantity, cultural influence and tradition English and FIGS stand out, and I would also add Russian with its strong novelistic tradition going back to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

In the end though, it is all very subjective, and you can find literary gems in much smaller languages. I say Romansh, because there are some really great Romansh writers who open the door to a unique European minority culture - and for me it was worth learning the language just to be able to read those (relatively) few books that have been written by these authors. I could also mention languages like Czech (e.g. Milan Kundera and Václav Havel), or Hungarian (e.g. György Konrád and Imre Kertész). Catalan also has a number of great contemporary writers. In short, you can find quality literature in most European languages, big or small. In a relatively small country like Norway more than 1000 original literary works are published each year, while some 1500 translated works are published (the figure includes novels, poetry, short stories, plays etc.).

[Adrianslont]

Finnish The answer is always Finnish
The original literature is awesome. If you're open to translated literature, there are translations from Swedish, Russian, Estonian, Hungarian and I think some minority Finno-Ugric languages. But the best thing is that you can join the HTLAL Finnish with extra pain group

(I feel your pain wrt Tagalog, I basically gave up on Indonesian for similar reasons. It seems like they mostly read in English, or in Arabic for religious stuff)

Yes, I struggled badly to find a source of Indonesian language books to buy in Australia or online from Indonesia. The big Indonesian book retailer, Gramedia, doesn't ship overseas and doesn't list most of its stock on its site anyway. I'm lucky in that my local library has a few hundred books in Indonesian because it's in an area with some thousands of Indonesians.

Anyway, on my recent trip to Indonesia I was pleased to discover that there are plenty of Indonesian language books in Gramedia! The variety is not great compared to western bookstores but still, at least books. Local authors are fairly limited in number: not much fiction, more young adult and kids fiction, non fiction about the law, local history and business and quite a few biographies of local politicians and public figures. Translations are more plentiful: some current fiction, some classic fiction, plenty of self help, lots of young adult and kids stuff, a fair bit of manga for younger readers.

HP is one of the few things readily available overseas - it can be found in ebook editions at Pottermore and probably also as paper editions as I've seen them in the flesh - I can't remember if you like HP or not.

So, one really needs to get on plane to a major Indonesian city to get hands on Indonesian books.

And I notice that Indonesian isn't even on that MIT website mentioned in this thread!

Edit: An apology to OP, sfuqua, for straying from his original topic which was about "European" languages.... but he did mention Tagalog in passing and then Serpent mentioned Indonesian in passing and I chimed in because my experience seemed relevant to those two mentions and I'd forgotten the original topic was about European languages!

This kind straying is a common phenomenon in forums and understandable enough when your post is separated by pages of other posts from the OP so I accept my own apology and hope others do, too!

[DangerDave2010]

I've got a ton of stuff in Catalan.

[IronMike]

Tons of sci-fi in Russian.

[Jiwon]

I don't think the amount of translations has anything to do with the best european langauges for reading novels. What gets translated is mostly matter of marketing, not any objective quality.

I'm sure the position of Latin on the list at number 10 is entirely due to the marketing efforts of those powerful Roman publishing companies, and nothing to do with the quality of the material available in the language.

The data is just a place to start. Numbers matter, if you're looking for a wide range of choices. If your goal is reading literature, then probably Kabardian is a bad place to start. Once you're done with the Nart sagas, that's pretty much it. And many languages don't even have any significant literature at all.

If it's a personal recommendation you're after, I'll recommend Russian. There's classic literature, tons of modernist and post-modernist stuff, and lots and lots of detective novels and science fiction. I don't know about romance novels, but I'm sure they have those too.

Do you really need a table with numbers to figure that out?

Latin is a bit different case, as the books to be translated have accumulated over a few thousand years. But at that time in history, export of Roman culture, with the langauge and literature, was quite important. Latin is quite a unique case. It got into the point at which Europe could either tranlate a few thousand years of history mostly from Latin, or forget it. Again, do you need any table with numbers to find this out?

This is the reason why I find topics like this ("Best European languages for reading novels") culturally insensitive or eurocentric to say the least. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against the original poster, sfuqua, nor do I think all languages have the same amount of written and/or oral literature produced in the language. I just don't think recognition and acknowledgement of the literature is the same as the quality of the literature.

I have a friend who is a PhD candidate in classical Korean literature. Once she took part in a comparative literature workshop, and she told me of one of the scholars who made a very interesting point. Apparently, the demand for any literature has very little to do with the quality of literature itself, but more to do with the power of the country in which the language is spoken. Hence, the recent increase of interest in Korean literature has more to do with the Korean history of economic development and the popularity of K-Pop and K-drama, rather than increase in recognition of the quality of Korean literature.

My own experience with different languages also confirms this hypothesis. While I believe that Hindi Chhayavaad poetry is as beautiful as English Romantic poetry, it would have been impossible for me to read or even know about the former, had I not majored in Indian Studies. On the other hand, if I wanted to read English Romantic poetry, I would find many translations and reading guides, even in Korean, only because the English-speaking countries such as the US and the UK are considered to be more important and powerful than India.

Not all languages have a rich tradition of literature, true. Yet it is also true that the languages that are considered to have fruitful literature are considered so not solely based on literary merits, but also on political, economic and cultural influence the countries exercise on others.