Conference thebay::joyoflex

    When will people stop making up these absurd and fallacious rules?
    I was born in Bemidji, Minnesota, a small town of 10K or so.

    Re: <<< Note 675.1 by EAGLE1::EGGERS "Anybody can fly with an engine." >>>

>   I was born in Bemidji, Minnesota, a small town of 10K or so.
    
    That's what YOU think!
    
    Bill

    Re: .2 
    
    Perhaps Bill Forbes doesn't believe 10K qualifies as a small town. 

Re:     Perhaps Bill Forbes doesn't believe 10K qualifies as a small town. 

        Sure it does. Just ask the people in NORGE::PEPPERELL
        (Massachusetts).

        	Mike

    We had a great conversation with my elder daughter (the college-senior
    one who got us started on the Higgledy-Piggledies of 788.* fame) this
    last weekend.  Seems she went and got herself her first job out of
    college, at Oracle Corporation, and she'll be working on a
    English-language text processing product aimed at native speakers of
    foreign languages.  One aspect of it is a grammar checker that is
    supposed to be particularly sensitive to what are called "faux amis"
    when coming from French, for example...  
    
    The way she explained it, when a Francophone uses the word "actually"
    they stand a good chance of being confused by its French cognate
    "actuellement," meaning "at the present time."  So this program, acting
    like a spell-checker, would go thru and look for occurrences of
    "actually" and if the use is as predicted, would pop up a dialog box to
    the effect of "wouldn't you rather not say 'Actually we are
    understocked but should be getting a shipment in tomorrow,' but 'We are
    understocked at the moment...'"  Fascinating, we all thought...  And
    they said that you couldn't get a high-tech job with just a linguistics
    undergraduate degree...  :-)
    
    So last Saturday night, the whole lot of us - both college-age
    daughters, my wife, and I - went in to Boston and had a really posh
    celebration dinner -- the sort of place where the Maitre d' is *really*
    French, and where four waiters bring your main courses in
    silver-covered dishes, then on some unseen signal pick up the covers
    simultaneously...  
    
    Jodie had just finished explaining the concept of "faux amis" when the
    food arrived; so I got out my newish Olympus camera to commemmorate the
    beautiful presentation of the food and the happy occasion.  The
    obliging Maitre d' kindly offered to take the picture, so I set up the
    camera, handed it to him, and took my place behind my two daughters,
    next to my wife.  The Maitre d' peered thru the camera, goggled at all
    the controls, and asked "Monsieur, ees thees ze last model produced by
    Olympus?"  Confused, I replied "Gee, have they gone out of business?" 
    "Non, Monsieur, but ees thees ze last model they have produced?"  "???"
    So Jodie stepped into the breach and deftly pointed out that he most
    likely had meant the LATEST rather than ze LAST model...  
    
    (Last = derniere, "latest thing" = "le derniere cri")
    
    Just too charming a co-inky-dinky not to report to JOYOFLEXers,
    methought.
    
    Any other "faux amis" that you folks post here will dutifully be
    extracted by this reporter and submitted for the delectation of this
    product's users.  At least in ze last version of it, zat iz...  :-)

    <<< Note 675.5 by RANGER::KALIKOW "Nature abhors a VAXuum; DEC too!" >>>
                                 -< Faux Amis >-

	I once knew a German gentleman who spoke quite good English (on
every possible occasion) but would invariably use _when_ when _if_ was
required by the context.  The false friend here was the German word _wenn_
which can be translated either "if" or "when".  Sort of a double-whammy
false friend.  His wife corrected him, on every possible occasion.

    	My kids - bilingual English-French - normally say "publicities" for
    the things in commercial breaks on television. They can't bring
    themselves to say "advertisements" since the manufacturers are
    obviously not warning you about their products.
    
    (The French for "advertising" is "publicit�", and the English for
    "avertissement" is "warning").
    
    	Another one that has caused Americans car problems here is petrol.
    Since Americans tend to refer to this as "gasolene" they often fill up
    their cars with "gasoil" (French for diesel fuel) rather than "essence"
    (French for petrol fuel). The fuel supply system has to be flushed out
    before the car runs again.
    
    	The mistake has been made so often that many self-service diesel
    pumps now play a recorded avertissement when you d�croche the pistolet,
    just so you don't shoot yourself in the foot.

    LEDS::HAMBLEN, PASTIS::MONAHAN -- I can just see your suggestions
    wending their merry way codewards...  Vicarious THANKS!
    
    Any other counties to be heard from?
    
    Cheers,
    
    Dan
    (who_wishes_he_were_raised_truly_bilingual_so_he'd_REALLY_understand:-)
    (but who [vide NODEMO::MARKETING 1212.*] worries about a kid at ORACLE)
    :-(

re: .7

�    They can't bring
�    themselves to say "advertisements" since the manufacturers are
�    obviously not warning you about their products.

Perhaps it's a warning that the next 30 seconds will be filled with 
psychological manipulation, innuendos, half-truths, gross exagerration, and 
outright lies.

Clay

    My favorite is a German-English confusion, which supposedly caused some
    uproar after WWII.  The word "gift" in German means poison...  When
    people were sending goodies to Germany, the post office viewed packages
    marked "bonafied gift" with extreme displeasure!
    
    Linda

Would a cooked whole fish qualify as a bona fide bonified gift?

-Perry

>Would a cooked whole fish qualify as a bona fide bonified gift?

No, but a whole fugu would.

    	The interesting thing is that the two words had the same origin.
    Unfortunately, in medieval times it was not safe to take sweets from
    strangers or political enemies in Germany, so the meaning of the word
    changed. In England they tended to solve their problems by hacking each
    other to pieces, or drowning each other in butts of Malmsey, so the
    word retained its original meaning.

I learnt English as my third language, after Telugu (mother tongue) and
Hindi (national). I have had quite a few mishaps 'coz of my wrong use of
English. The latest, on top of my memory stack, is the recent incident 
involving the accountant of my previous contracting agency. She faxed the
reconciliation statements. The next day I tallied them and found two errors,
both against me. Next time we started discussing this I said " I can't say 
that they were prepared sincerely !" meaning she hadn't put in enough time 
in preparing them and thus committed mistakes. It took me some time to 
grasp how my words were interpreted.

It caused lot of problems and finally a mediator suggested I send some 
flowers to her. I did !

I must be making/committing quite a few mistakes. But I never come to 
know them unless someone takes the liberty of pointing them out to me.

Ramana (who_loves_English_for_its_complexity_and_punnability_and_)
       (thinks_pgwodehouse_is_the_funniest_writer,)
       (after_james_hadley_chase_of_course)

    Re: .14

    This note from an American English speaker for whom English is
    essentially his only language...

	>> Next time we started discussing this I said " I can't say
    	>> that they were prepared sincerely !" meaning she hadn't put
    	>> in enough time in preparing them and thus committed mistakes.

    This would cause me a problem, too.  Seeing only the words, I would
    interpret the meaning to be a mild rebuke meaning, "You aren't
    serious," or "These are a joke."   On the other hand, the wording you
    used is sufficiently unusual, that I might very well suspect some
    communication difficulty, particularly if I had talked to you and you
    obviously had an accent that wasn't American.

    I don't think I would ever guess from the words alone that your 
    intended meaning was mistakes were made due to inadequate time in
    preparation.

    A Russian (at the time) coworker, in this country only a few years,
    had his own version of an American colloquilism, which, incidentally,
    took a bit of the sting out of it:
    
    			"Are you sh*tting me out?" 
                        
    							Don

    We had a guest from DEC Taiwan visit once.  When he arrived, he rented
    a car and proceeded to drive to his hotel.  Not being familiar with the
    area, he was looking at a map when he came upon a sign on the highway,
    (128 north) that read, NO. READING, whereby he put away his map and got
    off the highway to ask for directions.  
    
    He could not believe such a law as no reading in a car, but he did not
    want to get in trouble either.  
    
    (for those of you unfamiliar with the Boston area, NO. READING is
    short for the town "NORTH READING" and is depicted on most signs as NO.
    READING.)  
    
    You may understand the reaction of the gentleman from Taiwan.
    

    I'm not sure if this question has an answer that isn't "That's a stupid
    question!!"  but it provoked some languid thought in what passes for my
    own mind...
    
    "If a word-processor that offers a WYSIWYG interface to an embedded
    procedural document formatting language does its thing by processing 
    the text and underlying implied commands into a finished document by 
    implementing a Document Compiler stage, does a word-processor 
    incorporating a style checker therefore have a Document Compiler 
    that produces Optimized Code?"
    
    :-) :-)

    
    "If a word-processor that offers a WYSIWYG interface to an embedded
    procedural document formatting language does its thing by processing 
    the text and underlying implied commands into a finished document by 
    implementing a Document Compiler stage, does a word-processor 
    incorporating a style checker therefore have a Document Compiler 
    that produces Optimized Code?"
    
    Optimized answer:  No.
    
    Ordinary answer:  If a word-processor that offers a WYSIWYG interface
    to an embedded procedural document formatting language does its thing
    by processing the text and underlying implied commands into a finished
    document by implementing a Document Compiler stage, then a word-processor 
    incorporating a style checker therefore has a Document Compiler that
    produces Code.