Why Is Spanish So Damn Insignificant?

[Shaka Naldur]

1) First of all, I want to beg your pardon for my bad english: it's no my first language. Probably this one fact will do that you don't take my arguments seriously

same to me



wigly(or whatever your name is)
just for curiosity
are you able to name right now any book originally wrotten in latin or in greek besides the homero ones??

that you don´t know any spanish writer (what it means that you are a moron) it doesn´t mean there weren´t (or they are) important, it just means that you are a moron

[yaroslav]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
Spanish has not produced any significant works of literature, at least none that I'm aware of.

Only a example:One Hundred Years
of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Only a example! And it's on Harvard Book Store's 100 Favorite Titles, in the TOP FOUR

http://www.harvard.com/recommended/top100.html

[Chris 62]

It's ironic that wiggy cites Homer, considerting he was illiterate.

[Hueij]

Spanish has not produced any significant works of literature, at least none that I'm aware of.

Well that explains a lot...

And please ppl, don't try to argue with Wiggie... It's fun at first but it gets boring and takes up too much bandwidth on the ACS server...

[Giancarlo]

Wiggy Piggy is unaware of anything happening in the world.

[Stefu]

I hope someone's collecting Wiglaf quotes. This contains few precious ones.

And Wiglaf, you've never heard of Don Quijote? One Hundred Years of Solitude? Hoyyyyy you're ignorant.

[RGBVideo]

Originally posted by Giancarlo
Wiggy Piggy is unaware of anything happening in the world.

At least he stopped spamming and flaming now...

[Footie Mad]

I was at a very interesting lecture a few weeks ago, a language professor talked about language and how it is used as a controlling instrument. Basically he had lived with an african tribe that only had a spoken language, no writing, their whole culture was based on the spoken word and the society worked perfectly.

He argued that we westerners from the age of colonization and onward have used our own way of measuring culture and language, based on our way of thinking and lifestyle. Of course we thought/think that any language not similar to our "correct" one was only used because of these "savages" lack of ability to create a written language.

You cant judge all languages with the same criteria, they work differently depending on what culture they are from. I'll use the classic example of the Eskimoes having forty-something words for snow . I dont think there are many Inuit (correct for eskimoe language?) books that have affected literature in the world today, but on the other hand they would laugh at our primitve way of describing snow.

[RGBVideo]

Originally posted by Wille
I was at a very interesting lecture a few weeks ago, a language professor talked about language and how it is used as a controlling instrument. Basically he had lived with an african tribe that only had a spoken language, no writing, their whole culture was based on the spoken word and the society worked perfectly.

He argued that we westerners from the age of colonization and onward have used our own way of measuring culture and language, based on our way of thinking and lifestyle. Of course we thought/think that any language not similar to our "correct" one was only used because of these "savages" lack of ability to create a written language.

You cant judge all languages with the same criteria, they work differently depending on what culture they are from. I'll use the classic example of the Eskimoes having forty-something words for snow . I dont think there are many Inuit (correct for eskimoe language?) books that have affected literature in the world today, but on the other hand they would laugh at our primitve way of describing snow.

Weren't there some 'study' at UK in 19th century, which ranked the languages

Chinese came last, and English first, because Chinese were the most far from English,
it was ranked to the most barbaric language

[mactbone]

Actually, that's patently false.

They have specifc words for various kinds of snow, whereas in English we use adjectives.

Instead of using on of their specific words for snow, we can say the fluffy white snow.

It has more to do with environment than anything. English probably has more words that describe something than other languages do, but that's not to say they couldn't equate it with a combination of their words.

[Footie Mad]

They need that one word description for each kind of snow for survival. When out hunting or something similar they must be able to understand eachother quickly and know exactly the kind of snow they are dealing with, transporting yourself the wrong way across the wrong surface equals death. I really dont see the "fluffy white snow" desrciption cutting it in such a situation.


Hope my point doesn´t get lost in this, you cannot measure a languages worth.

[mactbone]

I get your point, but you're still wrong about the Inuits.

Dude, watch out for the slippery ice!
Dude, watch out for the slush!
Dude, watch out for the slushy snow!
Dude, watch out for the ice rain!
Dude, watch out for the wet snow!

And so on

[Footie Mad]

One word might be the difference between life and death, not to mention if you were to use two or more adjectives like, "Watch out for that day-old deepfrozen but somewhat slushy on the surface snow!"

[mactbone]

I think I got side-tracked for a moment.

Exactly, you're still able to describe the word in English. Which is really good because there are some concepts that don't cross between languages very well. I was trying to say that they may have 40 words, but it's like me having 40 words for rain. I could still use engilsh to describe the rain, I just choose to combine, or make up a new word to define a specific type of rain.

[Timexwatch]

I'm wondering if Wiggy speaks or reads Spanish proficiently, or at all. If he did, he'd know that the language isn't even remotely crappy. If fact, it's refreshing to read Spanish literature, especially the many of the novels, short stories and poems that have been written in the twentieth century. Few English poets of the past century can compare to poets like Neruda.

Spanish is wonderful for the ambiguity of the language and the effect regional variations can bring into a work. I guess one could compare it to how Twain brought in the linguistic uniqueness of the South in many of his novels...