The recent posts by @cryotosensei on the nature of the chinese language have sparked nutritive conversations on the virtues of other languages as well, I personally being enthusiastic about English. That left me thinking... what can I say on my part about Spanish, my native language? At a personal level I use English exclusively: to look up for information, to read articles, to formulate thoughts and to write down notes on whatever subject I consider important to save and expand. I leave Spanish for conversation and for quick personal memos I may delete later... so... what can I say? ...
... I can't say that there are negatives on Spanish, it's just not as agile and expressive as English... but what about the positives? ... here is a list of what I consider to be virtues of the Spanish language:
  • First of all, it's phonetically consistent, so words are pronounced exactly as written, always.
  • Even in its modern, plain form, it sounds chivalrous in the medieval sense, so we tend to soften it for informal conversation by using a lot of slang and modisms that will make it look like it's a different language for a non-native speaker. We do thus use the plain strict form to express ourselves with absolute seriousness and respect, specially when talking to a person we either don't know personally or is older.
  • It can sound so chivalrous and self-serious even for rather mundane situations that sometimes we express ourselves that way on purpose as a form of humour. That seriousness and sharpness does make it sound much less prettier than English (conversely, English for us sounds so much cooler that we are envious). Any expression I know that sounds beautiful in English sounds hopelessly empty and dumb in Spanish so much that we use said translations in a humorous manner.
  • On that line, Spanish also sounds very sophisticated, with its many articles and conjugations (non existent in english), so that much that when I first started learning my now beloved English I was horrified that it felt like if I had to speak in a "brute" manner, like a caveman.
  • It defines words with much more constrained and strict meanings, which is what makes it less expressive sometimes, but also much more precise for other purposes. For example "libre" means "free" as in "freedom" only, whereas if we want to say "free" as in "for free" the word is "gratis", with no overlapping in the slightest with the meaning of the word "libre". Pleasantly enough, the verb "to be" is expressed in Spanish in two strictly different ways: "to be" as in "ser", meaning "when one is something", is strictly different from "to be" as in "estar", meaning "when one is somewhere". That clarity is a double edged sword, for English also profits from the ambiguity, but I really like the sharpness of distinctions in Spanish all along the language.
I hope this interests you and many more discussions on this and other languages continue on SN! :)
Missed clarification for the third point: that property of Spanish of being "not as cool" I like to use it to double check on my English expressions to be sure what I'm saying actually has meaning and depth, and it's not just profiting on English beauty and ambiguity to cheaply sound like if I'm actually saying something. Translating into Spanish does a really good job at uncovering that. That's not to say you can not formulate empty expressions in Spanish that pretend to say something, but due to being a stricter language to me it's easier to detect than in English.
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Thanks! So nice to read this after a long hard day of work!
I have always had a healthy interest in Spanish. It’s intriguing to me how it assigns genders to inanimate objects. Like I think Bitcoin is feminine, if I’m not mistaken? I also think it evokes such fun vibes. Spain, Argentina - vibrant, exuberant, energetic!
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I'm glad you're interested! :)
Since every noun in Spanish is preceded by an article, and articles have a gender, anything in spanish that's not an article is either male or female. For example:
  • "beauty" is "la belleza", feminine, and "courage" is "el coraje", male.
  • "happiness" is "la felicidad", feminine, and "anger" is "el enojo", male.
And so on. Bitcoin is "el Bitcoin", so it's male. Some articles are placed to avoid cacophony, so for example "water" ("agua") is feminine, but it's preceded by a male article ("el agua") because "la agua" sounds horrible.
Due to it's Italian roots Spanish is definitely vibrant, yet not quite as the master. Even for us Argentinians (who mostly descend from Italian immigrants), Italians sound remarkably vibrant and energic. Spanish, being able to be much softer in tone and accentuation, plus the energic Italian inheritance, has led to many rural zones in Argentina to develop an accent that sounds like if people is singing softly when they talk, we love that people.
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Same here
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stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.