Re: CHAT: Scythes and Scythians (was: Re: CHAT: Re: Japanese English)

Dans un courrier daté du 23/03/00 18:24:20  , Tom a écrit :

> Humorous, but not surprising.  Umberto Eco writes in his book _The
>  Search for the Perfect Language about one Frenchman, the Count
>  Antoine de Rivarol and that man's book _De la universitalité de la langue
>  française_:
>
>  "According to de Rivarol, French possessed a phonetic system that
>  guaranteed sweetness and harmony, as well as a literature incomperable
>  in its richness and grandeur; it was spoken in that capital city which had
>  become the 'foyer des étincelles répandues chez tous les peuples'.  In
>  comparison with French, German was too gutteral, Italian too soft, Spanish
>  too redundant, English too obscure.  Rivarol attributed the superiority of
>  French to its word order: first subject, then verb, and last object.  The
>  word order mirrored a natural logic which was in accordance with the
>  requirements of common sense.... [D]e Rivarol asserts that if other people,
>  speaking in other tongues, had abandoned the natural direct word order,
>  it was because they had let their passions prevail over their intellect."
>  (p. 300-1)
>
>  It sounds disturbingly similar to modern day members of the French Academy,
>  or the editors of _Le Monde_.  :)
i can't get what is "humorous" or "disturbing" above.
of course french language is close to perfection thanks to the french people
and their academie's genius.

mathias