Not quite right here, Fry. The Dutch word "lul", literally "c*ck" or "d*ck" means as much as "arse" or "d*ck", i.e. "(male) pain in the arse". Not that I ever thought anything more strange about LulzSec than the average American.
Like the series, but a pity the Esperanto angle came across badly. Esperanto's ease of learning means it overcomes Babel *and* at the same time protects Babel. Most people naively assume *or*.
Whenever I hear protagonists for an international language to "become Esperantists" it does seem like they want people to join some sort of religion. This is unfortunate because the world does need a solution to the language problem worldwide.
Adaleide, Australia : "'The intention of Esperantists was not to think any less of their mother tongue, but to cultivate a general knowledge of a universal tongue, which would be of great assistance to all mankind.“ (Lewis Cohen, Mayor of Adelaide, 1911)
1996-2011 :
Prague Manifesto :
4. MULTILINGUALISM.
"We maintain that the speakers of all languages, large and small, should have a real chance of learning a second language to a high communicative level."
I might point out that you can occasionally guess at the sound of a Chinese character, as well as you might guess at the intonation of an unfamiliar word in any phonetically scribed language. It is not a rarity that part of a Chinese character will be there as a phonetic clue.
OK couldn't help but giggle at this: at around 1:00 Fry is saying "there's chess and there's a game of chess...". He parodied himself as he is now a few decades ago on a bit of Fry and Laurie: watch?v=hHQ2756cyD8 (A Bit of Fry and Laurie segment in which he talks about language; it's at 1:40 in that video that he says the same thing about chess and in relation in language XD)
@FredericBayer In linguistics, a word is a unit of language that cannot be divided in smaller units that carry independant meaning: Weltschmerz isn't a (linguistic) word, because it can be divided into two words that each carry meaning independantly, i.e. "Welt" and "Schmerz". English has the most of those, by a long shot. Most other modern languages have about half the number of words English has. Because English has such a large vocabulary, it can make do with a relatively simple syntax.
@JOZeldenrust just jumping in only having read your comment as the first one on this page: what your describing as the definition of a "word", sounds to me like the definition of a "morpheme" - smallest unit that carries meaning, not a word? I'm not trolling I'm genuinely trying to make sure I'm using the correct vocab in life! cheers.
@TobyEllisSongwriter Almost, but not exactly. A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning. A word is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning independantly. A lot of morphemes carry meaning, but need to be attached to other morphemes to be used: they're affixes. Words are morphemes that can stand alone.
@JOZeldenrust I'm sorry to be a bit tiresome and pedantic, but you seem the kind of person who maybe wouldn't hate me for pointing this out... It's "independEnt".
Also: wouldn't "Weltschmerz" be a linguistic word in English? I don't think "Welt" and "Schmerz" exist as part of the English vocabulary independently, but only in conjunction. In German, of course, you're right.
@Nabend1402 Thanks for pointing out the correct spelling. English isn't my first language, so my English spelling doesn't get all that much practice. I'll likely forget the correct spelling of "independent" again in a couple of weeks, but maybe in a year or ten it'll stick.
When exactly foreign words or phrases become part of a language is an interesting question. You could both call "Weltschmerz" a German compound word used in an English sentence, or an English word based on a German compound.
@JOZeldenrust I see your definition absolutely: what I forgot to put in my post was the idea of "Bound" and "Free" morphemes (refering to morphemes that can stand independently as words versus those that are "bound" and requiring other morphemes to function).
But tbh when we get to that level of analysis its just Tomatoes English accent and Tomatoes american accent. All the same thing.
@FredericBayer As a speaker of both German and English, and also being student in lingustics, I'd say that there clearly is a large, not to say, huge vocabulary in German. Nevertheless, the impact all the different languages have had on English, have given it an advantage that German, at least in this case, can't really keep up with. Even though both basically are germanic languages, English has been under influence from everywhere,and that has always been the case,from the beginning of English.
I hope that Stephen Fry will mention the success of Esperanto in his new BBC TV programme "Planet Word" when it airs on 25th September. Many ignorant people describe Esperanto as "failed" - other ignorant people say that if human beings were meant to fly, God would have given them wings.
"we in English have a massive vocabulary" - I beg to differ, English almost seems to have but a rudimentary vocabulary if you compare it to German. Often times in English, one word can mean 5 different things, whereas often times in German, 5 words mean exactly the same thing.
@FredericBayer Well that all depends on how you look at it. English has 800,000 words or so, not including scientific ones, I'm sure a few of them mean the same thing as each other (though my English teacher said that synonyms were a myth). It has far more words than German, but all the "trade languages" do.
@rabbitwho Actually, German pretty much has an infinite amount of words, because of the fact that words can be combined on the fly. Sure, at some point it just gets silly, but it's technically impossible for a language to have more words than German. I bet you can't find a word in English that doesn't have a German equivalent, but vice versa, try "Weltschmerz" ;-)
@FredericBayer Any language has an infinite number of potential words. The freedom with which German forms compounds does not mean every conceivable compound counts as an existing word. And if a compound is formed once just to express an idea spontaneously and then never used again, does it count as "a German word"? Then you'd also have to count every word that has ever been used in English, including Rich Hall's facetious "sniglets". Those must be existing "English words" as well.
@YourFaceWillDie468 I think you misunderstood me. My point was that there is a larger vocabulary in German, meaning you have to say *less* than you would in English. Example: "Scotland has a climate that can have negative health impacts." German: "Schottland hat ein Belastungsklima."
@FredericBayer What I said was just a joke sprinkled with words of wisdom. I understand what you were saying, but I was just throwing out something fairly irrelevant.
"[...] or that there is a proper style of language - I don't believe any of that" - the man has obviously never had to endure the pain of listening to a chav.
Stephen talks about this quite a lot and although he has used the same analogies in many different places and over a long period of time, they are such fantastic analogies that they never bore me. I love to hear him talk about a subject which is really his pet - though he maybe thinks that he is language's pet - and I absolutely cannot wait to see this series.
don't go in there; you have no right to say that; why?; stop it; that hurt: help! ... Marjory is dead...
fry as spokesperson for language! language, tiger, language is fry's bitch, and this series promises to be the foremost item in the back-catologue of this, our common human environment.
Fry has thought me more in sixteen minutes than any of my school teachers could teach me in a full day.
ScottyTheBullet 1 month ago
Saluton Esperantistoj! Kion vi pensas pri la intervjuo?
cornbagel 2 months ago
Sorry that's my naughty little son! Great programme. Fascinating facts about pinyin man.
chrisliroe 2 months ago
Very bad
chrisliroe 2 months ago
Bad
chrisliroe 2 months ago
Ok
chrisliroe 2 months ago
uh boy, no matter what the topic is, I think Stephen can talk about it for days on end without repeating himself..
..and we are more than happy to listen!
seeingyouaround 4 months ago
I love to listen to this man speak so much, it hurts a little..
MrZetteke 4 months ago
Not quite right here, Fry. The Dutch word "lul", literally "c*ck" or "d*ck" means as much as "arse" or "d*ck", i.e. "(male) pain in the arse". Not that I ever thought anything more strange about LulzSec than the average American.
Plutonar 5 months ago
Acts of love and spasms of joy lol.
ImaginedWriter 5 months ago 4
stephen hates these comments .....lets stop
bensimps123 5 months ago
OMG the "game of chess" thing was in "A bit of Fry and Laurie"... Fry is turning into a self-parody more and more I'm afraid...
nebuization 5 months ago
Luckily I sat down in front oif the TV by accident last night and caught the first episode; fantastic series, I can't wait for next week!
niriop 5 months ago in playlist Liked
Like the series, but a pity the Esperanto angle came across badly. Esperanto's ease of learning means it overcomes Babel *and* at the same time protects Babel. Most people naively assume *or*.
irvdel 5 months ago 2
Whenever I hear protagonists for an international language to "become Esperantists" it does seem like they want people to join some sort of religion. This is unfortunate because the world does need a solution to the language problem worldwide.
esperantoasocio 5 months ago
1911-2011 :
Adaleide, Australia : "'The intention of Esperantists was not to think any less of their mother tongue, but to cultivate a general knowledge of a universal tongue, which would be of great assistance to all mankind.“ (Lewis Cohen, Mayor of Adelaide, 1911)
1996-2011 :
Prague Manifesto :
4. MULTILINGUALISM.
"We maintain that the speakers of all languages, large and small, should have a real chance of learning a second language to a high communicative level."
repse2009 5 months ago
fry and laurie, the modern pete and dud, one went to holywood, the other is interesting.
yakacm 5 months ago
Mr. Fry- I love your mind.
Hoodinski 5 months ago
That will be a pleasure and an excitement to watch! I love language(s). Language is my profession.
dewinthemorning 5 months ago
I might point out that you can occasionally guess at the sound of a Chinese character, as well as you might guess at the intonation of an unfamiliar word in any phonetically scribed language. It is not a rarity that part of a Chinese character will be there as a phonetic clue.
shimauma 5 months ago
OK couldn't help but giggle at this: at around 1:00 Fry is saying "there's chess and there's a game of chess...". He parodied himself as he is now a few decades ago on a bit of Fry and Laurie: watch?v=hHQ2756cyD8 (A Bit of Fry and Laurie segment in which he talks about language; it's at 1:40 in that video that he says the same thing about chess and in relation in language XD)
Truthiness231 5 months ago 2
@FredericBayer In linguistics, a word is a unit of language that cannot be divided in smaller units that carry independant meaning: Weltschmerz isn't a (linguistic) word, because it can be divided into two words that each carry meaning independantly, i.e. "Welt" and "Schmerz". English has the most of those, by a long shot. Most other modern languages have about half the number of words English has. Because English has such a large vocabulary, it can make do with a relatively simple syntax.
JOZeldenrust 5 months ago
@JOZeldenrust just jumping in only having read your comment as the first one on this page: what your describing as the definition of a "word", sounds to me like the definition of a "morpheme" - smallest unit that carries meaning, not a word? I'm not trolling I'm genuinely trying to make sure I'm using the correct vocab in life! cheers.
TobyEllisSongwriter 5 months ago
@TobyEllisSongwriter Almost, but not exactly. A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning. A word is the smallest unit of language that carries meaning independantly. A lot of morphemes carry meaning, but need to be attached to other morphemes to be used: they're affixes. Words are morphemes that can stand alone.
JOZeldenrust 5 months ago
@JOZeldenrust I'm sorry to be a bit tiresome and pedantic, but you seem the kind of person who maybe wouldn't hate me for pointing this out... It's "independEnt".
Also: wouldn't "Weltschmerz" be a linguistic word in English? I don't think "Welt" and "Schmerz" exist as part of the English vocabulary independently, but only in conjunction. In German, of course, you're right.
Nabend1402 5 months ago
@Nabend1402 Thanks for pointing out the correct spelling. English isn't my first language, so my English spelling doesn't get all that much practice. I'll likely forget the correct spelling of "independent" again in a couple of weeks, but maybe in a year or ten it'll stick.
When exactly foreign words or phrases become part of a language is an interesting question. You could both call "Weltschmerz" a German compound word used in an English sentence, or an English word based on a German compound.
JOZeldenrust 5 months ago
@JOZeldenrust I see your definition absolutely: what I forgot to put in my post was the idea of "Bound" and "Free" morphemes (refering to morphemes that can stand independently as words versus those that are "bound" and requiring other morphemes to function).
But tbh when we get to that level of analysis its just Tomatoes English accent and Tomatoes american accent. All the same thing.
Thanks for your help! :D
TobyEllisSongwriter 4 months ago
@FredericBayer As a speaker of both German and English, and also being student in lingustics, I'd say that there clearly is a large, not to say, huge vocabulary in German. Nevertheless, the impact all the different languages have had on English, have given it an advantage that German, at least in this case, can't really keep up with. Even though both basically are germanic languages, English has been under influence from everywhere,and that has always been the case,from the beginning of English.
Trimaexchen 5 months ago
I hope that Stephen Fry will mention the success of Esperanto in his new BBC TV programme "Planet Word" when it airs on 25th September. Many ignorant people describe Esperanto as "failed" - other ignorant people say that if human beings were meant to fly, God would have given them wings.
Esperantoguy 5 months ago
"They immediately went to the area of gend---er, things."
XD
YourFaceWillDie468 8 months ago 2
Шампанское и спасибо!
executioned 8 months ago
I am passing away to see this. Linguistics are my mascot love.
rabbitwho 10 months ago
"we in English have a massive vocabulary" - I beg to differ, English almost seems to have but a rudimentary vocabulary if you compare it to German. Often times in English, one word can mean 5 different things, whereas often times in German, 5 words mean exactly the same thing.
FredericBayer 11 months ago
@FredericBayer Well that all depends on how you look at it. English has 800,000 words or so, not including scientific ones, I'm sure a few of them mean the same thing as each other (though my English teacher said that synonyms were a myth). It has far more words than German, but all the "trade languages" do.
rabbitwho 10 months ago
@rabbitwho Actually, German pretty much has an infinite amount of words, because of the fact that words can be combined on the fly. Sure, at some point it just gets silly, but it's technically impossible for a language to have more words than German. I bet you can't find a word in English that doesn't have a German equivalent, but vice versa, try "Weltschmerz" ;-)
FredericBayer 9 months ago
@FredericBayer Any language has an infinite number of potential words. The freedom with which German forms compounds does not mean every conceivable compound counts as an existing word. And if a compound is formed once just to express an idea spontaneously and then never used again, does it count as "a German word"? Then you'd also have to count every word that has ever been used in English, including Rich Hall's facetious "sniglets". Those must be existing "English words" as well.
VerilyTY 9 months ago
@FredericBayer It doesn't matter how much you say. It's how much meaning it has that count.
The English language just pwned the German language. XD
YourFaceWillDie468 8 months ago
@YourFaceWillDie468 I think you misunderstood me. My point was that there is a larger vocabulary in German, meaning you have to say *less* than you would in English. Example: "Scotland has a climate that can have negative health impacts." German: "Schottland hat ein Belastungsklima."
FredericBayer 8 months ago
@FredericBayer What I said was just a joke sprinkled with words of wisdom. I understand what you were saying, but I was just throwing out something fairly irrelevant.
YourFaceWillDie468 8 months ago
"[...] or that there is a proper style of language - I don't believe any of that" - the man has obviously never had to endure the pain of listening to a chav.
FredericBayer 11 months ago
Stephen Fry has a great French accent. :)
verevie 1 year ago
Stephen talks about this quite a lot and although he has used the same analogies in many different places and over a long period of time, they are such fantastic analogies that they never bore me. I love to hear him talk about a subject which is really his pet - though he maybe thinks that he is language's pet - and I absolutely cannot wait to see this series.
TheAlexander627 1 year ago
don't go in there; you have no right to say that; why?; stop it; that hurt: help! ... Marjory is dead...
fry as spokesperson for language! language, tiger, language is fry's bitch, and this series promises to be the foremost item in the back-catologue of this, our common human environment.
hope trefusis makes an appearance.
MrTonyInchpractice 1 year ago
it is because of this series that Stephen will have a cameo role in the Irish language 'Ros na Run'.
Language in Irish is 'Teanga', which means 'tongue'.
bigfellalixnaw 1 year ago
Oh, this promises to be something marvelous! It's Stephen Fry's documentary, after all... :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
TAfan2 1 year ago
Greek for language - Glossa which means tongue - that fits for me!
jsidiropoulou 1 year ago
@jsidiropoulou Heteroglossia!!!!
ashburnhouse 1 year ago
@ashburnhouse yep - different-tongue!
jsidiropoulou 1 year ago
Lan-guidge.
Lan-GUIdge.
<3
LeftyHandedGuns 1 year ago 10
So excited about this new series.
thundertid 1 year ago 20