Clarissa's Blog

4 responses to “Back to Spanish”

1. 

   Rob F

   February 6, 2013

   Your post seems to imply that wordiness is expected/normal style in Spanish writing. This surprises me, as I am pretty sure that, considering only simple subject-verb-(object) sentences, and linguistic word counts as a measure, Spanish is inherently less wordy than English.

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   1. 

      bloggerclarissa

      February 6, 2013

      Good writing style in Spanish is florid, bombastic, with endless sentences, verbal flourishes, many subordinate clauses. Oh, the beauty!

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      1. 

         cliff arroyo

         February 7, 2013

         It would not be unreasonable, surely, to assume that a similar written tradition dominates in the Russian style as well, as the florid bombastic (though those who are more modest among us might well prefer to refrain from such value laden judgements in favor of a more purely descriptive and less harsh label such as that that ‘intricate’ presents us with) style seems to dominate in southern and eastern europe with only the by turns, scenic, desolate and overcrowded Germanic northwest having any regard for the homlier, less engaging yet altogether more easily apprehended ideology of ‘plain’ language, which degrades intellectual discourse to the level of potato farmers who are as stingy and miserly with wordplay and imagination as they are with financial expenditures, leaving the reputed cultural and intellectual center of the old continent, namely France and Germany with an odd mix which refuses to gell into either extreme, though the witty and urbane French are able to infuse a deceptively simple surface with flights of intellectual rigor not much less poetic than the Greeks while the heavy and thudding German syntax defeats all efforts at lyrical expression, remaining mired in a soul-rushing querulous march to the mundane.

         Don’t Russians do the same thing? Generally in Europe more florid writing styles predominate in the south and east. Only the Germanic northwest much likes the idea of ‘plain language’ (the Swedes are particularly taken with it). French and German are somewhere in the middle. French style is based on surface clarity combined with intellectual flights of fancy. The Germans’, however, let their odd and clumsy word order do their intellectual heavy lifing.

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         1. 

            bloggerclarissa

            February 7, 2013

            “It would not be unreasonable, surely, to assume that a similar written tradition dominates in the Russian style as well, as the florid bombastic”

            – Yes!

            “Don’t Russians do the same thing? ‘

            – Yes! This is why I find this style of writing so easy to master and so pleasing to practice. I see that you are one of us, too, eh? 🙂 🙂

            “It would not be unreasonable, surely, to assume that a similar written tradition dominates in the Russian style as well, as the florid bombastic (though those who are more modest among us might well prefer to refrain from such value laden judgements in favor of a more purely descriptive and less harsh label such as that that ‘intricate’ presents us with) style seems to dominate in southern and eastern europe with only the by turns, scenic, desolate and overcrowded Germanic northwest having any regard for the homlier, less engaging yet altogether more easily apprehended ideology of ‘plain’ language, which degrades intellectual discourse to the level of potato farmers who are as stingy and miserly with wordplay and imagination as they are with financial expenditures, leaving the reputed cultural and intellectual center of the old continent, namely France and Germany with an odd mix which refuses to gell into either extreme, though the witty and urbane French are able to infuse a deceptively simple surface with flights of intellectual rigor not much less poetic than the Greeks while the heavy and thudding German syntax defeats all efforts at lyrical expression, remaining mired in a soul-rushing querulous march to the mundane.”

            – Yeah! That’s what I mean! 🙂 I have all this except the sense of humor so the whole thing ends up being quite plodding.

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