Why the french prefer spanish instead of english

The spanish of the french commentator interviewing Nadal is simply pathetic.
"Cuando estás pequeñito pequeñito que pensabas....." LOL

" Since when is English Nordic? "
Since ever.
"nordic" refers to northern Europe. Of course, for latin peoples northern Europe refers to all germanic countries. UK is clearly a northern European country, no one doubt about it. their language is a northern European language. Some people limit "nordic" to scandinavia, but I don't see really why. Scandinavian are germnaic peoples, like the english and german/austrians and dutchs.
Even Austria or south Germany, even if they are situated in central Europe are culturally considered nordic. German is considered as a nordic language by south Europeans.

Everything is relative : for a southern Italian, a french is not a south European, while for a swede he is very southern European...




" The spanish of the french commentator interviewing Nadal is simply pathetic.
"Cuando estás pequeñito pequeñito que pensabas....." LOL"

Hehehe !... You're right, this interviewer (Neslon Monfort) is famous to sistematically try to interview the sportsmen (sportifs) in their native language but in HORRIBLE versions, with a so false accents... Hearing him speaking english is even worse ! it is very funny !

Yann : I have to make some research to answer your question (particularly for Old French and Middle English).

Je te propose de continuer ce débat sur le fil 'What do you know about Old French ?'. Je vais d'ailleurs y copier-coller ta question illico-presto.

I think Riko wins the most absurd argument award for this week.

<<in the UK everybody speaks "Queens english"?>>

Well..no, not really...in fact not at all...but they certainly try to use their best Queenspeak in Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, the Palace of Holyrood, Balmoral, Sandringham, Kensington Palace, Highgrove, Clarence House, St James' Palace........

There is a natural antipathy towards the English Language in France....by all accounts there always has been and probably there always will be, and possibly getting more noticeable the more English gains ascendancy as it appears to be doing.

It shows itself in many different ways. This is no way a criticism of the French..they are perfectly entitled to adopt whatever Language policy they wish, such as refusing to use English in international air traffic control as used by the vast majority of countries. On a trivial note it was shown at the moronic trashy Eurovision CrapSong contest the other week when all the announcements from Paris were in French, which was natural enough and of course perfectly within their rights, but apart from Belgium and Monaco (the other French speaking countries) every other participating country used English. The two *Ukrainian people presenting the whole circus from *Kiyev themselves used English throughout...excepting when talking with Paris, Monaco or Brussels! :-)

Also, I think it's fair to say that the average French person is not as proficient in speaking English as those from other European countries, and not all of these are in northern Europe.

*It may have been some other location...can't remember now, but it was definitely from Eastern Europe....maybe Latvia or Poland...really cannae remember. Beside the point anyway.

mjd, you should moderate this forum better instead of throwing insults at people

I was just stating my opinion, Riko. Perhaps my opinion insults you, but I have a right to it just as you have a right to yours.

Your argument is laughable...what more can be said? I'd love to see you try to support it with evidence that isn't just your subjective and ill-informed opinion.

<<I think Riko wins the most absurd argument award for this week.>>

<<Your argument is laughable...what more can be said? I'd love to see you try to support it with evidence that isn't just your subjective and ill-informed opinion.>>

Absolutely, mjd. Even tho I'm in the process of being trained in the field of linguistics, it certainly doesn't take a linguist to realize Riko has literally no idea what he's talking about. I refuse to respond to (attempted) "serious" arguments that are so laughably out of touch with reality and linguistic fact.

Also, along with what Travis said, it is one of my biggest pet peeves when people imply or outright state in any way that native speakers of any variety of any language (whether it be a global language or one spoken by 200 people) can somehow be speaking "incorrectly" "lazy" or "substandard." Such arguments are against basic linguistic facts, are absolutely unacceptable and don't deserve serious consideration whatsoever.

greg: <<Yann : "Plus, although English has about 22 vowel sounds, almost none are similar to that of French".

I'm not too sure about the number '22' for English. Dialectal variation aside (for both English and French), I'd say there are 16 monophthongs in French and 12 in English. Then diphthongs and triphthongs should be added to that...English is said to have experienced one Great Vowel Shift (maybe more actually as old-time and current dialects should be taken into account) while French underwent 3 or 4 major vocalic mayhems before achieving its current stable, cardinal vocalic system.>>

Most modern English dialects may trace much of their current vowel sounds back to the Great Vowel Shift, but the system certainly isn't stable. English vowels are constantly moving around. For example, phenomena such as the North American chain shifts ("Northern Cities Vowel Shift" "California Vowel Shift" "Southern Vowel Shift") have or are significantly altering the vowels in many areas. These kinds of things show up all over the English-speaking world.

Also, just for the record, I have 10 strictly phonemic, contrastive, monophthongs in my dialect of English (all the possible allophones can make the number much higher, of course), as well as three diphthongs

monophthongs:
/i/
/I/
/e/
/E/
/æ/
/@/
/o/
/A/
/U/
/u/

diphthongs:
/aI/
/aU/
/OI/

Kirk : this reminds me of a discussion we had previously. So in your Californian dialect there seems to be no [eI]/[EI] diphthong and no triphthong at all ?

How would you transcript <girl> in SAMPA as realised in your dialect ? And <caught> ?

Kirk, I'd say the same except I'd say that the number of contrastive monophthongs is 14, because I myself consider /r=/ (you may write it as /@`/ if you like), /l=/, /n=/, and /m=/ to be monophthongal vowels. Also, I have a number of novel diphthongs in my own speech which I'm not sure whether they should be considered phonemic or not, beyond the standard phonemic diphthongs /aI/, /aU/ and /oI/. [@I] is clearly an allophone of /aI/, but I'm not quite certain as to how things like [EI], [IU] and so on should be handled

greg, slight technicality: [eI], [oU], and like are generally considered the be allophones of /e/ and /o/, in these cases, rather than phonemic diphthongs unto themselves. Note though that the [EI] I was above referring to is a distinctly different diphthong from [eI], and is not linked at all to the phoneme /e/, but rather collapse of certain sequences of vowels separated by an consonant which has gotten elided.

Kirk and Travis : how do you realise <bay>, <caught>, <fire>, <layer>, <joyous>, <our> and <slower> in your respective dialects ?

I should have said 15 contrastive monophthongs, for myself, as I distingluish /A/ from /O/, unlike you, apparently, Kirk.