Writing that last post reminded me of something that my 2nd year French prof said. She said "French expresses abstract ideas better than English."
This is not true.
French tends to express ideas more abstractly, and English tends to express ideas more concretely. But we can't say that either way is "better", because it's always coloured by our mother tongue.
I find that when truly abstract ideas are expressed in the already-abstract academic register of French (especially French from France), they're practically meaningless to me. When reading them I glaze over, and when attempting to translate them I'm tearing out my hair because I need to truly grok what is being said - my standard technique of doing a close translation of the French and editing the English turns out pseudo-intellectual bullshit that is very nearly meaningless even to an Anglophone subject-matter expert. I find the more concrete English is better for expressing abstract ideas because it requires retaining a certain grip on reality.
This is totally because I'm Anglophone. Francophones might find an abstract expression of abstract ideas easier to understand, and a concrete expression might make their brain hurt for reasons I can't possibly conceive of but readily accept might exist.
And that's the point. Neither language is objectively better for expressing certain ideas. We simply understand ideas more easily when they're presented in the concept system we're most familiar with.
1 comment:
Oo, very good! I used to have a friend who would make massive generalizations like "English is so much more specific than French," and use one word as an example. But he didn't speak French!
I knew he was wrong to make such a sweeping statement without even a working knowledge of the language, but I couldn't think of how to express that, except to say, "you're full of shit".
This was in university. I wish I could show him this post.
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