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From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: Languages in the EC
Message-ID: <donhD3ptKM.EBr@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <3h3ci5$qc8@agate.berkeley.edu> <3hafma$5bg@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <3halb2$785@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> <3hb3d2$cm4@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 04:24:21 GMT
Lines: 89

rison@hep.phy.cam.ac.uk skribis en lastatempa afisxo <3hb3d2$cm4@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>:
>En la artikolo <3halb2$785@gabriel.keele.ac.uk>,
>JM White <u4d14@cc.keele.ac.uk> skribis:
>
>> RJ Pomeroy (u2i02@teach.cs.keele.ac.uk) wrote:
>> : JM White (u4d14@cc.keele.ac.uk) wrote:
>> 
>> : : What are you drivelling on about? English is English, just with very slight
>> : : variations. I can understand Americans, Scots, Welsh, Irish equally, it's
>> : : just a slightly different accent they have. It's hardly a largely different
>> : : dialect is it? The accent is irrelevant, as long as everyone can understand
>> : : one another.
>> 
>> : A small example - what do you understand by the following words?:
>> : 	pants	retainer	vest
>> 
>> : Cause I can assure you, there are quite different possible interpretations of
>> : the following sentence:
>> 
>> : 	Mr Jones went out into the street in his pants.
>> 
>> : Not that the correct interpretation is not locally context sensitive.
>> 
>> Yes, that is right, but I doubt whether it will make a great deal of
>> difference. As long as  people understand one another. OK, the Americans
>> have developed some words in a usage we wouldn't strictly agree with, but
>> it's still understandable.
>
>(This reminds me of the time when I spent five minutes getting a tool
>from a new American housemate.  I can't exactly remember; did it
>all revolve around the words plier/wrench?)
>
There is also the story that the British and American high commands 
spent half a day arguing with each other over a proposal that one 
side wanted tabled and the other didn't. The afternoon was well on 
before they discovered that the expression 'to table' means exactly 
the opposite in the two languages.

A well-known science-fiction author (American) once told me that in 
his younger days, while hostelling through England, he grew very 
enthusiastic one night when a young lady staying in the same hostel 
asked him to knock her up in the morning. When he found out what 
she really meant, you can be sure that he didn't keep his pecker up.

When we arrived at High Wycombe Air Station in 1968, Family Services 
presented us with a list of three hundred words that we would have 
to learn before we could communicate properly with the English. Another 
105 and I'd have equalled the number of Esperanto roots, particles, 
affixes and grammatical endings you have to know to read through 
Claude Piron's interesting 200-page _Vere aux fantazie_. Still, these 
300 words didn't prepare me for the people who didn't know what 
a washateria was, or for my first encounter with TV commentary 
(and a Daily Express report) on a cricket match. Or for the plethora 
of new automotive terms I had to learn. Or for the chap leaning on 
a fence outside Hook Norton, Oxon., who explained what was going 
on with the fox hunt that was blocking the road -- and I couldn't 
understand one word in approximately 500 of his Cotswold accent (or 
maybe dialect -- I have no way of telling), even after two and a 
half years in the UK. Or our neighbor, the vice-headmaster of the 
village school in the above-mentioned HN, who came from Yorkshire ... 
need I say more?

>It is a problem, in that it's quite possible that even small
>misunderstandings will mushroom out.  A story I've heard (can
>anybody (mal)confirm this?) is that before Hiroshima, the U.S. asked
>Japan to surrender.  Japan replied with a word which was taken
>to mean `ignore', when apparently it can also mean `have not
>formed a final opinion yet'.  On a more mundane level, constant
>stumbling and correcting is a serious mental drain!
>
The actual story refers to the word _mokusatsu_, and the time-frame 
of the anecdote was the three days between Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I can't vouch for the truth of the anecdote.

>> All I want to know is that if I go to the US, Scotland or where ever, they
>> will understand me, and vice versa. 
>
>Indeed.  Well, I have serious problems with certain types of English in
>England.  (Admittedly, I was not brought up in the U.K., though English
>is a mother tongue.)  I shudder to imagine how a non-native English
>speaker would cope with all the variations of English!
>
Heh. See above.

-- 
Don HARLOW			donh@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A.       elna@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/el/elna/elna.html         Esperanto
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/do/donh/donh.html 
