test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Options
language question
sennahcherib
Member Posts: 2,823 Arc User
first of all, my language is french and I play the game in english (it helps to improve my english and i'm in a canadian fleet). And sometimes i'm surprised to see french words used in game, then there are english words to tell the same thing:
for example: in the last FE : "it's about to commence" why not "it is about to begin"?
or in an other mission : the expression "en route" is used.
my question is: why? (just simple curiosity
)
for example: in the last FE : "it's about to commence" why not "it is about to begin"?
or in an other mission : the expression "en route" is used.
my question is: why? (just simple curiosity
) 0
Comments
Or in other words, French used be what English is today. A language which constantly inserts words into other country's everyday language.
Love it!
At least this FE will have been interesting for 1 thing, I learnt a new thing about the english language (my favorite even if I don't speak this language fluently)
From what I've read many countries actually use English words to express themselves as there is no equivalent word in their own language as English has a much larger number of words than Germanic or 'romance' languages. Even China has adopted a great number of English words into it's language.
So I would not say English is a 'thief' of languages, rather it was far more open to integrating foreign words that other languages around at the time it evolved.
And as highlighted above, you can see that many languages borrow from English and vice versa. All languages are constantly evolving so its a good thing when they borrow words from each other.
The problem is you can't really compare French to other European languages when it comes to adopting foreign words into their own vocabulary.
As far as I know, the French are the only nation in the world who have founded an academy whose sole purpose it is to harmonize and preserve the French language (Académie française). This academy is the official authority on the French language, tasked with finding a corresponding French word to every new foreign word created thus making French quite rigid to exterior influences.
I do not understand this mentality of wanting to separate a language from the foreign influence, if a language stops to evolve then this language dies.
btw, the government of Quebec is more rigid than the "acédemie française".
(Nicoll is famous for this, and for being bizarrely accident prone.)
People have tried, and failed, to hold all sorts of languages in a static mould... the Académie Française is just one of a long line of failures in this respect.
Académie Française is pretty much an antithesis of what language 'is' an ever evolving and organic way in which to communicate.
Even most of France's population think the whole thing is a complete waste of time (and money); especially because French (as with all other languages) is a combination of a huge variety of the languages that preceded it.
indeed. there are a lot of words from other languages: turkish, arab, german, english, dutch, italian, spanish, portuguese, etc ; but few from the language of my grandparents, language which is in the french frontier.
Bare bones. The full line is: English doesn't so much borrow from other languages, as it follows them down dark alleys, knocks them over, and rifles through their pockets for loose grammar.
Also, the amount of French in English is greatly attributable to William the Conqueror. After he took over England the language of the court was French for quite a long time. Lotta mish mashing gonna happen there.
Actually, Spanish has the Real Academia Española which is also affiliated with the national language academies of twenty-one Spanish speaking countries.
Yes but oh so flexible to accomodate new terms and is still a growing and expanding language while others stay fairly static.
Commence is pretty much an english word. Its been in there a long, long time.
En route is borrowed --- to be pulled fully into the language it would become in route. Route is also an english word now, been in the language for ages, but en is unseen outside of prefixes (there are many, many en words like enlist, ensue, entrap, ..)
I am not a master of word origins so I couldnt say if these two were pulled from french or are just latin root words that evolved into both. Im sure a web search could tell you.
Being the screwed up language that it is, if you were German you would also recognize words, as english is a mix of latin and germanic roots blended with tons of other influences.
Like i'm fascinated by the History, i'm also interested by the languages and their evolutions. But i'm not a specialist, and it is always interesting to have the views of the users of these languages. so, thx
fun fact: Nahuatl is still spoken by enough people that the Mexican government recognizes it for official paperwork.
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing
My character Tsin'xing