The Vatican has no problems. It has invented much new Latin vocabulary to cope with science. Contrary to the myths propagated since the so-called "Age of Enlightenment", much of science came from within the Catholic Church and was written about in Latin.
Thank you. I now get it!
That's very true.
Good to see the Vatican keeping so up-to-date, concocting a translation* for disco ~ approximately 29 years after the term was last used in English.
As has often been said: "The Vatican thinks in centuries, not decades".
"Cycle" comes from the Greek κύκλος, meaning "wheel". All the Vatican has done is transform a word for something that didn't exist in Ancient Greece into a word for something that didn't exist in Ancient Rome. I'm not sure that the "rota" part needs to be plural; we don't call a bicycle a "bicycles" because it has two wheels. Also the Italian for tricycle is triciclo, not tricicli, unless we're talking about more than one complete machine.
I don't see how American English differs from any other variety of English in this regard (the grammatical differences between different national varieties of English are very slight). English seems no more or less clear to me than French (which I also speak, and which has a self-proclaimed reputation for pinpoint clarity).
Fair point about American English, I suppose.
But I'm pretty sure, that there is no need to use plural here. I can't recall any word in English (and neither in any other language I'm familiar with) that combines a number and a noun in plural.
Like Galileo for example?
Cat-o'-nine-tails?
Having studied French for 8 years, I always felt like it was less clear than English, Dutch and perhaps German. French seems to be more "basic". Whereas Dutch loves to use Germanic, Greek and Romance vocabulary (aanvaarden/accepteren, bioscoop/cinema/theater etc.), French often has only ONE frequently used word for a concept, and sometimes not even that. I am excluding some concepts like "vomiting", "having sex" and "shit" (there are lots of French words for those, like in many languages, I guess).
I have studied French since the age of 10 or 11.
What we are trying to say is that French depends more on context than English and Dutch. I don't see what's so absurd about that. We could be wrong, of course, but do you really believe that every language is just as clear as the other?!
In a word, No. The French for local is du terroir.
What is "depends more on context" supposed to mean? You claim that a language having more words apparently leads to its being "more clear". As evidence of this, you say that "pédé" (among other examples) can mean homosexual or peadophile. Whatever the origins of the term, pédé is a pejorative term for a gay man, not a peadophile. And French has dozens and dozens of words like it. Presumably you therefore believe that this makes homophobia "clearer" in French than in another language which has a less voluminous amount of homophobic insults.
No, terroir has multiple concepts bound up in its meaning. English has no single translation for it. But every language has words like this. It proves nothing other than to say that every language is as fit as any other for communication. English is no clearer than any other language. In the past (and perhaps still today), some people advanced the idea that Classical Latin or Ancient Greek or Sanskrit or Quranic-era Arabic were uniquely pristine vehicles for communication. But this is simply nonsense.
Maybe my French teachers simply weren't good enough. We definitely learned that in class. And I had both a Walloon and Swiss classmate then. They said it's always clear from context.
I never said anything like that whatsoever
Very true. I never said otherwise!
That article doesn't mention French anywhere, just English. Maybe I underestimate the amount of ambiguous words in English. I tend to think of homophones as separate words, but they can just as much ambiguity in the spoken language.
You make it look like I implied that minimalism is bad, but my previous posts on this forum (and many discussions with Eno2) should have made it clear that I prefer minimalism.
I believe you are underestimating the amount of words in English period. French has around 150,000 words, while English has well over three times that number, for historical reasons.
Odd that you should think the opposite.
They don't because of context.
Relatively, of course. As in: the amount of ambigous words that pop up in a random text/conversation.
And as we all know, l'Académie française is an organization with lots of mulitlingual people that are totally capable of comparing French with other languages
But then again, neither am I, apparently. Fair enough. A personal attack, how nice of you. So my French is bad, I lack personal investment to learn the language, and I blame my teachers for it. I must have been such a bad student! (but what if... I actually had good grades?)
In what way is it a personal attack? I am responding to your post above. If my use of Gaelic is less than the B2 level required from school leavers in Ireland, I cannot lay the blame for that on my teachers, each of us must take responsibility for his own failings. You fail to see that French is far, far less ambiguous than English (this is not a subjective opinion), this must be linked to your command of both languages. Since you won’t share you level of French, I am bowing of of this discussion. Like many threads here on WR folks confuse personal opinion for facts.
I quote a well-regarded French > English translation professor (PhD): French is abstract in a way that English just can't stomach.
The points raised about abstraction and clarity are very interesting. Perhaps you would be kind enough to open a new thread and move the relevant posts there?
Yes, perhaps we could start a new thread on this topic.
You are correct in what you say.Decline of inflectional morphology doesn't equal to decline of grammar. Just a friendly reminder.
Thanks, that was helpful (even though the half of the problem was that I simply got stuck between the verb "equal" and the adjective "equal", producing some mutated inbred construction as a result
). Sadly, the English system of articles seems nearly impossible to master.
Nearly is a (why not the
) wrong word there if you're talking about non-native speakers: it's absolutely impossible to master for them.
Agreed!
