The Antithesis of English

Guest   Tue May 13, 2008 7:31 pm GMT
<<Argentina, Chile , Uruguay and South Brazil together are a potential world power.>>

BWAHAHAA!!!!
Guest   Tue May 13, 2008 7:34 pm GMT
Didn't you know that until the 50's Argentina was richer than US?
Guest2   Tue May 13, 2008 7:45 pm GMT
Well, they are now together. Mercosur is their economic community, like European Union, more or less.
Guest   Tue May 13, 2008 9:54 pm GMT
<<Argentina, Chile , Uruguay and South Brazil together are a potential world power. I don't understand why they don't get integrated into a single nation like US did. They would become a major power at least.>>

South Brazil? Last time I checked the country wasn't divided...
Soon enough you'll ask why European Union doesn't form a single nation.


And yeah, they've the Mercosur or Mercosul, depending on the language. Actually Brazil is the strongest member there.

I'm just surprised on how Guarani was accepted as an official language there!
Guest   Tue May 13, 2008 10:06 pm GMT
South Brazil feels closer to Argentina and Uruguay than to zones like Northeast Brazil, which is much poorer and in fact looks more like Africa. Nowadays Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Parana are part of Brazil, but I think that very soon they will declare their independence so they can join the South Cone Union along with Argentina, Uruguay , Chile and Antarctica.
Guest   Tue May 13, 2008 10:09 pm GMT
Long live to the SCU!
Guest   Wed May 14, 2008 2:59 am GMT
Long live the YMCA!
Guest   Wed May 14, 2008 3:34 am GMT
<<South Brazil feels closer to Argentina and Uruguay than to zones like Northeast Brazil, which is much poorer and in fact looks more like Africa. Nowadays Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Parana are part of Brazil, but I think that very soon they will declare their independence so they can join the South Cone Union along with Argentina, Uruguay , Chile and Antarctica.>>

Very few regions feel close to Northeast, but claiming independence?
Brazil is already connected to the other countries through Mercosul, just not to... Antarctica.
Guest   Wed May 14, 2008 5:07 pm GMT
"I think the secret to the supremacy of English (aside from the British Empire and American Culture) is the fact that it’s a hybrid of Latin and Germanic"

English IS NOT an hybrid of germanic and rlatin languages.



" so it’s able to satisfy and be familiar to both Romance and Germanic speakers. "

As a romance speaker myself I never found English to be more familar than Dutch or German. Look at a german text, there would be some latinates words too, it is not an English specificity. Ahead of that core language of English is almost like Chinese or Russian for romance speakers.




"Choosing any other existing language to compete with English right now is destined to fail, whether it was French, Spanish, or German, because it will always be thought of as either Latin or Germanic, in other words, on one side of the fence. "


For us, english is clearly on "one side of the fence" as you said it. English is considered to be hybrid language just by some complexed english speakers who think that would make their language "more intelectual" if it would be considered hybrid. All other people knows that English is a germanic language.
greg   Thu May 15, 2008 11:07 am GMT
'Guest' : « English IS NOT an hybrid of germanic and rlatin languages. [...] Look at a german text, there would be some latinates words too, it is not an English specificity. »

Entièrement d'accord. Ceci dit, l'impact des langues latine et romanes sur la lexicologie anglaise est si profond, si étendu, qu'on peut tout à fait considérer la majeure partie du vocabulaire anglais sous l'angle de la francologie, de la romanologie et de la latinologie. C'est peut-être ce que les tenants de l'« hybridation » expriment d'une autre façon.