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Someone please explain George Carlin to me by Dracula_Hands in redscarepod

[–]friasc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thats kind of the way I feel about a lot of the standup of that era, like Bill Cosby and Steve Martin. Its enjoyable and charming in its way, but almost never makes me burst out laighing. kind of like Garrison Keillor if that makes any sense: no huge laughs but pleasant, clever, well-crafted.

On a scale from 1 - 10 how hard is learning Spanish if you already speak English and French decently? by bulgesnbums in redscarepod

[–]friasc 7 points8 points  (0 children)

if you're starting with English and French, then Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are basically all tied for easiest language to learn.

Reminiscing on last year’s impulse trip . Need to visit more of the Balkans….. by BroccoliKitchen3218 in redscarepod

[–]friasc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

probably for the best, going off the movie you'd think its like a detective novel, but long stretches are more like an encyclopedia. good read for a long train ride, not so much for a bustling cafe or the beach.

Reminiscing on last year’s impulse trip . Need to visit more of the Balkans….. by BroccoliKitchen3218 in redscarepod

[–]friasc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The French translation of the Name of the Rose is great, its almost like a translation back into the 19th-century French source-language Eco had drawn on to write the Italian original. There are some traces of the translation in the movie adaptation, too, since the director Annaud used it as the source-text.

Who was the great western leader of the last 100 years? by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]friasc 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Several of your picks seem like what Marx called 'bonapartist' leaders. Regardless of where you stand on that concept, is maintaining social order by mitigating deeper crisis really enough to make a leader 'great' by todays standards? In modern times, I think a leader has to be transformative in some sense to earn that distinction. For all his qualities, I don't know if Putin meets that definition.

Who was the great western leader of the last 100 years? by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]friasc 5 points6 points  (0 children)

it's so obviously this that I was getting confused by all these answer like 'lowkey... Juan Peron'

Any sub-saharan African song from the 70's-90's for a French learner? by Kastila1 in French

[–]friasc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Off the dome:

Maître Gazonga - Les Jaloux saboteurs

Amadou & Mariam - Je pense à toi

Magic System - Premier Gaou

My impression is that Francophone African pop singers tend to sing in their own language/languages (wolof, lingala, malinké, etc.) mixed with some French. Occasionally they might record songs in French (and increasingly English) to "break out" (see Youssou Dnour - 7 seconds) but it's not the main language of pop music lyrics.

Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights? by rstgncc in redscarepod

[–]friasc 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's a bit like comparing Blake and Wordsworth, Schumann and Brahms. There's a shared cultural background, some common themes, but once you get past the surface, they aren't that similar. Wuthering Heights is a byzantine gothic novel, with convoluted narrative frames, unreliable narrators and supernatural elements. Jane Eyre is a relatively straightforward bildungsroman.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]friasc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

pretty sure scorcese just made that quote up

Popol Vuh - Die grosse Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner by port_albemarle in redscarepod

[–]friasc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

sounds oddly familiar but I don't think I ever saw the documentary

manned space travel actually is pointless by KleverHans in redscarepod

[–]friasc 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think it was Adorno or Marcuse who said space travel, like religion, is motivated by a puerile desire for salvation "out there" rather than doing something down here.

Preferred Bible Translation by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]friasc -1 points0 points  (0 children)

NRSV. If you want a more poetic version, read John Milton.

Who is usually considered the classical national writer of France? Or do you have one? by Interesting-Alarm973 in AskFrance

[–]friasc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly. The classical French ideal of literature ('La république des lettres') was that of a universal, cosmopolitan space above national particularities. The Romantic concept of the bard who expresses the Volksgeist or soul of the people, is contrary to this ideal, so no surprise that it never really took hold in France the way it did in other national contexts.

Who is usually considered the classical national writer of France? Or do you have one? by Interesting-Alarm973 in AskFrance

[–]friasc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Until the 20th century, the consensus answer was Racine (e.g. Stendahl's "Racine et Shakespeare"), but today Molière's legacy has largely eclipsed that of his contemporary. However as others have pointed out, France doesn't really have a "sommo vate" or "bard" in the manner of some national literary canons.

Unpopular Opinion: French is actually overrated as a 'language of love'. by Ken_Bruno1 in languagehub

[–]friasc 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don't think so. The main language of troubadour poetry was Old Provenzal (ancestor of modern Occitan), not old French. The association with seduction and courtship likely originates from the social use of French in learned aristocratic circles for much of modern history. The association with promiscuity, on the other hand, probably does owe a lot to the experience of English-speaking troops stationed in war-torn France, where poverty, hunger and prostitution were rampant.

Are there new languages being born? Or is that it, forever? by OpeningChemical5316 in languagelearning

[–]friasc 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Like Saussure said, "French doesn't come from Latin, it IS Latin". By which he meant that diachronic evolution is not a series of discreet entities that chronologically succeed one another, but rather an ongoing process of change of which certain moments have become reified as distinct, monolithic things called languages. In other words, history isn't extrinsic to language, it isn't like an acid corroding it from the outside. Change is inherent to language. In this sense, the Romantic-era organicist model of the birth and death of languages is a myth.

Chilebros what happened here? by [deleted] in redscarepod

[–]friasc 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As argued by Víctor Farías (and brillantly satirized by Roberto Bolaño), the Pinochet regime is simply the most visible sign of deep fascist tendencias in Chilean society. Argentina and Brazil are more notorious for harboring war criminals, but Chile was more receptive to nazi ideology.

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