Today I got into an argument with V about "language". We were arguing about English. The point of argument was if English is a good language. I was of the opinion that English is the most straight forward, simple and professional language I have learnt. And V was saying that even with these qualities English need not be considered as "Interesting" language. He had some good points. He said that English is very simple ,easy to learn and of course a good language for communication. But it is not necessarily a good language for literary values. I am not sure of the literary values so I said that Shakespeare wrote in English and he is certainly one of the most well known and well respected authors in the world. However, according to V , Shakespeare gave some masterpieces because he was a genius. But English is not great because of that. In fact he gave some literary jewels to the world and English happens to be the language he used for it.
OK. The jist of the argument was that English has limitations when it comes to expressing some emotions, feelings or I should say that there are many other languages such as French, Italian, Spanish etc which make even most mundane expressions more poetic. Such as Senor is sweater than Mr. Of course I can not comment about this as the only foreign language I know is English. The rest are Indian languages.
Ladies and Gentlemen let your thoughts flow in this debate. I am an ardent supporter and a huge English lover. I think its the language of knowledge and wisdom.
What do you want to say about it?
3 comments:
What an interesting topic for a debate!
But don’t you think this is very subjective to individual taste?
So my opinion here stands as follows:
As you say English is definitely the language of knowledge and wisdom, science and communication. More than half the population in the world knows, speaks and writes in English.
English has received a very great and ancient tradition. It is evolving, like any other language, today also, making its vocabulary richer day by day, accepting and coining new words and phrases. This means it is very flexible and friendly to the foreign users also. That’s why the oxford dictionary of English contains 600,000 words. And more interesting fact would be to know that 700 Indian words are assimilated into it.
As you say correctly that without knowing other languages, it would be wrong to say anything about them.
So I would again like to give one more example of our Indian languages. The great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore himself translated ‘Gitanjali’ into none other than English language and it earned him the Nobel Prize for literature. If you read it, you find it very beautiful. So is the case with many a great literary works in other languages translated into English.
As per my knowledge, Italian is being assimilated into Spanish in most parts of the world other than Europe. I agree that when I listened to Spanish songs they sounded sweeter than English.
So the other languages like French, Italian, I wouldn’t say German, may seem good to sing because of the vowel use. But in my opinion, that doesn’t make them better than English any more.
And how can we forget the great poets like Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, Milton, Yeats,
Elliot….who wrote in English and have been delighting readers like us today also.
Oh…I’ve occupied large space here…so I should stop now.
But I support you definitely…Ladho !
well... Being V, I have a few additional comments here... before that let me make my stand a bit clearer. I don't think English is a poor language to any extent. :D . The whole argument is that there are 'better' languages when it comes to expressions. And following are the criteria that I strictly DO NOT accept to argue superiority of a language over another:
(1) 'How many people in the world know English' - I don't think this qualifies to any extent since this is a time bound criteria. Gitanjali earned Nobel since most of the judges could read English. Its got nothing to do with deciding how superior Gitanjali is. Had he translated that into French or some other language, it would not have received Nobel since it would not have been recognized based on language. Does that mean that Gitanjali is great only if its in English ??? I don't think so... it would be like saying that The Departed was the best movie produced in 2007 in the entire world since it won the Academy Award ! .. It might be the best English movie.. but I still think most of the Indians would argue that "Tare Jamin par" was better since most of them can not even understand half the dialogues in English movies. So my point is that popularity is not always superiority... !
(2)About history, I think (and I know) that most of the western literature was created in languages definitely non-english as there was no english when Socrates, Plutarch, Aristotle or even Jesus was into picture. Sanskrit, Greek and Arabic have got history so extensive that English would seem like a toddler in front of a centurian.
(3) Ofcourse there are tones of english poets equally good as so many other-language-poets. But if we strictly want to analyze this, then I can bet my statistical career on the fact that non-english poets would come out to be far more exceeding in number that the english. But again, I don't think that could be a criteria for comparing. Its a matter of time. English is a language of our era as our era is not of the art but of Science. And no doubt in my mind that english is the most convenient language for science even if more than half of the mathematicians hail from France, Germany and Spain...!
The whole point is... english is the most popular... but not the best of all for literature... As I said to Rhucha the other day, you can't even call your Atyebhau and Mamebhau different in english but your distant cousins !! how the heck is someone going to write a literature if you cant even describe relationships properly.. !!
Vinit,
Might be I put my point in a wrong way. When I mentioned Gitanjali I wanted to point out to the fact that Tagore himself thought it better be translated (he felt the need to translate it )in English and not in Hindi or French or any other language.( In fact, Bengali, itself, is said to be a very sweet sounding and expressive language.) If he would’ve thought any other lang.e.g.French to be more adequate to carry out his expressions, he would’ve had it translated into that language. And English did not fail in carrying his ‘expressions’ to the readers.
I watched ‘Life is beautiful’ in both Italian and English and I found English no less sweeter.
A language is always meant to communicate, to express. An artist produces his art to express himself. When his art reaches those who really can appreciate it, he gets contentment. No matter how much substance the art (books, movies, songs) may have, if the medium it uses to reach to its patrons doesn’t carry the strength to express, what’s the use? (So Shakespeare using English carries value.) And if not always, in this domain, here the popularity of English plays a role.
I mentioned that English is evolving not to say that there are no more ancient languages, but to support the fact that a language is a good language and goes on becoming better when it “grows”.
Sanskrit (Greek, Arabic )is a great and fluid language, no doubt, but if it cannot reach to more than a handful people in today’s world, I would say, it fails as a means of communication and consequently as a medium to an artist.
I did not say anything about the ‘number’ of poets, but their eternal work. And if you deny the role of language in poetry, then why this argument? If English has tones of poets and you may find more than that in other languages, how can that say that English falls short in expressions than those others? How many of these poets have been able to write something equal to epics like Paradise Lost? And if they have, why does it not get mass-patron as good as English gets? How many languages, other than English, could bear the onus of translating our Ramayana and Mahabharata, doing justice to them?
The point you make here is slightly different than what I came to know earlier. I contradicted the points that English is not an interesting language and not good in terms of literary value. It is both.
I agree with you in saying that English is the language of this era of science. But at the same time it doesn’t fail to be an interesting language.( Just go through the figures of speech and even idioms…)
English may not have words to describe ‘atyebhau’(paternal cousin) and ‘mamebhau’(maternal cousin) but it is certainly affectionate enough to call your son’s wife “daughter”-in-law and not ‘sunbai’
Vinit, it was great communicating with you. Let’s meet some time and continue with the argument.
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