____twoism

It has to be said. I am in complete and utter awe whenever I read Guido's exceptional posts. His ability to form complex sentences from a vast and rich vocabulary is rarely seen in people for whom english is a second language, let alone mostly self taught second language.

A short example, found in a recent thread by Saturday Index:

I'm a lover of music which uses quite limited means to subsequently manifest itself in sublime ways and this track does just that; it doesn't make pretensions to its quality by means of eclecticism but rather defines a very limited set of musical axioms by which it actually proves its quality and musical correctness.

As someone with boundless love for language (and English in particular) and a deep wish to improve my own writing and speaking, I must praise and thank you, Guido, for showing us your beautiful mind through your written posts here.

Haha, thanks for saying that man, that's really motivating. I do spend considerable effort on improving my English, especially increasing the size of my vocabulary. My spoken English never really transcended the degree of a broken speech synthesizer made in Cold War Germany, though .

I consider your command of English as superior to mine by the way. You especially seem to possess a talent for learning and applying an organic way of structuring sentences by which the language is typically presented in every day life.

Aw man cool thread! I love languages, and I especially love my home language because it's so flexible and bizarre. English just doesn't give a -fuck-. You can use it almost any way you want - when I discovered you don't have to follow rules, you merely have to convey ideas any way you can manage it, speaking with English became, to me, like painting when you realize you don't -have- to paint a tree, you can splash color however you want if it imparts an idea and a feeling to people. The content of our language can be so much richer than merely dried-up literally structured ideas if we let it get mushy in our minds and mouths.

turquoise70 wrote:...I especially love my home language because it's so flexible and bizarre. English just doesn't give a -fuck-. You can use it almost any way you want - when I discovered you don't have to follow rules, you merely have to convey ideas any way you can manage it, speaking with English became, to me, like painting when you realize you don't -have- to paint a tree, you can splash color however you want if it imparts an idea and a feeling to people. The content of our language can be so much richer than merely dried-up literally structured ideas if we let it get mushy in our minds and mouths.

I somehow wish that English wasn't my first language so I could be more aware of its magical properties.

And I have to agree with you, Jeroen. The way Guido puts his ideas together via English is up there.

English is my first language! That's what I meant by "home language". You don't have to be a secondary-English speaker to notice how cool it is

Totally true! I spoke with Guido about this in the past as well. Compared to him I'm still speaking boerenkool English.

Heh...it's kind of funny, I always figured everyone outside the English-speaking countries hated learning English (like I would) but it seems like you guys are pretty enthusiastic about it.

what's the point?