The Beauty of the English Language

[The Mystical Man]

A single word in the English language can be like a work of art:

• The 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language

• The 60 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language

I've lived in Germany all my life, but I still find German difficult.

"The German language ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it." - Mark Twain

"Never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German." - Mark Twain

I love English because it is simple, flexible, and elegant. 

The English language and the dramatic arts are probably the two things I love the most.

Edited September 4, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[Nilsi]

Der, die, das.

[The Mystical Man]

1 minute ago, Nilsi said:

Der, die, das.

The three articles, the four cases, and the subjunctive mood make German difficult. 

[The Mystical Man]

The German language is beautiful, too:

 

[The Mystical Man]

Words Shakespeare Invented

[Leo Gura]

There are way more difficult languages than German.

Beauitful English words:

• Paradox
• Eerie
• Strange loop
• Macabre
• Sublime
• Recontextualization
• Mindfuck

Edited December 4, 2022 by Leo Gura

[Tudo]

The languages I love are Brazilian Portuguese, American English, Korean and Japanese. All other languages are kind of ugly.

German sounds like an angry dog having a stroke. Ugly.

[Nilsi]

21 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There are way more difficult languages than German.

Beauitful English words:

• Paradox
• Eerie
• Strange loop
• Macabre
• Sublime
• Recontextualization
• Mindfuck

 • Weltschmerz

 • Zweisamkeit

 • Dasein

 • Götterdämmerung

 • Übermensch

 • Wanderlust

German is existentialist as fuck. 

[Girzo]

30 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Paradox

Comes from Latin/French

30 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Macabre

Comes from Latin/French

30 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Sublime

This also comes from Latin/French 

It's like saying "Oh, we have such beautiful words in English, like Wanderlust!" while in fact it's a German word xDD

Edit: Oh, helloo brother, I see we both like this word

2 minutes ago, Nilsi said:

Wanderlust

heh

Edited December 4, 2022 by Girzo

[mmKay]

Some cool language facts:

"Wszystko jedno " means " I don't care " In Polish. It translates literally as " All is one" . Thats some heavy nihilism embedded into the language right there ?

"Adiós" means "goodbye"  in Spanish . It literally translates as " To God " 

German has the quality of being extremely precise with words. Like "Schadenfreude", when you experience joy because of someone else's suffering ( not in a neurotic sadistic way, but more a day to day way) 

 

Meanwhile, in French " 80" Is "quatre-vingts" ( literally four twenties ") ??‍♂️ and " Water " ( eaux) is read " O " ) 

Lol

Languages are cool but i find other things more beautiful tbh

Edited December 4, 2022 by mmKay

[UnbornTao]

Latin and Greek are probably the Debian of many languages (the basis), right?

 

Edited December 5, 2022 by UnbornTao

[Bojan V]

English language is a very simple language. I taught myself to read, write and speak English.

But Slovenian is a very complex and difficult language, even more then German. If i hadn't been born half Slovene, i would never have gone to learn Slovenian.

English certainly has it's beauty, but Slovenian is much richer in it's vocabulary and possibilities of expression.

Edited December 5, 2022 by Bojan V

[The Mystical Man]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

There are way more difficult languages than German.

Possibly. I can only compare German and English.

Actually, I learned Turkish first, but now it's the language I know the least. 

9 hours ago, Tudo said:

German sounds like an angry dog having a stroke. Ugly.

That's a stereotype. When I read Patrick Süskind, German sounds very beautiful. And in the hands of Goethe, German sounds soft.

9 hours ago, mmKay said:

Languages are cool but i find other things more beautiful tbh

Language is one of the most fascinating things there is.

9 hours ago, Girzo said:

Comes from Latin/French

"English grew out of the merger of two languages, Anglo-Saxon, a dialect of Old German, and Old French, a dialect of Latin. As a result, the vocabulary of the language that became modern English immediately doubled. English has at least two words for everything. In fact, with more than a million words, the English vocabulary offers near-inexhaustible choices." - Robert McKee

How English became a double language (excerpt from Dialogue by McKee):

After the Romans conquered England in the first century AD, they hired German and Scandinavian mercenaries from Anglia and Saxony to help fend off pirates and put down rebellions by the native Picts and Celts. When the Roman Empire abandoned England in 410 AD, more Anglo-Saxons migrated to the island, marginalizing the Gallic-speaking Celts, wiping out the Latin of the Romans, and imposing their Germanic tongue throughout England.
But 600 years later Latin came back this roundabout way: In 911 AD Danish Vikings conquered territory along the north coast of France and named it after themselves, Normandy, land of the Norsemen. After 150 years of marriage to French women, these Danes spoke what their mothers spoke, a thousand-year-old French dialect of Latin. In 1066 King Wilhelm of Normandy (a.k.a. William the Conqueror) led his armies across the English Channel and defeated the English king. With that victory, French came to England.
Throughout history, foreign conquests usually erase native languages. But England was the exception. For some mysterious reason, the Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons and the Latinate French of the Normans merged. As a result, the vocabulary of what became modern English doubled. English has at least two words for everything. Compare, for example, the Germanic-rooted words “fire,” “hand,” “tip,” “ham,” and “flow” to the French-derived words “flame,” “palm,” “point,” “pork,” and “fluid.”

[Nilsi]

We have the original of "Thus spoke Zarathustra" - that alone settles the case for German being the superior language

In all seriousness: by far the most beautiful thing I've ever read.

[The Mystical Man]

3 hours ago, Nilsi said:

We have the original of "Thus spoke Zarathustra"

I ordered it. I hope it's as good as you say it is.

[Nilsi]

1 hour ago, The Mystical Man said:

I ordered it. I hope it's as good as you say it is.

Its a treat.

[The Mystical Man]

I prefer American English.

Edited December 15, 2022 by The Mystical Man

[The Mystical Man]

Elucidate: make (something) clear; explain.

[Leo Gura]

Actualised => Actualized

[Sucuk Ekmek]

Paradox is not coming  from english, french or latin...

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/παρά

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/δόξα#Ancient_Greek

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxa#:~:text=The term doxa is an,by the Septuagint as doxa.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/παράδοξος#Ancient_Greek