Falkner

My favourite is probably The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. While The Lord Of The Rings was great in parts, it was bogged down by very uneven pacing. The Silmarillion doesn't have that problem, spanning several ages in just under 400 pages. I also love Tolkien's prose (and I know that I'm pretty much alone in that).

Reading through Hamlet in a version without annotations was definitely difficult and frustrating. I will never do that again. I can, however, recommend getting the Oxford School versions, which are very nicely annotated and made reading Othello a much more fun and rewarding thing.

The hardest I haven't finished was definitely Milton's Paradise Lost. The endless hypotactic sentences with latin word order and countless biblical allusions were just too much for me.

I started learning Japanese as a flight of fancy a few years ago and thought that I would go the distance. But ultimately I found that I don't really care enough about the language to devote the enormous amount of time and effort required to learn it, so I gave up on it. I think it was the right choice.

The best way to fit language study into a busy schedule is probably to get Anki or Memrise or any of the other flashcard apps for your smartphone (or even just physical flashcards, if you're so inclined) and use them to study whenever you have five minutes while waiting for the bus, at the dentist, etc.

It doesn't sound like much, but if you make it a habit to use your downtime for something useful, you will be surprised how much time it adds up to.

And this is not just for vocabulary, you can create cards to practice grammar like declensions or conjugations, too.

I'd like to learn of the Scandinavian languages, especially Swedish. I've always been fascinated by it, because it sounds so different from the languages I'm used to hearing and I can't fathom that people actually understand each other. 

Swedish would be my next language as well. As a German it sounds slightly familiar, even though I don't understand it. I wouldn't necessarily call it beautiful (even though it can be), but it sounds like a very fun language.

You should never say "Ich habe heiß", which doesn't make any sense.

The correct form would be "Mir ist heiß" or "Mir ist kalt", since heiß and kalt are adjectives, which you cannot have.

Hi there.

I'm Falkner and I come from Germany. I'm currently studying Italian, even though I've done far too little in the recent months. I'd also like to start learning Swedish pretty soon, with my main goal being learning Icelandic after that.

Looking forward to using this forum.

When learning languages, I like improving my vocabulary by reading, which has helped me immeasurably with English.

Now that I'm learning Italian, I'd like to do the same thing, the problem being that my Italian is still not very good. Is there anything that the resident Italians or learners of the language can recommend that is comparatively easy to read?

I've already started reading the Harry Potter books (with mixed success) and a few readers specifically for learners (which were terrible and cringe-worthy).

Icelandic.

It sounds so effortless, every word sounds as if there couldn't possibly be any other way to say it and every other language just got it wrong. It doesn't sound limp and powerless either, saying something with conviction and passion in Icelandic will sound like you really mean it. It is without a doubt the most beautiful language I have ever heard and I look forward to learning it.

Definitely French. I can't really put my finger on what it is exactly, but it just makes me cringe everytime I hear it. Probably partly because it sounds so nasal.

Danish I don't find ugly or unappealing in the way French is, but it sounds pretty funny.