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binTravkin
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Lord of Progress of the Council of Lords of Gaia
Jan 2004
time: 07:37
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As far as my historical knowledge tells Spiffor is right and saying that US was "the undisputed hegemon of the west" he is right as well, as if the West are being Westo-to-Europe or Over-The-Lake (from European viewpoint), US has been a hegemon ever since the second war with english (first was mostly to fight them off, second was mostly to get an upper hand in land forces in North America).
And the thing about popculture is something which anti-globalists often name as one of the main reasons why they are opposing globalisation.
Under current circumstances words "globalisation" and "americanisation" are almost sinonymes.
It may seem to not be so for an English speaker, but it's especially visible in countries which hadn't been previously exposed to it - former USSR (and Im from Latvia).
quote:
Yes, and it is after WW2 that French was actually losing ground as the elite language. |
Historically France was considered the most powerful land nation in Europe (count Russia out) since Spanish bankruptcy in 17th century.
It was defeated in 1871 (war with Prussia), but it was quite a minor blow to french being elite language, more to their military prestige.
Then was WW1 which France held off, but it was also a minor blow to their elitary language status.
WW2 was major one because France was knocked off the diplomatical pane effectively being a puppet of Hitler.
In this was most diplomacy was conducted in English, German and Russian, the second one later fell as to their defeat and the two other ones remained diplomatical languages until around 1991.
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Spiffor
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CPA - Evil Clone brigade
Nov 2001
time: 06:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Sandman
You are wrong to claim that French literature was 'more active' and 'especially more prestigious' than British literature. I provided a list of British authors from the C19th who are regarded as extremely influential, but you simply ignored it. Why? |
I have read it, but I had nothing to respond to it. You did have an active literature, and so did we.
My main contention about "activity" comes from an impression (it's not like the degree of activity of literature is easy to assess): On Apolyton, we have a very English-speaking culture. Even though that culture is mostly American, we have a large part of our 'Poly population that identifies with the British culture. As such, I think 'Poly gives me a (clearly imperfect) glimpse of what cultural bearings the British frequently refer to.
I have largely seen how the British culture is affected by its strong tradition of liberalism, which differs quite a bit from what is done on the continent. I have seen John Stuart mill being used as a frequent reference both in politics and in philosophy (the guy isn't mentioned nearly as much in French textbooks, as he didn't affect our traditions). I have seen loads and loads of quotes by Oscar Wilde. I have even seen mention to the Scarlet Pimprenel quite a few times (something I've never heard of in France  ). However, I barely saw references to other British authors than to Wilde here. It leads me to believe that your literature didn't have as much cultural impact on Britain than ours had in France.
OTOH, the French literature of the 19th century came at a "golden age" of sorts for the French arts. Never before or never since had the country produced so many works that stood out. This is what leads me to believe that our literature scene was more active.
As to the prestige, it is simple really. As I said, in the wake of the napoleonian conquest, continental Europe was full of French worldview. In plenty of countries, the nobility had to learn French to be "in". Quite a few languages imported French words in a fashion as inappropriate as they do English today For example, southern German nobles showed off by calling their watch a "quelle heure est-il" ("what time is it").
The spread of French as the lingua Franca among the nobility was a very positive externality for French literature, which could be spread over Europe more easily than what was produced in other languages*.
Let's go back to the original idea that triggered this discussion (that France hates the UK because the UK ended France's cultural domination). France never felt that the British arts were a threat to the cultural domination. Otherwise, we'd be much more hostile to the authors you quoted. Yet they are seen in a positive light in France, contrary to the American pop culture . That's because we never felt threatened by them, never did we feel overwhelmed, despite being very touchy on the issue, as you know.
The area where British English really challenged French as an international language was exchange. But it didn't affect us nearly as significantly than the American cultural conquest, because exchange is a field that never really mattered in our self-image. That the pound was the reference currency, well, that was acceptable by our standards. That British English was spoken when two international brokers were dealing with each other was acceptable as well. These weren't humiliations. The noble things (diplomacy) were ours, and thus the British didn't threaten us on the cultural domination we felt so complacent on. The ones who rocked our boat were the Yanks.
And this is why our hatred for Britain doesn't come from our loss of status in the cutlural domination. This frustration fuels the traditional hatred for the Yanks 
*As an aside, this kind of externality linked to the lingua franca exists today and is beneficial to Britain. The American major labels export a popular English-speaking music pretty much everywhere, and some British pop can also benefit from these distribution channels. The Spice Girls would have probably not met the same international success if they had sang in Romanian
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lightblue
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L'Boro, UK
Oct 2001
time: 05:37
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There's fairly globally known things from those English writers that were mentioned. Things like Sherlock Holmes or Alice in Wonderland are incredibly well known.
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lightblue
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L'Boro, UK
Oct 2001
time: 05:37
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Whatever, i am Dutch so I don't really differentiate that much between them, can't really say I knew either, guess i should use british for all this.
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23-08-2005 17:32
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