Who else finds writing about feelings etc hard?

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In some parts of English literature you have to describe what you think the character is feeling etc.

I've always found questions like these difficult and to be honest a bit daft.

Does anyone else find these types of questions difficult?

i don't even know how to describe what i am feeling.

couldn't answer your poll, never had English...

Hi there,

I like English a lot. It's a beautiful language. It's plainness, Simplex Sigillum Veri, is outstanding.

Thou, I understand almost everything I read or hear in English, when I try writing stuff down or make conversation it sometimes is difficult to switch off my own native language (i.e. Dutch, which is a very beautiful language as well) and I get a bit confused. And frustrated.

I strongly feel for the idea that the whole world should learn English, next to their own native language, of course, so we all can communicate with each other.

I think only good things will come from this already ongoing proces.

Naive?

Best of luck to you all,
Ceesjan

[quote]
Solum certum nihil esse certi, et homine nihil miserius aut superbius.

Last edited by Erminea on 29 Aug 2008, 10:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

That is a beautiful notion and I fully agree with that.

Once I was stopped by three 8 y/o boys on a street in Paris, they were trying to sell me some postcards, earning money that way for something related with their school. It was all under the supervision of their teacher. Probably some project. I told them that I don't understand their language and that if they want something, they should speak English to me. The first sentence they said: 'what for?'
I gave them 2 euro.

...I don't find english beautiful at all. But I am a native speaker.

It has its good points, doesn't get me wrong, but, for a world lingua franca I think the spelling is WAY to complex. definitely need something more consistent for some world language and I really REALLY support keeping the language diversity of this planet alive, its so rich and interesting and has so much history. we can all have a common language as long as we keep the indigenous ones alive too.

As for the original question: its remarkably easy for me to talk about what the characters are feeling and stuff. but, its what I think ABOUT all the time. I have an NT friend who has a huge difficulty in this area though. She was going to major in French, but, the higher level classes were all literature essays where she would have to do that kind of thing. She had the vocbulary, it wasn't the language she had trouble with, she just couldn't do the literary analysis in english even! She had to switch majors in the end

I'm alexithymic and used to find it impossible to analyse the inner world of a character when I was in school. As I got older, I improved slightly. At university, I took French as a minor, and studied literary criticism. I had to make an extra effort to learn characterisation - I went to the city library and borrowed books meant to help school kids with this sort of thing. I bought books that teach you how to analyse different genres, like plays and novels. All that effort paid off and I learnt how to describe characters for the first time in my life. This knowledge has also helped me in my every day life - you can apply it to real world characters (people) to try and make sense of what they're saying and what it is that they really want.

Being a linguist, I'm all for preserving the linguistic diversity of this planet. It's always a great loss to lose diversity, whether it's genetic diversity from the gene pool or intellectual diversity contributed by different cultures. A lingua franca may be a practical solution, and those who are interested will probably learn English as it is the most widespread language in the world today. However, not everyone wants to learn English, so it's unlikely that we'll have a universal lingua franca anytime soon.