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Re: linguistic abuse (was "Loop approach")



After having met Matthias, I find myself reading his e-mails with my best 
impersonation of his accent, and now they all make perfect sense!

I know that I'm guilty of assuming the meanings of and/or misusing musical 
terminology, having not been classically trained.

-Hans


At 16:09 26/09/2002, you wrote:
>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