I actually got myself into a serious argument with my brother in law, who is Danish and a medical doctor (you know what that means, maybe).
It was all about great Orators - I did mention Obama...and next Hitler - and next my brother in law went ballistic! Comes out that he, who by the way is a good speaker himself and takes pride in that, studied great speeches from history together with his father, another medic and skilled social speaker.
He came down on me furiously, yelling to me about those Hitler speeches and how lousy they all were etc.
Now, in Danish 'speaker' and 'speeches' ('taler' and 'tale' or actually 'taler' in plural) are easily mixed up, whereas 'orator'and 'speach' in English are basically 2 different things, so being a Danish native speaker he misunderstood me for a promoter of the content of Hitler's speeches being more than it was.
That said, I also know from my son, who took such classes in college, that Hitler speaches for sure aren't studied there like those of Goebbels (Sportpalatzrede) and Cicero (Defense, actually cited long after from hearsay only) among others and I didn't pull up Hitler for the content of his speeches, just for the execution and nothing else.
Man, as an orator he was good and the lousy content of his messages was totally unimportant because his audience didn't pay attention to content but just to the mood.
My brother in law didn't quite get it though and next didn't talk to me for 3 months or so.
Taro |
