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French Translation (The History of Britain Revealed)
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Hatty
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P.S. Mick in the past you corrected my spelling in a rather patronizing way

It was most likely me -- not in order to put you down, honest, it's just that at times spelling or grammar mistakes can distract attention from an interesting and well-expressed message (e.g. just had an email referring to the 'nuisances' between the two main American parties).

There is a burgeoning awareness that other countries have produced great writers but it's an uphill battle if the Wokingham poetry group is anything to go by; the poet whose work I chose to bring was Wislawa Szymborska (Nobel Prize for Literature 1996) and no-one had ever heard of her. Let alone some extraordinarily talented Polish and other artists.
PS. Reynolds' work is currently being rubbished if BBC4 is an arbiter of taste.
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Hatty
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Reynolds (born 1723) a contemporary of Turner (born 1775), really? Only in the sense that you are a contemporary of George Orwell.

If a work of art is 'great' it really matters not a jot when it was done except for purposes of placing it in a context; what's interesting about Turner is that he's seen as a visionary like Blake, capturing the mood of the early industrial age, which continues to be relevant unlike the stiff formal poses of society ladies and gentlemen. (Orwell is a modern writer for the same reason even though Communism is a dead or dying -ism).

There was an event known as the Reformation in England which disrupted art in all sorts of ways.

Thank goodness for the Reformation. English (and Dutch) culture really took off thereafter.

But once English has gained a critical mass you end up having Poles like Conrad and Russians like Nabokov (and, yes, Irishmen like Yeats and Joyce) CHOOSING to write in English BECAUSE OF THE AUDIENCE not because of some innate superiority of the language.

The most active book publishing market at the turn of the century was in Germany. Politics, not audience, determined the travels and travails of writers surely? Joyce was an ex-pat; Beckett not only couldn't wait to get away but wrote his best stuff in French apart from 'Happy Days' which had to be translated back into English. Ireland seems to have stifled its prodigal sons or at least those without nationalist leanings (I'm no fan of Yeats).

Art is international cos it doesn't need language to be understood; Spanish artists are highly regarded across the globe but do you admire Spanish literature because of its intrinsic merit or because you're living there and have absorbed national enthusiasms? Don Q is, according to the literary world, the greatest novel ever written, a verdict with which I concur, but outside of Spain (and S America?) it's probably safe to assume that only students of European literature or people who have Spanish connections read it.

There are many countries which make superior films to the stuff coming out of the USA and the UK yet the average Brit objects to subtitles out of laziness rather than any nationalistic leanings (my acquaintance with Polish culture is due to having gone out with a lecturer in film studies with a special interest in Polish works).
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Nick


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If we go back to the starting point of this: Mick said "we" (the British) are crap at art and music and número uno in literature. I believe that is simplistic. Of course, politics comes into play. How else would you explain the deadening effect of the Soviet system on Eastern European culture.

However, there is a real danger of confusing popularity, recognition and quality. BBC4 is rubbishing Reynolds because they are - bless 'em - 20 years out of date. It was trendy to rubbish Reynolds two decades ago. He is being rediscovered by others now. Bacon is all the rage but I will predict with total confidence will not stand the test of time. Just go to the overpriced exhibition in the Tate at the moment and you'll see why.

Of course, Turner was doing something new as was Blake and especially Constable. But so were Gainsborough and Hogarth. The thematic innovations that come with the "bourgeois" revolution of 1688 are hugely important too.

All I'm saying is that after you've removed the obvious limitations (e.g. you can't paint frescoes in Scandinavia and there isn't much ivory carving in Czechia) it is unhelpful and facile to suggest that one nationality is good at one thing and another is good at another. Again, how do you compare poetry in different languages?
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Hatty
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If we go back to the starting point of this: Mick said "we" (the British) are crap at art and music and número uno in literature. I believe that is simplistic.

It's a sweeping statement but not necessarily wrong... British art and music taken as a whole don't rank as highly as other European nations which isn't to say that there haven't been great artists who've developed distinctive styles. Taste is determined by familiarity to a certain extent or at least appreciation is deepened by understanding 'what it's all about'. (Latterly we've been exposed to aboriginal art mapping out history in swirls and blobs and galleries and Southeby's are apparently making a bit of a killing but it's hard to decide which aboriginal works are the 'best' as an outsider, cf. Japanese art).

How else would you explain the deadening effect of the Soviet system on Eastern European culture.

How would you explain the absence of notable Eastern European art/writing since the demise of the USSR?

Again, how do you compare poetry in different languages?

Poetry is a subgroup of literature, too specialised to be treated separately and can be judged in the same way as other branches of culture, i.e. how widely read it is in diverse eras and areas of the world.
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Nick


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How widely read? What does that mean? Have you ever met a Briton who takes down volumes of poetry and sits in their window-seat musing over Wordsworth, Sydney or Milton? English poetry isn't read, it's studied. A large section of the reading public has some poetry in their homes but they don't actually read it. The only possible exception is comic poetry with may still be read to children in the "better sort of family". So, what you are talking about comes down to sales. And sales, as we all know, result from marketing. I repeat, you can hardly determine what is good and what is bad art within the same culture (hence the DWEM debate). It is impossible to make any meaningful evaluation of the value of literature across languages.

Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to write his stuff without Seneca and Montaigne and Woolf and Joyce wouldn't have come (late) to Modernism without Dostoevsky and Proust. From the sonnet to the novel to modern theatre, English-speakers arrive late and popularize (in the increasingly massive English-speaking world) rather than innovating.

And while we're at it, Blake, Samuel Palmer, Dadd and bloody Lowry were Outsider Artists before the term was invented by the marketers.
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Nick


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You say sweeping but not necessarily wrong, but it is, of course, wrong. What is the alternative. That each country makes exactly the same size splash in the different areas of art. How weird would that be? Because Italy is the most influential (a much more interesting concept) country in the world as far as sculpture and painting, it has to have exactly the same influence in music and literature?
Greatness of influence in a specific field of art tends to be cyclical, anyway, precisely because some countries are tied down by the baggage of the past (e.g. Italians have truly appalling pop music because they are so rich in opera).

Protestant England freed from religious art and its iconic forms could develop landscape painting in a way that practically no other European country was in a position to.

English literature will continue to be prolific - yes, and enormously influential - while the primacy of the English language continues. But that has nothing to do with "us" (the British). Apart from anything else the best writers in English today are people like Seth writing in English as a second language. Unless you fall back on the "what sells most is the best" argument, in which case Rowling, Pullman and Dan Brown bravely carry the "Anglo-Saxon" (irony intended) flag into the sunset.
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DPCrisp


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Poetry is a subgroup of literature, too specialised to be treated separately and can be judged in the same way as other branches of culture, i.e. how widely read it is in diverse eras and areas of the world.

See? There are objective ways to look at the broad strokes. It's a matter of scale: being trained to look at woods or at trees.

And they are objective measures: you can say this is what I measured, or in such-n-such respects, this outranks that. There seems to be a tendency for experts, trained in certain conventions, to think alternative models or perspectives are invalid. (The danger in confusing popularity, recognition and quality is not real unless you think things will go wrong. "Things can be confused" is neutral.)

it's hard to decide which aboriginal works are the 'best' as an outsider

Cf. foreigners all looking the same. It's true and it's about training (exposure).

It is impossible to make any meaningful evaluation of the value of literature across languages.
Italians have truly appalling pop music because they are so rich in opera.

How come it's possible to make one equation, but not the other?

If there is little or no pop music culture because they're all about opera, where should an aspiring Italian pop musician go? Somewhere they're good at pop?
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Mick Harper
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Yes, Crisp, cultural relativism has a lot to answer for. There are millions of Nicks out there and while we can shoot them down like the dogs they are one never seems able to control their numbers. It's a species of orthodoxy, that's why.
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Mick Harper
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Though I should add, in case there is any doubt, that my view that Britain was stupendo at the verbal arts and crapissima at the non-verbal ones (and that the reason for this state of affairs is the richness of the English language) is itself entirely orthodox.
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DPCrisp


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...the richness of the English language...

Can anyone here explain what this means? I hear it a lot, but considering the supposed richness of the language, no one seems to go on to give any eloquent illustrations. What can English do that other languages can't? (Who works in English because of it?) Can jokes and puns be made in other languages as freely as in English?

What do other languages do to compensate? Do historical or cultural references make up for it?

Why doesn't any argue that English is rather backward in having no genders, no plural of knowledge, a borrowed word for entrepreneur, no long compounds like centralheatingoiltankaccesscupboard...?
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Nick


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Italian pop music is appalling in an absolute sense, not a relative one.

The silliness of comparing the value of literature in different languages has been beautifully illustrated for me by the Nobel Prize Committee.

I suppose English is "rich" in having a lot of synonyms, being open to adopting words from wherever and inventing words. Other languages only adopt words from English!

Creamy sauces are also "rich", doesn't mean it's a good thing. Have you ever heard a polyglot describe English as "rich"?
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alincthun



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Nick wrote:
When did French begin to use -s to make its plurals (chat-chats)? Is there any point in so-called "Old French" where the plurals are mostly not -s?

In the first French writings, before the XIIIth Century, there was no rule for the expression of the plural. You could find terminations in –s at the end of singulars as of plurals. « Aussi force pluriels pour singuliers, et plusieurs autres incongruités dont estait plein le langaige mal lymé d’icelluy temps »; So many plurals for singulars, and several other incongruities of which the language of that time was (Clément Marot).

In the XIXth Century, the neolatinists (the academics stating that the romance languages were derived from Latin) have claimed they had found the rule : the Old French nouns were declined as Latin nouns. But there were only two cases left, the nominative (or subject) case and the objective case :

Singular
Subject : homs
Objective : hom

Plural
Subject : hom
Objective : homs

Very clever as you can see. But nowadays even (some figures of) orthodoxy admits it was sheer invention.

Since the XIIIth Century, the plurals have been –s in the writings.
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DPCrisp


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In the first French writings, before the XIIIth Century, there was no rule for the expression of the plural. You could find terminations in –s at the end of singulars as of plurals.

That's interesting. So the final letter was already pretty much neither here nor there for Chaucer's contemporaries.

When do they say the final letter fell into disuse in French pronunciation? Some affectation of the 17th century upper crust?

Since the XIIIth Century, the plurals have been –s in the writings.

Do they say there was a shift (or consolidation) in French speech at that time?
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Mick Harper
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Received this e-mail today re an old collaborator of ours

Dear friends, Dear linguists,

We regret we have to inform you that Yves Cortez left us on May 2009 after having struggled against a cancer.

Before leaving, he almost finalised his last book, entitled Etymologie des langues indo-européennes, par la métode oronale, that you can discover on the following address : http://www.etymologie-langues-indo-europeennes.fr/

You might have previously discovered his work on his blog : Le francais ne vient pas du latin, yvescortez.canalblog.com.

Unfortenatly he didn’t get the chance to fully complete his last book, but he trusted of all you, to work together, and continue his search.

On this website, that you can read like a book, you can also download a PDF version (Chap 1-8 detail his thesis, Chap 9 is an annex). Finally throught the “search” module, you can access directly word’s etymology.

Could you please, as he would have asked to, not only discover his work, but also talk to any other linguists intersted in etymology such as you are.

Joelle Cortez, his wife
Annabelle Cortez, his daughter
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Leon



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Here's another proof that French did not derive from Latin. The Gauls used the Greek alphabet before being conquered by the Romans. Consequently the French vowels are written in the manner of classical Greek: ou (= omicron + upsilon) is u, u (= classical upsilon) is ü, e is a neutral vowel or open e (= epsilon), é is closed e (= eta in classical Greek), o is open (= omicron), ô is closed (= omega in Greek), and the letter y (named i-grecque, also = upsilon) appears with considerable frequency, whereas in Latin it was only used in Greek words and has been banished entirely from Italian, even in Greek borrowings, and only appears in recent loan-words from English or French. If the Gauls, the Celts properly speaking, had adopted Latin as a written form of communication when the Romans occupied Gaul, and not just for monastery use later on, the French vowels today would be written as in Latin and Italian. Obviously when the Latin alphabet was adopted, the Greek spellings of the same language previously spoken for millennia before were simply transliterated.
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