Re:Hillbillies Need No Elegy
by madhadron on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @02:48PM
(#20347359)
> Trust me
No, thank you. I studied Italian and French (old, middle, and modern), Latin, and Ancient Greek, though most of that has vanished from disuse.
I'm not talking about the grammar (which is simply different in English despite a couple centuries of attempts to make it fit into Latin), or the degree of nuance Cervantes or Rabelais can extract from their linguistic milieu. I'm talking about the range of nuance that a educated, contemporary speaker of the language has available to them. It is simply vastly greater in English than in, say, modern French.
No, thank you. I studied Italian and French (old, middle, and modern), Latin, and Ancient Greek, though most of that has vanished from disuse.
I'm not talking about the grammar (which is simply different in English despite a couple centuries of attempts to make it fit into Latin), or the degree of nuance Cervantes or Rabelais can extract from their linguistic milieu. I'm talking about the range of nuance that a educated, contemporary speaker of the language has available to them. It is simply vastly greater in English than in, say, modern French.