[Seaside] More transaction rambling (getting OT)

Jimmie Houchin seaside@lists.squeakfoundation.org
Sat, 06 Jul 2002 10:29:44 -0500


While our education system is poor, it is due to the fact that most 
Americans are mono-lingual. It is therefore often conceptually difficult 
  for us to think in multiple languages. This is true even for the 
educated among us.

I am always amazed and appreciative of the fact that so many 
non-English-native people can communicate reasonably well in English. I 
am also so incredibly amazed and saddened by the tremendous numbers of 
native English speaking people who communicate so poorly.

I myself like most Americans am mono-lingual. I do hope to take up 
Spanish soon.

I always enjoy seeing pronunciation helps for foreign names. I always 
like to try to say names in my head when reading them. I used to 
mispronounce Cees in my head. I used to think Cees = 'sees'.  Then when 
Cees went to New York and visited with Paul (I think), Paul in a message 
  offered pronunciation help for Cees name. Cees = 'case'. Makes things 
interesting.

Jimmie Houchin

Cees de Groot wrote:
> Frank Sergeant wrote:
>  >  I hope that helps.
> 
> Yup. Thanks.
> 
>> English is hell.  I am constantly amazed at the excellent English spoken
>> (at least written) by the "foreigners" on newsgroups and mailing lists.
>>
> 
> That's probably more of an indication how bad education is in the UK and 
> US these days than how good we foreigners are at it (we're only 
> relatively excellent ;-)).