NorthernGent
Posts: 8730
Joined: 7/10/2006 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: philosophy FR ......lets look at the language. English, particulary as spoken in the UK, is like a caddis fly larvae....stealing words from other languages and making them our own. Creating a sort of hodgepodge of lingo. Straight off the top of my head we have french words, latin, german, welsh, indian, greek and spanish words used regulary. Many people don't even recognise the cosmopolitan nature of the language that we speak. From my point of view this speaks to a willingness to accept ideas from other cultures.....which is not a trait usually associated with xenophobia. Add a few Old Norse words, too.....such as beck (which is a Durham word for a stream), luck etc. Spot on. England is a mongrel 'race' with a mongrel language......by as early as the 1000, England was a mix of pre-Celts, Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes...the Norman conquest added a little seasoning...followed by Huguenots, Russians, Poles, Irish, recent immigrants from the colonies. And, this has been of huge benefit to us, because it's enabled a willingness to take on board others' ideas and use them to our advantage, a willingness to learn, adapt and mix and match to come up with the best solution.......so the modern world is basically Made in England.....Football, Boxing, Rugby, Golf (well, Scottish) Horse Racing, Mountaineering, even Skiing (and we don't have the climate!), modern tourism with the package holiday, the first moern luxury hotel (The Savoy), the world's first computer, countless inventions and industrial innovation (far too much to mention), postage stamps, boy scouts, modern insurance, detective novels, banking, forms of land and tenure....even today, 25% of the world's top 100 medicines are British designed. Quite impressive for a small nation, and I think our lack of xenophobia has been a key factor in our success. Unlike say cultural nationalism in Germany and France where they have a history of racial and breeding theories, the English have a history of getting in the garden shed and designing something. I think what MsScarlett describes is the yob element that is far more to do with achievement in youth culture than it is xenophobia. Edited for spelling.
< Message edited by NorthernGent -- 10/28/2007 10:26:37 AM >
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I have the courage to be a coward - but not beyond my limits. Sooner or later, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.
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