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English v Other Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 25 of 28 19 June 2009 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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I recently read Dieter E. Zimmer's Sprache in Zeiten ihrer Unverbesserlichkeit (Language in times of its incorrigibility) and there was an interesting part about language cultivation. The author took an old dictionary that offered alternatives for some thousand loanwords. Some of the alternatives were older words that had lots their importance, regional terms, others were translations or new creations. Of this book, the author counted the words that had gone out of use in their loanword form, their German form or both. Many of the words had vanished because the concept wasn't needed any more in daily life, others had been replaced by completely new words, some had only one or the other form, but for a lot of word, there was a clear distinction between the words that at the publishing date of the dictionary had been used interchangeably.
What me personally annoys is not the usage of popular new loanwords (or even new creations like 'handy') but the mass of too direct or plain wrong translations (=there is a correct term in German and if you want to understand the bad translation, you have to translate it back to English first) Edited by Bao on 19 June 2009 at 11:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| magnus c Newbie United States Joined 5691 days ago 14 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English* | Message 26 of 28 21 June 2009 at 7:26am | IP Logged | ||
Could you give any examples of this? I am very interested! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6049 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 27 of 28 21 June 2009 at 7:27am | IP Logged | ||
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I hate TAGLISH! There is no Tagalog, only Taglish. I don't know what to blame, English or Tagalog.
I like the concept of a language that says, "nope, I'm going to take this word and chinafy it into something totally different, because I'm chinese, and I'm badass like that. In your face, English!" I like a language that can stand up for themself, have some dignity and self-respect. This doesn't mean not borrowing, rather just making it theirs, with their style..not blatent stealing, and making it hard for English speakers to learn their language. That's the kind of language I want to share my life with. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Le dacquois Diglot Groupie France Joined 5646 days ago 54 posts - 69 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, German | Message 28 of 28 23 June 2009 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think much of the English language 'invasion' has to be treated philosophically. I hear many people here in France complaining about anglicisms. It seems strange to me because not many languages have borrowed more words than English and the most of them came from French. A bit ironic.
In addition, keeping one's national language alive is largely the responsability of those who speak it. I don't find anti-English language sentiment very useful of indeed fair since it would make things a bit difficult if we all went back to the days of the Tower of Babel. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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