People always complain about politicians doing what they want and not listening to ordinary folks. So, why do not enough people, when there is the opportunity to vote on an issue that will affect most people living in the city, bother to actually tell those politicians what they think?
How do you measure a language's beauty or its merit? How do you assess whether one language has more nuances than another? Can one language be 'poorer' than others? I'm asking because I read a letter to the editor in which the writer complains about the use of the phrase humanitäre Katastrophe which he identifies as a direct translation of 'humanitarian catastrophe'. He goes on to say that English has less nuances than German and is sprachlich ärmer. He says we should use menschliche Tragödie instead.
Apart from his claim about the inferiority of English, I find he is discussing a non-issue and doesn't quite understand that a 'human tragedy' is not necessarily a 'humanitarian catastrophe'. A human tragedy can befall one person or one family, whereas for it to be a 'humanitarian catastrophe' it needs to affect a whole group of people. At least, that's my understanding of the terms.
On top of that, some quick googling shows that the phrase most used is 'humanitarian crisis' (with 906.000 g-hits) whereas 'humanitarian disaster' (263.000 g-hits), 'humanitarian catastrophe' (212.000 g-hits) and 'human tragedy' (293.000 g-hits) are a lot less common. If I limit my googling to .co.uk sites the difference becomes even more apparent: 'humanitarian crisis' gets 11.800 hits compared to a measly 2430 for 'humanitarian catastrophe'. I somehow have the feeling that this phrase isn't all that English, but more an example of the language of international politics which just happens to be conducted in English.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
