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What’s beautiful about English? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 9 of 34 27 May 2011 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | ||
It's not hijacking. We're just discussing language we all obviously use and we are considering it's beauties as well. Every coin has two sides. And this thread is as well nice as one of the few considering English a foreign language. Btw approximately how many % of members of the forum don't have English as their native language? Is this information somewhere on the member lists or so? About English, I personally dislike the huge amount of phrasal verbs, which is difficult for me to memorise. And I've always had the impression that English is different from many other languages by having much less grammar rules and huge lists of irregularities instead while I prefer the opposite. It's not only the grammar, it's the reading as well. And I dislike about it another thing, that many natives of my other target languages use English when speaking to me instead of their language and it's often hard to make them change their mind. But this was already discussed somewhere else. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 10 of 34 27 May 2011 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Frankly, I don't like it when people romanticize languages as "beautiful". It falls into the whole superficial interpretation of foreign elements as "exotic", which effectively dehumanizes actual, intellectually multifaceted people into the same category as flowers, music, and butterflies. Ideas can be beautiful, but language is a tool for communication, and to consider the tool in and of itself to be intrinsically "beautiful" is about as meaningful as considering a screwdriver to be beautiful because it has a shiny handle.
Languages have varying functional capabilities with respect to communication—for example, analytic/synthetic structure, presence or lack of certain tenses—but audible and visual aesthetics are just the packaging of the product—they exist, but they aren't particularly meaningful. As for English, most of us native speakers don't think of it as intrinsically beautiful because we associate it with forum posts, YouTube comments, school papers, annoying political rhetoric, etc. But all of us have favorite movies and music that use the English language. We just think of these films and songs as entities in and of themselves, and the products of their songwriters/singers and directors/actors, rather than associate them with the English language itself. I should note that there are certainly things I like and dislike about different languages, but I don't really consider these to be relevant to the notion of "beauty". Edited by nway on 27 May 2011 at 11:36pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 34 27 May 2011 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, language is a tool but you cannot tell tools in general can't be considered beautiful. For exemple cars are just tools as well and many people consider them beautiful. Writing is just a tool to put ideas on paper and transport them to someone else to read but many people consider writing so beautiful (especially foreign writing) to put them on their body as a tatoo. And there are more exemples. I believe a language is much more important and much more complex tool than a screwdriver. By "romanticizing" we are not underestimating value of the language, quite the opposite.
Of course native speakers see their language differently than learners. And people are not all the same as well, some feel more emotions towards their tools and subjects of study, some are strictly pragmatic. But from what I have read on this forum, I'd say many people here have emotional ties to their languages, based not only on what will the language do for them. What's wrong about that? There are even people who love beauty of mathematics, more than the results maths give. 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5416 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 12 of 34 28 May 2011 at 12:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I don't consider cars to be beautiful, so perhaps I'm just weird.
By "tools", I mean even the prettiest "sounding" language can be used to express mundane or even hateful things. For example, I don't consider a speech by Hitler to be beautiful. If that speech were to be spoken in French or written in Chinese, I still wouldn't consider it to be beautiful. If it were to be expressed in English, I wouldn't find it "less exotic". Likewise, all languages have had their bigots and politicians and whatnot expressing crude or ugly ideas using language that might superficially appear "beautiful". Another example would be Mozart's "Leck mich im Arsch": Leck mich im Arsch g'schwindi, g'schwindi! Leck im Arsch mich g'schwindi. Leck mich, leck mich, g'schwindi ...which a Germanophile might think looks beautiful and poetic, until of course they realize it translates to "Lick me in the arse quickly". To put it another way, the language of Shakespeare and Chaucer is the same language as Beavis and Butthead. Or, a car trip might be a beautiful experience, but I wouldn't say it has anything to do with the car's color or wheels. That said, beauty is of course subjective, and I claim no authority on its definition. If someone finds something beautiful, no one else can take that away from him or her. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5035 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 13 of 34 28 May 2011 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
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As a native English speaker, I find beauty in the crazy spellings, but I also find our culture in it, too.
I find beauty in creative poetry, whether by someone literary or a rap artist who finds interesting ways to make internal vowels rhyme. I find beauty in alliteration. And rhythm... the many pick-up notes before a stress accent making a galloping sound as the language progresses. I find it beautiful because it is my own. No matter how far I roam with other languages, I come back to this one and appreciate it all over again. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 5082 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 14 of 34 28 May 2011 at 6:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't like English sound very much, I mean, the Spoken language. However, it's illogical spelling makes Written English a beautiful language to read or just see the words. Also, if you speak a Romance or a Germanic language you'll find similar words and then you will feel at home.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6035 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 15 of 34 28 May 2011 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||
The literature :). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rafferty97 Newbie Australia Joined 4930 days ago 1 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 16 of 34 28 May 2011 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love English for the flexibility not found in other languages.
You can put whatever part of the sentence you wish first, followed by the less important details. You can omit a lot and whatever you want from sentences while keeping them grammatically correct, allowing you to get your point across in very few words. Other languages I've met require certain elements, or force you to use pronouns with specific antecedents. In English, it is as simply as ommiting the phrase altogether ("I'm going to the house" -> "I'm going"), or using 'it' ("Do you want it?", "I can do it.") Most languages I encounter don't let you make such a general and short sentence as "I do" to encompass just about any question. Edited by Rafferty97 on 28 May 2011 at 12:58pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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