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[REBOL] [OT] french history

From: jason::cunliffe::verizon::net at: 16-Jan-2002 9:28

> Your translation is excellent and shows how close english and french
really
> are. May I ask where you learned your french. > > Patrick
Thanks.. yes it is easy with technical stuff as global vocabulary/concepts are already faniliar. there is almost zero cultural content present. ..where did you learn english? [warning: long OT story follows.. where I learnt french] schoolboy french ages 8-16 holidays in France [I grew up in UK] A huge stack of comic books: mostly donated by one of my big sister's nicer boyfriends: Spirou, Lucky Luke, later Asterix and Tintin. In 1995 I moved from New York to Paris, where I lived and worked for a few years. I was very free for the first 6 months, exploring Paris, going to the cinema as much as possible, cafe life, reading magazines and papers. Made some French friends. I then I got very busy working on proposals for European projects via a division of France Telecom. My colleagues were almost all French, but spoke, read and wrote an excellent combination dialect I will call "English technocratic-disco speak" ;-) We would start the day in English, since all proposals bound for Brussels had to be written in a standard common nonsense [English]. Mid-morning - time to converge on the espresso machine. Within 2-3 minutes they would all spring into highspeed french. Ditto lunch time, ditto afternon coffee break where everyone huddled to talk strategie et le planning. I am still like a neanderthal with french numbers [chiffres]. Of course any contract or shady business should be discussed en francais in low voice. In 1999, I lived for a year in the South of France in the beautiful countryside. I worked on a web project funded by the EC, and hired a french programmer to work with me to develop in Python and Zope. So we sat under the big tree after lunch and discussed object-oriented paradigms and web system architecture in French.. I could never tell if my head was spinning more from the OOPS or the French. I have to sketch whenever I talk about ideas, so always carry 5x8 white cards with me. There is always a universal communications issue between people to resolve, no matter what langauge, age, sex, topic, style, realtionship, context... drawing seems to help this process. While working in Europe I found it was very helpful to use "live" diagrams during most discussion. This was extra true when discussion project and programming topics with french, italian, german, spanish and swedish partners. Diagrmas aer ecelletn for heloing to prepersent abstraction, sequence, optinos and refences. My recent experiences convinced me to develop special animated whiteboard comunications tools: what I call "smart-maps". I hope my rebol skills advance swiftly so I can achieve this using a combination of rebol+flash
> ps. For Alexandre Dumas (author of the three musketeer) english was just > misspelt and mispronounced french.
LoL:) We have the Romans to thank for that effect! yes English spelling is the insanely ironic price of entry for being one of internationally useful langauges. I imagine the 21st century will generate a common phonetically consistent spelling for english. through though thought tough !@#$ ./Jason