Language

Interviewer: ‘If you could have someone alive or dead for lunch who would you chose’.

Interviewee: ‘The one that’s alive’.

Sometimes we don’t quite say what we mean. Of course, apart from the question that was intended and the way it was heard there could be a 3rd interpretation – you could infer from the question that you were going to be eating the person. Interesting. Who would you eat if you were forced into cannibalism?

Does this show the flexibility of the English language? I read that there are now 5 times as many words in English as there are in French probably because English is now spoken in so many different cultures and they all put their own spin on it whereas French is now spoken as a first language by about 100 million people. I for one will be very interested to see how global Spanish will be when it becomes the majority first language in the US – 25 years time is the prediction. Will it become the 2nd studied language after English in European schools. I think it likely that German and French will both be pushed back. The Germans are secure enough in their own identity to not let it worry them. The French are terrified of the decline in use of their language perhaps again demonstrating the well publisized fear they have of the alck of ‘France’ in the world. I constantly try not be negative about France in my blogs (and fail miserably) but I, after 4 years of living here see little evidence of a culture that is anything but self-absorbent rather than outward looking. That to me makes it dull.