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mollyringle[Edit: turns out this was a joke, as I sorta suspected it MUST be, given the creed mentioned below. But it's still funny.]
Ordinarily linguists have a creed of being mild and non-judgmental about speakers of any languages and all languages, and that's a lovely thing. Which makes it all the more remarkable (and, let's face it, hilarious) when one snaps and goes after, say, the French language. (He points out it's only fair, since French speakers have been sneering at the English language since the dawn of time.)
Excerpt:
Boy may long for girl to hold him in her warm embrace, but he won't be able to tell her that in French, because they don't have a word for "warm". They have tiède, which means "tepid", but boy doesn't long for girl to hold him in her tepid embrace. So what they use is chaud, which is the word on the hot water tap, the one that isn't froid. A language of love that was minimally functional would be able to distinguish between a warm friendship (enthusiastic discussion of topics of common interest; amicable farewell handshakes with promises to do lunch real soon) and a hot friendship (passion, heavy breathing, sudden uncontrolled couplings in shadowy doorways and on moving trains, returning home having lost underwear, midnight calls to say I have to have you right now). If boy cannot distinguish lexically between these, boy is going to be in real trouble with his relationship with girl.
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Hee.
Ordinarily linguists have a creed of being mild and non-judgmental about speakers of any languages and all languages, and that's a lovely thing. Which makes it all the more remarkable (and, let's face it, hilarious) when one snaps and goes after, say, the French language. (He points out it's only fair, since French speakers have been sneering at the English language since the dawn of time.)
Excerpt:
Boy may long for girl to hold him in her warm embrace, but he won't be able to tell her that in French, because they don't have a word for "warm". They have tiède, which means "tepid", but boy doesn't long for girl to hold him in her tepid embrace. So what they use is chaud, which is the word on the hot water tap, the one that isn't froid. A language of love that was minimally functional would be able to distinguish between a warm friendship (enthusiastic discussion of topics of common interest; amicable farewell handshakes with promises to do lunch real soon) and a hot friendship (passion, heavy breathing, sudden uncontrolled couplings in shadowy doorways and on moving trains, returning home having lost underwear, midnight calls to say I have to have you right now). If boy cannot distinguish lexically between these, boy is going to be in real trouble with his relationship with girl.
---
Hee.
