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> Source: I feel quite at home commenting here, but I'm a mumbling wreckage when navigating the day to day linguistic perils of e.g. something as trivial as a U
by microcolonel 9y ago
> Source: I feel quite at home commenting here, but I'm a mumbling wreckage when navigating the day to day linguistic perils of e.g. something as trivial as a US supermarket checkout.
Yeah, I think that's a fairly common issue (overspecialization). I have that problem with studying Japanese: I get most of my practice in listening, so I can listen to and understand at a level far above my speaking, reading, or writing.
- jernfrost 9y agoExactly. That is kind of my point. Many europeans are able to participate in technical discussion in english even if our regular english is lacking. When I visited relatives in the US I noticed the problem that I could speak of computer science topics, history etc without problems, but struggled big time even naming the most basic food items. I knew what spam email was but was unaware that it was an actual food product until I visted wallmart and saw spam on the shelf which made laugh far more than perhaps such an observation reasonably warants. I also can’t read a lot of regular prose very well. I can read any technical subject quite well though. To be fair I was shocked when visiting the US how bad many Americans are at formulating themselves on paper.
- microcolonel 9y ago> To be fair I was shocked when visiting the US how bad many Americans are at formulating themselves on paper. The thing about English is that it's such a clusterfuck; slang, contractions, and "incorrect" grammar are hard to criticize when the language is already such a mess. Partly in jest, I liken it to a linguistic Broken Windows Theory[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory