Re: Colloquial language

[Ole Jacobsen <[e-mail]>]

I fully agree. One could (perhaps) argue that this document would be a 
suitable place to INTRODUCE non-native speakers to such language, but
then the document really needs to do that rather than have the reader
infer meaning based on context.

Ole


Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: [phone]   Mobile: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj
Skype: organdemo


On Thu, 31 May 2012, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:

> 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
>