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Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6036 days ago
1457 posts - 1759 votes 
5 sounds
| Message 169 of 206 20 November 2009 at 6:50pm | IP Logged |
Gusutafu wrote:
I thought that the official song was some symphony by Bach or Mozart, but perhaps that would be too ethno-centric, like having depictions of ACTUAL buildings on the paper money...
EDIT: So I was almost right then. But wait:
http://akadnews.twoday.net/stories/1000202/ |
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The anthem of Europe is "Ode to Joy" by Beethoven (i.e. the music is by Beethoven; The text is a poem by Friedrich Schiller). Only the music is officially recognized as the anthem of Europe, not the German lyrics. I don't think this is too Germanо-centric, every composer comes form one country or another. There are unofficial lyrics translated in many (all?) languages - there is also a Bulgarian version.
( I hope that song by Peter Jedlicka won't replace it, it sounds horrible. I like the Ode to Joy even without the lyrics. )
Edited by Sennin on 20 November 2009 at 7:14pm
4 persons have voted this message useful
| Woodpecker
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5813 days ago
351 posts - 590 votes
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian)
Studies: Arabic (classical)
| Message 170 of 206 20 November 2009 at 6:52pm | IP Logged |
Rikyu-san wrote:
I would like to ask you a different question:
What would it take for those of us who are critical of English being the universal language to accept it and even embrace it?
Perhaps the political, economic, "imperial" situation should change. Perhaps higher education and the development of character and a noble humanity and humaneness would need to be valued by Western societies - valuing the needs of the spirit more than the needs of the economic system but still maintaining or developing some form of sustainable economy, post-financial collapse.
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I have not been involved in this thread at all since I spawned it, but I will go through it all one of these days and contribute something valuable.
But I have to jump on this. How this is related to the discussion I'm not exactly sure. Are you saying that English is in some way a philosophically deficient language because you think Western philosophy values economic well-being over whatever you think is important and therefore isn't worthy of being a universal language? Whether that's what you were going for or not, I disagree completely with the premise. Considering as 80% percent of the population lives on less than $10 a day and there are 1 billion people on the planet who can't read a word, now is not the time to be valuing the needs of the spirit more than the needs of the economic system.
1 person has voted this message useful
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Jiwon
Triglot
Moderator
Korea, South
Joined 6438 days ago
1417 posts - 1500 votes
Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1
Studies: Hindi, Spanish
Personal Language Map
| Message 171 of 206 20 November 2009 at 6:59pm | IP Logged |
I get the feeling that this thread is just about to cross the line of being unrelated to the forum. Please, do keep it language-specific. :)
5 persons have voted this message useful
| Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6441 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 172 of 206 07 March 2010 at 1:32am | IP Logged |
91jerome wrote:
Rikyu-san wrote:
One of the problems with English is that the meaning of a sentence is becoming much more contextual. In order to understand a sentence, one need to refer to an ever sliding and unclear context. We can still communicate and understand each other, but English is no longer a language of precision. Of course, great ideas can be expressed and profound truths can be said in just a few words. But the ambiguity is harmful to our thinking. Unclear, imprecise and muddled thinking leads to problems.
Sanskrit was invented as a language of truth. It has unique characteristics that make it particularly suitable for this. English does not have the same power.
When languages change, should we not prefer changes that improved the languages?
I am looking forward to advance in my Chinese studies. The Chinese characters can be read at different levels - the ordinary person reads one level of meaning, the educated scholar, or someone with a special background, reads different levels of meaning. This means that the same text - written with the same characters - can be read in mulitple ways. I find this absolutely astonishing.
Only a language that makes clear, truthful and unambigous communication possible should be worthy of consideration as the world's primary lingua franca. Remember French was once the language of the diplomats and the international postal language exactly because of its precision, clarity and unambiguity. |
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I think you’re an idiot. In what way is English any more ambiguous than French or any other language? And inflexion loss isn’t a process of simplification because although fused morphemes are lost, they’re built back up but are unbound. An isolating language like Chinese/English has the same morphemes as a fusional language like Sanskrit or Latin it’s just that in Sanskrit the morphemes are fused and blended whereas in Chinese they’re all isolated from each other. In some ways an isolating or an agglutinative language has more clarity than a fusional language because every morpheme is represented by a grammatical element and they’re not distorted by other morphemes.
What’s this notion of clarity in French? Nouns aren’t marked in the plural anymore so “leur ami” and “leurs amis” sound exactly the same and context is depended upon to know whether you mean “their friend” or “their friends”. Oh yes the orthography still pretends that it’s marked in the plural but it’s not really. French person conjugation is very weak; in most tenses it’s only the “vous” and “nous” forms that conjugate (although the orthography pretends otherwise) but that doesn’t cause ambiguity because the personal pronouns are always used i.e a rebuilding of the morphemes.
What’s with this fetish you seem to have for Classical languages anyway? Your mindset seems very fragmented.
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Please do keep it civil.
I agree with the general point that English doesn't tend to be more ambiguous, but it certainly has some constructs which are ambiguous while the French equivalents are not. Claude Piron's "Learning From Translation Mistakes" has some nice examples. "In English similar ambiguities are constant. In International Labor Organization, the word international refers to organization, as shown in the official French wording: Organisation internationale du Travail. But in another UN specialized agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the word international is to be related with aviation, not with organization, as shown, again, by the French version: Organisation de l'aviation civile internationale (and not Organisation internationale de l'aviation civile)."
1 person has voted this message useful
| 91jerome
Triglot
Newbie
Belgium
Joined 5378 days ago
4 posts - 7 votes
Speaks: French*, English, Welsh
| Message 173 of 206 07 March 2010 at 1:42am | IP Logged |
Volte wrote:
91jerome wrote:
Rikyu-san wrote:
One of the problems with English is that the meaning of a sentence is becoming much more contextual. In order to understand a sentence, one need to refer to an ever sliding and unclear context. We can still communicate and understand each other, but English is no longer a language of precision. Of course, great ideas can be expressed and profound truths can be said in just a few words. But the ambiguity is harmful to our thinking. Unclear, imprecise and muddled thinking leads to problems.
Sanskrit was invented as a language of truth. It has unique characteristics that make it particularly suitable for this. English does not have the same power.
When languages change, should we not prefer changes that improved the languages?
I am looking forward to advance in my Chinese studies. The Chinese characters can be read at different levels - the ordinary person reads one level of meaning, the educated scholar, or someone with a special background, reads different levels of meaning. This means that the same text - written with the same characters - can be read in mulitple ways. I find this absolutely astonishing.
Only a language that makes clear, truthful and unambigous communication possible should be worthy of consideration as the world's primary lingua franca. Remember French was once the language of the diplomats and the international postal language exactly because of its precision, clarity and unambiguity. |
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I think you’re an idiot. In what way is English any more ambiguous than French or any other language? And inflexion loss isn’t a process of simplification because although fused morphemes are lost, they’re built back up but are unbound. An isolating language like Chinese/English has the same morphemes as a fusional language like Sanskrit or Latin it’s just that in Sanskrit the morphemes are fused and blended whereas in Chinese they’re all isolated from each other. In some ways an isolating or an agglutinative language has more clarity than a fusional language because every morpheme is represented by a grammatical element and they’re not distorted by other morphemes.
What’s this notion of clarity in French? Nouns aren’t marked in the plural anymore so “leur ami” and “leurs amis” sound exactly the same and context is depended upon to know whether you mean “their friend” or “their friends”. Oh yes the orthography still pretends that it’s marked in the plural but it’s not really. French person conjugation is very weak; in most tenses it’s only the “vous” and “nous” forms that conjugate (although the orthography pretends otherwise) but that doesn’t cause ambiguity because the personal pronouns are always used i.e a rebuilding of the morphemes.
What’s with this fetish you seem to have for Classical languages anyway? Your mindset seems very fragmented.
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Please do keep it civil.
I agree with the general point that English doesn't tend to be more ambiguous, but it certainly has some constructs which are ambiguous while the French equivalents are not. Claude Piron's "Learning From Translation Mistakes" has some nice examples. "In English similar ambiguities are constant. In International Labor Organization, the word international refers to organization, as shown in the official French wording: Organisation internationale du Travail. But in another UN specialized agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the word international is to be related with aviation, not with organization, as shown, again, by the French version: Organisation de l'aviation civile internationale (and not Organisation internationale de l'aviation civile)."
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Yes but you could change that to "International Organisation of Civil Aviation" and the ambiguity is avoided without changing the meaning. And we can nit-pick details in individual language until the cows come home but at the end of the day we'll come to the conclusion that there are ambiguities in every language and that on the whole all natural languages are as ambiguous/unambiguous as each other. Too many people are so enthralled by the Classical languages that they see anything else as debased.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Rikyu-san
Diglot
Senior Member
Denmark
Joined 5530 days ago
213 posts - 413 votes
Speaks: Danish*, English
Studies: German, French
| Message 174 of 206 07 March 2010 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
Let me clarify my point about the difference between English and French. You are of course welcome to think about it what you wish.
French was chosen as the international postal language and as the language of diplomacy because of its ability to create agreements that reduces the risk of interpretation. What is agreed upon is agreed upon, and the deal cannot be interpreted later on. Very important in international affairs. The French language as ambiguities in terms of how things sound but I don't consider it important in this context.
My interest in Sanskrit has many roots. Clarity and precision and the orderliness it gives to the mind are among them.
Edited by Rikyu-san on 07 March 2010 at 11:27pm
1 person has voted this message useful
| guesto
Groupie
Australia
Joined 5743 days ago
76 posts - 118 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 175 of 206 08 March 2010 at 6:03am | IP Logged |
Rikyu-san wrote:
French was chosen as the international postal language and as the language of diplomacy because of its ability to create agreements that reduces the risk of interpretation. What is agreed upon is agreed upon, and the deal cannot be interpreted later on. Very important in international affairs. The French language as ambiguities in terms of how things sound but I don't consider it important in this context.
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Yeah right... I think it is much more likely that French was chosen because they had the strongest military/economy.
1 person has voted this message useful
| spanishlearner
Groupie
France
Joined 5456 days ago
51 posts - 81 votes
Speaks: Spanish*
| Message 176 of 206 08 March 2010 at 2:29pm | IP Logged |
Rikyu-san wrote:
| French was chosen as the international postal language and as the language of diplomacy because of its ability to create agreements that reduces the risk of interpretation. |
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I believe the spread of French was a direct result of the influence of its culture, not the specific linguistic features of the language. The same of course is true of English today. More than a code set, language is an embodiment of culture.
3 persons have voted this message useful
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