What a dumb article. You might as well put any language in there. Chinese, Spanish, English or Farsi... trying to say English is a problem in its title when it’s clearly people (and few, loud people at that) that are the problem
Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
401–410 of 478 posts
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
I speak 4 languages and have read literature for 3. The depth and diversity of modern english fiction has no parallel, at least for the genres I enjoy(sci-fi, fantasy, alternative history, thrillers).
Russian and French 19c literature are the two obvious counter-examples. I admire the attempt to reframe the question in terms that allow you to claim English is pre-eminent though.
Please name 10 popular high fantasy novels spanning multi thousand pages in French and Russian.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience (English natively, Chinese, Japanese & Spanish conversationally, and an interest in the subject with knowledge of about a diversity of other languages), English and Chinese can tolerate a lot of "error" and still maintain strong communication. You can mix up the order of words, you can use the "wrong" vowel for a given word, and there are a lot of different words that mean similar things, but are clo…
I find that a somewhat odd evaluation. English is comparatively intolerant of changes in word order compared to a lot of languages.
Aye.
"Man chased the woman" and "woman chased the man" have completely different meanings in English. In many languages, switching around the two nouns like that wouldn't necessarily change the meaning, and in others you'd at least be able to pick out that something had gone wrong.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Zwischenspeicher" is a magnificent word! Betweensaver. I love the Germanic way of nouncompounding. As an American who learned German in high school and have since only admired German from afar, that word sounds great and I love the way the meaning is derived.
German just has a real knack for clarity and simplicity because of this composibility. Some examples I like: - Satzbau = Syntax: I always found it hard to remember what syntax meant. The German word, being the combination of "sentence" and "construction" requires no memorization - Teilchen = Particle: In German, "part" + domunitive ending - Jahrhundert, Jahrzehnt = century, decade: literally "year" + "hundred"/"ten"…
It is just a question of orthography. In German, compound nouns are written without space, as a single word. In English, they are usually (but not always) written with space. So "Christmas tree" is "Weinachtsbaum". This is sometimes made out to be much more mysterious than it is, as if German is more "composable" or something, but the only difference is the typographical space.
English is just more difficult to spell because there no simple rule for when a compound is written with or without space (or with a dash, as is sometimes the case). E.g. Christmas is Christ + mass, but is written in a single word.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#405The biggest advantage of English: no central authority or standard. You can invent your own neologisms/slang/loanwords at your leisure and it will spread virally if useful.
There isn't any cultural resistance to language change, the competition is for efficient/descriptive communication not adherence to 'correct/proper pronunciation'.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree of course that there are many languages in which great literature is produced. I just happen to find that books, be it fiction or non-fiction, written by English or American authors, have a very refined way of pleasing the reader.
I don't mean to be rude, but how many other languages do you speak? There's an almost ineffable depth to nearly every language on this earth, and there are hundreds of them with very large literature corpuses. Naturally, maybe speaking two languages, you are familiar only with literature in those languages. Also, remember that English, being spoken by so many people, its literature is naturally more divulged and wide…
I read and speak German, English, French and Farsi (Persian) fluently.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
The English etymology is more indirect, but essentially means the same thing, by way of Latin and Greek: c. 1600, from French syntaxe (16c.) and directly from Late Latin syntaxis, from Greek syntaxis "a putting together or in order, arrangement, a grammatical construction," from stem of syntassein "put in order," from syn- "together" (see syn-) + tassein "arrange" (see tactics). https://www.etymonline.com/word/syntax…
> The English etymology is more indirect, but essentially means the same thing, by way of Latin and Greek: ... meaning you can't understand many terms if you only know English, because they are actually french/latin/greek. "Cache" is actually an example of this.
Or, putting on my optimist's glasses: learn enough English etymology, and you'll learn Latin, Greek, German, French, Italian, Hindi, Celtic, Klingon, ...
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't mean to be rude, but how many other languages do you speak? There's an almost ineffable depth to nearly every language on this earth, and there are hundreds of them with very large literature corpuses. Naturally, maybe speaking two languages, you are familiar only with literature in those languages. Also, remember that English, being spoken by so many people, its literature is naturally more divulged and wide…
I speak 4 languages and have read literature for 3. The depth and diversity of modern english fiction has no parallel, at least for the genres I enjoy(sci-fi, fantasy, alternative history, thrillers).
What is your native language? Mine is Polish, for sci-fi I could not enjoy Stanislaw Lem translated to English. On the other hand I really enjoyed translation of H.P. Lovercaft to Polish.
I find Douglas Adams "Hitchhiker's guide to galaxy" lot less funny in Polish. There was also really bad (in my opinion) translation of "Lord of the rings" to Polish which tried to translate proper names, but there was different one which I read and left names unchanged.
I am just thinking how many experiences I am missing while I am not knowing many other languages. Now I live in The Netherlands and learn Dutch, I cannot properly enjoy literature even though I read books, but on my language level everything is bland and I see just words to be understood. So I don't get double meanings like I could already get while reading English.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
German just has a real knack for clarity and simplicity because of this composibility. Some examples I like: - Satzbau = Syntax: I always found it hard to remember what syntax meant. The German word, being the combination of "sentence" and "construction" requires no memorization - Teilchen = Particle: In German, "part" + domunitive ending - Jahrhundert, Jahrzehnt = century, decade: literally "year" + "hundred"/"ten"…
It is just a question of orthography. In German, compound nouns are written without space, as a single word. In English, they are usually (but not always) written with space. So "Christmas tree" is "Weinachtsbaum". This is sometimes made out to be much more mysterious than it is, as if German is more "composable" or something, but the only difference is the typographical space. English is just more difficult to spell…
While you are correct to some extent, I do find German to be much more consistent in this regard.
In many cases this may just be due to English's distance from it's root (i.e. Latin, French). As it was pointed out below, "syntax" is also a composition of two simpler words - they just aren't words we know. In German, there are also loan words from Latin and French, but I do have the impression it is not to the same extent, and the German language is quite consistent.
Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
I meant examples of expressiveness over German. Edit: You were comparing English with other languages and implied it is more or as expressive as the majority of languages (or at least the ones you are familiar with). Thus my question.
I cannot think of a a good example right now, but as a native German speaker, I do sometimes find myself wondering how to express a certain thought in German. English grammar feels more flexible to me than German, and English seems to be more suited for colorful idioms.
Fellow German here. From a grammatical standpoint German is a really flexible language while English isn‘t. I only recently found out about it during my Latin studies (selftaught) and comparing Latin to German and English. The problem with expressing a thought in German might be a side effect of the ubiquity of English in so many fields: we are just used to think in English terms that it becomes a second nature.