Six-language coverage from #Kyiv with @AP_GMS. In this order: English, Luxembourgish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German. pic.twitter.com/kyEg0aCCoT
— Philip Crowther (@PhilipinDC) February 21, 2022
February 22, 2022
Language proficiency — beautiful!
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39 comments:
Esperanto would solve the problem...
"Esperanto would solve the problem..."
I was just reading a passage in a book that had something about Esperato:
"My father lived with several other young artists at 4 Fengyu Lane, a noisy communal space in a small two-story building on rue Porte de l’Ouest. Through Jiang Feng he was introduced to the League of Left-Wing Artists, and soon they established the Spring Earth Painting Club as a base for the league’s activities. Father drafted its manifesto, which read in part, “Like other forms of culture, art grows and evolves along with the tides of the era, and so modern art must inevitably follow a new road and serve a new society. Art needs to constantly advance, fulfilling its role in educating and organizing the masses.” Father was beginning to align himself with a revolutionary agenda, one that valued culture as a vehicle for grounding theory and ideology in visible forms of expression. On July 12, 1932, while the Spring Earth Painting Club was hosting a class in Esperanto—the constructed language then popular in progressive circles—detectives from the French Concession police force suddenly descended on the venue. When they entered, Father was sitting on a shabby old sofa. A policeman turned to him and asked, in stiff French, “Are you a Communist?” “What do you mean, ‘Communist’?” my father replied innocently."
Ai Weiwei. 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows (p. 41). Crown. Kindle Edition.
From what I can tell, fluently.
Probably could do Russian too.
By the way, if Ai's dad wrote of art serving society, fulfilling its role etc. etc., how could he complain about Mao?
Impressive, considering how many US reporters can't handle even the English language.
But can he translate Kamala's authentic American gibberish?
Show off…
'Impressive, considering how many US reporters can't handle even the English language.'
I resemble that remark!
I am illiterate in Spanish, Italian, German, and Japanese.
Although, in my defense, I can find a restroom, order dinner and drinks, and catch the correct bus or train in all of them : )
'I was just reading a passage in a book that had something about Esperato:'
I ordered a book on Esperanto in high school...it was fun for a while and made as much sense as Spanish at the time...maybe more.
I'll take "Laptop Class social markers" for $1000, Alex.
I'd be more impressed if he has a CDL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Crowther
English is Esperanto
Ivanka is impressive!
Luxembourgish? First time I've ever heard of it. Apparently an offshoot of German-and many German speakers can understand it as spoken, even more in writing. Requires a regulatory body to define it- otherwise it seems it would just be a German dialect. Like French- a ruling body to determine what is actually a French word.
English- everyone knows what it is, but it's constantly adding new words, changing and adapting, stealing words form other languages and making them part of the lingua Franca. There are people who obsess each year over the words the Oxford English Dictionary adds to the lexicon, but most English speakers pay no attention. Is it soda, pop, coke, soda pop... depends on where you are. Is it a boot or a trunk? Tyre or tire? Is vitamin pronounced with the first "i" long or short? Watching British shows brings home the old saying that we're two people divided by a common language.
A brief history of Luxembourgish shows it didn't even have a standard lexicon until the 1950s or so. Sounds like another liberal idea to separate people into groups where they can be more easily controlled. Once it's called Luxembourgish instead of high German- you've established a new identity that can be used to divide and create tension. Then, of course, the official ruling body for the language in order to justify it's existence must make sure that the languages continue to differ and migrate apart.
Eventually the world will speak one language, with regional differences. The only language that doesn't have people anywhere pushing for universal adoption is English- and English speakers are growing each year. There is a push in the Philippines to make Tagalog the official and only language for everything. Trouble is- Tagalog doesn't even have words for many scientific concepts. Words have to be invented. Should they A. be brute forced to sound Tagalog like of B. Just use the English word for the concept and declare it Tagalog? hard liners pushing to maintain a distinct Philippine identity push for A, those who want modernity push for B. It's a struggle.
'Apparently an offshoot of German-and many German speakers can understand it as spoken, even more in writing.'
When I watch 'Shtisel' (really good, btw) they often speak Yiddish.
It lines up very nicely with the German I know.
'English is Esperanto'
Sure...but written English must be a nightmare for non-native speakers...
¡Muy impresionante! Très formidable! Era ótimo!
I could cadge about no version in Ukrainian, but I have no doubt he would have covered it as ably.
Biden to mumble, mutter, and threaten shortly. Stay tuned!
My mother spoke four when she was younger, but in her last days, a Dutch nurse visited her, and she could no longer understand her native language. That's what 70 years of living in America will do to you.
I knew a Econ Professor who could do like this when traveling Europe ... he was fan and member of Esperanto society too
I tend to translate into English and respond also ... like a translation program swithces on in my brain
"By the way, if Ai's dad wrote of art serving society, fulfilling its role etc. etc., how could he complain about Mao?"
I'm up to the part of the book where his father is *advising* Mao directly, but he will be condemned as a rightest soon enough and sent to Chinese Siberia for 20 years.
What is your native tongue, Narayanan?
I can get around OK in Spanish, German, and French, in that order of proficiency, but am not fluent in any of them. One reason I never pursued a history PhD was that even mediocre schools insisted on reading fluency in two or even three foreign languages, and that was too much work for too little return for a late-starter like me.
I think my alma mater and employer's history department only requires one now for a PhD in AmHist, part of a trend; there were people in the graduate program who were barely literate in English, and I don't just mean the rich or connected Chinese and Middle Eastern brats.
In, China, we make you 'disappear,' in America, they just make you 'invisible.'
A poem by the father:
No one could suffer more than me
I am loyal to the epoch and commit my life to it, but I am silent
Against my will, like a captive
Wordless on my way to execution....
I love it more than anything else I have loved
For its arrival, I am willing to hand over my life
Relinquishing everything, from body to soul
Before it I appear so insignificant
I’m even willing to lie faceup on the ground
And let its feet, like a horse’s hooves, stamp upon my chest.
That last part made me think about the Canadian police.
Did he report on Putin's comment that after Ukraine, Luxembourg is next?
On the subject of knowing many languages, look up Jose Rizal.
I'd advise him to learn Russian pronto.
I speak four of those languages fluently, and have had plenty of conversations with native speakers. His accent in those four is "native" enough that I can tell roughly where his assorted accents are from. To me, as a polyglot, that's even more impressive than that he speaks them fluently. Me? I **always** have some sort of accent. Amusingly, in French they think it's Spanish, and in Spanish they think it's French. Go figure.
I envied my cousins with American mother, Swiss father who grew up in Santiage, Chile. They attended a Swiss school in Santiago so they were taught in German and French, spoke English at home, Spanish on the streets, and taught Italian in school. From a very young age. All very bright, as a result, I believe.
Re Gospace's comments on Tagalog being promoted over all other languages in the Philippines. Members of the other major language groups: Cebuanos, Ilocano, Waray, etc. highly resent that move. Also, when Filipinos of different groups gather, English is often the default they use since they all have been educated in English from earliest grades.
"Let's be prepared for WW III."
Righty-o. Who do you see as the main belligerents and sides?
As for the content of Crowther's report, I don't much care, as all I know about him before and after the segment is that he has a much greater facility with foreign tongues than I do. I respect stuff like that, as I do, say, musical talent.
I filled my 5-quarter foreign language requirement (old school Geology Dept) by taking 2-quarters Fortran, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations and 2-quarters of Fluid Mechanics. Because I grew up in So Cal, I was already fluent in conversational Mexican slang.
Narr said...
What is your native tongue, Narayanan?
========
sort of Tamil in Kerala / Madras region
only good for casual conversation not intellectual / erudtionary etc
All that muli-lingualism reminds me of an old lyric from back in the 60's by Tom Lehrer lampooning America's premier rocket scientist, a Nazi we scooped up at the end of WWII:
"Vance ze rockets goes up,
Who care's vehr ze come down,
That's not my department", says Wernher von Braun
You too may be a big hero
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero
In Cherman und Englisch I know how to count down
Und I'm learning Chinese", says Wehrner von Braun
Joe Smith said...
Esperanto would solve the problem...
*********
Not a chance . Every one of those languages has nuances difficult or impossible to translate into the others, at least without using lots of words attempting to capture their essential meaning.
Yeah, maybe for a straight "news" story it might work. Sorta.
But try translating the idiom "je ne sais quoi" into Esperanto.
I'm a loser.
Esperanto is one of those ideas whose time will never come. The vocab and structure are entirely (IIRC) West Indo-European derivations, with as much utility in the real world as Elvish, Klingon, or Dothraki.
Esperanto will never catch on for the same reason Mandarin will not--it's not useful enough for most people to invest the time learning even the simplified form, when the alternatives--especially promiscuous, supple, subtle English, which has spent centuries embedding itself around the world as the lingua franca (ha) or koine of modernity--have so much more to offer.
'I'd advise him to learn Russian pronto.'
And we should all start brushing up on our Mandarin...
Impressive still, no question, but was he reading?
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