The reason why the English (well native British, and descendent Yanks, Aussies, and Kiwis), struggle to get their brains and lips, around a foreign language (particularly a Latin based one such as French, Spanish or Italian), has long baffled linguists.
They often have subscribed to the idea that native English speakers are too lazy, and that having the rest of the world learning English as their second language, either by force in colonies, or for economic reasons such as trading with the British Empire and US economies, has created the idea that they need not bother themselves to learn another language.
But having recently brushed up my French (rather unsuccessfully I might add), then turning my attention to Spanish as a change, I have my own theory now.
Around 800 years ago, when our Norman overlords were strutting about, and spouting their 'courtly' Norman /French at each other, the native English were left largely to their own unlettered ways.
With no betters to correct them (or even caring), they never developed, or if they had it, dropped the concept of male or female objects. We just had objects .... A plate, the plates etc. Whereas in French, Italian and Spanish, objects are sexed, either in themselves e.g La Plato or El Cuchillo (the female plate, the male knife), or in the context of their users sex.
This so confuses the native English speakers mind, that it locks up and refuses to respond, until the language teacher just gives up and goes away, shaking their heads and muttering in a foreign tongue. .... which luckily for them, the English speaker still can't understand.
So that's it. Unless 'Johnny Foreigner' reforms his languages, then they will just have to jolly well learn English.
They often have subscribed to the idea that native English speakers are too lazy, and that having the rest of the world learning English as their second language, either by force in colonies, or for economic reasons such as trading with the British Empire and US economies, has created the idea that they need not bother themselves to learn another language.
But having recently brushed up my French (rather unsuccessfully I might add), then turning my attention to Spanish as a change, I have my own theory now.
Around 800 years ago, when our Norman overlords were strutting about, and spouting their 'courtly' Norman /French at each other, the native English were left largely to their own unlettered ways.
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| Two Worlds, Two Languages And Two Outcomes ..... |
With no betters to correct them (or even caring), they never developed, or if they had it, dropped the concept of male or female objects. We just had objects .... A plate, the plates etc. Whereas in French, Italian and Spanish, objects are sexed, either in themselves e.g La Plato or El Cuchillo (the female plate, the male knife), or in the context of their users sex.
This so confuses the native English speakers mind, that it locks up and refuses to respond, until the language teacher just gives up and goes away, shaking their heads and muttering in a foreign tongue. .... which luckily for them, the English speaker still can't understand.
So that's it. Unless 'Johnny Foreigner' reforms his languages, then they will just have to jolly well learn English.
It's not just us Anglo Saxons who have trouble with the French language, the French find it pretty confusing as well !
ReplyDeleteGender for nouns is an unnecessary complication to language, it's arbitrary and illogical with nothing in the plus column.
It also maybe accounts in some measure for why those languages are not more widely spoken .... although that being said, Spanish could easily become the dominant language of the Americas by 2150 AD.
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