Isn't English the most Beautiful Language ?

Haven't read the whole thread - BUT;

Ek dink die taal van jou hart sal altyd die taal wees wat vir jou die mooiste is. In Afrikaans noem ons dit jou Moeder Taal. Dis die taal waar in jy lief het en die taal waar in jou ouers jou groot gemaak het. Dis net so bekend soos die mure van n huis waar in jy groot geword het, en jy ken dit so goed soos die klank van jou ma se stem. Vir jou is dit mooi omdat jy die emosie agter elke woord kan sien sonder dat dit daar gesit hoof te word. Vra vir n Duitse of Franse iemand watse taal is die mooiste en hulle sal se Duits of Frans. Vir my is Afrikaans die mooiste, my moeder taal :2thumbsup:

 

Can't see much of a global future for Afrikaans though.
On the decline in S.Africa too I expect.

 

It's the same as ever. Does a language need a global future in order to be beautiful? Latin is dead as a door nail and is still beautiful? I speak three languages fluently. English too, as you can see. And I still think whatever your mother tongue is, that is most likely the language you'll end up loving. I do think English is beautiful, I love writing poetry and I write in English; I just don't have the same emotional attachment to it as I do Afrikaans. Have you heard of languages like Xhosa, Zulu, Sepedi, Sotho, Tswana, Tsonga, Swati, Venda or Ndbele? No? Because you probably live in a teeny area of the world where English is the most widely spoken language. But it is certainly not the only language or the only language not facing extinction. Someone who is born and raised as a Venda speaker will be emotionally more attached to Venda than he/she will ever by to any other language.

Afrikaans is the third most spoken language in SA.
Zulu is spoken the most.
Xhosa is spoken the second most.
English is only spoken by 9.6% of the population.

So stoned, hope this makes sense

 

Was just sayin'...
I have heard of some of those languages but no-one here speaks them.
Interesting facts on the language distribution in SA.
Doesn't seem to be any extra number of teens around here.
If I had grown up in a multi lingual community I 'm sure to have leraned some.
English is my language but I don't think of it as 'beautiful'. It is however very flexible because it is such a mongrel.

 

scouse is a mix of Irish, Welsh, Dutch and sumit else...
but it changes generation by generation.. people in Liverpool don't always understand me! but im glad I don't talk with the latest accent...bera bileeve it!

 

I was always told English was hard to learn because of words like to, too and two. Now when I lived in Australia and moved there we were all sent to Saturday schooling for English classes. They say I you know German you'll get English. We picked it up easy enough I suppose but I really don't think they're that similar. Similar pronunciation of certain words but once we roll them into a sentence in Deutsch it sounds nothing like it does in English.

 

english seems to have words like that, or sometimes words that are the same word but with different meaning depending on the context, so you have to learn all these idioms and stuff.

it must not be that hard because a lot of people seem to become fluent in it as a second language, though I've seen that some people struggle with subject-verb agreement and that sort of thing.

 

Where I live is a very good English speaking town because of the many tourists it brings in but there's some things that's just really funny. A young german girl behind a bar might understand 3 beers, a glass of water and a rum and what? Coke? I don't understand. I need to speak to my supervisor. He comes over, what would you like with the rum?

Coke.

Coke?

Yes, coke.

Ohhhh CocaCola.

She'll understand CocaCola. Of course, the younger and more innocent the bar wench the cuter it is.

 

Some english (American) speakers sound weird to some of us here. I have what would be considered almost a non accent. West coast, I am and people from Massechusetts, New York, Philly and some of the northern, mid-west-(as in Fargo) sound grating and odd to me. In Boston, Cuba is Cuber and a tuba is a tuber. Those who write well, would seem to have an advantage with english because of the sheer number of words with all the synonyms, similies,etc. I have a reasonable grasp of english, but not at all like real writers have.

Although to add: I'm sure I sound as if I have an accent to speakers in England.

 

I have a St Helens accent which is the weirdest thing as Liverpool , St Helens , And Wigan are all towns within spitting distance but none of us can frigging understand each other

 

St Helens Accent Lol
http://youtu.be/iwWcWbE1v5U

 

English is my second language. Using pharasal verbs are enjoyable. I like to say I gaze upon women for example.

 

English is a good language to know, and there's some amazing English writings out there.

To me though, it's not the most beautiful of languages. Italian is softer, Spanish too, although I don't know much of either one. French I like, but it's cumbersome by comparison with English.

I was forced to learn Latin for 3 years at school. Useful at times in working out the derivations of many English words, and impressive if you can reel off Latin quotes, but otherwise quite useless.

At one time I had the intention to try to learn some Chinese. Since it's structured very differently from European languages, Semitic languages etc, I thought it might be an interesting exercise. One of those things I never got round to and now lack the energy to do.

Et verbum caro factum est.

 

Language is interesting, but some accents of english sound so hick, it's very far from beautiful.

I generally find French to be the most beautiful, I love how everything flows together, the liaison rule is just so beautiful, especially when creating that z sound
je vais à chez elle (Jay Vey a chey zel)

 

I love many of those 'hick' accents! Even though they can be hard to understand if you're not used to a particular one.

 

Being married to a frenchman I have to point out that spoken english does not cause me to get a little damp spot in my panties the way that french does!!

 

No, it isn't! Every language is beautiful in its own way! I love languages and love to learn them. The way each and every language is different from another is extremely fascinating! Just finding out how and when every language came into existence is very interesting.

 

English is an International language, no doubt in it, but how can you realized that its a beautiful language among more then 150 languages, spoken in different countries. The time might come when Chinese will be the most spoken language of the world, becasue Egnlish is well know due to business amd market value, the gravity of business towards Westren Countries. But now China become a real threat for the business tycon all over the world, slighlty different between China and American economy, so i think if the growth of China contineous like this, the time will come when people must learn Chinese, so be prepare yourself and get admission in Chinses language institute :bomb:

 

C

 

Can there be anything more beautiful than a young French girl, at some advanced stage of undress, lying in bed, and trying to seduce you in French?


...No, seriously, can there be? I want to know, I've never been with a French girl...


All joking aside (...well, half joking), there are a lot of beautiful languages. Japanese, for example, can be very beautiful and has fascinating euphemisms. I compose haiku in Japanese, and I don't have a lot of respect for much of the haiku done in English. Japanese can express so much in such a short poetic form, and English is limited in this respect.

Chinese sounds very exotic to me, Cantonese and other similar dialects much more so than Mandarin. Chinese is beautiful in its own simplistic and blunt grammar. It enables a poetic beauty, with more meaning hinted than expressed, than English could ever hope to do.

Lakota and its dialects (Sioux Languages) are considered, by some of its own speakers, to be one of the most magically powerful spiritual languages. I agree, especially that it is more so than say English and other Indo-European languages----because, unlike Indo-European languages, it is a non-linear language. I believe that non-linear languages are more in tune with the subconscious----our own gateway to the spiritual.

There are many written languages that are more of an artform than English and other similar languages that rely on kind of a block-shaped lettering. Arabic and Urdu, for example. Sanskrit is another example. Chinese and Japanese are very beautiful, where as Korean is somewhat block-like (and mathematically determined). Ancient Egyptian is certainly a beautiful writing system.

I have a Quran written in Arabic, which I cannot read, but each page is so beautiful and artistic---as if each page was very carefully done with several colors of ink and a brush held by a very skilled master calligrapher.