Languages was Re: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: A note about the SPAM flags

[Kathryn Cawte]

Ms. Tattersall

>
> Everything else aside, I admire the heck out of this person for being
> not only technically knowledgeable, but also able to be technically
> knowledgeable in two disparate and difficult languages.
>

K

Me too - although I wonder if the technical stuff in whichever language it
is, is anything like the technical stuff in German - I know a person who
works for a software company of some kind who regularly communicates with a
German counterpart. neither speaks the other's language, making smalltalk
impossible, but once they get to talking in technicalities they understand
one another perfectly because so many German computer related terms are
simply the American terms, occasionally spellt differently. Something which
is becoming more and more common in German despite periodic attempts to weed
out the foreign words (which is never going to be entirely possible,
especially in German which had a whole layer of French terms develop during
the Napoleonic era - because it was fashionable if you were aristocratic to
talk French)

Ms. Tattersall
> If a person who speaks two languages is bilingual, and a person who
> speaks three languages is trilingual, what do you call someone who
> speaks only one language?
>
> American.
>
> Guilty as charged, wishing I'd learned a second language when I was
> young and still had malleable brain cells,
> >
>
K

I think English would be as accurate as American - if not more so. I was on
holiday in France staying at a small hotel with the stereotypical group of
English tourists (their mere presence made the rest of us want to apologise
for them). They persisted in the belief that the French waitress was merely
being awkward when not understanding them and that if they SHOUTED at her
slowly then she'd suddenly know what they meant.

K