On Sunday 18 January 2009 20:10:36 Willie Wong wrote: > On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 07:49:10PM +0200, Penguin Lover Alan McKinnon squawked: > > If I read that message out loud, it sounds suspiciously like a babelfish > > translation from Japanese to English. Whatever it is, the author of the > > message is certainly not a native English speaker. > > You have way too much faith in the education system provided by > English speaking countries. While I cannot argue for most of those > countries, I can claim, by example, that plenty of > native-English-speaking red-blooded Americans write in a way not > dissimilar to the snipplet cited above. > > This is not to say your conclusion is wrong; I just don't think it is > possible to conclude from the evidence given that the author of the > message is not a native English speaker, when I consider the kind of > junk submitted to my in-law, who teaches at a fairly affluent suburban > school district, by students who pretend that they are writing in > English. > > Of course, you can bloody-well argue, by way of Henry Higgins, that > "in America they haven't spoken [English] for years." :)
Forgive me, I was being foolish again :-) You see, I have this fatal flaw - assuming that the capacity for logical thought exists; when in fact, upon examination, one usually finds no such thing.... Oddly enough (or maybe not so oddly) if I look around the other desks at work, the standard of spoken English is higher amongst the non-native English speakers. Maybe they actually paid attention in class? -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
