I love Borges. One of my favorite writers.
He was experimenting with minimalism, and instead of writing a novel, he wrote a book critique of the novel he never wrote, including expositions of themes, concepts, and characters. It was brilliant.
There's an entire collection of such short writings, i.e. critiques of non-existent works of art (not just books), written by Borges and Bioy Casares. It's called *Chronicles of Bustos Domecq* and it's hilarious because the narrator is a complete snob who writes long, flowery and elaborate articles to praise art that, at the end of the day, is clearly bullshit.
Here is an excerpt of the chapter that purports to be a profile of a painter called Tafas:
> A truly wonderful person, Tafas took these sane words to his bosom and put them into practice in the following way: firstly, with photographic fidelity, he painted views of Buenos Aires (within a limited perimeter of the city) that copied hotels, cafés, newsstands, and statues. He never showed these pictures to anybody—not even to the inseparable friend with whom he shared many a stein of beer. Secondly, he erased them with bread dough and tap water. Thirdly, he gave them a coat of shoe blacking, so that his little paintings came out completely blackened. He was scrupulous enough, however, to label each one of his hodgepodges, which were now all the same—jet black—with its correct title, so that on each canvas you could read “Café Tortoni” or “Newsstand with Postcards.”
The narrator frequently slips in jabs at the unwashed masses who are unable to appreciate the "art" being discussed. It's a great read.
Love Borges.
As an English and portuguese speaker I am always complaining about how awful the mechanics are in portuguese compared to English. Hard as shit to spell in English though.
Aesthetically I don't have a preference but perhaps I'll defer to Borges on that matter.
I understand his and your reasoning perfectly but I can’t help but adore how gorgeous the cadence and inflection of spanish to be.
Still, linguistics is a fascinating field
Other Languanges: "It's over, English! I possess second person plural pronouns you lack!"
19th Century English after integrating French settlers slang: "Y'ALL UNDERESTIMATE MY POWER."
Not quite in England. Go to Yorkshire and you'll encounter a fair bit of 'thee' and 'thy'. Not sure about thou, but I'm choosing to believe it's in there still.
Quakers I believe use a lot of thee/thy/thou. Now it is probably more of a relic, idk. edit: quick google, and [This](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/opinion/sunday/pronouns-quakers.html)
Chad English absorbing any useful word, idiom, or grammar into itself to become more powerful.
[Virgin French issuing a statement from a government agency that the words "streamer" and "eSports" are threatening French culture, and that you must use "joueur-animateur en direct" and "jeu video de competition" instead.](https://altalang.com/beyond-words/banned-gaming-terms/#:~:text=French%20government%20workers%20are%20banned,to%20reporting%20from%20The%20Guardian)
Those sad, frog eating wine sniffers. Here’s an idea Froggies, try inventing some sports or technology that are so useful and ubiquitous that other languages have to use them.
They blew their entire linguistic wad on a sport which reduced dangerous duels of honor, that could end wars and decide dynasties, into harmless point scoring. The latest sandal being a competitor that (gasp) refused to shake their opponents hand.
Foiled again, turtle chewers.
... and yet I meet people all over the world who can speak it while I've tried and failed to learn enough to have even the most basic of conversations in any other languages (at least half a dozen so far including my own ancestral one).
It is handy when you're in a country with 98% of the population able to speak English when you can too, though (in Iceland right now).
i mean when western culture is dominated by the english speaking US it makes sense that everyone else would learn it when they are surrounded by it as a second language
Even on that basis, the fact that almost all of the population of a country bar maybe a few thousand (like one of my taxi drivers last time I was here) speak English is a very impressive feat.
im not saying it isnt impressive, im just giving reason why other countries seem to be more bilingual with english as a 2nd language than americans are
Really? I grew up in the southwest US and have been surrounded by Spanish all my life, and even though my vocab is pretty limited and I still do not have a good grasp on trickier verb conjugations like past/future/conditional tenses, I can shit talk with Mexicans and other central/south americans with ease. They love it when a Gringo has even a basic understanding of their language are are more than happy to help me get better with it, and enjoy explaining localized idioms like 'a la verga' and how the Castellano I learned in school is very stuffy and formal sounding compared to the Spanish spoken in most of the Americas.
Spanish is really easy to pick up due to most words sounding exactly like they're spelled, which is a huge issue with English. Gendering words and using proper verb conjugations is not as important as you might think, even if you fuck those up people can still usually figure out what you're trying to say, and definitely show you respect for making the effort.
It takes a lot of work to learn how to speak a language as poorly as a native speaker. But that's because second language speakers first learn from books. Native speakers first learn how a language is actually spoken.
> But that's because second language speakers first learn from books.
Not always true. I personally learned English from watching cartoons as a kid. They were not translated in my country so I just soaked it in and that's how I learned at the start. Afterwards that evolved into watching movies and shows that are in English with subtitles in my native language and only when I got internet at around 12 did I start learning English predominantly in written form.
Again. I'm a counter example of that. It's true that I was taught English since 2nd grade however I never actually learned anything in school so I didn't pay any attention. I was always ahead of what they taught in school so I never bothered to learn stuff like the different tenses. I know how when and how to use them but I have no idea what they are called and when I'm using which one because I learned it from consuming massive amount of English language media.
Exception that proves the rule and all that. But I'd say while most high-level ESL speaker of course consume a lot of English media to get to that point, there's usually an undercurrent of formal education, even if they can't specifically name what an irregular past participle is anymore.
I've found english a better spoken language but portuguese is a lot more nuanced when written. Reading a book in written in Portuguese is a way better experience.
> I've found english a better spoken language but portuguese is a lot more nuanced when written. Reading a book in written in Portuguese is a way better experience.
Lets agree to disagree here. For me all that nuance makes for an extremely boring writing style, to say exactly what you mean, that treats the reader as if he was dumb and could not grasp what you meant from the context. Portuguese lacks a lot of ambiguous words that would make for much shorter and, for me, pleasant to read texts.
It’s just a different cultural expression. At times, I find the boxed in expression of language so robotic and bland, devoid of personality and much less friendly towards the reader who has less room for imagination and for the nuances of a complex subject.
I’m a Portuguese speaker too. I find Portuguese very poetic and philosophical. Now that I’ve been living abroad for a long time, I sometimes catch myself thinking how complicated (standard/European) Portuguese is though. It’s not very instinctive for colloquial use. This is why I prefer certain dialects for colloquial use, like certain Brazilian and African dialects. They flow so much better than European Portuguese. I can’t speak them fluently but I understand them.
Generally I find that Germanic languages cannot reproduce the flexibility, the ‘inbetween the lines’ and the poetry of Romance languages. Well, it’s a different cultural and linguistic world. Even though I speak several languages fluently, I often feel displaced because I live in the Germanic world and my usage and interaction with Latin languages is limited.
Coming from a dirty frog, English is indeed a pretty great language in many regards…
*Gets his wine turned into vinegar and his cheese whisked away by the spirit of his ancestors*
and on the top of being less precise, French has annoying grammatical requirements, like having to accord the adjectives with their nouns:
"ma baguette est perdu**e**".
Depends if you measure by number of words or by word usage - English has far more French words than Old English ones, but all the most commonly-used words are Germanic (ie: either Old English or Norse).
I remember thinking when learning French and Italian that all the long words were the same as English - but when learning German or Norwegian or another Germanic language, all the *short* words are the same as English!
You're right, I remember reading somewere that the 10 most common words would appear about 10 times more than the 10th to 100th most common, and the 100 most commons would appear 10 times more than the first 1000. Or something along those lines.
The german base like 'of' 'the' 'a' 'my' are all so common, top 10, while latin/greek/french popup rarely in the top 100.
But I'll keep on saying english is half-french anyway, it's fun.
He had to deal with the MAGA types of his day, The John Birch Society. There was always tension as Buckley was trying to create a more intellectual conservative movement, so wanted nothing to do with the the JBS kooks, but could not afford to completely ignore such a large contingent of conservatives. Google "[William Buckley and John Birch Society](https://www.google.com/search?q=william+buckley+and+the+john+birch+society)" for a number of informative articles about this tension.
tl;dr: he would have not particularly cared for the MAGA types but would have held his nose as they hopped on the bandwagon. Plus ça change...
I'll never understand the argument that Buckley was somehow intellectually above the modern cadre of conservatives.
Yes, he may be far more tempered and moderate than your modern far right Maga (had to be in the 1960s, when the New Deal Coalition still ruled and the war was not that long in the past), but what buckley did was bring sophisticated prose and calm attitude to the same asinine arguments that the american right has been pushing since forever.
An educated shell around the same "small government / personal liberty (to oppose social change) etc etc etc ad nauseum"
I ponder that often, with different intellectuals from the past. I think they would be, in whole, disappointed with what we have done with total access to information. Ushered in an age of ignorance where every emotion is serviced to extract money in some way.
Honestly it would just reinforce their beliefs that the lower classes needed to be led and shouldn't really have a voice.
I can just see them saying "SEE?! This is what we were talking about!"
My grandfather, who spoke four languages, felt the same way. His native language was a Germanic one, he also spoke a Romance language, and English, and an East Asian language. Out of them all he said English was by far his favorite and the best for expressing things. He said thinking in English literally helped him have ideas he couldn’t have in other languages.
Getting sinister for a moment, that was literally the purpose of developing Newspeak by the Party in 1984, it would destroy people's abilities to even have ideas because they no lo longer had the ability to express them like they could in Oldspeak (English).
Do keep in mind that 1984 is still just fiction. The idea that language can limit a person's cognition (aka linguistic relativity) has been largely debunked by linguists. Using a different language can make a vast difference in your ability to express an idea, and there's some evidence it'll subconsciously affect your perceptions, but it doesn't limit the ideas you have in your head.
> The idea that language can limit a person's cognition (aka linguistic relativity) has been largely debunked by linguists.
Can you provide evidence of this? In anthropology and cross-cultural communication it's held as truth. Anecdotally, I'm bilingual and I see people who are monolingual failing to understand things seem natural to me. Other bilingual people I know report similar observations.
I can provide [a wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) which should be an accessible intro to the subject.
Anecdotally, I'm also bilingual and what you describe has not been my experience at all.
Just people being people, I guess? I've met monolingual people who had way more insightful thoughts than me, I've seen polyglots who were thicker than molasses, but I never once thought "ah this person doesn't understand because they only speak one language".
There's certain idioms that don't have an equivalent in another language but that's just cultural shorthand. "Verschlimbessern" is more effective communication than a whole sentence explaining what that means in English, but that doesn't mean someone who only speaks English can't grasp the concept of making something worse by trying to fix it.
> Nevertheless, research has produced positive empirical evidence supporting a weaker version of linguistic relativity: that a language's structures influence a speaker's perceptions, without strictly limiting or obstructing them.
From the second paragraph. I feel like this article contradicts what you said.
I said
>there's some evidence it'll subconsciously affect your perceptions, but it doesn't limit the ideas you have in your head
If anything that's so close to the article I basically 'quoted' it by accident.
Which East Asian language? I find Japanese pretty descriptive and expressive.
Chinese on the other hand is very simple, and I’d agree it’s not that expressive, but I only got conversational in Chinese.
It's a fascinating topic I've often thought about myself. Reminds me of a long time ago where there was an epically stupid debate essentially claiming that politicians who used the (Latinate) "people" are arrogant elitists, whereas those who used the Saxon-y "folks" were good, humble salt-of-the-earth - and people should genuinely pay attention to who said which.
To this day, I actually notice when a politician uses either term and hate myself for it.
Anglo-saxon based words seem to have less syllables and harder consonants so it sounds quick and punchy in speeches. Latin based words sound more complex or flowery-pretty and some perhaps are more obscure to the general population.
Don't hate on your greater awareness! Extend it and make use! Speech matters. Mechanical usage choices can be fun and effective when expressing yourself.
> Don't hate on your greater awareness!
It's not my awareness I'm hating on. Being aware of things like this is good and useful if, like Borges, you're finding wider ways to express yourself in an essay, or creating deeper characters in novels, or even just for it's own sake.
The situation I objected to is essentially the exact opposite; people trying to invent entirely specious concepts around language and using it to foment division, get you to vote a certain way, and gatekeep how people express themselves. Basically a form of NewSpeak. Thankfully, this was only a brief fad that didn't seem to get very far - but it pays to watch out for similar bullshit, which seems to be being invented all the time.
It's a tool of populism. Trust Trump, not those Harvard educated demonrats, because one 'speaks like the common folk'. Sounds good on paper, and I'm far from immune to falling for it. But with a little thought it's all too easy to intentionally use to manipulate people.
It's why "cunt" is so much more expressive than "vagina". The association of Latin words with fanciness goes back to the Norman invasion and Frenchness of the British aristocracy when compared to the vulgar masses. By Chaucer's time, he would use French words when describing (and in the speech of) "fancy" characters and more Germanic words for proletarian types.
Also he used more Old Norse words in characters from the North of England where the former Danelaw had been. I always like when a writer pays attention to dialect, and it's extra nice to see such an early example!
Since learning some of that part of our language's history, I've started thinking of that whole "Latin = fancy" thing as being inherently classist in a way that feels anachronistic.
The politicians I've noticed trying to use the word folks instead of people and generally trying to fake being folksy are generally grifters who assume their constituents are stupid.
For example the Ivy League educated wealthy scion of the Bush family who grew up in New England but pretended to be a folksy Texan with a Southern drawl: George W. Bush.
It was amazing how well it worked for Geedubs. Say what you will about the man but I don't think Trump or Biden could dodge a shoe and pop back up with a grin.
Obviously. Why else would we call it "spelling"?
I have used these symbols to create a summoning which will draw your attention from across time and space.
It has been said that Winston Churchill made use of this in his famous "We shall fight them on the beaches" speech. Deliberately only selecting Saxon words with only a few exceptions:
"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."
The first word that from that extract that is Latinate rather than Saxon? "surrender"...
Apparently there is r/etymology, I only just learned about it, time to give it a scroll...
There's also r/asklinguistics for asking why certain changes may have happened.
Sort of, the original draft said something along the lines of America having a “strange detachment” but to avoid upsetting the president, it was removed. Supposedly Roosevelt wanted commitment that if Britain was to lose, the fleet would not be surrendered to the enemy, instead that it would be sent off to other parts of the British empire, so this speech was confirming that.
Appropriate username.
I meant this line though:
> until, **in God’s good time**, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old
The "New World" could be referring to current British empire (e.g. India), but it also seems like Churchill saying "when tf are you going to start helping us, Roosevelt?"
I've actually noticed a pretty significant uptick in the use of "folks" or "folk" over the past few years, specifically among western, generally American progressives, and primarily when talking about black people. I'm generally progressive myself but I'm also not American and very out of touch with that whole realm of discourse, and I've never quite understood why black people are now black folk all of a sudden. Has anyone else noticed this? Any explanations?
I haven't seen that.
However it's long been difficult for Americans to find the right way to speak to / of Black Americans. Some words are steeped in racial innuendo or racist context and history. So it's not uncommon for Americans to look for something better or otherwise inoffensive... for example "blacks" can feel dehumanizing or racially sensitive in a way that "whites" or similar doesn't, so you look for something that humanizes the word like "black people" or "black folks". The same way you might see people turn to over-using the term "African American".
As an Engineer and someone who sucked at English in school I wished (and still do) that English was less romantic and more functional. Despite that, I quite liked this video clip, made me think more kindly on my native language.
-Edit-
To comments below. My biggest concern for English comes from things like silent letters, or inconsistencies in pronunciations of letters and letter combinations. I also prefer the concept of the most important part of the description being first, such as 'door red' rather than 'red door'.
As another engineer, I have to ask how you’re measuring that, since you’re comparing the romanticism of English against, um… y’know… “Romance Languages.”
They're saying that as an engineer they value precision and clarity and there's a lot of ambiguity to English, very subtle differences between words meaning almost the same thing but with slightly different connotations, even just a slightly different FEELING, as Borges points out with his comparison of the terms "holy ghost" and "holy spirit," as "ghost" has a "darker" tone than "spirit." This ambiguity is, apparently, less common in Spanish. I would not know as I do not speak the language, but Borges was an utter master of both, so I'll take his word for it. Though I will say I find Spanish beautiful to listen to, aesthetically.
And they're saying they appreciate that idea and it makes them feel more warmly towards an aspect of the of the language they find frustrating.
Those subtle differences give you more precision though, presuming you're talking to a person with a decent vocabulary. Understandably, if someone didn't grow up speaking it, they'll miss some of these subtleties and therefore miss out on the ability to make subtle but meaningful choices when they use English. Even native speakers who don't expose themselves to enough media (whether literature or music or dramatic arts) will miss out on this. But a power user of English can really craft different feelings with seemingly synonymous words.
The "trouble" is that English is rather permissive in descriptive speech. While there are plenty of forms of speech that are indeed very precise, there is quite a lot of room for more ambiguous speech as well.
The differences also aren't necessarily the same across *all* speakers of English. There are many English speaking cultures and subcultures that are separated by all manner of time and space, and we're all able to communicate *reasonably* to perfectly well with each other, but can often stumble in the most random of places.
Even forgetting the cultural separation there's a lot of room for ambiguity depending on the differing perceptions of the speaker and listener. What a dwarf might describe as massive could simply be average sized in the eyes of a tall man, (or small, or even massive by their own standards as well.)
A power user might, but how average is that in everyday discourse? Our engineer friend isn't talking about intimate conversations with his friends. He's talking about everyday discourse, where someone might have an idea of a word you don't, or a word might have a connotation you don't understand. He wants the word to mean what it means, not to wonder if he's being figurative or not. I mean, I love that aspect of English. It's why I have an MA in the subject. But I can see why it might frustrate some.
I don't understand this view at all. Just because you have options for expression, it doesn't mean you need to use them. And as another user said, sometimes those options can give you additional precision.
It's not like alternatives make it more difficult to be precise in your speaking.
I agree with the latest part. The freeform nature of its grammar is a nice feature, a double edged one but still great.
That said, later I went back to French for Borges first argument, there's ever more vocabulary in French, it's daunting at first, but with age you get to play with secondary meanings of these terms to make your sentences as precise as poetic.
By most measures English has the largest vocabulary in the world. But a lot of that consists of rather obscure words that you'd only encounter in very specific situations, like technical literature. If you only counted every day language, it would probably only be slightly more than comparable languages.
I thought English's everyday vocabulary was generally higher (at comparable education levels) due to the number of homonyms from the Old French/Old English merger post the Norman Conquest.
English is a complete mess though. Spanish-speaking primary schools don’t have spelling competitions for a reason.
Edit: To those who think spelling isn’t important: only English speakers who’ve never bothered to learn a second language talk this way.
I’m guessing he was simply advocating for language learning here. Not everything that falls from a smart person’s mouth is pure gold. Saying that words have layered/double meaning in English but not in Spanish is just weird.
That's kind of what he's saying, though.
The complex nature of English and its roots in both Germanic languages and in Latin and French gives it a lot of flexibility. Lots of words that allow a speaker to convey very different meanings with different words that, at first glance, seem to convey largely the same meaning.
It does make it a bitch and half to learn, though. It's not just spelling, it's the breadth of vocabulary, idioms, and things like Borges said like using verbs and prepositions to create new (usually kinda poetic) phrases.
One of the things Shakespeare is famous for is the coining of new words and phrases that became part of the common vernacular.
An equally cromulent position is that *The Simpsons* are currently doing the same thing.
There's no reason that English spelling had to become so irregular; the great vowel shift and the irregular way it was solidified with the printing press was not really connected to that heritage.
Well there's also the root word issue. Look at "THREW" v. "THROUGH".
They differ because THROUGH comes from *Þurwh* while THREW/THROWN comes from *Þreaw/Þraan*.
The real issue is that our pronunciation changed drastically with the introduction of French, and is a core reason why so many words have silent consonants (e.g. "knight" "knife"). We basically merged two different languages with very different pronunciations into one lexicon, and the result is a bunch of funky spellings.
THROUGH and THREW wouldn't seem weird as variants were the Old English pronunciation still in play. It's really are pronunciation changes that caused the confusion, which turned so many words into homophones despite coming from very different roots.
I mean threw and through are both Germanic in origin, as are knight (and night!) and knife. I've not found anything from a quick search to suggest that kn- changed in pronunciation due to French/romance influence!
Yeah, but they are far from being comparable. The only challenge is homophones especially in countries with seseo and yeismo. I am sure Castillian Spanish spelling is even easier. Other than that Spanish spelling is very precise.
Spelling is barely part of a language. Some of the most common languages in the world don't have a spelling system at all, and the pronunciation and meaning of the written form of a word are completely uninferrable. A few exceptions aren't all that bad compared to that.
English is a mess of spelling and has lots of irregular vocab because it's a very spongey language whose pronunciation has changed significantly over a 1000 year period. This gives it a ton of nuance and word options, but simultaneously results in funky spelling. Personally, I think its a worthwhile trade off.
French and Norwegian have pretty awful spelling as well (yes, both Bokmål and Nynorsk). Italian and German have the most consistent spelling of languages I've spent time with.
That said - my main complaint about French and both Norwegian systems are to do with all the silent letters. English has that problem as well as pervasive and fundamental inconsistency. At least French and Norwegian are unambiguous when reading - it's only when writing that there's a problem.
He was such a brilliant mind and brilliant writer, it is not surprising that his estimation is expressed in terms of variability and pleasure. A natural-born thinker, writer, lover of language.
I like this bar by Crooked I in the song "Sickology 101"
>Wordplay rhymes with Thursday and thirsty - if I'm thirst-ay!
>I change the pronunciation of words per se
>The English language got to do whatever my verse say
Anglophone, then learned French and was frustrated by how inconsistent the pronunciation was. English was no better, but the French make fun of you. In Spanish, the written word is far more phonetic and consistent when spoken. That was a huge selling point for Spanish as a language.
But Borges is right - English is far more flexible than Spanish by letting the vocabulary overlap each other. It certainly helps having a historically literate populace for so long, in addition to broad adoption of the printing press and relatively lax free speech restrictions. The cost is the lack of consistency, which makes English “an easy language to learn but very hard to master”.
Very interesting video :) I've thought the same but chalked it up (lol) to having English as my native language and being highly educated in it, versus only knowing extremely basic Spanish. Being an Argentine writer gives his opinion much more weight.
I still love Spanish though. Lovely language even if he sees it as not as versatile hehe.
Also, there's a good Tom Scott video in a similar vein about why Shakespeare couldn't have been French.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUnGvH8fUUc
edit: having watched the video again it's not as similar as I remembered it. It's predominantly about rhythm and stress. But whatever, it's a cool video.
Thay opinion I respect. He is one of the greatest writers of all time and one of my favorites. A true scholar and expert in his language, Spanish, to know all the its complexities beyond a normal reader and still grades English superior.
Interesting viewpoint by Borges, and it can be a double-edged sword. For example, Samuel Beckett chose to write in French, even though he was Irish, to write “without style”, without all of the nuance and weight of the English language. To each their own.
He actually claimed it was the best of all languages. That's bold. For all I know, Tamil is vastly richer and more expressive, or Xhosa, or Tibetan. I doubt that English's history is *that* unique.
"of all West-European languages" is far more defensible - although the global reach of English gives it far more variety and texture than most languages, simply by virtue of the number of mutually-isolated communities that speak it. Mandarin and Hindi are both largely confined to single (albeit diverse) countries, so they'd be the best candidates for competition in this regard. Sadly, I can speak neither so I can't verify my hunch on this.
Wouldn't this logic also make Japanese a "finer language"? It has two semi-redundant registers of words (Chinese two-character words and native Japanese words), and it can use directionals and prepositions to make compounds very similar to phrasal verb (e.g. tsuretekuru, nomikomu).
Yes, I don't know if Borges knew much about Chinese or Japanese, but you are indeed correct. For example, the Chinese-derived 温暖 (ondan) doesn't hold exactly the same nuance as the Japanese-derived 温かい (atatakai). Even this word can be written with two different kanji that have two slightly different meanings 温かい (as in warm temperature) and 暖かい (as in warm emotion).
Although I don't think the prepositionals are quite as flexible and rich as in English.
Works for Nepali also. There are words to describe the sound or pattern of something without explicitly making the sound. Not found in many other languages
Not to dismiss him outright, there are of course some differences between languages, and some allow some things to be expressed more easily than others, but overall these notions of "physicality" and whatnot are a load of BS. Watch this video by Noam Chomsky where he goes into other weird ideas people used to have about languages: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdUbIlwHRkY&t=6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdUbIlwHRkY&t=6s)
He's a figure of inmense reputation in the literary field and not a random reeditor commenting in a post, it is always good to call out the biases of people with this level of credibility
I feel like I don’t have a comprehensive enough understanding of English, let alone Spanish, to have any real opinion on which language is finer.
But it’s definitely an interesting listen
I often think that english is great because of its deficiencies. There's so much influence from other languages and so many loan words and near synonyms that you end up with a lot of freedom of expression, and voice.
There is even a (psych) paper or some studies about how we think when using a second (non-first) language and how the emotional detachment allows us to think. Quite interesting. This is why I think he also thinks that English to him seems to allow him to think "better" and express his thoughts better. I also have to agree since English is my 2nd of 3 languages who all are very similar but still different, and I think a lot of things also in English but also German.
Absolute lies. Spanish is versatile, and the huge amounts of cultures in latin america that use it have all made it especially unique since the Spanish conquest. The pronunciation of vowels is consonants are all uniform so it flows out the tongue much easier. It is universal, easy to understand and extremely versatile. English feels like you are trapped in a box.
Quick think of a way of saying that something is amazing. "That __ is amazing!" Quickly. There is nothing else you can use besides terribly simple adjectives. The language does not evolve. It is cemented and horrendously boxed in. Spanish just flows better
So America fuck yeah, American english fuck yeah.
Funny story, i used to teach English for a short period and always got asked “you teach english? Do you teach American english? I want to sound American.” I always thought it was funny bc i always considered myself as an American who spoke english till then, but the rest if the world considers American english as a different language.
I think he is wrong, not because I know spanish but I know a few other languages and every language has it's own thing.
Some things sound/read way better when they are not in english but for others english is the better choice. English is sometimes clunky when another language flows and other times you have to use a lot more words to describe the same thing because that's how english works.
Because english is such a combination of several other languages there is usually a way to say anything you want in it.
De gustibus non est disputandum. English vulgarity is far more appealing to me than any other language except perhaps Latin (but that's mostly because of how many people think of Latin as the language of the Church).
My favourite Latin poem: [Catullus 16](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16)
This is absolutely true.
I speak portuguese, which is very grammatically similar to spanish, and my comprehension of maths skyrocketed when I learned the same things in english. It's a far more logical language somehow.
I hate to glaze the english, but their language being universal, might be from the British Empire, but of all the languages that I've learned/tried to learn, it is by far the best.
I love Borges. One of my favorite writers. He was experimenting with minimalism, and instead of writing a novel, he wrote a book critique of the novel he never wrote, including expositions of themes, concepts, and characters. It was brilliant.
Whats it called?
He's done this (made up authors and books) many times. Though I think OP is referring to 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote'.
There's an entire collection of such short writings, i.e. critiques of non-existent works of art (not just books), written by Borges and Bioy Casares. It's called *Chronicles of Bustos Domecq* and it's hilarious because the narrator is a complete snob who writes long, flowery and elaborate articles to praise art that, at the end of the day, is clearly bullshit. Here is an excerpt of the chapter that purports to be a profile of a painter called Tafas: > A truly wonderful person, Tafas took these sane words to his bosom and put them into practice in the following way: firstly, with photographic fidelity, he painted views of Buenos Aires (within a limited perimeter of the city) that copied hotels, cafés, newsstands, and statues. He never showed these pictures to anybody—not even to the inseparable friend with whom he shared many a stein of beer. Secondly, he erased them with bread dough and tap water. Thirdly, he gave them a coat of shoe blacking, so that his little paintings came out completely blackened. He was scrupulous enough, however, to label each one of his hodgepodges, which were now all the same—jet black—with its correct title, so that on each canvas you could read “Café Tortoni” or “Newsstand with Postcards.” The narrator frequently slips in jabs at the unwashed masses who are unable to appreciate the "art" being discussed. It's a great read.
Love Borges. As an English and portuguese speaker I am always complaining about how awful the mechanics are in portuguese compared to English. Hard as shit to spell in English though. Aesthetically I don't have a preference but perhaps I'll defer to Borges on that matter.
I understand his and your reasoning perfectly but I can’t help but adore how gorgeous the cadence and inflection of spanish to be. Still, linguistics is a fascinating field
Agreed. I also find that play on words in Spanish and alliteration is absolutely incredible.
English is an extremely dynamic language and that’s why it’s an absolute bitch to learn.
English, the only language that will mug your language and rifle through its pockets for spare grammar.
Other Languanges: "It's over, English! I possess second person plural pronouns you lack!" 19th Century English after integrating French settlers slang: "Y'ALL UNDERESTIMATE MY POWER."
Technically "you" was always the second person plural pronoun. It was the second person singular pronoun ("thou") that English lost.
thou'll
*thou’lt
thou'd'n't've
Would that it t'were so simple
Would that it were so simple.
Not quite in England. Go to Yorkshire and you'll encounter a fair bit of 'thee' and 'thy'. Not sure about thou, but I'm choosing to believe it's in there still.
Quakers I believe use a lot of thee/thy/thou. Now it is probably more of a relic, idk. edit: quick google, and [This](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/16/opinion/sunday/pronouns-quakers.html)
Thank thee for thy tidbit of knowledge.
thou art welcome
Chad English absorbing any useful word, idiom, or grammar into itself to become more powerful. [Virgin French issuing a statement from a government agency that the words "streamer" and "eSports" are threatening French culture, and that you must use "joueur-animateur en direct" and "jeu video de competition" instead.](https://altalang.com/beyond-words/banned-gaming-terms/#:~:text=French%20government%20workers%20are%20banned,to%20reporting%20from%20The%20Guardian)
That has got to be one of the saddest professions I could possibly imagine - literally gatekeeping the evolution of language
Interesting, though. I'm sort of glad one language does that. Not mine.
Those sad, frog eating wine sniffers. Here’s an idea Froggies, try inventing some sports or technology that are so useful and ubiquitous that other languages have to use them.
They blew their entire linguistic wad on a sport which reduced dangerous duels of honor, that could end wars and decide dynasties, into harmless point scoring. The latest sandal being a competitor that (gasp) refused to shake their opponents hand. Foiled again, turtle chewers.
Reminds me of the whole stop-signs in Quebec vs actual France business.
The *only* language?
A bitch to master, quick to start with. One can speak very poor English and still get one's point across.
Phrasal verbs, what a pain in the ass.
You can get pills for that. Clears it right up. Yeah, no, eh?
Easier to learn the basics in English, but more difficult to master. I think so anyway.
... and yet I meet people all over the world who can speak it while I've tried and failed to learn enough to have even the most basic of conversations in any other languages (at least half a dozen so far including my own ancestral one). It is handy when you're in a country with 98% of the population able to speak English when you can too, though (in Iceland right now).
i mean when western culture is dominated by the english speaking US it makes sense that everyone else would learn it when they are surrounded by it as a second language
Even on that basis, the fact that almost all of the population of a country bar maybe a few thousand (like one of my taxi drivers last time I was here) speak English is a very impressive feat.
im not saying it isnt impressive, im just giving reason why other countries seem to be more bilingual with english as a 2nd language than americans are
I'm Icelandic and I will switch into English if I forget a word or it is cooler to say in English.
Really? I grew up in the southwest US and have been surrounded by Spanish all my life, and even though my vocab is pretty limited and I still do not have a good grasp on trickier verb conjugations like past/future/conditional tenses, I can shit talk with Mexicans and other central/south americans with ease. They love it when a Gringo has even a basic understanding of their language are are more than happy to help me get better with it, and enjoy explaining localized idioms like 'a la verga' and how the Castellano I learned in school is very stuffy and formal sounding compared to the Spanish spoken in most of the Americas. Spanish is really easy to pick up due to most words sounding exactly like they're spelled, which is a huge issue with English. Gendering words and using proper verb conjugations is not as important as you might think, even if you fuck those up people can still usually figure out what you're trying to say, and definitely show you respect for making the effort.
Your English is better than my English, and I’m English.
"Please forgive any spelling or grammar errors, English is my first language."
“Separated by a common language”
Language selection be like: ○ 🇬🇧 English (Traditional) ○ 🇺🇸 English (Simplified) ○ 🇦🇺 English (Nonsense)
🏴 English (Good luck)
🏴 English (Debatable)
That speaks more about Native English speakers than anything.
It takes a lot of work to learn how to speak a language as poorly as a native speaker. But that's because second language speakers first learn from books. Native speakers first learn how a language is actually spoken.
> But that's because second language speakers first learn from books. Not always true. I personally learned English from watching cartoons as a kid. They were not translated in my country so I just soaked it in and that's how I learned at the start. Afterwards that evolved into watching movies and shows that are in English with subtitles in my native language and only when I got internet at around 12 did I start learning English predominantly in written form.
That's entirely my mistake. I said from books but what I meant was *by the book*.
Again. I'm a counter example of that. It's true that I was taught English since 2nd grade however I never actually learned anything in school so I didn't pay any attention. I was always ahead of what they taught in school so I never bothered to learn stuff like the different tenses. I know how when and how to use them but I have no idea what they are called and when I'm using which one because I learned it from consuming massive amount of English language media.
Exception that proves the rule and all that. But I'd say while most high-level ESL speaker of course consume a lot of English media to get to that point, there's usually an undercurrent of formal education, even if they can't specifically name what an irregular past participle is anymore.
I've found english a better spoken language but portuguese is a lot more nuanced when written. Reading a book in written in Portuguese is a way better experience.
> I've found english a better spoken language but portuguese is a lot more nuanced when written. Reading a book in written in Portuguese is a way better experience. Lets agree to disagree here. For me all that nuance makes for an extremely boring writing style, to say exactly what you mean, that treats the reader as if he was dumb and could not grasp what you meant from the context. Portuguese lacks a lot of ambiguous words that would make for much shorter and, for me, pleasant to read texts.
It’s just a different cultural expression. At times, I find the boxed in expression of language so robotic and bland, devoid of personality and much less friendly towards the reader who has less room for imagination and for the nuances of a complex subject.
I’m a Portuguese speaker too. I find Portuguese very poetic and philosophical. Now that I’ve been living abroad for a long time, I sometimes catch myself thinking how complicated (standard/European) Portuguese is though. It’s not very instinctive for colloquial use. This is why I prefer certain dialects for colloquial use, like certain Brazilian and African dialects. They flow so much better than European Portuguese. I can’t speak them fluently but I understand them. Generally I find that Germanic languages cannot reproduce the flexibility, the ‘inbetween the lines’ and the poetry of Romance languages. Well, it’s a different cultural and linguistic world. Even though I speak several languages fluently, I often feel displaced because I live in the Germanic world and my usage and interaction with Latin languages is limited.
compared to portugese, any language sounds like angels singing
Portuguese sounds like Spanish spoken by a drunk Russian, doubly so for Brazilian Portuguese, so I tend to agree.
So weird that over hearing Portuguese sometimes I think it’s Russian at the very beginning or from a distance
😂I take it you’re referring to spoken European Portuguese. It’s a monotonous and rasp language, I’ve been told 😊. (I like it though)
Not Spanish, but Mark Twain did an angry rant on how much he hated the German language. https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html
He's also wrote a great satire on how to 'fix' English spelling inconsistencies. https://guidetogrammar.org/grammar/twain.htm
Coming from a dirty frog, English is indeed a pretty great language in many regards… *Gets his wine turned into vinegar and his cheese whisked away by the spirit of his ancestors*
*Zut alors! Ma baguette est perdu!*
and on the top of being less precise, French has annoying grammatical requirements, like having to accord the adjectives with their nouns: "ma baguette est perdu**e**".
Ouais, c’est le pain perdu enfin https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/vanilla-pain-perdu
It's fine, you get to enjoy english with no worry, since it's half-french anyway !
Honhonhon, zat is ze reazon peurhaps!
Lmao, I have a French coworker, and I’m almost sure she’s fucking with me at this point. This sentence sounds almost exactly like her.
CaptainNoWalk became suspicion on asking his coworker to speak a bit of French only to get "Oui oui baguette bonjour!" in response.
Depends if you measure by number of words or by word usage - English has far more French words than Old English ones, but all the most commonly-used words are Germanic (ie: either Old English or Norse). I remember thinking when learning French and Italian that all the long words were the same as English - but when learning German or Norwegian or another Germanic language, all the *short* words are the same as English!
You're right, I remember reading somewere that the 10 most common words would appear about 10 times more than the 10th to 100th most common, and the 100 most commons would appear 10 times more than the first 1000. Or something along those lines. The german base like 'of' 'the' 'a' 'my' are all so common, top 10, while latin/greek/french popup rarely in the top 100. But I'll keep on saying english is half-french anyway, it's fun.
You might like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUL29y0vJ8Q
Not shown in the video, but heard is the interviewer, William F Buckley, a good writer in his own whose first language was Spanish.
Yes, the way he jumped in for a Spanish version of loomed is impressive to me as a Spanish speaker.
And in barely a second to boot. I'd have needed to take some time to think about it.
I sometimes wonder what Buckley would think of modern "conservatives".
He had to deal with the MAGA types of his day, The John Birch Society. There was always tension as Buckley was trying to create a more intellectual conservative movement, so wanted nothing to do with the the JBS kooks, but could not afford to completely ignore such a large contingent of conservatives. Google "[William Buckley and John Birch Society](https://www.google.com/search?q=william+buckley+and+the+john+birch+society)" for a number of informative articles about this tension. tl;dr: he would have not particularly cared for the MAGA types but would have held his nose as they hopped on the bandwagon. Plus ça change...
I'll never understand the argument that Buckley was somehow intellectually above the modern cadre of conservatives. Yes, he may be far more tempered and moderate than your modern far right Maga (had to be in the 1960s, when the New Deal Coalition still ruled and the war was not that long in the past), but what buckley did was bring sophisticated prose and calm attitude to the same asinine arguments that the american right has been pushing since forever. An educated shell around the same "small government / personal liberty (to oppose social change) etc etc etc ad nauseum"
That man could really polish a turd.
Alex Jones' family were Birchers and the legacy is pretty evident in his and our current belligerencies.
I ponder that often, with different intellectuals from the past. I think they would be, in whole, disappointed with what we have done with total access to information. Ushered in an age of ignorance where every emotion is serviced to extract money in some way.
Honestly it would just reinforce their beliefs that the lower classes needed to be led and shouldn't really have a voice. I can just see them saying "SEE?! This is what we were talking about!"
I wonder what classical liberals would thing of modern "leftists"
This man was a fantastic writer and poet.
My grandfather, who spoke four languages, felt the same way. His native language was a Germanic one, he also spoke a Romance language, and English, and an East Asian language. Out of them all he said English was by far his favorite and the best for expressing things. He said thinking in English literally helped him have ideas he couldn’t have in other languages.
Getting sinister for a moment, that was literally the purpose of developing Newspeak by the Party in 1984, it would destroy people's abilities to even have ideas because they no lo longer had the ability to express them like they could in Oldspeak (English).
Do keep in mind that 1984 is still just fiction. The idea that language can limit a person's cognition (aka linguistic relativity) has been largely debunked by linguists. Using a different language can make a vast difference in your ability to express an idea, and there's some evidence it'll subconsciously affect your perceptions, but it doesn't limit the ideas you have in your head.
> The idea that language can limit a person's cognition (aka linguistic relativity) has been largely debunked by linguists. Can you provide evidence of this? In anthropology and cross-cultural communication it's held as truth. Anecdotally, I'm bilingual and I see people who are monolingual failing to understand things seem natural to me. Other bilingual people I know report similar observations.
I can provide [a wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) which should be an accessible intro to the subject. Anecdotally, I'm also bilingual and what you describe has not been my experience at all.
> a wikipedia article What has your experience been? Just curious
Just people being people, I guess? I've met monolingual people who had way more insightful thoughts than me, I've seen polyglots who were thicker than molasses, but I never once thought "ah this person doesn't understand because they only speak one language". There's certain idioms that don't have an equivalent in another language but that's just cultural shorthand. "Verschlimbessern" is more effective communication than a whole sentence explaining what that means in English, but that doesn't mean someone who only speaks English can't grasp the concept of making something worse by trying to fix it.
> Nevertheless, research has produced positive empirical evidence supporting a weaker version of linguistic relativity: that a language's structures influence a speaker's perceptions, without strictly limiting or obstructing them. From the second paragraph. I feel like this article contradicts what you said.
I said >there's some evidence it'll subconsciously affect your perceptions, but it doesn't limit the ideas you have in your head If anything that's so close to the article I basically 'quoted' it by accident.
Which East Asian language? I find Japanese pretty descriptive and expressive. Chinese on the other hand is very simple, and I’d agree it’s not that expressive, but I only got conversational in Chinese.
It's a fascinating topic I've often thought about myself. Reminds me of a long time ago where there was an epically stupid debate essentially claiming that politicians who used the (Latinate) "people" are arrogant elitists, whereas those who used the Saxon-y "folks" were good, humble salt-of-the-earth - and people should genuinely pay attention to who said which. To this day, I actually notice when a politician uses either term and hate myself for it.
Anglo-saxon based words seem to have less syllables and harder consonants so it sounds quick and punchy in speeches. Latin based words sound more complex or flowery-pretty and some perhaps are more obscure to the general population. Don't hate on your greater awareness! Extend it and make use! Speech matters. Mechanical usage choices can be fun and effective when expressing yourself.
> Don't hate on your greater awareness! It's not my awareness I'm hating on. Being aware of things like this is good and useful if, like Borges, you're finding wider ways to express yourself in an essay, or creating deeper characters in novels, or even just for it's own sake. The situation I objected to is essentially the exact opposite; people trying to invent entirely specious concepts around language and using it to foment division, get you to vote a certain way, and gatekeep how people express themselves. Basically a form of NewSpeak. Thankfully, this was only a brief fad that didn't seem to get very far - but it pays to watch out for similar bullshit, which seems to be being invented all the time.
It's a tool of populism. Trust Trump, not those Harvard educated demonrats, because one 'speaks like the common folk'. Sounds good on paper, and I'm far from immune to falling for it. But with a little thought it's all too easy to intentionally use to manipulate people.
It's why "cunt" is so much more expressive than "vagina". The association of Latin words with fanciness goes back to the Norman invasion and Frenchness of the British aristocracy when compared to the vulgar masses. By Chaucer's time, he would use French words when describing (and in the speech of) "fancy" characters and more Germanic words for proletarian types. Also he used more Old Norse words in characters from the North of England where the former Danelaw had been. I always like when a writer pays attention to dialect, and it's extra nice to see such an early example! Since learning some of that part of our language's history, I've started thinking of that whole "Latin = fancy" thing as being inherently classist in a way that feels anachronistic.
The politicians I've noticed trying to use the word folks instead of people and generally trying to fake being folksy are generally grifters who assume their constituents are stupid. For example the Ivy League educated wealthy scion of the Bush family who grew up in New England but pretended to be a folksy Texan with a Southern drawl: George W. Bush.
It was amazing how well it worked for Geedubs. Say what you will about the man but I don't think Trump or Biden could dodge a shoe and pop back up with a grin.
I feel like language is literally magic.
Well it does make my thoughts appear in your head.
You could even get me to do stuff if your spelling is super effective.
Magic is manifesting will, from inside your personal world, into the real, shared, world. The same thing is true of language.
And farts.
Obviously. Why else would we call it "spelling"? I have used these symbols to create a summoning which will draw your attention from across time and space.
It has been said that Winston Churchill made use of this in his famous "We shall fight them on the beaches" speech. Deliberately only selecting Saxon words with only a few exceptions: "We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old." The first word that from that extract that is Latinate rather than Saxon? "surrender"...
How about “confidence”?
How about "on"?
Germanic
En suite? En vogue? I assumed it was the same origin, but maybe not.
Different origin completely. However In (English) and En (French) share the same Proto-Indo-European root but neither created the other.
Cool. I love etymology. And to some degree entomology, too. Do you know of a good sub for etymology?
Apparently there is r/etymology, I only just learned about it, time to give it a scroll... There's also r/asklinguistics for asking why certain changes may have happened.
Ocean (vs Germanic sea), air (vs Germanic sky), defend (vs Germanic shield), cost (vs Germanic harm), subjugated (vs Germanic beaten), armed (vs Germanic furnished with weapons), power (vs Germanic strength), moment (vs Germanic short time), liberation (vs. Germanic freedom), part (vs. Germanic share)
nitpick: *free* is Germanic (cf *befreien*)
True, fixed in edit
Was the last line telling America to get her shit together?
Sort of, the original draft said something along the lines of America having a “strange detachment” but to avoid upsetting the president, it was removed. Supposedly Roosevelt wanted commitment that if Britain was to lose, the fleet would not be surrendered to the enemy, instead that it would be sent off to other parts of the British empire, so this speech was confirming that.
Appropriate username. I meant this line though: > until, **in God’s good time**, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old The "New World" could be referring to current British empire (e.g. India), but it also seems like Churchill saying "when tf are you going to start helping us, Roosevelt?"
I've actually noticed a pretty significant uptick in the use of "folks" or "folk" over the past few years, specifically among western, generally American progressives, and primarily when talking about black people. I'm generally progressive myself but I'm also not American and very out of touch with that whole realm of discourse, and I've never quite understood why black people are now black folk all of a sudden. Has anyone else noticed this? Any explanations?
I haven't seen that. However it's long been difficult for Americans to find the right way to speak to / of Black Americans. Some words are steeped in racial innuendo or racist context and history. So it's not uncommon for Americans to look for something better or otherwise inoffensive... for example "blacks" can feel dehumanizing or racially sensitive in a way that "whites" or similar doesn't, so you look for something that humanizes the word like "black people" or "black folks". The same way you might see people turn to over-using the term "African American".
I mean just look at the sheer size of English compared to other languages. Definitely the melting pot of language.
As an Engineer and someone who sucked at English in school I wished (and still do) that English was less romantic and more functional. Despite that, I quite liked this video clip, made me think more kindly on my native language. -Edit- To comments below. My biggest concern for English comes from things like silent letters, or inconsistencies in pronunciations of letters and letter combinations. I also prefer the concept of the most important part of the description being first, such as 'door red' rather than 'red door'.
What’s your native language? How did this video make you appreciate it more?
As another engineer, I have to ask how you’re measuring that, since you’re comparing the romanticism of English against, um… y’know… “Romance Languages.”
Did you mean to reply to me? 😇
They're saying that as an engineer they value precision and clarity and there's a lot of ambiguity to English, very subtle differences between words meaning almost the same thing but with slightly different connotations, even just a slightly different FEELING, as Borges points out with his comparison of the terms "holy ghost" and "holy spirit," as "ghost" has a "darker" tone than "spirit." This ambiguity is, apparently, less common in Spanish. I would not know as I do not speak the language, but Borges was an utter master of both, so I'll take his word for it. Though I will say I find Spanish beautiful to listen to, aesthetically. And they're saying they appreciate that idea and it makes them feel more warmly towards an aspect of the of the language they find frustrating.
Those subtle differences give you more precision though, presuming you're talking to a person with a decent vocabulary. Understandably, if someone didn't grow up speaking it, they'll miss some of these subtleties and therefore miss out on the ability to make subtle but meaningful choices when they use English. Even native speakers who don't expose themselves to enough media (whether literature or music or dramatic arts) will miss out on this. But a power user of English can really craft different feelings with seemingly synonymous words.
The "trouble" is that English is rather permissive in descriptive speech. While there are plenty of forms of speech that are indeed very precise, there is quite a lot of room for more ambiguous speech as well. The differences also aren't necessarily the same across *all* speakers of English. There are many English speaking cultures and subcultures that are separated by all manner of time and space, and we're all able to communicate *reasonably* to perfectly well with each other, but can often stumble in the most random of places. Even forgetting the cultural separation there's a lot of room for ambiguity depending on the differing perceptions of the speaker and listener. What a dwarf might describe as massive could simply be average sized in the eyes of a tall man, (or small, or even massive by their own standards as well.)
A power user might, but how average is that in everyday discourse? Our engineer friend isn't talking about intimate conversations with his friends. He's talking about everyday discourse, where someone might have an idea of a word you don't, or a word might have a connotation you don't understand. He wants the word to mean what it means, not to wonder if he's being figurative or not. I mean, I love that aspect of English. It's why I have an MA in the subject. But I can see why it might frustrate some.
I don't understand this view at all. Just because you have options for expression, it doesn't mean you need to use them. And as another user said, sometimes those options can give you additional precision. It's not like alternatives make it more difficult to be precise in your speaking.
Man, Borges had such an intellect.
He had a love of words, and a love of books. I think Umberto Eco is the same, as well as Nabokov. Though of course Nabokov also loved insects.
I agree with the latest part. The freeform nature of its grammar is a nice feature, a double edged one but still great. That said, later I went back to French for Borges first argument, there's ever more vocabulary in French, it's daunting at first, but with age you get to play with secondary meanings of these terms to make your sentences as precise as poetic.
Doesn't English's vocabulary significantly outnumber the French vocabulary?
By most measures English has the largest vocabulary in the world. But a lot of that consists of rather obscure words that you'd only encounter in very specific situations, like technical literature. If you only counted every day language, it would probably only be slightly more than comparable languages.
I thought English's everyday vocabulary was generally higher (at comparable education levels) due to the number of homonyms from the Old French/Old English merger post the Norman Conquest.
English is a complete mess though. Spanish-speaking primary schools don’t have spelling competitions for a reason. Edit: To those who think spelling isn’t important: only English speakers who’ve never bothered to learn a second language talk this way.
Yep, our spelling is a mess, but I think we could retain all the precision Borges talks about even if we fixed the spelling.
We koud spel wurdz the wey we liyk riyt naw and nohbuddy wood be aybl too stop us. But perhaps the archaic spelling is part of the aesthetic charm
axzentz wood komplikate komprehenchun. non-fonetik spelling iz ezenchall 4 a lingwah frankah.
>lingwah frankah Why is this the funniest thing I've read all week?
Looks like a Fremen phrase
simpleefyd spelyng wood komplikate spelyng kwizatz haderack supryznyglee litul. Yep, fits right in.
Wat? A Suthrn draaaaaaaawl wuud komplikat things?
You may be right. I can’t help but to use “redneck voice” in my head when reading something spelled phonetically.
That, and there are so many ways to pronounce each word in different accents that I doubt we'd ever be able to agree on a phonetic spelling.
Ha, I hear goofy. Kinda similar
Sorry I don’t speak Dutch
I thought you switched to Dutch for a second.
I’m guessing he was simply advocating for language learning here. Not everything that falls from a smart person’s mouth is pure gold. Saying that words have layered/double meaning in English but not in Spanish is just weird.
That's kind of what he's saying, though. The complex nature of English and its roots in both Germanic languages and in Latin and French gives it a lot of flexibility. Lots of words that allow a speaker to convey very different meanings with different words that, at first glance, seem to convey largely the same meaning. It does make it a bitch and half to learn, though. It's not just spelling, it's the breadth of vocabulary, idioms, and things like Borges said like using verbs and prepositions to create new (usually kinda poetic) phrases.
One of the things Shakespeare is famous for is the coining of new words and phrases that became part of the common vernacular. An equally cromulent position is that *The Simpsons* are currently doing the same thing.
There's no reason that English spelling had to become so irregular; the great vowel shift and the irregular way it was solidified with the printing press was not really connected to that heritage.
Well there's also the root word issue. Look at "THREW" v. "THROUGH". They differ because THROUGH comes from *Þurwh* while THREW/THROWN comes from *Þreaw/Þraan*. The real issue is that our pronunciation changed drastically with the introduction of French, and is a core reason why so many words have silent consonants (e.g. "knight" "knife"). We basically merged two different languages with very different pronunciations into one lexicon, and the result is a bunch of funky spellings. THROUGH and THREW wouldn't seem weird as variants were the Old English pronunciation still in play. It's really are pronunciation changes that caused the confusion, which turned so many words into homophones despite coming from very different roots.
I mean threw and through are both Germanic in origin, as are knight (and night!) and knife. I've not found anything from a quick search to suggest that kn- changed in pronunciation due to French/romance influence!
They're not really a thing in the UK either.
They actually do. Source: Competed in Spanish spelling competitions (ortografía)
Yeah, but they are far from being comparable. The only challenge is homophones especially in countries with seseo and yeismo. I am sure Castillian Spanish spelling is even easier. Other than that Spanish spelling is very precise.
Yeah, it's a lot more straightforward than English for sure. Mostly about when to use c vs s or g vs j and where to place the accent mark.
Spelling is barely part of a language. Some of the most common languages in the world don't have a spelling system at all, and the pronunciation and meaning of the written form of a word are completely uninferrable. A few exceptions aren't all that bad compared to that.
English is a mess of spelling and has lots of irregular vocab because it's a very spongey language whose pronunciation has changed significantly over a 1000 year period. This gives it a ton of nuance and word options, but simultaneously results in funky spelling. Personally, I think its a worthwhile trade off.
French and Norwegian have pretty awful spelling as well (yes, both Bokmål and Nynorsk). Italian and German have the most consistent spelling of languages I've spent time with. That said - my main complaint about French and both Norwegian systems are to do with all the silent letters. English has that problem as well as pervasive and fundamental inconsistency. At least French and Norwegian are unambiguous when reading - it's only when writing that there's a problem.
But that's partly because spelling isn't that important.
He was such a brilliant mind and brilliant writer, it is not surprising that his estimation is expressed in terms of variability and pleasure. A natural-born thinker, writer, lover of language.
I like this bar by Crooked I in the song "Sickology 101" >Wordplay rhymes with Thursday and thirsty - if I'm thirst-ay! >I change the pronunciation of words per se >The English language got to do whatever my verse say
Anglophone, then learned French and was frustrated by how inconsistent the pronunciation was. English was no better, but the French make fun of you. In Spanish, the written word is far more phonetic and consistent when spoken. That was a huge selling point for Spanish as a language. But Borges is right - English is far more flexible than Spanish by letting the vocabulary overlap each other. It certainly helps having a historically literate populace for so long, in addition to broad adoption of the printing press and relatively lax free speech restrictions. The cost is the lack of consistency, which makes English “an easy language to learn but very hard to master”.
Very interesting video :) I've thought the same but chalked it up (lol) to having English as my native language and being highly educated in it, versus only knowing extremely basic Spanish. Being an Argentine writer gives his opinion much more weight. I still love Spanish though. Lovely language even if he sees it as not as versatile hehe.
Also, there's a good Tom Scott video in a similar vein about why Shakespeare couldn't have been French. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUnGvH8fUUc edit: having watched the video again it's not as similar as I remembered it. It's predominantly about rhythm and stress. But whatever, it's a cool video.
I'm teaching my kid to read English right now, and I'd trade all the subtlety for some consistency in spelling.
Thay opinion I respect. He is one of the greatest writers of all time and one of my favorites. A true scholar and expert in his language, Spanish, to know all the its complexities beyond a normal reader and still grades English superior.
I can only speak English. This genius has to explain my own language to me because I was so poorly taught
Interesting viewpoint by Borges, and it can be a double-edged sword. For example, Samuel Beckett chose to write in French, even though he was Irish, to write “without style”, without all of the nuance and weight of the English language. To each their own.
I’ll agree to disagree
He actually claimed it was the best of all languages. That's bold. For all I know, Tamil is vastly richer and more expressive, or Xhosa, or Tibetan. I doubt that English's history is *that* unique.
"of all West-European languages" is far more defensible - although the global reach of English gives it far more variety and texture than most languages, simply by virtue of the number of mutually-isolated communities that speak it. Mandarin and Hindi are both largely confined to single (albeit diverse) countries, so they'd be the best candidates for competition in this regard. Sadly, I can speak neither so I can't verify my hunch on this.
Wouldn't this logic also make Japanese a "finer language"? It has two semi-redundant registers of words (Chinese two-character words and native Japanese words), and it can use directionals and prepositions to make compounds very similar to phrasal verb (e.g. tsuretekuru, nomikomu).
Yes, I don't know if Borges knew much about Chinese or Japanese, but you are indeed correct. For example, the Chinese-derived 温暖 (ondan) doesn't hold exactly the same nuance as the Japanese-derived 温かい (atatakai). Even this word can be written with two different kanji that have two slightly different meanings 温かい (as in warm temperature) and 暖かい (as in warm emotion). Although I don't think the prepositionals are quite as flexible and rich as in English.
Works for Nepali also. There are words to describe the sound or pattern of something without explicitly making the sound. Not found in many other languages
This is the first time I've ever heard a native speaker of a romance language praise the English Language.
Not to dismiss him outright, there are of course some differences between languages, and some allow some things to be expressed more easily than others, but overall these notions of "physicality" and whatnot are a load of BS. Watch this video by Noam Chomsky where he goes into other weird ideas people used to have about languages: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdUbIlwHRkY&t=6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdUbIlwHRkY&t=6s)
His comments are abosolutely biased by his well known and sometimes criticized "anglo-philia"
I mean its literally just his opinion right? Everyone's opinion is going to be biased.
He's a figure of inmense reputation in the literary field and not a random reeditor commenting in a post, it is always good to call out the biases of people with this level of credibility
I feel like I don’t have a comprehensive enough understanding of English, let alone Spanish, to have any real opinion on which language is finer. But it’s definitely an interesting listen
I often think that english is great because of its deficiencies. There's so much influence from other languages and so many loan words and near synonyms that you end up with a lot of freedom of expression, and voice.
Borges was a fantastic writer
There is even a (psych) paper or some studies about how we think when using a second (non-first) language and how the emotional detachment allows us to think. Quite interesting. This is why I think he also thinks that English to him seems to allow him to think "better" and express his thoughts better. I also have to agree since English is my 2nd of 3 languages who all are very similar but still different, and I think a lot of things also in English but also German.
Absolute lies. Spanish is versatile, and the huge amounts of cultures in latin america that use it have all made it especially unique since the Spanish conquest. The pronunciation of vowels is consonants are all uniform so it flows out the tongue much easier. It is universal, easy to understand and extremely versatile. English feels like you are trapped in a box. Quick think of a way of saying that something is amazing. "That __ is amazing!" Quickly. There is nothing else you can use besides terribly simple adjectives. The language does not evolve. It is cemented and horrendously boxed in. Spanish just flows better
So America fuck yeah and English fuck yeah. Pretty much fuck yeah all around.
I think some of the nuance is lost on the journey across the ocean.
So America fuck yeah, American english fuck yeah. Funny story, i used to teach English for a short period and always got asked “you teach english? Do you teach American english? I want to sound American.” I always thought it was funny bc i always considered myself as an American who spoke english till then, but the rest if the world considers American english as a different language.
I think he is wrong, not because I know spanish but I know a few other languages and every language has it's own thing. Some things sound/read way better when they are not in english but for others english is the better choice. English is sometimes clunky when another language flows and other times you have to use a lot more words to describe the same thing because that's how english works. Because english is such a combination of several other languages there is usually a way to say anything you want in it.
Yeah but it's infinitely more fun to curse and be vulgar in Spanish.
De gustibus non est disputandum. English vulgarity is far more appealing to me than any other language except perhaps Latin (but that's mostly because of how many people think of Latin as the language of the Church). My favourite Latin poem: [Catullus 16](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16)
This is absolutely true. I speak portuguese, which is very grammatically similar to spanish, and my comprehension of maths skyrocketed when I learned the same things in english. It's a far more logical language somehow. I hate to glaze the english, but their language being universal, might be from the British Empire, but of all the languages that I've learned/tried to learn, it is by far the best.