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Dr. Z said... >I think most people don't even think about what words literally >mean; they just mimic what they hear other people say. At 7:18 PM -0300 9/26/02, Matthias Grob wrote: >This is especially true for foreign languages. When I wrote that I wasn't even thinking of it as a second-language problem. I know many native speakers of American English who misuse words because they hear others misuse them or because they make an assumption about the meaning. But you are so right about the problems that arise when trying to muddle through in a foreign language. I myself, regrettably, have no facility with other than my native tongue, but I've taken the equivalent of first-semester courses in German, French, and Spanish and I had three years of Latin in high school. I've also traveled enough to hear English spoken with a wide range of competency. In these cases is works fine because we're just trying to muddle through and get some work done or enjoy a social situation. One thing I find myself doing is to fall into the cadence of the other person's language, so I end up speaking English with the other person's accent. It's quite unintentional! But when the conversation is in ASCII most of the time there IS no cultural context, and there is certainly no aural sense of an accent. What might in person be a charming "flavor" to the conversation seems in plain text to be a bit clumsy. This is sometimes misinterpreted, and proper respect isn't always given to the foreign writer of English. I've been guilty of it. Most of the time there's an easy way to avoid making that anglocentric mistake - just look at the return address. -- ______________________________________________________________ Richard Zvonar, PhD (818) 788-2202 http://www.zvonar.com http://RZCybernetics.com