I cannot express all my emotions in English

Chris   Thursday, November 13, 2003, 17:36 GMT
Ok. I said shite not because I was trying to be trendy...I was trying to avoid any automatic censorship on these board, but it looks like there is none.

Right. Ok. I agree with Californian about other languages sounding more beautiful to my ears. I suppose that all this has to do with cultural things as well. Some of us in America who are not of the Anglo-saxon/European majority often feel conflicted about this. Like in my case, I live in a part of California where there are so many illegal immigrants from Mexico that a guy who looks like me gets lumped in with that because my look is ambiguous but definitely "too ethnic" to ever be mistaken for "white."

I'm not saying it's a racial issue per se but looking back into my geneology (sic) I've found no less than 8 different components, Dutch, Native American Indian (2 different tribes), French-Canadian, Italian, Spanish, Galician....with a mix like that, I don't identify with any one culture but I get lumped into what I look closest to. In this environment I'm considered Mexican by the whites and the Mexicans (believe me, it's that black and white in this area-no blacks, asians, anyone else to be seen) but yet I speak perfect American english, something that surprises many of them.

I had a professor the other day who said how shocked he was that a native Spanish speake like me had such a great English vocabulary. I almost slapped him. I'm disenchanted enough being in a country that teaches you about how the white european made America great from Kindergarten through 12th grade and then flips it around on you in college saying how evil the white man is for destroying "indigenous" culture.

A guy like me doesn't know what to think. I mean, I am capable of so much in English, but at the same time I think that becoming fluent in another language would give me so many more tools for enrichment as a person. Maybe it sounds pompous...but it's how I feel.

However, I have no desire to learn the 2nd dominant U.S. language, Mexican Spanish. Once you spend 11 years of your life in a Mexican-American ghetto you'll understand why.
chris   Thursday, November 13, 2003, 17:37 GMT
hell. someone wasn't up on his grammar this morning. :(
Anahita   Thursday, November 13, 2003, 19:58 GMT
As a learner of English and French, sometimes I feel like to express an emotion in one of these langages not because my mother tongue doesn't have those expressions or vocabulary but because the nuance makes a difference.
Miguel   Thursday, November 13, 2003, 21:51 GMT
Anahita, I don't really know what you are getting at.
Anahita   Friday, November 14, 2003, 10:30 GMT
hello Miguel
I mean emotions are expressed differently in different languages.
uday   Saturday, November 15, 2003, 08:49 GMT
Chris, your first post is pretty offensive.

there is no such thing as a superior language. words in two different languages are anchored by the same thought. learning another language or archaic english words doesn't mean you're finding new emotions, just different ways of expressing the same thought! of course you need enough words to express ideas accurately, but are you effectively communicating if you go out of your way to use an enriched language? a "large" vocabulary usually just means you're not using words practically.

ps- a professor should slap you for being so cocky
Miguel   Saturday, November 15, 2003, 15:43 GMT
anahita, of course emotions are express differently in different languages, I'm from spain and I speak spanish perfectly but when I want to express myself in english I never find the right word to say what I really want to say. but If I spoke english perfectly I wouldn't have any problems to express my emotions as I did in spanish.