DIY Planner - Europe Is Inefficient - Comments

No kidding

steves — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:19:27 -0400

No, English does not make any sense. And, as they say, the character of the people reflects their language:P

I seem to be in the minority here...

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 20:45:25 -0400

but , for me, Spanish and French ( and even german) were relatively easy to learn . Perhaps it was just my wonderful instructors. English, on the other hand, has never made any sense. I did quite well in my grammar classes but the technicalities never made sense to me. There are to many exceptions to too many random and utterly illogical rules. I feel terribly sorry for those who try to learn English as a second language!

"I'd suggest that everybody

irian — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:13:30 -0400

"I'd suggest that everybody learn English, but that's the most impossible language of all!"

As a non-native English speaker, I must agree. My roomates never cease to mock me due to mistakes caused by English inconsistent pronunciation rules. Plough, through, although... Same letter combinations and different pronunciations!

Not that any language does not have its subtleties. Even when communicating with a Spanish speaking friend from a different country, we often hit slang that means different things for each of us.

Hold on a minute

Costumequeen — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:32:20 -0400

While I appreciate the humor in the original article, and am trying to understand where the writer of the above comment is coming from, I think the comment about soldiers in body bags is out of line.

Just my two cents.

only english make you stupid

Haga2000 — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:20:06 -0400

very funny article it very well confirms that if you are english speaking and in particular armerican english speaking you grew up with the impression that you dont need to learn anything about other languages and cultures and everwhere you will be understood. How many body bags have you sent home from Irac? 20000? To late for those guys to make themselfs understood. Is is 10% or 25% of americans that cant locate australia or Irac on a map?

knowledge is the lightest load you can carry. If dont remember wrong it was an amaerican president who said something like this: you dont learn things because its easy you do it because its hard and useful

Spelling English

hblanchard — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:25:09 -0400

Here in the US, spelling bees seemed to have enjoyed some pop culture attention lately. But think about it - just the inherent concept of a contest to see who can spell words correctly - meant to be played by native speakers of the language - surely must strike fear into the hearts of those trying to learn English as a second language. Surely it's hard to find another European language which has such fun. (Japanese on the other hand, has many rare kanji characters which are challenging enough to expert native speakers that they have to be annotated in newspapers and the like with phonetic furigama characters - so other languages do play similar games.)

Your comment also tickled another memory. I once tried to get a rise out of an English-first person by saying - did you know that a huge percentage of people in the US are speaking a foreign language? Yeah, well, they didn't get it.

variety

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 04:23:17 -0400

Variety HELPS to understand, don't be fooled by what is only apparent...

In most european countries,

Smaaz — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 08:29:59 -0400

In most european countries, they teach english at school, so there is a way to communicate ;-)

fun movie quote:

Sara — Tue, 5 Jun 2007 12:34:32 -0400

"Blagged? Speak English to me, Tony. I thought this country spawned the *BEEEP* language, and so far nobody seems to speak it."

Can anyone name that movie? It is one of my favorites :D ((I think its related to article - so I doubt Steve will mind <3))

my artwork | my blog

But it's so fun to blame

Tournevis — Tue, 5 Jun 2007 12:10:53 -0400

But it's so fun to blame everything on the English language!

"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy." -- Steve Jobs

No Offence

Chiccorosso — Tue, 5 Jun 2007 05:13:07 -0400

Not a serious offence, and no need to blame so much the english language. every language has it's own pro and cons. I think we (world) are just getting better year after year, and the Internet is helping a lot in meeting other people and other cultures. I feel it's just a matter of time.

Of course, mayo

Tournevis — Mon, 4 Jun 2007 17:09:05 -0400

That's what the French, the Belgian and a slew of Swiss put on their fries. An ever increasing protion of Quebeckers too. When you have good fries (not the kind made with extruded mash like at McDonald's, but those made with actual cut fries), you have mayo with them. The other kind, you put ketchup on.

"It's better to be a pirate than to join the Navy." -- Steve Jobs

Ah yes, fish and chips.

reepicheep — Mon, 4 Jun 2007 17:07:38 -0400

Fish and chips is still served in newspaper here. Unfortunately it no longer is used news-print. The ink off of yesterday's paper used to add an extra taste to the meal as it coated one's fingers. Nowadays the paper hasn't been printed on. We usually have variety of fish to chose from: cod, skate, rock salmon (a type of shark), haddock, gurnet, coley, plaice, etc etc. And in different portion sizes too.

A few years ago I was on a business trip to King of Prussia, PA. In my hotel I had multiple choises for everything: e.g. scrambles eggs, fried eggs, eggs over easy, etc etc etc. So many choices in fact that on my first morning in the hotel I had to ask the waitress to come back later because the effect of jet lag was such I could assimulate all the breakfast menu choices quickly enough for her to serve me and other guests in her section. Out in the evenings the local restrauents had plenty of choices too. Down the road at the mall the food court there had a fish and chip shop. It had one variety of fish on the menu --- uh, "fish". The manager wasn't even sure what sspecies it was; it was cod. It also only came in one size. Rather ironic that after all the choices to be had at the hotel, or Starbucks, or McDonalds, the fish and chip shop didn't provide any choice what-so=ever. ;-) And they served it in effete little polysterene boxes no paper anywhere to be seen.

Similarly the choice of Scotch at my host's favourite local restaurent was somewhat limited. When I enquired what it was called the barman replied Mac-something-or-other. So no distinction there with blended or single malt. :-(

Lutefisk ?

ygor — Mon, 4 Jun 2007 16:41:31 -0400

If you have ever tried lutefisk, you must read this: The Power of Lutefisk
-----------------------------------
"I think the surest sign that there is intelligent life out there in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us." (Calvin and Hobbes/Bill Waterson)

ahhh i miss fish n chips served on newspaper!!!

Sara — Mon, 4 Jun 2007 16:38:56 -0400

I adore ketchup and mayo mixed for fries...

Lately I enjoy creamy french salad dressing on almost everything. Marinate some chicken and slap em on the grill... mmmmm.

Honestly, try the chip n shake! The salty chips (french fries for us yanks) plus the shake is deeeelicious!

my artwork | my blog

Europe Is Inefficient

steves — Fri, 1 Jun 2007 17:35:45 -0400

Greetings all, Steve here again. So, I'm learning Italian. It's hard, ya know? I mean, it's a really tough language. I bought an Italian dictionary and, I mean, wow! You just wouldn't believe how many words the Italian language has. And several years ago I attempted to learn German and that was a very difficult language, with many words. And several years before that I learned French and that was also an extremely hard language to master. I was thinking about this problem the other day when it occurred to me: All European languages are tough! And then something else occurred to me: If all European languages are really tough, then probably nobody in Europe knows what anybody else is saying. And, ya know, that must be really inefficient!

I should state at the outset that Doug Johnston, big man hereabouts, was concerned when I told him that I was planning to write an article basically saying that Europe is terribly inefficient. "That shouldn't offend more than half our readers", he said. And then he groaned, by way of explanation. Well, he may have a point. So let me state at the outset that I do not speak any European languages other than English even close to fluently, nor have I asked any actual Europeans or done any research whatsoever, because there's a fair chance that I might be wrong and I'm lazy. What can I say, this is the level of concern for the truth that people have come to expect from my work.

Still, I think I may be on to something. First, some historical background on Europe. Europe has been populated since the Paleolithic era, when primitive people from Africa traveled Northward, looking for a place where they'd be allowed to smoke. For many centuries, Europeans kept on smoking and evolving until the Roman Empire came along and then it fell apart because of too many kinds of gelato and then King Arthur found the sword and invented hubris, and then nothing happened for about 1000 years and then they stole the number zero and Leonardo di Vinci painted some woman and grew a huge beard and they had a number of wars and several revolutions, mostly for longer vacations, and finally developed espresso, which is Italian for small coffee that re-energizes you like a kick in the face, on the basis of which they decided to sit down and form a common government with some very happy-looking money. That pretty much brings us up to today.

Now, the problem is that Europeans, in the course of these many historical developments, developed many different languages. Whole different languages! In fact, in some disputed border areas they took the precaution of learning two or three languages, 'cause you never know who will be in charge next week. Now, this, I suspect, must cause problems. Consider, for example, the Italian language.

Italian, from what I can tell, is not a modern language like we usually think of them. It's missing several important bits. In the 5th century, barbarian tribes invaded Rome and made off with many of the prepositions, killed off a number of the consonants and mortally wounded nearly all the pronouns and the Italian people have never recovered. This means that today, the modern Italian language has a terrifying vowel imbalance. There are too many vowels and nowhere to put them all. They deal with this by speaking incredibly fast and waving their arms wildly about, which gives an Italian the look and sound of a person drowning above water. They make up for this by saying, "eh!" and drinking a lot of espesso.

This must cause problems for people trying to conduct business. I mean, you can buy one of those phrase books, but it's pretty hard to make one of those things actually work for you. A misplaced vowel could change the entire meaning and blow the whole deal. For example, you could mean to say, "I'll have my people call your people," and end up saying, "I believe I may be pregnant. Please take me to a hospital and alter my pants."

Likewise, "I think we should cement the deal in writing. Does this sound reasonable to you?", could very easily come out, "I would like to consummate our relationship by throwing mayonnaise at you in the moonlight. Does this conform to your personal or ethnic belief system?"

Even getting around can be difficult. "Does this train stop at Milan?", could easily come out as "You're camel smells like cherries. Would you like some espresso?"

So what's to be done? We have, according to my research, a whole continent full of people who can't understand one another and therefore can't conduct business. I'd suggest that everybody learn English, but that's the most impossible language of all! Anyone have any suggestions (besides throwing me to the lions in the Colosseum)?

Until next time, keep your pen on the page and your camel smelling wonderful.

Steve Sharam
www.whenrealityknocks.com

D*I*Y Planner - Europe Is Inefficient - Comments