2nd language attrition - Shades of gray and other matters

[Stan-Sandy Anonby]

The question of beauty is related to the question of prestige of the people who speak the language. For example, I have heard anglophone Canadians from Ottawa complain about how aweful the French across the river in Hull sounds. These same people feel that Parisian French and the French from Quebec City sounds beautiful. I can't really say I notice a big difference in the beauty of these varieties of French. I think my fellow Canadians are talking about their like or dislike, their respect or disrespect, of the people who live in Hull vs. those in Quebec City and Paris.

Stan Anonby

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 18:29:51 -0400
 David Balosa <balosa at lasalle.edu> wrote:
> Hi Hamo, French as more beautiful than Portuguese and French people more developed than portuguese people was my attitude when I was twelve years old and didn't have any sociolinguistic background. But I do still believe that we can't fight the nature of language and how they sound to our ears. Though each language's beauty is determined by being familiar to the culture and the pragmatic or the degree of that language mastery, it should also be recognized that language's beauty is in the eyes of the beholders. It is not in any sociolinguist' s culture to classify languages' beauty since we have the theory of attitude toward languages, but I believe that it is natural that a language with many nasal sounds will caress the ears of its listeners more than the one with many glottal sounds. Another point in language beauty that I think should be left to the ears of listeners is that common opinion toward languages' beauty is not always wr!
 ong. As a
> multilingual individual, languages,  like clothes are in my cognitive closet.I codeswitch like a clothes-change according to circumstances.I feel it natural that i am more elegant in some of my suits than I am in some others.Should one feel the same when it comes to languages'beauty? Second my experience with language is not representative of most DR Congoleses.I have never conducted a comparative survey between my language experience and the most of DR Congoleses' language experience.Just for your information, DR Congo is one of the most complex multilingual societies in the world. 4 nationla languages (Lingala, Kikongo, Tshiluba, Kinguana-Swahili), French as an officiel language, Kinshasa Lingala Creole as the language of wide communication, plus hundreds of regional languages. The colonisors imposed French, Mobutu imposed Lingala, powerful tribes impose their own languages to their children and their communities. As you can see, the DR congoleses's l!
 anguage
> experience is very complex and just the people themselves with their Congolese Music ( Congolese Rumba) have made the Kinshasa Lingala Creole become a special lingua franca in southern Africa. Today, most DR congoleses would identify themselves best with Lingala than with French. Thanks for your inspirational question. David Balosa