Elaine:
I would never call English boring! However, I was being a bit provocative earlier on, saying English is cold and clinical. In one sense it is.....in the form of business English, the hard commercial form of English that fills official documents...then there is nothing so dreary as that. That applies to all languages though, I'm sure.....even the romantic Latin languages...I mean, French has always had the reputation of being the language of love. Used effectively, English can be equally so.
I was just being mischievous. I have spent the last three years studying English literature and I agree wholeheartedly with you.....English is as expressive and romantic as any language can be. It has a huge vocabulary, probably one of the largest of any language, with so many synonyms and we should be proud of all those beautiful literary works produced by the people you named in your post, and many others. Was it merely an oversight that you missed out Shakespeare?
"Was it merely an oversight that you missed out Shakespeare?"
Too obvious (i.e. it goes without saying...)
Vive la France!!! Oui, oui, oui.
Je suis désolé, I look like an old woman shouting.
It's a shame I've never read Don Quijote de la Mancha.
Jordi: What do you mean when you say that in Equatorial Guinea people speak beautiful Spanish? I think the only beautiful Spanish accent is Castilian. The way they pronounce the "S"...
Hi Elaine,
It is the grammar of English that is boring to me; I mentioned earlier that I'm fond of highly inflected languages.
Certainly the written works you've mentioned are not boring and, truth be told, I cannot imagine that any of Raymond Chandler's wonderful stories would be as romantically appropriate written in any other language but English.
However, it seems to me that other languages, such as German or Spanish are more internally consistent in their sounds and in the formation of the words themselves, being that those languages did not borrow words as heavily as English did.
Xatufancito:
What I meant is that you can hear beautiful Spanish all over the Spanish-speaking world. I, personally, feel that educated "bolivianos" and "ecuatorianos" often speak better Spanish than many Spaniards. The same applies to English and you'll often hear beautiful English in the US, Australia or New Zealand and not so beautiful English in England.
I thought german is cold and ugly but when i saw the wings of desire (W Wenders), i realized german can be very beautifull and sensual. It depends who speak teh language. For german by example, i think it's because i thought too much about german spoken by Hitler. I guess it's the same with but it's difficult for me to realize it.
When english is spoken, it all depends about who's speaking it. Same for french...
I think especially about the crawberries singer, she uses too much her accent, if you see what i mean.
Please stop with your "Vive La France", for us it sounds ridiculous, even fascist. Nowadays no frenchman would say "vive la France", we all would laugh at him.
the same with "italian" because of Mussolini
Axel,
you are true, historians do not all agree for the same period.
Vincent is right, vive la France is no more said today. In fact you won't never listen a french saying it today. It's useless. Do not be "vexed" if your intentions were nice, but don't say it.
grammar tip:
"vive la France is no more said today"
better:
"vive la France isn't said anymore"
better still:
"No one says vive la France anymore"
Jordi,
I never said "contemporean France" i just used the name "France". Contemporean is another thing, but if you separate periods, oyu separate in the same time people and their origins. You delete inn the same time their history. All things are linked, maybe i expressed myself baddly, but Charlemagne has contribute to configurante France on his time. I did not say he did not influence some other places. It's like Spain and north africans (16th century?), at this time Spain and spanish were very different but you can see their ingfluences today in the country.
I don't only read national books as you said, and this famous clichés "nos ancêtres les gaulois is a cliché used on the colonialist period. I am 32 years old and never heard these words at school, my grand father told me and of course i have read it. There's a correction because it's not les gaulois but les gallos-romains (mix of gaulois and romains) that's what you hear at school.
At least, i know of course the configuration of the country was not the same. As I said, even the configuration was not the same, you cannot separate periods. That’s you and not me who think too much like books, why? Because you think about periods : contemporean for example.
Toulouse French or not yesterday? So what? The same with Lille Marseille Lyon…so? I never said these towns were, I just said France is 1500 years old.
Greece is much more older Greece from today is not of course the same it was yesterday but it still being Greece.
A+
I can't thank you because you stayed anonymous
I never made a name for these boards, I'm vn23 from the Europa forum if you've ever been there and a native english speaker (from New Zealand).
I really need to think of a decent forum name and stick with it :)
Maybe you could use this nick : "nickless" :-)