english is evil

[MU]

German is a very nice language.
Certainly the most beautifull in the world.
Unfortunately, it gets corrupted by "anglizims", words that are a mixture of english and german, or that are whole english words.

But as a nation with a high national identity, we of course have movements, that fight these issues.

It is good, to be honest - to be true - and to use a correct language.
So an important part in this movement are christian groups, that spread the idea, to be honest.

The first one, founded in 1998, was the CLRJ.
Christliche Liga zur Rettung Jugendlicher.
Christian League to Rescue the Youth.

They had spread the word in "Internet Discussion Boards".
That is a term known by most germans, but this is a anglizism already!
So, instead, they used the correct translation:
"Zwischen Netz Unterhaltungs Brett".

At that time, they used a program called "Zwischen Netz Erkunder".
Nowadays, they would use "Feuerfuchs" or "Eroberer".

The CLRJ no longer exists, but there are some descendents remaining.

One of the pages, that still exist:
http://www.geocities.com/Reinhard_Pfarr ... ndex2.html

So if you are interested in learning true german, you should visit that very honest website.

Mark



P.S.: I don't remember how I found it again, I just stumbled over it via google or so.
But I knew the original board of the CLRJ, and just got reminded of the good old times, when the evil english was not as widely spread as nowadays

The history can be found in this enceclopedia:
http://lexikon.calsky.com/de/txt/d/di/die_redlichen.php

[Lobster]

One of the advantages of German is it is spelled the way it sounds and new words are made by combining smaller words.

English can be ambiguous, irrational and contrary.

Sometimes it is not so much the tongue
but what we hear . . .

If we listen out for the good even in the evils of English
we might find it . . .

To give an example from the martial arts
In the more primitive arts, you hit harder and faster
- in effect meeting evil with greater evil

With the more effective techniques, you absorb and dissipate
or redirect peoples 'evil' energy.

How does this apply to language?
Are we reactive? Or reflective?

[MU]

yes, german is a bit more structured than english, less exceptions.

But those guys were really funny.
They translated almost every word to german, what sounds *really* strange.
We are so used meanwhile to say "Internet", or use other english words.

Imagine, you would say "car drive" instead of "autobahn".
"autobahn" is a germanism, a german word, that has become common in english.
I think nobody would say "car drive" or "car street" instead, just because that would be "real english"

They even always just say "Sie", what is the polite form of "you".
In english, you just have "you".
In german, you can say "you" ("Du") to a friend.
But in a shop, you say "Sie".
I think, that is related to the old english "thy".
"thy honour...".

It was very uncommon, to use "Sie" in the web.
The web was "cozy", the people exploring it, always used "Du", as it is used by friends.
Just in last years, when commercial exploration extended, "Sie" could be found more often.
So at the time, when these "be honest" guys were active, "Sie" was very strange in the web...
Now reality has reached, what was a comedy in the beginning

Mark

[Lobster]

In London you often hear people speaking Hindi or Tamil.
Very often you hear them break into English.
In fact what has happened is these languages
absorb English phrases, were the equivalent does not exist.

One of the bizzare elements of English is spelling
that involves an extra u for example flavour instead of
the Americanisation flavor (much more sensible)
and notice how I might spell 'customisation' (trad English)
as opposed to the more logical 'customization'

Language evolves. Influences come from all sides.
And look at dialects such as 'leet' and text speak
which uses phrases such as

CU
for See You

[MU]

One of the bizzare elements of English is spelling
that involves an extra u for example

I think, this is not bizzare.
It might be a reason, why british english sounds "clearer" than american english.
For me, it is much easier, to understand someone speaking british english.
The pronounciation is stronger, while american english has less intonation.

And exceptions:
they make a language "living".
We had a reform(?) of the german language some years ago.
Many exceptions were forbidden/depreciated.
But some big newspapers still use old forms, because it is suited better, especially if you write about historical or literal topics.

However, as a second language for everybody, I really like Esperanto.
It is an artificial language, very easy to lear, as it has no exceptions at all.
Mi estas - I am
Mi estis - I was

as = presence
is = past.
Always.

Mi shatas = I like
Mi shatis = I liked

You are not abe to have such fine distinctions as with all the english past forms, like was, had has been, had been...
But to quickly learn a language, to talk to someone fluently, it is suited better.

I learned it a little bit, when I was young, but there were too few, that spoke it, too.
And meanwhile, english has become a standard, pushed again by the web.

Mark

[shroomy_bee]

French and Italian have polite forms of addressing others also,

Vous and Lei, respectively.

actually my French is a bit rusty, so look that one up before using it...I think it's right.

Truth be told, in language classes in this English-speaking country, we were taught more about grammar and composition there than for English! In about 13 years of school education, I got about three days teaching of English language structure! Mostly in primary school - verbs, adjectives, nouns, and that kind of thing.

I remember in primary we had a chance to learn Gaelic, but few of us knew what it was! (we were about age 5 - 7, something like that) so we didn't know it was worth learning, and the folks offering to teach it never came back again. Shame. Gaelic is very widespread here now.

'Sie' is one of the few things I know about German; the schools I went to didn't do any German at all, they just took us on holiday there, and to Austria....

I tried learning it myself on those Linguaphone tapes years ago, but those things do my head in. I don't like the idea of speaking at a recording, it doesn't help you realise if you are pronouncing anything correctly. Tried the Japanese one too - tried to get Power Japanese software for so many years, it was never available. Only very recently has anything like that come about again, there's some Nintendo DS titles that show how to read the different Japanese writing systems. But I don't have a DS......another thing to add to the 'to buy' list.

Cool things about some other languages:

Mayan - in Mayan, if you speak a sentence backwards it actually means the opposite of the sentences meaning when it is spoken forwards!

Chinese glyphs are actually symbolic (sort of abstracts) drawings of what they mean.

Hebrew: meanings & relations in Hebrew also add up numerically. eg - to take the example from the film pi - if you add up the value of father + mother, the number is the same amount as the value for child.

Another one I recall about Mayan that is important for a 'real language' - the word for 'seed' means (is) the same thing as 'egg' for example. That is sensible, because in reality a seed and an egg are functionally exactly the same thing - it's not important that one is from a plant and one is from an animal, the important part is what they actually are and what they actually do!

English is very odd, in the sense that it seems designed to obscure meaning rather than convey it efficiently and in a way that makes sense. There's about 50 million ways to say the same thing in English - BUT, unlike say Japanese again, that can be missing from areas that actually benefit from multiple nuanced descriptions.
eg - Japanese has many words for different types of rainfall. But in English it is just 'rain'.......the only way we have to differentiate between all the many types of rain is to say things like 'it's pouring' (which is borrowed from another term), 'it's spitting' (ugly, and also borrowed from another term), or something additive like such as 'it's raining cats and dogs' (whatever the hell that means).
There is however a specific term for midway between rain and snow, 'sleet'.

English is rewarding if you persist with it long enough to learn to read extremely literary books; otherwise it is brain-scrambling.

One thing I agree 100% on with regular Christianity is that if you are really sent by God to impart wisdom and knowledge, then you will have the Holy Spirit with you - enabling you to be understood in any language, regardless of what language you actually use.
Maybe it's like that telepathy people report who say they've been on UFOs....and aliens talk to them directly into their minds.
After all, the Fall (the Babylonian fall) was about how one common language was taken away from people, so that they couldn't be understood by one another, so that wars would come from the lack of communication.

[moron]

German is a very nice language.

corse it is - u german

hell of a title,

drew me right in

wher's de snipers

i fink i better rite to berners lee an tell him we need bordrs on tinternet as well as truth

[SirDuncan]

It is interesting that you feel that English is evil given the number of similarities between the two. I have never seen two other languages with so many cognates.

[moron]

cognates

nice sir d

rekon dats coz english has been conkered so many times they jus speak universal language now

also why even germans speak it, even tho they got funny axentz

[moron]

anywayz itaint english thatz evil its ruudniss

derz been plenni o dat heer an i only post a few bitz an got plenni a ruudniss

jus tryin ta get a friggin pc to go wivaht windaz

fanks abunch itz bin fun - NOT

[Dr. Faustus]

I think you're right, "H" in real life is like the character of Ali G or some such yoof-bollox-parody. Except he actually is that way "for real aiiii".

But I'm the one in the hat and the specs.

[Pizzasgood]

Um, moron? (I feel like I'm insulting you and I'm not, how annoying...) Maybe people are rude because you type in a manner that is annoying to translate into "proper" English. I for one can read it just fine, but I'm of a younger generation than most of them, and a native speaker of English. There are a great many people here who are not. A person doesn't choose what his native language is. And as easy as it may seem to you and me to understand what you type, it is very difficult to understand a non-native language that is typed that way, unless you have spoken it for many years. When a person sees things like 'wiv', they may not realize that it means 'with'. They might think it's some word they don't know. Or they might realize something is wrong, but not know the correct way to pronounce 'wiv' to get the real word, due to how stupid the English language is. It could be 'weave' or 'wiff'. Or it could be "live", and you're just using that idiotic baby-voice that some demented people like.

All the variations of English out there make it worse, even for English speakers. You've got half a dozen or more significant dialects just in the USA alone, then there's the English English, and the German English, and the Chinese English, and the Spanish English, and the Australian English, and on and on... And I'm sure all those countries have several variations of English within them too. Words are pronounced differently in all of them.



So if anything, you are the one being rude by making it more difficult than necessary to understand you, and then acting offended because of it.

[DialupDude]

Pizzasgood wrote:

Maybe people are rude because you type in a manner that is annoying to translate into "proper" English.

Yikes! I understood every word moron said without problem.
In the U.S. english is a myth.

[Crash]

I remember this striking passage from Mark Twain that I was forced to read in High School:

http://www.americanliterature.com/Twain ... nn/23.html

[vootie]

Some folks believe there'd be less war if people used one language. The underlying premise seems to be that fights are caused by misunderstandings and miscommunications, and that these confound people's presumably greater common interests.

I wouldn't be surprised if a one-language world would have more wars, perhaps people might understand each other too well, without vagueness and misunderstanding to hide their "naked" intentions they might proceed to battle all the faster.

Languages have various strengths and weaknesses. Some languages have stronger vocabularies that better describe certain phenomena; other languages have grammatical structures and customs that are more convivial to certain modes of thought and endeavor; some languages are sharper, some fuzzier; languages vary greatly in their underlying metaphors & metaphysics, the etymology of a single word might contain a host of assumptions, valid or invalid, useful for some purposes, less so for other purposes. But to maximize or increase one useful trait means minimizing or reducing what may be its useful opposite trait. To be the tallest means you can't be short, to be the biggest means you're not good at being small. Some languages "see" (or show) certain things better, but for that very reasons are a little blind to what others see well.

One conceivable danger of a one size fits all universal language, it might well be the verbal and intellectual equivalent of a genetic monoculture, easy pickings for one size fits all "universal" prejudices, fallacies and falsehoods.

Perhaps more practical and researchable questions, (as judged by extant evidence & results rather than a priori criteria), would be:

* how general and universal can any language (safely) get? Could Latin & Roman numerals have helped stupefy & doom the Romans? Can English become overextended?

* or is the vagueness, anarchy & orneriness of English a currently misunderstood hidden strength?

* which languages are best for particular purposes?

* how precise can language get, and how much precision is useful for what tasks? (Ditto for vagueness, where would comedy be without that? Is there a funniest (and least so) language?)

* etc...

Speaking of universals, we do have these:

PS: notice of prejudice by a German-less Yankee -- I've always thought German was one of the least beautiful sounding languages, (by how all those guttural phonemes sound, not necessarily their unknown logical sense & meaning), and find the wordcoiningcharacterics (look Ma, no spaces) akin to advancing from numeric positional notation to zeroless roman numerals, and I get a chuckle out of ethnic jokes that mock overprecise German scholars. But I'm happy to find a stalwart champion of any language, (especially German), and I sure do love some German accents!

[shroomy_bee]

But the Tower of babel thing - it is not merely about one language. It's about a real form of communication.

Two Terence McKenna quotes / references that you need to understand:

1. language was invented so that it became possible to lie

2. a real language is one where you literally see what the communicator is intending,

in other words, a real form of communication makes it impossible to be anything other than honest - and not just honest, but correct. It removes all lies, even unintentional lies (ie - wrong information).

Has anyone seen The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (I haven't read it so I don't know if this is also in the text) - if so, then what you need to understand about a real form of communication is that it is like being 'shot' with the point-of-view gun - you don't just know what someone else really means, you also know why they mean it. Everything that leads a person to think what they do, is implicit or even explicit in the manner of communication itself.

Maybe it's a form of telepathy then, maybe what is termed a heart-language like that of the Kogi tribe.

So in the example where knowing what someone really meant could lead to more wars - no, it couldn't. Because whatever they really thought about someone else, if there was truth to it, that also would come across. It deals in facts, and facts are: how a thing happened, and all that has happened - ever - that is to do with that thing. Maybe things took place differently, in another parallel world, but then that only applies there in that world, unless of course there are false worlds that are mere branches off a real world, in which case their origins - their facts of being - are to be found from where-when they branched off from.

Additionally, a war is a very different thing from individual disagreements. Wars happen because one person controls, or an abstraction such as a country is used to control, many other people to fight for a particular reason against another 'types' of person. A truthful means of communication would again make that fact - the true reasons for the war as well as the non-reality of such abstractions like imaginary borders - first and foremost in awareness as they already are naturally even to people in this world, which is why their minds cannot be tarnished towards supporting such things.

There are many political leaders here who do seem to grasp what the problem there is: because of how this world has been going, you can't just take borders away - not without somehow being able to evolve everyone to some enlightened level. Which you can't do, because they have to be able to do that themselves. So it's a mess because it's been allowed to go wrong for such a long time. But mostly they do also realise that it's imperative not to have wars.

That isn't the same as being wishy-washy and so forth, it's more about understanding the differences between any type of quoshing of an actual problem, and the reasons that wars tend to happen here and how people are mind-controlled through eras of brainwashing and stupidity to not being in a position to be able to think clearly about things in the first place, or feeling pressurised by those around them to seem to have views that match up with whatever alpha-male character is calling the shots inside their heads, which in evolved worlds they would use for truthful telepathic verifications of communication.

[vootie]

Shroomy, I'm not sure what you mean -- how would you define "real forms of communication", or what you might call McKenna style telepathy?

That is, would it be instantaneous, faster than light? Or would it have a finite speed?

Would it take place in a physical space, or presuppose some infinite parallel world that serves as a big mystic ram drive for the communicants?

Would it confer omniscience upon the communicants? When you say

not just honest, but correct. It removes all lies, even unintentional lies (ie - wrong information)

that sounds like total omniscience.

Anyhow, I'm prolly more interested in actual languages and physical space, like German & English, with constraints like finite speeds, finite storage spaces, finite time limits, etc. rather than going into science fiction & theology.

[MU]

PS: notice of prejudice by a German-less Yankee -- I've always thought German was one of the least beautiful sounding languages,

I hoped, that my exagerated praise of the beautifull german would give the readers the idea, that it could be meant ironic
In fact, the whole CLRJ stuff was comedy concerning "typical" german behaviour, though some people took it really serious

[vootie]

I hoped, that my exagerated praise of the beautifull german would give the readers the idea, that it could be meant ironic Wink
In fact, the whole CLRJ stuff was comedy concerning "typical" german behaviour, though some people took it really serious Wink

Well, if it's any consolation, your first post did come across as tongue-in-cheek, but some of the issues are real enough. It's funny because I have the same problem... my eccentric speculations seem (to me) inherently whimsical or recreational, but sometimes people can read it more soberly than intended.

Is that such a bad thing? If we all wanted some humor, doesn't a general level of oblivious misunderstanding, ("I'm half kidding, but is he?"), upgrade the comedy, from banter to comedy of errors?

[Pizzasgood]

Anyhow, I'm prolly more interested in actual languages and physical space, like German & English, with constraints like finite speeds, finite storage spaces, finite time limits, etc. rather than going into science fiction & theology.

My suspicion is that in under a century, most people will have a brain-controlled communication device, possibly with feedback also done through the brain, but more likely through some kind of special contact lens and nearly permanent in-ear speakers.

The speakers would be sort of like hearing aids combined with noise-canceling earphones - they could cancel out loud or undesired noises, allow or enhance/amplify the desired ones, and act as earphones/headset. Probably also would record all sound passing through them, with instant-replay features and such.


But I sidetrack myself. My point was the Telepathy over IP. I thought that I had coined that phrase, but it appears somebody beat me too it, intentionally no less:
http://www.ric.ca/blog/2007/11/telepath ... ented.html