[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