Is English only a language of business?

Animateur   Tue Sep 08, 2009 9:54 am GMT
I occasionally hear from Europeans that English is a language of business and their language is a language of soul.

English is very laconic and it sometimes feels lack of emotions. English gives more information about a subject rather than your feelings or attitude towards the subject.

In European languges word order can alone change the meaning of sentence substencially or to opposite at all.

And as an example I am sometimes proposed to translate the following joke into English:
- Papa, was sind das für Beeren?
- Blaubeeren.
- Papa, warum sind sie dann so rot?
- Weil sie noch grün sind.

What do you think about it????
Guest   Tue Sep 08, 2009 10:03 am GMT
Who cares for your Germanic joke? You have no sense of humour. It is unwanted here.
Probably yes   Tue Sep 08, 2009 10:06 am GMT
English is the language of spam too. E-mail messages in my account are all in another language aside from the spam box where hundreds of messages in English about dubious ways of making easy money, penis enlargement, anti-obesity medication, etc, accumulate like if there was no tomorrow. But spam is a big business too, isn't it?.
Animateur   Tue Sep 08, 2009 10:12 am GMT
Guest Tue Sep 08, 2009 10:03 am GMT
Who cares for your Germanic joke? You have no sense of humour. It is unwanted here.

What is wanted here anyway?
Amabo   Tue Sep 08, 2009 11:54 am GMT
"Is English only a language of business?"

No.

Next question.
2   Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:06 pm GMT
Why is the sky so blue?
Edward Teach   Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:15 pm GMT
Everyone knows why the sky is blue.
Its because America and Britain are arrogant bastards and are evil and force innocent foreigners to learn their diabolical tongue
Guest   Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:17 pm GMT
Who cares.
I know why   Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:21 pm GMT
<<Why is the sky so blue? >>


Sky is gray in England, not blue.
Edward Teach   Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:24 pm GMT
I think you will find those are called 'clouds'
Johnny   Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:59 pm GMT
<<English is very laconic and it sometimes feels lack of emotions. English gives more information about a subject rather than your feelings or attitude towards the subject. >>

That's what is said by people who don't know English well enough.
As for your joke, which I don't understand, if it's impossible to translate it into English, you should also keep in mind that there are lots of English jokes that can't be translated either.

<<What do you think about it???? >>

You must have no idea what you are talking about, that's what I think.
Guest   Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:10 pm GMT
I think that all foreign languages seem "laconic", or some sort of "syntetic" language to non natives cause they don't grasp the soul of the language, just the grammar rules , some vocabulary and such.
3   Tue Sep 08, 2009 1:14 pm GMT
Now it is getting interesting and all LOL
Uriel   Thu Sep 10, 2009 12:52 am GMT
I don't think people who speak English natively think that it lacks emotional depth or fails to allow us to convey an enormous range of feelings. In fact, English is known for having an enormous number of synonyms with different shades of meaning. People who don't speak English all that well or lack a large vocabulary may be insensitive to that full range, or may mistake translation difficulties for a shortcoming, when in fact all languages contain individual terms that may defy easy translation into another tongue, because they are unique to a particular language.
Another Guest   Thu Sep 10, 2009 1:44 am GMT
<<English is very laconic and it sometimes feels lack of emotions. >>
"...feels lacking in emotions".

<<English gives more information about a subject rather than your feelings or attitude towards the subject. >>
Odd. My understanding is that English's profusion of synonyms allows one to express how one feels about something through word choice. For instance, if you are happy about someone being well known, you might use the word "recognition", if you are unhappy you might say "notoriety".

<<In European languges word order can alone change the meaning of sentence substencially or to opposite at all. >>
That is true for English, as well. In fact, besides misspelling "languages" and "substantially" and using the word "opposite" in a way that doesn't make sense, you provided a counterexample of the very claim you seem to be implying. What you wrote isn't really grammatically correct, but it most nearly means "the only thing that word order can change is meaning"; if you meant to say that word order can be enough to change meaning, you should have said "word order alone can change..."

<<And as an example I am sometimes proposed to translate the following joke into English: >>
People sometimes ask you to translate that joke into English?

And I get spam in Spanish, too.