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Me parece que mucho de lo que dice Borges sobre por qué le gusta más el inglés que el español es bastante cuestionable, superficial e incluso engañoso. Por un lado, el hecho de que el inglés tenga bastantes raíces latinas no lo hace una lengua romance, así como el hecho de que el español tenga muchas raíces del griego y del árabe no lo convierte en una lengua helénica o semítica. Si a Borges en particular le gusta la combinación de raíces germánicas y latinas en los idiomas allá él, lo respeto, pero no aguanta para decir que el inglés es más fino o preciso, ya que el español (y en principio todas las lenguas) también tiene un rico vocabulario de origen diverso: latín, griego, árabe. Por otro lado el inglés no es el único idioma que tiene esta mezcla de raíces germánicas y romances, en el alemán se encuentra también esta combinación. Por lo demás, si bien es cierto que hay expresiones en inglés que son difíciles de traducir y que son muy ‘físicas’, según Borges, en español también se encuentran expresiones y palabras que son difíciles de traducir al inglés satisfactoriamente, el ejemplo más sencillo es el verbo estar, pero hay muchísimas más palabras como ojalá, escampar, lenguaje (no lengua), tocayo estrenar, tutear… En inglés se requieren varias palabras para explicar el significado de ellas y aun así el español no es más preciso que el inglés ni el inglés es más preciso que el español. En todas las lenguas se puede a expresar más o menos lo mismo solo que dependiendo del caso tomará más palabras en unas que en otras. Lo único que deja claro Borges es que prefiere las raíces latinas y germánicas sobre todas las demás, nada raro para un hombre occidental y sobre todo con inclinaciones fascistas

Yes. English is unique in many ways for a European language. It's simple yet complex. It's easy to learn but difficult to master. And it's a constantly evolving language, more so than purely romance languages. That said, I know little of Slavic languages, so perhaps in respect to them English isn't unique. I'm sure Russian or Polish et al. speakers will correct me, if warranted.

Trascorrendo sulla forma alquanto indigesta d’una conferenza letta anziché parlata, l’esposizione del professor Falzone mi risulta convincente sia per la rigorosa analisi dottrinale e testuale sia per la commendabile ed illuminante modestia della conclusione : « …compito dell’interprete […] spiegare fin dove è possibile spiegare, capire fin dove è possibile capire. » Infatti, per quanto ingegnosi e talentosi siano l’esegeta e lo studioso , essi devono pur sempre guardarsi dall’ubris intellettuale. Anzi, non essendo invero un addetto ai lavori cui più di tanto interessi sapere se Guido Cavalcanti fosse averroista o epicureo, ricavo da tale argomentata e convincente lezione di prudenza il maggior beneficio di questo video. P.S. Nel titolo « inafferRabile »

"I love English phrasal verbs", says no one ever other than Borhes here

Was he Galician?

English is the Jack of all trades and master of all.

I think he's trying to be polite here. English is a fine language but all those examples can be said of any other language in relation to another.

The vocabulary in English, almost every verb has two or three synonyms, and all of them don't convey the same meaning...

As a writer I do believe that english has more choices for nuance.

This guy speaks very good English!

Funny, as a Polish speaker I consider english extremely primitive.

English is also best of you want to doublespeak

English is also the most inconsistent of all

Full of BS, another propaganda video you can say those things in Spanish. This guy is full of BS and I am not surprised this being said taking into account the history and what is happening now. Mass brainwashing for easy conquering of argentina by the white people of the world.

He's right lol. English really in fascinating

Il fatalismo non è parte della fede musulmana,perché un musulmano se si accorge che sbaglia o gli viene detto che sbaglia ,se è debole deve pregare ALLAH che gli dia la forza per migliorare inoltre se nota degli errori nel comportamento o fatti delle altre persone deve farlo loro presente. Inoltre secondo la tradizione la prima parola scesa su Mohamed fu dikr dal significato studia ,recita ed altro

Il buco sul polo sud era reale.buco Ozono.in seguito i clorofluorocarburi CFC furono banditi. Su questo Sir Karl Popper sì sbagliava.

This was very interesting. Thanks for posting.

He spoke 4 languages

What does he mean that it is more physical ?

I am glad that Borges pointed me, a native Argentine, and native level Hebrew speaker, on the way of developing why it feels wonderful to express oneself in English. I love all three of my languages, but somehow I feel more able to express and convey myself in English.

“Sfortunato quel popolo che ha bisogno di eroi” (Bertolt Brecht)

Idiot.

English is a stu*id language. It also lacks emotions.

Borges ci prende in giro l'inglese serve solo perché raggiunge più lettori! L'inglese è una lingua banale dai periodi brevi, sicuramente diretta ma dalle poche sfumature.

cierto, absolutamente cierto.

These days I hear all sorts of ugly languages in Lisbon which makes me miss English tourists.

Well, probably Mr. borges was not fully aware of the Word "cojones" in Spanish, otherwise he wouldve thought differently about flexiblity. Cojones means "balls" (as of testicles), but depending on the context, it can have more than 20 additional meanings (like being brave, lazy, stupid, reckless, etc.). For example, "ole tus cojones" means praise to someone, but "que cojones tienes!" means someone has said or done something completely stupid or reckless, but also can mean someone is brave.

merci!

Sanskrit and Tamil can have a similar dynamic if we ever decolonize language forever.

Fuck Buckley, that fascist prick. You can track all the pseudo intelectual right wing grifting and insanity today right back to him. This was an interesting interview, though.

In polish you can say everything like in english and even more however there are not as many words borrowed from germanics and latin

This guy is still undervalued

Grazie, molto interessante.

Un idioma que no permite distinguir entre ser y estar es más "fino" que el español, la lengua de cervantes, que risa😂. Cuando un anglosajon realice una obra del nivel del Quijote, ahí me dices si es mas fino o no, de resto, es una lengua de menor calidad que el español.

Spanish native here and teacher of literature in both languages: English is more precise, more physical, and more economic. You can say a lot with very few words while in Spanish you need to add word after word to create the same effect. I wouldn't take it that far tho, it's a very subtle difference (a 500 page book in english Will usually be 600 in Spanish).

Grazie per il prezioso contributo

Now I don't feel bad about having read most of his works only in English.

What a remarkable linguist!

Holy ghost and holy spirit are the same damn thing

English is a cool fucking language.

English is by far the most adaptable and immediately capable language in the world. Hes right.

He had very good arguments, but the total lack of pronunciation consistency just destroys english for most spanish speakers. I will add english is much more effective to communicate practical stuff, expressing very exact ideas with fewer characters in less time... but I still hate the way it just kitchen sink everything into an arbitrary mess of letters and sounds without law or order.

English is simple: me be, you be, he be, she be...

As a native speaker of German I keep preaching that learning English actually means learning a Language that's ⅔ Romance/Latin.

English literature is hard to beat

His eyes were looking at the camera and the interviewer at the same time while thinking in two languages.

I'm Argentine too, bilingual as well and with a love for everything Germanic just like JLB. I fully agree with his statements; English is both the most Germanic of all Romance languages and the most Romance of all Germanic languages, so this historical fact attributable to the Roman and Norman invasions of Britain gives it a kind of double way of expanding expressiveness and symbolism you can't easily find anywhere else. Take for instance "fade away" and "diminish", or "Christmas" and "Yuletide". Every time I read something in English my brain works in "German" and "Latin" simultaneously, and as I know the basics of some other 3-4 languages the comparisons are almost automatic. Spanish is poetical, complex and refined when it comes to picturing the abstract, but its monosource vocabulary "dulls it out" in a way. I'm not saying it's easy, in fact the verb "ser" (to be in a permanent way) and "estar" (to be located somewhere or to be in a temporary way) make things constantly unclear for a foreign speaker. But these characteristics are attributable to local development and not outside influence. Spanish imported about 10% of its vocabulary from Arabic during the 800-year Moorish occupation but no Romance structure got affected. English on the other hand really mixed things up between Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, making itself a sort of two way language able to convey meanings and concepts from both cultural-linguistic realms. Pronunciation of dental consonants and long vowels, phrasal verbs and the auxillary do are the most complex aspects of learning English. Reflexive verbs, ser and estar and memorising Arabic words like i.e. alcázar, zanahoria or aljibe are the most complex aspects of learning Spanish.

As being philologist, I can freely say that English is the worst constructed language of Indo-European languages. Full of irregularities, tons of made-up phrasal verbs and phrases, 'exceptions' and so on. Creators of this language directly copied more than 80% of French vocabulary either without changing or making slight changes on the words. I was shocked when I was learning French. Similarly, Alexander Dumas had thought English as an accent of French when he saw English texts for the first time and his famous quote on it is; "English is the same as French, just spoken badly". The most disturbing aspect of this language for me is being forced to define myself or my feelings with made-up phrases that make no sense at all. The language is solely depends on memorizing, you have to memorize more and more in order to define yourself or the things better. You can't lexicalize in other words make your own words in this language like other languages. For insantance, in Turkish nouns and verbs are related closely. If I don't know the name of something or can't recall the name, I can easily made up my own words by changing verbs which listeners will always understand me very well. For example, 'kapı kolu' means 'door handle' in Turkish and let's say I don't recall its name, I can easily use the verb 'tutmak' which means 'to hold' and say something like 'tutacak' (that can be translated into English as 'thing to hold') and the listener can understand me very well. I can define myself and my feelings more detailedly and intensively by simply adding more suffixes which English speakers will need to add more and more words to do the same thing. A simple word versus tons of words (adverbs, adjectives, noun). For me English is an inadequate constructed language at most. Definitely, it doesn't deserve its lingua franca status...

English Is the simplest language