Re: Colloquial language

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

On 5/31/12 7:46 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: Simon Perreault <[e-mail]>
> 
>     > I think colloquialisms may often be as hard to understand as excellent
>     > but seldom-used vocabulary.
> 
> Indeed - and now that we have this really cool Internet thingy (it's odd to
> think that young people have no memory of what the world was like before a
> large fraction of its information was instantly at one's fingertips - and in
> 80 years or so, _nobody_ will remember that age personally), one can very
> easily look up either a recondite word, or an obscure colloquialism, in
> moments...

So the way we introduce some people to the IETF is to expect that they
will look up fifty unfamiliar words and phrases? Having taught English
as a second language, I can attest that some of the idioms and
colloquialisms included in this document would have caused puzzlement in
my students.

It's bad enough that many IETFers speak in a highly colloquial fashion
at our meetings. I think it would be a shame if we do not avoid such
confusion in our written (and supposedly user-friendly) introduction to
the IETF.

Showing up at your first IETF meeting is quite enough of "taking the
plunge" [1] for most people. Why make it even more difficult?

Peter

[1] http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/take+the+plunge