Re: Opinions on English (was Re: basic vocab)

On Sun, 17 Sep 2000, Dan Seriff wrote:

> Robert Hailman wrote:
>
> > > Hee hee, or if they're AGAINST your native language.  :-)  I personally
> > > find English an ugly language.  To many consonant clusters, I think, is
> > > what makes it so ugly.
> >
> > I never cared for English either. I don't care for the consonant
> > clusters, and the orthography rubs me the wrong way. For Ajuk, I tried
> > to keep down the possible consonant clusters, but I'm not terribly
> > satisfied with it, so I might change it.
>
> I've always rather liked English, at least once I realized that there
> actually *is* a method to the madness. It's not quite as subtle as
> Classical Greek or as rhythmic as Latin or as liquid as French, but it's
> a nice, solid language. The rules make perfect sense, once you learn
> them all, and they have very few exceptions. It's very utilitarian,
> flexible, and at times quite beautiful (as evidenced by some of the
> great British and American writers). It also has the great advantage of
> a huge lexis of loanwords from all kinds of languages upon which to
> draw, and forming new words is extremely easy.
I rather like it because it's a language I know what to do with.  I like
English poetry.  I like the loanwords and I like it because I understand
enough of its subtleties to figure it out and write in nuances.

I regret I don't know Latin yet.  I actually *don't* like French's
*sound,* aesthetically.  All these people were going on about how
romantic it sounded, and all I heard were these honking nasals.
<apologetic look>  Polish and Russian, OTOH, sound quite romantic to me.

And then there's some rock song a friend played for me--can't remember
the group--where you hear this deep voice spouting guttural German (maybe
that's redundant), and these wild cheers in the background, and if you
don't know enough German you hear it and think Oh no, it's a Hitleresque
deal, and all the voice is saying in German is a recipe for hemp
brownies.  :-p

YHL