Confessions of a Reluctant Anglophone

                           

                           My first language is English, and  unfortunately I must write in this funny and obnoxious tongue for the benefits of my audience... Up until the past few years or so I have not given that a great deal of thought. Until I realized how subjective of a language it is. What really prompted this was the frustration at the fact I could not speak Italian my ancestral tongue, which I always heard growing up. I understood the basic phrases, many of which were the local dialect of my grand parents. I always was interested in Italian culture and indeed continental European culture as whole, ever since I can remember I would dream about being there whether I was in the Swiss alps or in the sands of Sicily.
There many reasons for my recent troubles with the tongue of the Anglosphere many of them are cultural, English seems to me not a blunt enough  tongue unlike the Romance tongues which derive from Latin, which too the best of my poor linguistic knowledge are pretty straight forward. (This article is a purely subjective ramble about my personal problems with being Anglophone, not a professional study of languages. If I have any French Canadian or Irish readers, you can understand this perhaps as having their cultures ceased by Anglophones.) There are many cultural things that divide Romance tongue speakers and the majority of the Anglosphere. A Catholic culture which thanks to the work of my acquaintance and in my view todays best Catholic Author, Charles A. Coulombe, who really made me understand through various talks the importance of cultural Catholicism alongside supernatural Faith. Which Anglophones' since the reformation have been lacking of and their culture suffered for it. It's perhaps unfair to say the English language is uncatholic but my prejudice of it for its Protestant antecedents are in that direction.

Anyway, Charles Coulombe's special relevance to these meanderings are when he and his colleague Bill Biersach (musician and author of Catholic themed horror novels which you can but at TumblarHouse.com, as well as all of Mr.  Coulombe's books.) who in there talk which you can listen to from this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW7-                        Bg74rAM&list=PLCVYi9yXYkhp6qiooWxAyeynbl0W4dd7I
 In the middle of the talk they speak about why the church traditionally used Latin and not vernacular tongues (English in our case) they say precisely what I said earlier that Latin is precise and easily defined where as English is flowery and sentimental.
                                                                   

While I'm not a fan of English as much as I am of Italian or French. I still love certain English writers like Yeats, Hopkins and even Shakespeare, but it still divides my identity as being and "Italian-American" would.


The bet article I have found on this subject:

https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages








































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