My thoughts on this:
Part of this misunderstanding is due to cultural differences. We may speak
the same language and some of us even fully understand every nuance (like I
do), but there's still our cultural background and personal perception/
worldview to consider.
Dutch people tend to be considered blunt and rude by other cultures, even or
specially by Americans. There are courses you can take to try and minimize
offending others in business meetings. Our language has different nuances
which are lost in translation and our culture permits, nay demands bluntness
and directness, a "straight through the sea" mentality as they call it. This
comes from centuries of making hard business deals and being the world's no.
1 traders. Think Ferengi. ;)
So Jeroen and I may think we've written a perfectly reasonable,
well-balanced paragraph which sums up our thoughts to a tee, but somebody
else reading it gets a different message.
And really, these differences are so tiny, so buried in nuance, that they
are hard to detect unless you are specifically lookinn for them. We (all of
us) tend to forget not everybody thinks the way we do.
We like to think the entire western world is one community with one culture,
but the fact is we are segmented into a miriad of peoples, each with their
own culture and ways. Even within tiny Holland there's various 'tribes' with
diferent 'personalities'. Of course it is possible to bridge the gaps and
come to understandings, but we should always remember that different people
interpret words in different ways.
So let's cut everyone a little slack. There's more to communication than
speaking the language. Especially on a mailing list. ;)
And just imagine communicating not only with e.g. an eastern culture
(several degrees different from western culturs), but with actual aliens,
non-humans! It'd simply be impossible not to misscommunicate there, don't
you think? For one, *we'd* definitely misundestand *them*.
Ticia ',:)
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[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Fool wrote:
>
> >
> > > My thoughts, as an outsider:
> > >
> > > His command of the language is superlative. It is logically
> > > self-sustained. There are no obvious grammatical errors. It is
> > > impossible to believe that what he writes is being misunderstood
> > > because he 'doesn't understand English very well'. It is clear that
> > > he understands what he is writing, and what he reads.
> >
> > Naturally, *I* always understand what I am writing. The problem lies in
> the
> > finer nuances of a language; it is the understanding of those finer
> nuances
> > that seperates the people with a good understanding of the language
> from the
> > people with an excellent understanding of the language.
>
> If I didn't know you were not a native speaker, I would not be able to
> tell. There aren't that many nuances. It's about logic. Some
> statements imply other things either explicitly, or implicitly. The
> expression 'read between the lines' sums it up.
>
> It seems clear that you understand what you read, at least what you reply
> to.
>
