It is said that after Napoleon invaded Spain in 1810 and placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne, he gathered with his generals and was heard to make the comment that the German language served him well for talking and directing his horse while his native French was the language that charmed the ladies. He said that English was the ideal language for handling business affairs but that Spanish he found was best suited for talking with God.
Napoleon no doubt was much impressed by the gentle flow and general smoothness of the Spanish language. This distinctively melliflous quality is the product of a language that is phonetical to a fault. Let's take for example the simple good-bye phrase. In German the common and informal manner to say good-bye is "Tschüs". Instantly apparent is the inordinate number of letters needed to make one simple sound. This complicated pattern makes for a language that can be tough both on the tongue and on the ear. Althoug French is arguably a rich Romance language, it too is quite complicated due to its heavy reliance on multiple letter combinations to spell out words. In "Au Revoir" we see this combination at work which makes pronunciation a trial to the average new pupil of the language. English suffers from a similar condition of non-phonetical structure which is why some vowels need to be doubled in order to achieve a certain sound and then there are those vowels which are written but not pronounced. We see this at play in "Good-bye". In direct contrast to all this is the Spanish word "Adiós". Here we see what an uncomplicated structure can do to make pronunciation extremely easy. This consistent phonetical pattern predominates the language and makes capricous letter combinations and dangling unpronounced vowels completely unnecessary. Spanish clearly enjoys a combination of sounds that conform to the alphabet in a logical and consistent manner making it a language distinguished, among other things, for its sweetness of sound. A characteristic not lost on Napoleon.
Felicidades,
Ed
November 17, 2007
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3 comments:
I enjoyed reading this. Spanish just makes sense doesn't it? Maybe Spanish should be the universal language?!
I really learned a lot from reading
this, about the differences between
some of the more common spoken
languages. I've tried learning
French, but the pronunciations are
very difficult. However, as Ed
points out, Spanish is spoken like
it's written. I'm looking forward
to learning to speak Spanish!
Good for people to know.
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