MRAB writes: > On 2020-07-04 16:23, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: > > 3. Write in a comfortable dialect. (Exceptions: legalese and > > The Academic Register are strictly forbidden, even if you're > > native in one of those. :-)
> I'd also add: Try to avoid regionalisms; aim for a broadly > "international" form of the language. Some words and phrases might be > specific to a certain region, or have different, possibly conflicting, > meanings elsewhere. I'm sympathetic, but I personally would give this its own number, probably 6. My reasoning starts from the fact that most Americans, at least, are not even aware that they have an accent! And few non- natives will any idea that there's no difference between "truck" in the mouth of an American and "lorry" in the mouth of most other English speakers (although that can be ameliorated by targeting the admonition specifically at native speakers). (I'm projecting from anecdotes, of course; I'm not sure how I'd acquire data on this.) I think deemphasizing this detail is on the side of caution. Following Strunk & White, or even choosing which of those rules to follow and which to ignore, is probably a lot easier for most people than identifying regionalisms. Or references to any subculture, such as my own "laying a burden of clarity and intelligibility we ourselves could not bear on non-native and non-Standard speakers" (compare any Christian Bible, Acts of the Apostles, 15:10). I did that because I thought it likely to be familiar to many of the more vociferous participants in the thread, but the sentence would have been much easier to parse if I'd avoided it. Thing is, I'm sure I've used Americanisms and even the dreaded Academic Register, but I sure never noticed them! :-) Steve _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list -- python-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-dev-le...@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-dev.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/message/67NQ5CD65AHYXAQUZFKMZEIDSJOKSXKP/ Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/
