Quote of the Day
Posted by Chicago Boyz Archive on April 16th, 2009 (All posts by Chicago Boyz Archive)
Distance from English, from the European languages of reason, is always a bad thing for the developing world.
Aakar Patel, “Try and say this in Hindi—bet you can’t”.
RTWT.
Via The Middle Stage.
April 16th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Japanese might be the exception here. Their modernization ( Meiji Restoration -Taisho eras) easily outstripped that of the Italians, Spainards, Portuguese, Russians and the Eastern Europeans. In 40 years they jumped from the Middle Ages to defeating a great power with a modern Navy and Army.
Other than that, you might have found a good rule of thumb.
April 17th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Agreed, Japan is a unique case. Never colonized, only conquered once, in 1945.
April 21st, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I’ve started learning Japanese recently and I’m quite impressed with both the vocabulary and the grammar. It seems that you can say anything in Japanese.