Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
It's not the same thing, actually. He wasn't saying (I think) that English is of higher quality than other languages, but just that English has certain qualities that other languages may not have. For example in English you can potentially make a verb from every noun, even proper nouns: you can say for instance "don't Perry me!" (don't call me Perry); in Italian you can't do this, because you need a specific suffix to form a verb (are, ere, ire). Hope you'll get my point!
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Yes, that's more or less what I meant.
I don't think English is of higher quality than Dutch (or any other language for that matter), but, as it is a different language, there are certain situations more suited to the English language. You can often achieve more or less the same result with another language, but it may not be as aesthetically pleasing.
From the top of my head, Dante's Divina Commedia would be a decent example. In the translation (Mandelbaum's) I felt that much of the poetic nature of the Italian original was lost. Not because Mandelbaum did a lousy job, but because the English language isn't as flexible as the Italian language in a fixed form of poetry.
I'd also assume that the Dutch and English languages would have much broader range of words, expressions and proverbs concerning the sea than, say, the Kyrgyz language. I'm certain the Kyrgyz language has words for sea and every species of fish you could think of (although most would probably be loanwords), but apart from the strictly technical terms, the Kyrgyz language is probably comparably poor in this area. The opposite would be the case for the steppes, most likely.
I don't really want to compare different languages in terms of "good" or "bad", but to fail to recognise aesthetic merit in different areas seems a little short-sighted to me. It's what makes linguistic interesting, in my opinion.