GMG International School of Languages

Started by Wanderer, September 28, 2023, 09:45:31 PM

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Symphonic Addict

Quote from: JBS on September 30, 2023, 11:41:30 AMI suppose as a native speaker I'm so used to idioms like "well off" the problem you have just floats by unnoticed. But you right: there's no obvious connection between the words that make up "well off" and its meaning.

But surely Spanish has its own idioms?

That is precisely what happens with phrasal verbs that sometimes confuses me.

Of course, it has, and I suppose every language has their own idioms. It seems I still need much to learn from English.
Part of the tragedy of the Palestinians is that they have essentially no international support for a good reason: they've no wealth, they've no power, so they've no rights.

Noam Chomsky

AnotherSpin

Quote from: Wanderer on September 28, 2023, 09:45:31 PMI did not know that the Russian word for album comes from the Greek τετράδιο (notebook).

The Russian language has many words borrowed from Greek. The alphabet is also Greek/Byzantine in origin. There are also many words borrowed from Turkish group and major European languages.

Jo498

English became the global language only with American dominance. Despite the British Empire before WW 1 French was more important as language of international diplomacy etc and a more common second language in Europe and the near East, maybe even until the 1930s.

Therefore I think that cultural dominance is often more important than military because French followed Latin as European lingua franca in the late 17th century (because the Sun King was admired and emulated by the other rulers), not with Napoleon conquering Europe. 18th century German and 19th century Russian nobility often preferred French to their "barbaric" mothertongues.
(Of course, French pronunciation is also a nightmare, if more logical than English. But I'll never understand why French has the reputation of precision and logic when "personne" can mean "nobody"...)

I also think that in antiquity Greek was quite common through trade and scattered Greek colonies in the Western Mediterrean, 2 centuries before Alexander's conquests in the East.
Tout le malheur des hommes vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos, dans une chambre.
- Blaise Pascal

Florestan

Quote from: Jo498 on October 01, 2023, 07:34:21 AMI'll never understand why French has the reputation of precision and logic when "personne" can mean "nobody"...)

And "jamais" can mean both "never" and "forever".  ;D

The precision and logic is at grammar level but the French grammar is as difficult as its pronunciation.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Archaic Torso of Apollo

#44
Quote from: Jo498 on October 01, 2023, 07:34:21 AM(Of course, French pronunciation is also a nightmare, if more logical than English. But I'll never understand why French has the reputation of precision and logic when "personne" can mean "nobody"...)


Yeah, that's a funny one. Re pronunciation, think of all the letters that never get pronounced (passe / passent, pronounced the same), plus stuff like:

o
au
eau
haut

I think the ideal lingua franca would have been Italian - clear, phonetically consistent, and fun to speak. But modern Italy didn't conquer the world.
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

Florestan

Quote from: JBS on September 30, 2023, 11:27:12 AMApologies. The Google Translate font on my phone made the gamma look like a nu.

No problem at all.

Actually, I first encountered the Greek Ἀνάγκη in secondary school when reading Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (in Romanian translation, including the translation and pronunciation of the Greek word).

Here is Hugo's own preface.

PREFACE.

A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:—

ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.

These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.

He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been that soul in torment which had not been willing to quit this world without leaving this stigma of crime or unhappiness upon the brow of the ancient church.

Afterwards, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down, I know not which, and the inscription disappeared. For it is thus that people have been in the habit of proceeding with the marvellous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two hundred years. Mutilations come to them from every quarter, from within as well as from without. The priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon scrapes them down; then the populace arrives and demolishes them.

Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author of this book here consecrates to it, there remains to-day nothing whatever of the mysterious word engraved within the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame,—nothing of the destiny which it so sadly summed up. The man who wrote that word upon the wall disappeared from the midst of the generations of man many centuries ago; the word, in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the church; the church will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the earth.

It is upon this word that this book is founded.

March, 1831.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

JBS

Quote from: Florestan on October 01, 2023, 08:23:00 AMNo problem at all.

Actually, I first encountered the Greek Ἀνάγκη in secondary school when reading Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (in Romanian translation, including the translation and pronunciation of the Greek word).

Here is Hugo's own preface.

PREFACE.

A few years ago, while visiting or, rather, rummaging about Notre-Dame, the author of this book found, in an obscure nook of one of the towers, the following word, engraved by hand upon the wall:—

ἈΝÁΓΚΗ.

These Greek capitals, black with age, and quite deeply graven in the stone, with I know not what signs peculiar to Gothic caligraphy imprinted upon their forms and upon their attitudes, as though with the purpose of revealing that it had been a hand of the Middle Ages which had inscribed them there, and especially the fatal and melancholy meaning contained in them, struck the author deeply.

He questioned himself; he sought to divine who could have been that soul in torment which had not been willing to quit this world without leaving this stigma of crime or unhappiness upon the brow of the ancient church.

Afterwards, the wall was whitewashed or scraped down, I know not which, and the inscription disappeared. For it is thus that people have been in the habit of proceeding with the marvellous churches of the Middle Ages for the last two hundred years. Mutilations come to them from every quarter, from within as well as from without. The priest whitewashes them, the archdeacon scrapes them down; then the populace arrives and demolishes them.

Thus, with the exception of the fragile memory which the author of this book here consecrates to it, there remains to-day nothing whatever of the mysterious word engraved within the gloomy tower of Notre-Dame,—nothing of the destiny which it so sadly summed up. The man who wrote that word upon the wall disappeared from the midst of the generations of man many centuries ago; the word, in its turn, has been effaced from the wall of the church; the church will, perhaps, itself soon disappear from the face of the earth.

It is upon this word that this book is founded.

March, 1831.


Given that I read the book when I was about 14 or 15, that must have been my first encounter with the word as well.

Hollywood Beach Broadwalk

Madiel

Quote from: Archaic Torso of Apollo on October 01, 2023, 08:08:36 AMYeah, that's a funny one. Re pronunciation, think of all the letters that never get pronounced (passe / passent, pronounced the same), plus stuff like:

o
au
eau
haut

I think the ideal lingua franca would have been Italian - clear, phonetically consistent, and fun to speak. But modern Italy didn't conquer the world.

Languages regularly lose pronunciation of the ends of words because we are all a bit lazy. It's just that French has gone through that process fairly quickly.

Danish is another language doing this. There's a meme about how to pronounce any Danish word where most of the instructions say "skip this bit".
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