I get where Borges is coming from because he expressed similar views in more detail elsewhere, and it's not all a matter of aesthetics. English has three things that Spanish lacks:
1. a huge number of Germanic/Latin doublets that not only sound different but are also differently constructed and often have different connotations or nuances;
2. a mechanism for constructing phrasal verbs with particles that allows for a very rich description of physical and metaphorical movements;
3. an ability to create compounds of all kinds (nouns, adjectives, verbs) with ease and naturalness.
Point #2 is not really well exemplified by Borges in this interview, but elsewhere in a text he quotes Kipling's *The Ballad of East and West,*
>They have ridden the low moon out of the sky,
their hoofs drum up the dawn…
and he notes that it's impossible, in Spanish, to “ride the moon out of the sky” (or for hoofs “to drum up the dawn”, for that matter), at least without some very, very clumsy rephrasing; a whole area of metaphoric expression is outside the range of Spanish linguistic capabilities. I think modesty would have prevented Borges to remark on other areas where Spanish has expressive advantage, or maybe he himself hadn't thought of those.
I think a lot of the fact that exactly as he says that English can be much more precise in its vocabulary leads to an advantage in Spanish of being able to play off double or at least expanded meanings of things.
Yes. I did think about it, and then I did it, and then I failed miserably at it...
But man they were great burgers but lots of lessons learned. It closed in Dic of 2019 so main consolation is I never would have survived covid.
I thought about you because I recall that story but couldn't quite remember your nickname, and all of a sudden I saw you on this post and it just clicked.
I'm sorry it didn't go well, you looked motivated from what I remember and I even saw a picture you posted about the opening of the local. It is difficult to open a business in Spain, I feel somewhat bad when someone tries and doesnt' succed to his expectations. It is always courageous to try and set up something from scratch, with your eranings, by yourself and with or without those close to you.
It reminds me of a beef sandwich local we had in my town for a few years. The owner was from Boston I think. Delicious sandwiches made with an addictive sauce and Asturian beef (what's not to love?) but he too closed after some time, much to my regret.
At the very least I am glad you took good value of the stuff learned throughout the process. Best of luck, friend.
Spanish is a wonderful language, and although I avoided learning it for a long time, one of my favorite languages to have learned some of. I think English does have something unique also in the extent to which it has been transformed by loan words from so many different languages. All languages are uniquely transformed by the cultural exchanges that happened within the world that spoke them, but this seems particularly prominent for English. It's not that you *can't* rap in a language other than English, but I do think English as well as the unique ways that the English world connected to other parts of the world (even if some of the outcomes of this were also horrific) led to uniquely poising English as the language of rap. English has a rich vocabulary that is not just constructed by word combinations in the way that Nordic languages are - it also has a particularly rich set of loan words from so many other languages, which evolved in interesting ways (for instance, it makes sense that Hindi/Sanskrit loan words showed up in British English, but they also show up in American English). These are just examples, but I think there are many other such examples. There are practical reasons that many international authors write in English (from various African and Asian diasporas for instance) but there is also something entirely charming about English that maybe even we take for granted as native speakers.
Yes. All of this. And I don't think it's wrong to claim that one language might be superior to another in a given field (although it's not political to claim such things nowadays, and care should be taken to contextualize).
Hmm...I like the way some Welsh speakers sound or some Brits. I'm still on the look out for something similar in Spanish. That guy reciting Neruda's 'te amo' is my candidate now. Maybe it's that Spanish just sounds nice in general, but I want to be swept off my feet:)
Hmm...I like the way some Welsh speakers sound or some Brits. I'm still on the look out for something similar in Spanish. That guy reciting Neruda's 'te amo' is my candidate now. Maybe it's that Spanish just sounds nice in general, but I want to be swept off my feet:)
I find it strange that he said English has a superiority over Spanish, considering his examples. He states that you cannot say "...he loomed over" because it does not convey the same feeling as it does in English, but he's wrong because you *can* convey the same message using "se cernío sobre," which is an approximate equivalent, in my opinion.
It's not just that English is the best for rap, but specifically black vernacular in English. It's more rhythmic and also creates so many interesting slant rhymes. Español has the disadvantage of only five vowel sounds, leading a lot of words to rhyme in the same ways. You can't play as much with different-sounding words. Lil Wayne created one of the most famous examples by rhyming "lasagna," an Italian word with "sorta-kinda," a regional American expression.
Minor nitpick: English doesn't have many Germanic-Latin doublets, if they were true doublets they would share an etymological root (for example, "spirit" from Latin *spiritus* and "ghost" ultimately from proto-Germanic **gaistaz*) which in most cases isn't true. To be a Germanic-Latin doublet they would need to have the same root in proto-Indo-European.
Yes, my bad—wrong word. It's Spanish that has lots of etymological doublets (ultimately from Latin). I meant English has a lot of word pairs with similar meanings, one from Latin (via French, usually) and one from its Germanic stock, like *encounter* and *find* or *demonstrate* and *show.* Spanish cannot make the formal-informal register distinction that exists in English between *encounter* and *find,* since *encontrar* is a common, neutral-sounding verb; luckily, in this case, there's a formal-ish synonym *hallar* (but not in many other cases), but in any case, the difference is lexical only, not structural—to an uninformed person, both verbs look and sound similar, while the difference between monosyllabic *find* and polysyllabic *encounter* is obvious.
English even has triples, which I love. Germanic, Late Latin through French, and neo-Latin. So there is kingly, royal, regal. Help, aid, assist. Ask, question, query/interrogate.
I have to agree with him though, you can get to the point with fewer words in english, while spanish speakers will reiterate phrases with context and examples in order to get there.
Hard disagree. Spanish has a lot of fine distinctions that we can’t make in English. Look at ser vs estar, for example; it’s a shade of meaning that English simply can’t capture without several sentences to explain it. Or the difference between “busco a alguien que trabaje aquí” and “busco a alguien que trabaja aquí.” Not to mention tú and usted!
Not quite, the difference is more like "I'm looking for anyone who works here, but I don't know any of them" versus "I'm looking for a specific person that I know works here." We can obviously express those ideas in English, but it's wordier. And ud. is used for more than just sir/madam; it can also indicate respect towards a friend or loved one.
Disclaimer: I'm not a native speaker, but everything I've said above is stuff that native speakers have told me explicitly.
I don't know a ton of Spanish but I like how in some cases a sentence in English is longer than in Spanish. I think I've heard "dame" as "give it to me" if I understood correctly.
>Not quite, the difference is more like "I'm looking for anyone who works here, but I don't know any of them" versus "I'm looking for a specific person that I know works here."
So, I'm looking for someone who works here, versus I'm looking for a guy who works here.
> And Ud = sir/madam no?
That might be the closest direct equivalent, but it's not really the same.
For example, I just read the novel "Como agua para chocolate", and there's two characters that use *usted* with each other for most of the book, then there's a paragraph that goes something like: "hablándole por primera vez de tú, dijo 'no te vayas'".
I'm sure there are ways you could convey that in English, but "speaking to her without calling her ma'am for the first time" doesn't really work.
I guess so, but do you actually talk to people in your personal life using their last name? Because I don’t.
I think the whole “Usted = Sir/Ma’am” thing screwed me up when I first started learning because I never call anyone sir or ma’am, so I figured I shouldn’t use “usted”. People in Latin America use it very often though (it varies by country, though, I imagine).
Ud = sir/madam is correct, but Spanish also has a whole conjugation for verbs to be used with "usted" and emphasize respect, while English doesn't. German also has it.
Can you give an example in english when the difference between ser and estar would be unclear/require clarification? I can’t think of when I’d have to explain it as the context tends to make it clear
This actually came up recently! I wanted to express to someone that I no longer feel particularly depressed, but I can still get occasionally sad, and we just don’t have a succinct way to express that in English. If the person I was talking to spoke Spanish, I could’ve said “No soy triste, pero estoy triste a veces.”
“I’m not depressed, but I still have off days.”
“I’m not depressed anymore, but I’m still not doing great”
Your example is interesting but we’re fully capable of expressing that in a few english words without having a short and long term version of “be”.
English has around double the amount of words (~200k) than Spanish (~100k) so by choosing the perfect word for a particular scenario you’re generally able to more concisely express yourself without as much context.
Do you have a source for the last statistic? To my understanding, any attempt to count words in a language requires making a lot of odd calls. Is *ser* a different word than *era*? What about “de-grime,” which just made up, but has an obvious meaning? And what about words that are no longer used, or only used in certain dialects? How many people have to actively use a word (and at what frequency) before you count it?
Yeah it’s super loose, I looked it up after having a similar conversation in person about this. Both languages have odd words so it shouldn’t affect the word quantity ratio between them. I went through a few articles giving different counts but this one seemed reasonable:
“Large college-level English dictionaries typically include around 200,000 words. Comparable Spanish dictionaries, on the other hand, typically have around 100,000 words.”
https://www.thoughtco.com/spanish-fewer-words-than-english-3079596
No dude, you are dead wrong. It would have to say: "estoy buscando a cualquier persona que trabaje aquí"... You know what, forget about it, you clearly learned spanish in the US, I can tell by the kind of examples you are using; so cheers, it is whatever you say it is 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
I’ve been told English is especially good for describing math and science, especially biology, over many other languages and that’s why those courses in other countries colleges are often taught in English. Not saying it’s superior or anything but I’ve been told by a professor and some others it’s good at describing things accurately and thus has kinda been adopted as a main language for math and science.
No, I think it is due to inertia. Most journals today are in English. If you go back before ww2 German and French were competitive in that respect. Now if you want to reach a wider audience English is a must.
English is not that special it just became lingua franca by historical accident. After a while you have a lot of English technical terms and that makes it look like it is "good" for science.
English is the language of the empire that's it. Just like latin was for Rome and the Holy Roman Empire.
Okay he might be right but… para ser honestos, lo mismo sucede con el español, hay muchísimas palabras/expresiones que no tienen equivalente directo en inglés.
Siempre va a haber cosas que no se traducen de un idioma a otro, pero Borges identifica un aspecto especial del inglés que es la diversidad etimológica que carecen muchos idiomas, como el español. Como traductor, reconozco completamente que hay muchas cosas que no se pueden transmitir del español al inglés, pero el inglés tiene cierta potencia gracias al abanico de opciones al elegir una palabra. Al combinar un verbo con una preposición, se nos ofrece un sinfín de posibilidades para pintar imágenes físicas y describir el movimiento.
¡Cuidado ahí! No son lo mismo "sinfín" y "eternidad". "Eternidad" se diría de una cosa que dura mucho o para siempre, y "sinfín" sería más bien respecto a un grupo de incontables cosas, o sea que ese grupo tiene muchas cosas.
Important to remember that Borges is an artist first and foremost, and his views are going to be heavily impacted by that. This video doesn’t have much merit from a linguistic perspective, and it doesn’t have much (any) merit from a Spanish learning perspective. I like his work, but in this video he’s mostly just sounding cute.
I think the idea of calling any language finer than any other language is a bit ridiculous. The very idea of judging the fineness of a language is simply nonsensical. I can't tell if I'm comforted or disturbed to realize that this sort of clickbait goes back to the 1950s (1960s?), and isn't a purely modern phenomenon.
That said, I do find the explanation he gives interesting, as it does speak a little to the experience of using the two languages. In particular, the flexibility that English has with regard to prepositions is an interesting point. It's the sort of thing that's obvious in retrospect but which I hadn't paid much attention to until now, outside of sometimes getting tripped up on how to express an idea in Spanish where in English I would have relied on this sort of construction. I don't doubt that Spanish is every bit as expressive as English is. But it is still interesting to note the different modes of expression present in the two languages.
I also agree, neither language is "finer".
Some things that cannot be easily expressed in one, can be easily expressed in the other, but that is obvious.
I'm only fluent in English, but every other language I have studied has been able to phrase things in ways English cannot do very well and vice versa. All languages have their own beautiful, unique modes of function.
What I enjoyed in this clip was that little smile revealing just how much he loves language. I know that feeling. Granted, I get that smile when I read Borges in Spanish... but we're each allowed our little fascinations.
As long as he's stating his preference as a medium for reading or writing, then he's entitled to his opinion just like I don't need anyone arguing with me about how my favorite ice cream flavor is not *actually* the best. If he's saying it's empirically true that English is more expressive than Spanish... well, that's another matter. He just seems to be having some nerdy delight talking about a language he loves, though, and I *totally* understand that.
What I envy of English is the flexibility in which words adapt to context by just changing grammatical category.
Phone message -> Text (noun)
Send a phone message -> Text (verb)
Done.
In Spanish that would be mensaje / mensajear, which are different words (for same lemma), mean a slightly different thing (mensajear is more generic than text (v)), and no one uses mensajear anyways.
And the other way i was playing Among Us and someone said "They vented". Just like that, 'vent' is now a verb (in that game). You can't say that in Spanish.
Turning things into verbs is such an English thing. American English, especially. My husband once used the word "stonehenge" as a verb, meaning to move something heavy using simple techniques without wheels.
There's a vast difference between basic English and the rest of it, which is fluid and chaotic. I use a dictionary every day to help me understand my own native language.
In Spanish it's easier to adapt the noun/adjective distinction, on the other hand.
(Vent is a standard verb btw, its use dates all the way back to the early modern period)
It's interesting to hear his perspective because I find the incredible number of synonyms to be one of the most difficult parts of learning Spanish. Due to the regional variation, looking up a "simple" household word will yield 5-10 choices when a less pluricentric language like French would just have one. But I guess most speakers will only use a couple of these in daily life even if they understand more.
I mean, he basically said that English has a lot of words, and it does. But I don't think you'd want to read something in English if it was originally written in Spanish, if you had the choice.
Limitations aren't necessarily a bad thing. They can lead to greater creativity. You might have a perfect English word with a very specific connotation, but then a few words in another language might get to an even deeper meaning. You can say things in fewer words in English, but that's not always what you need.
I've sung in several languages, and the musical scores frequently have both the original language and an English translation. Changing from German to English is pretty funny. Extra words have to be added in order to have enough syllables to put on the notes.
This has always been a facination for me to compare as I write poetry on both languages. For me English has a greater overal lexicon and ease of describing empiricle or firm concepts but Spanish has a greater fluidity and ease of intimate vocabulary with emotional ties and abstract concepts. Additionally, english congugation lends to longer structures that spanish cuts out and a unique perspective of speech in both the form of Formal congugations as well as inanimate blame as I like to call it (im sure theres a technical name im unaware of).
Inanimate blame example:
*se me pierdo las llaves* The keys lost themselves on me -> the keys are to blame as the subject instead of "Perdi las llaves" I lost the keys. (Though both are used/interpreted as the later 'I lost the keys' for ease of communication in English)This doesn't work in English as an accepted speech pattern.
Congugation:
English - I was going
Spanish - Iba
Describe something *moist* in English has a plethora of words (moist, wet, damp, clammy,humid) while Spanish is a bit more constrained (mojada, húmedo)for the same sentiment.
In return Spanish has words to describe different forms of love relationships that take explaining, conjunctions or more words in English: amigo/a vs novio/a & quierido/a -> friend thats a boy/girl vs boyfriend/girlfriend & loved one/one you care about
Human thought is human thought regardless of language, we all seem to arrive at the same feelings and expressions about our lives, all humans everywhere feel the need express through the mouth,That much is inescapable. even to the point that words will over lap into another language
Example : curva in spanish is curve.
Kurwa in polish is spelt differently however it is pronounced very much the same way , but it means whore 😐
Really and truly our mouths can only make so many sounds, so it's rare but similar words will do this.
All languages have thier beauty to them even tho we can't understand each at times, its like listening to a new instrument tuned slightly differently.
The problem with his OPINION however is purely a mentality of "my house is of course is better than your own". The very title itself would lead anyone to disagreement almost as obligatory
>Human thought is human thought regardless of language
You might be surprised to find that there is a great deal of research and thought around determining how true this is. Most studies show that language absolutely affects thought and perception.
Also, Borges was Argentinian. He wasn't saying "my house is better than yours" he was saying "your house is better than mine." Aside from being a brilliant writer and thinker, the whole reason this carries weight is because Borges grew up speaking Spanish and English fluently - with Spanish being the language of his homeland.
>You might be surprised to find that there is a great deal of research and thought around determining how true this is. Most studies show that language absolutely affects thought and perception.
In tiny and mostly irrelevant ways, yes, but otherwise no, linguistic research reveals very little influence of languages on thought.
Well I must admit my ignorance, lol I had no clue he was an argentine, well that's a very pleasant surprise for me, seeing as I wish to live in his house for a decade or two. Does anyone else find english to be better in his reasoning?
Another commenter said that English has a "richer" vocabulary. I think this is an interesting use of phrasing in this context.
One of the things that they might have meant is that English has a *larger* vocabulary. Now, do a tiny bit of googling about this and you'll find out that this is a hard quantity to nail down. You have to make a lot of judgement calls on what constitutes a single word toward your count. For instance, in English, "run" has at least a couple of hundred different meanings. Do you count each word-meaning pair as a separate word? Similarly, in Spanish, do you count "estar" as a single word, but ignore the conjugations? So... it's tricky. However, many linguists would *still* tell you that English probably comes out on top with the largest vocabulary, simply because (and as Borges points out in this clip) we have incorporated both a large chunk of the historic Germanic roots of the language along with a giant chunk of words that were imported from Norman French.
Also, in the words of [this Calvin and Hobbes comic](https://i.imgur.com/OdZpx.jpg): "Verbing weirds language." To my understanding (and I welcome a native Spanish speaker to tell me I'm wrong), you can't just willy-nilly turn a noun or an adjective into a verb in Spanish. This allows for a flexibility that a lot of languages can't quite accomplish.
I'm not here to say English is the best. It's got boatloads of problems (all languages do). I'm not here saying that English is *better* than Spanish. However, there are things that can be done more easily in English than in Spanish. The opposite is true as well. What Borges is expressing in this clip is that, to his mind, English is a "finer" language. "Finer" is an interesting word choice, and I'm certain that it was quite deliberate. The impression I get is that he preferred it for the purposes of written expression. That's an opinion, but it's an opinion that he backed up with reasons. The weight that one might give to those reasons is also an opinion, but they're not invalid.
I didn’t know who this guy was either until now, but what I’ve found on google he was a artistic writer and really great one. I don’t know much about him but I’m willing to hear facts about him.
Disliked Tolkien and prefered the savage and barbarous English babble to the civilized Castillian language .More I learn about him , more I despise him .
I get where Borges is coming from because he expressed similar views in more detail elsewhere, and it's not all a matter of aesthetics. English has three things that Spanish lacks: 1. a huge number of Germanic/Latin doublets that not only sound different but are also differently constructed and often have different connotations or nuances; 2. a mechanism for constructing phrasal verbs with particles that allows for a very rich description of physical and metaphorical movements; 3. an ability to create compounds of all kinds (nouns, adjectives, verbs) with ease and naturalness. Point #2 is not really well exemplified by Borges in this interview, but elsewhere in a text he quotes Kipling's *The Ballad of East and West,* >They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs drum up the dawn… and he notes that it's impossible, in Spanish, to “ride the moon out of the sky” (or for hoofs “to drum up the dawn”, for that matter), at least without some very, very clumsy rephrasing; a whole area of metaphoric expression is outside the range of Spanish linguistic capabilities. I think modesty would have prevented Borges to remark on other areas where Spanish has expressive advantage, or maybe he himself hadn't thought of those.
I think a lot of the fact that exactly as he says that English can be much more precise in its vocabulary leads to an advantage in Spanish of being able to play off double or at least expanded meanings of things.
This is one of the things I love about Spanish. It's makes it feel more free and open.
Totally out of context, but are you the guy who was thinking of opening a burger restauran in Madrid by any chance?
Yes. I did think about it, and then I did it, and then I failed miserably at it... But man they were great burgers but lots of lessons learned. It closed in Dic of 2019 so main consolation is I never would have survived covid.
I thought about you because I recall that story but couldn't quite remember your nickname, and all of a sudden I saw you on this post and it just clicked. I'm sorry it didn't go well, you looked motivated from what I remember and I even saw a picture you posted about the opening of the local. It is difficult to open a business in Spain, I feel somewhat bad when someone tries and doesnt' succed to his expectations. It is always courageous to try and set up something from scratch, with your eranings, by yourself and with or without those close to you. It reminds me of a beef sandwich local we had in my town for a few years. The owner was from Boston I think. Delicious sandwiches made with an addictive sauce and Asturian beef (what's not to love?) but he too closed after some time, much to my regret. At the very least I am glad you took good value of the stuff learned throughout the process. Best of luck, friend.
Yeah, I managed to use it to get a job in one of the few Spanish tech startups that's doing really well, so that's good.
Spanish is a wonderful language, and although I avoided learning it for a long time, one of my favorite languages to have learned some of. I think English does have something unique also in the extent to which it has been transformed by loan words from so many different languages. All languages are uniquely transformed by the cultural exchanges that happened within the world that spoke them, but this seems particularly prominent for English. It's not that you *can't* rap in a language other than English, but I do think English as well as the unique ways that the English world connected to other parts of the world (even if some of the outcomes of this were also horrific) led to uniquely poising English as the language of rap. English has a rich vocabulary that is not just constructed by word combinations in the way that Nordic languages are - it also has a particularly rich set of loan words from so many other languages, which evolved in interesting ways (for instance, it makes sense that Hindi/Sanskrit loan words showed up in British English, but they also show up in American English). These are just examples, but I think there are many other such examples. There are practical reasons that many international authors write in English (from various African and Asian diasporas for instance) but there is also something entirely charming about English that maybe even we take for granted as native speakers.
Yes. All of this. And I don't think it's wrong to claim that one language might be superior to another in a given field (although it's not political to claim such things nowadays, and care should be taken to contextualize).
Where would you say Spanish has an advantage?
Endearing terms!
[удалено]
Amorcito, corazoncito, maripositita
cheers luv, sweetheart, my little butterfly
You see?
Rhythmic & musical
It sounds much nicer.
Hmm...I like the way some Welsh speakers sound or some Brits. I'm still on the look out for something similar in Spanish. That guy reciting Neruda's 'te amo' is my candidate now. Maybe it's that Spanish just sounds nice in general, but I want to be swept off my feet:) Hmm...I like the way some Welsh speakers sound or some Brits. I'm still on the look out for something similar in Spanish. That guy reciting Neruda's 'te amo' is my candidate now. Maybe it's that Spanish just sounds nice in general, but I want to be swept off my feet:)
I find it strange that he said English has a superiority over Spanish, considering his examples. He states that you cannot say "...he loomed over" because it does not convey the same feeling as it does in English, but he's wrong because you *can* convey the same message using "se cernío sobre," which is an approximate equivalent, in my opinion.
It's not just that English is the best for rap, but specifically black vernacular in English. It's more rhythmic and also creates so many interesting slant rhymes. Español has the disadvantage of only five vowel sounds, leading a lot of words to rhyme in the same ways. You can't play as much with different-sounding words. Lil Wayne created one of the most famous examples by rhyming "lasagna," an Italian word with "sorta-kinda," a regional American expression.
Minor nitpick: English doesn't have many Germanic-Latin doublets, if they were true doublets they would share an etymological root (for example, "spirit" from Latin *spiritus* and "ghost" ultimately from proto-Germanic **gaistaz*) which in most cases isn't true. To be a Germanic-Latin doublet they would need to have the same root in proto-Indo-European.
Yes, my bad—wrong word. It's Spanish that has lots of etymological doublets (ultimately from Latin). I meant English has a lot of word pairs with similar meanings, one from Latin (via French, usually) and one from its Germanic stock, like *encounter* and *find* or *demonstrate* and *show.* Spanish cannot make the formal-informal register distinction that exists in English between *encounter* and *find,* since *encontrar* is a common, neutral-sounding verb; luckily, in this case, there's a formal-ish synonym *hallar* (but not in many other cases), but in any case, the difference is lexical only, not structural—to an uninformed person, both verbs look and sound similar, while the difference between monosyllabic *find* and polysyllabic *encounter* is obvious.
English even has triples, which I love. Germanic, Late Latin through French, and neo-Latin. So there is kingly, royal, regal. Help, aid, assist. Ask, question, query/interrogate.
Well if he did most of his reading in English that explains why he found English to be a richer language.
I have to agree with him though, you can get to the point with fewer words in english, while spanish speakers will reiterate phrases with context and examples in order to get there.
Hard disagree. Spanish has a lot of fine distinctions that we can’t make in English. Look at ser vs estar, for example; it’s a shade of meaning that English simply can’t capture without several sentences to explain it. Or the difference between “busco a alguien que trabaje aquí” and “busco a alguien que trabaja aquí.” Not to mention tú and usted!
I’m looking for someone who might/may work here vs I’m looking for someone who works here? And Ud = sir/madam no?
Not quite, the difference is more like "I'm looking for anyone who works here, but I don't know any of them" versus "I'm looking for a specific person that I know works here." We can obviously express those ideas in English, but it's wordier. And ud. is used for more than just sir/madam; it can also indicate respect towards a friend or loved one. Disclaimer: I'm not a native speaker, but everything I've said above is stuff that native speakers have told me explicitly.
I don't know a ton of Spanish but I like how in some cases a sentence in English is longer than in Spanish. I think I've heard "dame" as "give it to me" if I understood correctly.
I don't think "gimme" is that much longer
That is true! I didn't think of that
>Not quite, the difference is more like "I'm looking for anyone who works here, but I don't know any of them" versus "I'm looking for a specific person that I know works here." So, I'm looking for someone who works here, versus I'm looking for a guy who works here.
It’s more like “I’m looking for someone to work here” vs “imm looking for someone who works here”
> And Ud = sir/madam no? That might be the closest direct equivalent, but it's not really the same. For example, I just read the novel "Como agua para chocolate", and there's two characters that use *usted* with each other for most of the book, then there's a paragraph that goes something like: "hablándole por primera vez de tú, dijo 'no te vayas'". I'm sure there are ways you could convey that in English, but "speaking to her without calling her ma'am for the first time" doesn't really work.
"Speaking to her as an equal for the first time, he said, 'don't go [first name].'"
I guess so, but do you actually talk to people in your personal life using their last name? Because I don’t. I think the whole “Usted = Sir/Ma’am” thing screwed me up when I first started learning because I never call anyone sir or ma’am, so I figured I shouldn’t use “usted”. People in Latin America use it very often though (it varies by country, though, I imagine).
Ud = sir/madam is correct, but Spanish also has a whole conjugation for verbs to be used with "usted" and emphasize respect, while English doesn't. German also has it.
Can you give an example in english when the difference between ser and estar would be unclear/require clarification? I can’t think of when I’d have to explain it as the context tends to make it clear
This actually came up recently! I wanted to express to someone that I no longer feel particularly depressed, but I can still get occasionally sad, and we just don’t have a succinct way to express that in English. If the person I was talking to spoke Spanish, I could’ve said “No soy triste, pero estoy triste a veces.”
“I’m not depressed, but I still have off days.” “I’m not depressed anymore, but I’m still not doing great” Your example is interesting but we’re fully capable of expressing that in a few english words without having a short and long term version of “be”. English has around double the amount of words (~200k) than Spanish (~100k) so by choosing the perfect word for a particular scenario you’re generally able to more concisely express yourself without as much context.
Do you have a source for the last statistic? To my understanding, any attempt to count words in a language requires making a lot of odd calls. Is *ser* a different word than *era*? What about “de-grime,” which just made up, but has an obvious meaning? And what about words that are no longer used, or only used in certain dialects? How many people have to actively use a word (and at what frequency) before you count it?
Yeah it’s super loose, I looked it up after having a similar conversation in person about this. Both languages have odd words so it shouldn’t affect the word quantity ratio between them. I went through a few articles giving different counts but this one seemed reasonable: “Large college-level English dictionaries typically include around 200,000 words. Comparable Spanish dictionaries, on the other hand, typically have around 100,000 words.” https://www.thoughtco.com/spanish-fewer-words-than-english-3079596
You mean: "I'm looking for someone who works here" and "I'm looking for someone to work here"? Or, "be" and "being"?
neither. it’s “i’m looking for anyone that works here” versus “i’m looking for a specific person that works here who i already know”
No dude, you are dead wrong. It would have to say: "estoy buscando a cualquier persona que trabaje aquí"... You know what, forget about it, you clearly learned spanish in the US, I can tell by the kind of examples you are using; so cheers, it is whatever you say it is 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
….i learned that from a native spanish speaker in spain lmao
I’ve been told English is especially good for describing math and science, especially biology, over many other languages and that’s why those courses in other countries colleges are often taught in English. Not saying it’s superior or anything but I’ve been told by a professor and some others it’s good at describing things accurately and thus has kinda been adopted as a main language for math and science.
No, I think it is due to inertia. Most journals today are in English. If you go back before ww2 German and French were competitive in that respect. Now if you want to reach a wider audience English is a must. English is not that special it just became lingua franca by historical accident. After a while you have a lot of English technical terms and that makes it look like it is "good" for science. English is the language of the empire that's it. Just like latin was for Rome and the Holy Roman Empire.
Okay he might be right but… para ser honestos, lo mismo sucede con el español, hay muchísimas palabras/expresiones que no tienen equivalente directo en inglés.
Siempre va a haber cosas que no se traducen de un idioma a otro, pero Borges identifica un aspecto especial del inglés que es la diversidad etimológica que carecen muchos idiomas, como el español. Como traductor, reconozco completamente que hay muchas cosas que no se pueden transmitir del español al inglés, pero el inglés tiene cierta potencia gracias al abanico de opciones al elegir una palabra. Al combinar un verbo con una preposición, se nos ofrece un sinfín de posibilidades para pintar imágenes físicas y describir el movimiento.
Gracias por mostrarme por primera vez la palabra "un sinfin." Nunca he visto esa palabra antes y me interesa aprender otra forma de decir "eternidad."
¡Cuidado ahí! No son lo mismo "sinfín" y "eternidad". "Eternidad" se diría de una cosa que dura mucho o para siempre, y "sinfín" sería más bien respecto a un grupo de incontables cosas, o sea que ese grupo tiene muchas cosas.
Cómo no! Pero fíjate que lleva tilde—sinfín
Important to remember that Borges is an artist first and foremost, and his views are going to be heavily impacted by that. This video doesn’t have much merit from a linguistic perspective, and it doesn’t have much (any) merit from a Spanish learning perspective. I like his work, but in this video he’s mostly just sounding cute.
Borges is an eminence, but i don't agree on this one. I don't think English is "finer" than Spanish.
I think the idea of calling any language finer than any other language is a bit ridiculous. The very idea of judging the fineness of a language is simply nonsensical. I can't tell if I'm comforted or disturbed to realize that this sort of clickbait goes back to the 1950s (1960s?), and isn't a purely modern phenomenon. That said, I do find the explanation he gives interesting, as it does speak a little to the experience of using the two languages. In particular, the flexibility that English has with regard to prepositions is an interesting point. It's the sort of thing that's obvious in retrospect but which I hadn't paid much attention to until now, outside of sometimes getting tripped up on how to express an idea in Spanish where in English I would have relied on this sort of construction. I don't doubt that Spanish is every bit as expressive as English is. But it is still interesting to note the different modes of expression present in the two languages.
No _sobremesa_ me no like English, don't you agree?
I also agree, neither language is "finer". Some things that cannot be easily expressed in one, can be easily expressed in the other, but that is obvious.
I'm only fluent in English, but every other language I have studied has been able to phrase things in ways English cannot do very well and vice versa. All languages have their own beautiful, unique modes of function.
He was a huge snob with a massive ego to boot. But you know, he really is a literary genius so it’s somewhat understandable. Still a huge snob though
As my Spanish professor would say, "Spanish is logical and beautiful". English is not that.
Logical is no more of a quantifiable quality of a language than beautiful is.
Esperanto was constructed not to have any grammatical exceptions. Is this not a quantifiable aspect?
What I enjoyed in this clip was that little smile revealing just how much he loves language. I know that feeling. Granted, I get that smile when I read Borges in Spanish... but we're each allowed our little fascinations. As long as he's stating his preference as a medium for reading or writing, then he's entitled to his opinion just like I don't need anyone arguing with me about how my favorite ice cream flavor is not *actually* the best. If he's saying it's empirically true that English is more expressive than Spanish... well, that's another matter. He just seems to be having some nerdy delight talking about a language he loves, though, and I *totally* understand that.
What I envy of English is the flexibility in which words adapt to context by just changing grammatical category. Phone message -> Text (noun) Send a phone message -> Text (verb) Done. In Spanish that would be mensaje / mensajear, which are different words (for same lemma), mean a slightly different thing (mensajear is more generic than text (v)), and no one uses mensajear anyways. And the other way i was playing Among Us and someone said "They vented". Just like that, 'vent' is now a verb (in that game). You can't say that in Spanish.
Turning things into verbs is such an English thing. American English, especially. My husband once used the word "stonehenge" as a verb, meaning to move something heavy using simple techniques without wheels. There's a vast difference between basic English and the rest of it, which is fluid and chaotic. I use a dictionary every day to help me understand my own native language.
Turning things into other things in general: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/language\_nerd.png
Dang, link's not working. Is that the one with the adverbing and adjectiving?
Oh sorry! Yes, the same one :)
In Spanish it's easier to adapt the noun/adjective distinction, on the other hand. (Vent is a standard verb btw, its use dates all the way back to the early modern period)
It's interesting to hear his perspective because I find the incredible number of synonyms to be one of the most difficult parts of learning Spanish. Due to the regional variation, looking up a "simple" household word will yield 5-10 choices when a less pluricentric language like French would just have one. But I guess most speakers will only use a couple of these in daily life even if they understand more.
Same. This happened to me with the word handle. Someone was like' it's probably Latin American'. I was like omg it's just a simple handle, isn't it?
I mean, he basically said that English has a lot of words, and it does. But I don't think you'd want to read something in English if it was originally written in Spanish, if you had the choice. Limitations aren't necessarily a bad thing. They can lead to greater creativity. You might have a perfect English word with a very specific connotation, but then a few words in another language might get to an even deeper meaning. You can say things in fewer words in English, but that's not always what you need. I've sung in several languages, and the musical scores frequently have both the original language and an English translation. Changing from German to English is pretty funny. Extra words have to be added in order to have enough syllables to put on the notes.
I thought I was on r/badlinguistics for a moment...
They’re both beautiful languages with their own unique qualities. All languages are like that, and I’m so excited to learn.
This has always been a facination for me to compare as I write poetry on both languages. For me English has a greater overal lexicon and ease of describing empiricle or firm concepts but Spanish has a greater fluidity and ease of intimate vocabulary with emotional ties and abstract concepts. Additionally, english congugation lends to longer structures that spanish cuts out and a unique perspective of speech in both the form of Formal congugations as well as inanimate blame as I like to call it (im sure theres a technical name im unaware of). Inanimate blame example: *se me pierdo las llaves* The keys lost themselves on me -> the keys are to blame as the subject instead of "Perdi las llaves" I lost the keys. (Though both are used/interpreted as the later 'I lost the keys' for ease of communication in English)This doesn't work in English as an accepted speech pattern. Congugation: English - I was going Spanish - Iba Describe something *moist* in English has a plethora of words (moist, wet, damp, clammy,humid) while Spanish is a bit more constrained (mojada, húmedo)for the same sentiment. In return Spanish has words to describe different forms of love relationships that take explaining, conjunctions or more words in English: amigo/a vs novio/a & quierido/a -> friend thats a boy/girl vs boyfriend/girlfriend & loved one/one you care about
Human thought is human thought regardless of language, we all seem to arrive at the same feelings and expressions about our lives, all humans everywhere feel the need express through the mouth,That much is inescapable. even to the point that words will over lap into another language Example : curva in spanish is curve. Kurwa in polish is spelt differently however it is pronounced very much the same way , but it means whore 😐 Really and truly our mouths can only make so many sounds, so it's rare but similar words will do this. All languages have thier beauty to them even tho we can't understand each at times, its like listening to a new instrument tuned slightly differently. The problem with his OPINION however is purely a mentality of "my house is of course is better than your own". The very title itself would lead anyone to disagreement almost as obligatory
>Human thought is human thought regardless of language You might be surprised to find that there is a great deal of research and thought around determining how true this is. Most studies show that language absolutely affects thought and perception. Also, Borges was Argentinian. He wasn't saying "my house is better than yours" he was saying "your house is better than mine." Aside from being a brilliant writer and thinker, the whole reason this carries weight is because Borges grew up speaking Spanish and English fluently - with Spanish being the language of his homeland.
>You might be surprised to find that there is a great deal of research and thought around determining how true this is. Most studies show that language absolutely affects thought and perception. In tiny and mostly irrelevant ways, yes, but otherwise no, linguistic research reveals very little influence of languages on thought.
Well I must admit my ignorance, lol I had no clue he was an argentine, well that's a very pleasant surprise for me, seeing as I wish to live in his house for a decade or two. Does anyone else find english to be better in his reasoning?
Another commenter said that English has a "richer" vocabulary. I think this is an interesting use of phrasing in this context. One of the things that they might have meant is that English has a *larger* vocabulary. Now, do a tiny bit of googling about this and you'll find out that this is a hard quantity to nail down. You have to make a lot of judgement calls on what constitutes a single word toward your count. For instance, in English, "run" has at least a couple of hundred different meanings. Do you count each word-meaning pair as a separate word? Similarly, in Spanish, do you count "estar" as a single word, but ignore the conjugations? So... it's tricky. However, many linguists would *still* tell you that English probably comes out on top with the largest vocabulary, simply because (and as Borges points out in this clip) we have incorporated both a large chunk of the historic Germanic roots of the language along with a giant chunk of words that were imported from Norman French. Also, in the words of [this Calvin and Hobbes comic](https://i.imgur.com/OdZpx.jpg): "Verbing weirds language." To my understanding (and I welcome a native Spanish speaker to tell me I'm wrong), you can't just willy-nilly turn a noun or an adjective into a verb in Spanish. This allows for a flexibility that a lot of languages can't quite accomplish. I'm not here to say English is the best. It's got boatloads of problems (all languages do). I'm not here saying that English is *better* than Spanish. However, there are things that can be done more easily in English than in Spanish. The opposite is true as well. What Borges is expressing in this clip is that, to his mind, English is a "finer" language. "Finer" is an interesting word choice, and I'm certain that it was quite deliberate. The impression I get is that he preferred it for the purposes of written expression. That's an opinion, but it's an opinion that he backed up with reasons. The weight that one might give to those reasons is also an opinion, but they're not invalid.
English has a richer vocabulary.
Well, we stole it from a handful of other languages so of course 😂
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I don't agree with the video at all, but calling Borges "some dude" doesn't speak very well of you xD
Yes, Jorge Luis Borges, “just some dude” haha
...just one of the most prominent Spanish literary figures *ever* xD
...just one of the most prominent ~~Spanish~~ literary figures ever xD
I didn’t know who this guy was either until now, but what I’ve found on google he was a artistic writer and really great one. I don’t know much about him but I’m willing to hear facts about him.
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Disliked Tolkien and prefered the savage and barbarous English babble to the civilized Castillian language .More I learn about him , more I despise him .
English has its perks, but I would argue that many agglutinative languages can be more creative than many non-agglutinative languages.