4 ms·

The article is about writing, in the higher sense of book authoring, in a second language and the emotional issues related to that. I can't fully identify with

by etatoby 11y ago

The article is about writing, in the higher sense of book authoring, in a second language and the emotional issues related to that. I can't fully identify with it, as the most I've written in my second language are posts and comments like this one. But there's something to be said about the connection between a language and the culture that shapes and is shaped by it. I believe they form an ensemble, so much so that our emotional response to one is inevitably tied to the other. For example, I spend more time reading and writing in English than in my native language, which happens to be Italian, even though I live and work in Italy. This has certainly a lot to do with the subject of my education, job and interests (guess what...) but I cannot exclude that it's also based on a certain feeling of "otherness," or alienation, from my country's mainstream culture. That being said, I do consider contemporary English to be technically superior to Italian in almost all respects. It's easier, more flexible, more expressive, more concise, and more complete. The only exception would be its utter, inexcusable, almost criminal, irregular spelling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography

wolfgke 11y ago
> That being said, I do consider contemporary English to be technically superior to Italian in almost all respects. It's easier, more flexible, more expressive, more concise, and more complete. The only exception would be its utter, inexcusable, almost criminal, irregular spelling. For German I consider it exactly the other way round. German is much more exact: Long compound substantives are very easy to express in German but difficult in English (in this sense I consider German as more expressive and concise). The grammar in German might be ugly and unforgiving (it really could be simplified - just my opinion) but makes it much more complicated to express sentences that can be misunderstood. English might be easy to learn at the beginning, but becoming really good in English takes a horrible amount of time. For example it is in my opinion much easier to become good in French than in English. Additionally there is no really "standard English" as there is in French or in German (Hochdeutsch). What is actually the authoritative ressource for English to clear up what spelling, punctuation etc. really is the correct one?
- kwhitefoot 11y ago
  The correct one is whichever works best at the time. In English it is, or use to be, common to use different registers for different occasions.
  - wolfgke 11y ago
    How can one even say then that a spelling a punctuation is wrong in English if there is no authoritative ressource with which one can answer the question?
    - unlikelymordant 11y ago
      as long as you are consistent, it really doesn't matter. Even in academic or technical writing (i am in Australia), you can use american spellings or british spellings and noone really cares. Perhaps you have to let go of the "one true way" of spelling/grammar, if things seem to work fine without it.
      - wolfgke 11y ago
        I rather think about school: How can teachers even mark wrong spelling if there is no standardized spelling? The same holds for punctuation of course, for which up to now I really could not find any ressource with authoritative character where to put commas in the English language.
        GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
        There are specific guides within certain contexts. An educational setting may use the Meriam-Webster dictionary as the definitive for spelling, and the English textbook as the definitive for punctuation. Outside of specific contexts, there is no absolutely correct way of doing things.
    - GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
      The metric is "Did the message get passed, and did I not sound like an idiot?"
GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
We'll never give up our non-standard and confusing spelling. It's part of the charm of the language.
gkya 11y ago
Ciao. I'm a student of Italian philology, and I do find your comment interesting for obvious reasons. I also speak English very fluently. I find English to be a dumbed down language, and reading long and complex sentences in it gives me unbearable pain, with about every grammatical function contained in different words spread all over the sentence, and little to no clue for what's linked with what. I never read literature in English because it is incomprehensible (even tho I easily read technical stuff in it). And I can't stand English pronunciation. Italian on the other hand offers nice possibilities for prefixes and suffixed that modify a word's meaning, allowing for deriving new words rather easily. The noun-gender system and verb conjugation allows for more complex sentences to be built more fluently and pleasingly, without compromising legibility. Vowels are actual vowels. Italian has a small set of simple and nice sounds, whereas English has upwards of 40 different sounds you need to learn in order to speak near-native. And Italian sounds just cool and lovely. I don't know how you can think that English is more flexible and more expressive. All that makes English feasible is the fact that it's spoken in the US.
- douche 11y ago
  English is the Microsoft of languages. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Part of the insanity of English grammar and spelling is that it's a weird polyglot mashup of Old English/Frisian, Norse, French, Latin, Greek, and then whatever random bits of a hundred other languages. This flexibility is also a strength, in comparison to more ossified and standardized languages. To borrow another software analogy, English is the bazaar. On a completely different front, gendering sexless nouns is just silly, as an English-native speaker. At least German mostly puts things that don't have an actual gender as neuter.
  - gkya 11y ago
    The one argument I'm aware of about grammatical gender is that found in the prologue of the second edition (1858) of the work titled De l'origine du langue of Ernest Renan, which holds that it may have originated in what I'll call sexual dialects, which diverge because of little intersexual social contact, and words most used by females become feminine, and those most used by males become masculine. He cites that in Indian dramas men speak Sanskrit and female Femprakrit, though I couldn't find anything about the latter. He also writes, little before this, that the older the language, the more apparent the grammatical gender, because of the instinct of ancient peoples to attach sexual identity to even the inanimate. The more modern the language, the lesser the effect of grammatical gender. He cites indeed English for being the most simplified in this respect. Grammatical gender is not merely about masculinity or femminility of words. For example, "giornata" is a femminine italian word meaning "the part of the day from morning to the evening", derived from "giorno", a masculine word which means "daytime, (whole) day (i.e. 24 hours). This is a feature of femminine past participle, which carries the meaning of quickness, something that happens at a certain time, a hit (testata: headbutt) etc.
drethemadrapper 11y ago
I am a globetrotter and now in France working at a tertiary institution. I learnt french only for a few months, when I was younger (elementary school) as it was one of the compulsory languages to learn. Overtime, I lost it. On getting here, I tried to pick it up but was very intimidated. To add insult to injury, they don't want to hear me speak the phonetic/queen's English Lang. It is even not understood by them; hence, I speak the basics (most times grammatically wrong). They tend to speak English but the conveyed message is often confusing let alone torturing to me. I often cry and on many occasions, I think there is a systemic racial profiling going on here given that I am dark skin. I appreciate them picking an additional language and improving their skills via me, yet I am intimidated by not allowing me speak their language but must communicate in English. The whole experience seemed to be a new-age skills transfer - French<-English. They are using folks from the 2nd/3rd world as the 1st world folks cannot stand the harassment - they would have left the job. An interesting observation is that my thinking changes as I learn/improve on the French Lang. I sometimes think the English folks could have been more picky all the while i.e. the systemic racism is higher with them. I tend to see the culture in French - love/friendship even I have my reservations (history has shown that they could be dangerous - colonialism). I see the hidden traits in French (Lang.), which is fearlessness/aggressiveness and English,\ (Lang.) which is respectfulness with a possibility of deception in it.

by etatoby 11y ago

wolfgke 11y ago

> That being said, I do consider contemporary English to be technically superior to Italian in almost all respects. It's easier, more flexible, more expressive, more concise, and more complete. The only exception would be its utter, inexcusable, almost criminal, irregular spelling. For German I consider it exactly the other way round. German is much more exact: Long compound substantives are very easy to express in German but difficult in English (in this sense I consider German as more expressive and concise). The grammar in German might be ugly and unforgiving (it really could be simplified - just my opinion) but makes it much more complicated to express sentences that can be misunderstood. English might be easy to learn at the beginning, but becoming really good in English takes a horrible amount of time. For example it is in my opinion much easier to become good in French than in English. Additionally there is no really "standard English" as there is in French or in German (Hochdeutsch). What is actually the authoritative ressource for English to clear up what spelling, punctuation etc. really is the correct one?

kwhitefoot 11y ago
The correct one is whichever works best at the time. In English it is, or use to be, common to use different registers for different occasions.
- wolfgke 11y ago
  How can one even say then that a spelling a punctuation is wrong in English if there is no authoritative ressource with which one can answer the question?
  - unlikelymordant 11y ago
    as long as you are consistent, it really doesn't matter. Even in academic or technical writing (i am in Australia), you can use american spellings or british spellings and noone really cares. Perhaps you have to let go of the "one true way" of spelling/grammar, if things seem to work fine without it.
    - wolfgke 11y ago
      I rather think about school: How can teachers even mark wrong spelling if there is no standardized spelling? The same holds for punctuation of course, for which up to now I really could not find any ressource with authoritative character where to put commas in the English language.
      - GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
        There are specific guides within certain contexts. An educational setting may use the Meriam-Webster dictionary as the definitive for spelling, and the English textbook as the definitive for punctuation. Outside of specific contexts, there is no absolutely correct way of doing things.
  - GunboatDiplomat 11y ago
    The metric is "Did the message get passed, and did I not sound like an idiot?"

GunboatDiplomat 11y ago

We'll never give up our non-standard and confusing spelling. It's part of the charm of the language.

gkya 11y ago

Ciao. I'm a student of Italian philology, and I do find your comment interesting for obvious reasons. I also speak English very fluently. I find English to be a dumbed down language, and reading long and complex sentences in it gives me unbearable pain, with about every grammatical function contained in different words spread all over the sentence, and little to no clue for what's linked with what. I never read literature in English because it is incomprehensible (even tho I easily read technical stuff in it). And I can't stand English pronunciation. Italian on the other hand offers nice possibilities for prefixes and suffixed that modify a word's meaning, allowing for deriving new words rather easily. The noun-gender system and verb conjugation allows for more complex sentences to be built more fluently and pleasingly, without compromising legibility. Vowels are actual vowels. Italian has a small set of simple and nice sounds, whereas English has upwards of 40 different sounds you need to learn in order to speak near-native. And Italian sounds just cool and lovely. I don't know how you can think that English is more flexible and more expressive. All that makes English feasible is the fact that it's spoken in the US.

douche 11y ago
English is the Microsoft of languages. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Part of the insanity of English grammar and spelling is that it's a weird polyglot mashup of Old English/Frisian, Norse, French, Latin, Greek, and then whatever random bits of a hundred other languages. This flexibility is also a strength, in comparison to more ossified and standardized languages. To borrow another software analogy, English is the bazaar. On a completely different front, gendering sexless nouns is just silly, as an English-native speaker. At least German mostly puts things that don't have an actual gender as neuter.
- gkya 11y ago
  The one argument I'm aware of about grammatical gender is that found in the prologue of the second edition (1858) of the work titled De l'origine du langue of Ernest Renan, which holds that it may have originated in what I'll call sexual dialects, which diverge because of little intersexual social contact, and words most used by females become feminine, and those most used by males become masculine. He cites that in Indian dramas men speak Sanskrit and female Femprakrit, though I couldn't find anything about the latter. He also writes, little before this, that the older the language, the more apparent the grammatical gender, because of the instinct of ancient peoples to attach sexual identity to even the inanimate. The more modern the language, the lesser the effect of grammatical gender. He cites indeed English for being the most simplified in this respect. Grammatical gender is not merely about masculinity or femminility of words. For example, "giornata" is a femminine italian word meaning "the part of the day from morning to the evening", derived from "giorno", a masculine word which means "daytime, (whole) day (i.e. 24 hours). This is a feature of femminine past participle, which carries the meaning of quickness, something that happens at a certain time, a hit (testata: headbutt) etc.

drethemadrapper 11y ago

I am a globetrotter and now in France working at a tertiary institution. I learnt french only for a few months, when I was younger (elementary school) as it was one of the compulsory languages to learn. Overtime, I lost it. On getting here, I tried to pick it up but was very intimidated. To add insult to injury, they don't want to hear me speak the phonetic/queen's English Lang. It is even not understood by them; hence, I speak the basics (most times grammatically wrong). They tend to speak English but the conveyed message is often confusing let alone torturing to me. I often cry and on many occasions, I think there is a systemic racial profiling going on here given that I am dark skin. I appreciate them picking an additional language and improving their skills via me, yet I am intimidated by not allowing me speak their language but must communicate in English. The whole experience seemed to be a new-age skills transfer - French<-English. They are using folks from the 2nd/3rd world as the 1st world folks cannot stand the harassment - they would have left the job. An interesting observation is that my thinking changes as I learn/improve on the French Lang. I sometimes think the English folks could have been more picky all the while i.e. the systemic racism is higher with them. I tend to see the culture in French - love/friendship even I have my reservations (history has shown that they could be dangerous - colonialism). I see the hidden traits in French (Lang.), which is fearlessness/aggressiveness and English,\ (Lang.) which is respectfulness with a possibility of deception in it.