If it has no meaning in English it has no meaning at all?

Answer 1

OK, first of all, this is not a question. It is a statement. On the face of it, it appears to say that if a person says "Je suis heureux" he is speaking nonsense, because what he says means nothing in English, never mind that all the French speakers in the world understand it perfectly. If that is what this phrase means, it is just about the most arrogant, ethnocentric, xenophobic, ignorant, and stupid thing you could say.

But maybe it means that English is the perfect language in which every possible shade of meaning can be conveyed, so that if there is no way of expressing an idea in English, the idea is not worth expressing. If so, it is probably the second most arrogant, ethnocentric, xenophobic, ignorant and stupid thing you can say. And totally false, too, since English is constantly borrowing words and phrases from other languages to fill the holes (we'd normally call them lacunae but that's Latin) in our vocabulary. I think that puts the coup de grace to that idea.

But just possibly, it means that if you are trying to express your ideas in English and can not express them in clear concise English so that another person can understand them, you are not expressing an idea. Either something means something or it does not mean anything. Either you are expressing an idea or you are not expressing an idea. Either your ideas mean something or they do not. No excuse is acceptable. If so, this manifestly ambiguous statement fails by its own test. It is, as even its proponents must admit, absolute nonsense.