3 ms·

I think it pisses them off that english is now the lingua franca.

zalew 14y ago
yeah, they are certainly pissed they can talk in their native tongue when they're on vacation in one of their many post-colonies where there is sun all year long, and you feel like an idiot because nobody speaks english. when you say 'lingua franca' you should follow it with 'of the....' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lingua_francas#French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lingua_francas#French
Loic 14y ago
As a French, living in Germany after a couple of years in Denmark and in the US, I really enjoy diversity of languages to express opinions and ideas. English, as spoken and understood by most of the people is a very limited language, it is way better in such cases to speak your native language and let a professional with a deep understanding of both languages translate. It is wonderful the diversity of languages, each one can express different ideas and concepts differently. Some words are so "exact" in a given language that you cannot even build a sentence to fully translate them in let say English (or French for that matter). This is exactly why you also have many computer languages, because each one has strengths and weaknesses. Imagine someone coming and telling you that you should not write your software in Ruby but in PHP because everybody is using PHP at the moment. What do you get? The "trolls" about one language is better than the other and this at nauseam. So, this is not because one does not understand French that one should require a French to speak another language you understand. And this goes for every languages on Earth. If you are only speaking English, it is maybe time you start learning a foreign language and start to live in a non English speaking country, this will open your mind even more than learning yet another programming language. Edit: Forgot to congratulate you about your joke which was the first reason I wanted to answer, but I drifted :)
- lmm 14y ago
  Languages are about communication. Some languages do indeed lack words for certain concepts, but English is not shy about taking what it needs; if there really is some useful concept that you cannot express in English, you can use the foreign word and it will become part of the language. I lost all shyness about using English for everything when I met a couple of Lithuanians on a train in Slovenia. If there's anyone you'd expect to be proud of their language (after decades of the soviets trying to stamp it out) it's Lithuania. The one thing they complained about to me throughout the journey? All these Slovenians who wouldn't speak English.

zalew 14y ago

yeah, they are certainly pissed they can talk in their native tongue when they're on vacation in one of their many post-colonies where there is sun all year long, and you feel like an idiot because nobody speaks english. when you say 'lingua franca' you should follow it with 'of the....' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lingua_francas#French https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lingua_francas#French

Loic 14y ago

As a French, living in Germany after a couple of years in Denmark and in the US, I really enjoy diversity of languages to express opinions and ideas. English, as spoken and understood by most of the people is a very limited language, it is way better in such cases to speak your native language and let a professional with a deep understanding of both languages translate. It is wonderful the diversity of languages, each one can express different ideas and concepts differently. Some words are so "exact" in a given language that you cannot even build a sentence to fully translate them in let say English (or French for that matter). This is exactly why you also have many computer languages, because each one has strengths and weaknesses. Imagine someone coming and telling you that you should not write your software in Ruby but in PHP because everybody is using PHP at the moment. What do you get? The "trolls" about one language is better than the other and this at nauseam. So, this is not because one does not understand French that one should require a French to speak another language you understand. And this goes for every languages on Earth. If you are only speaking English, it is maybe time you start learning a foreign language and start to live in a non English speaking country, this will open your mind even more than learning yet another programming language. Edit: Forgot to congratulate you about your joke which was the first reason I wanted to answer, but I drifted :)

lmm 14y ago
Languages are about communication. Some languages do indeed lack words for certain concepts, but English is not shy about taking what it needs; if there really is some useful concept that you cannot express in English, you can use the foreign word and it will become part of the language. I lost all shyness about using English for everything when I met a couple of Lithuanians on a train in Slovenia. If there's anyone you'd expect to be proud of their language (after decades of the soviets trying to stamp it out) it's Lithuania. The one thing they complained about to me throughout the journey? All these Slovenians who wouldn't speak English.