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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: X Y Zebra who wrote (5636)	5/17/2000 9:56:00 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

Since SI is international, I avoid judging the English of posters and I never criticize anyone's grammar, but I can't help but notice. One of the things I've noticed is that the best English comes from those for whom English is not the first language. I cringe when I read the Nokia thread, where the best English comes from the Scandinavians. Uncle Sam should shed a tear over that. I admire and envy those who are fluent in more than one language. I've studied Spanish, French, German, Latin, Japanese, and Slovak and I've learned a smattering of the language of every country I've ever visited, but I was never really fluent in any of them--not even close in any but Spanish. Even at the top of my Spanish skills, many years ago, I could never understand a conversation I overheard between locals on a bus. You have a great gift. My Slovak teacher, a native of Slovakia, used to complain at great length about how difficult English was. Here I am trying to learn a language where nouns and adjectives need to be declined, there are more irregulars than in French, and failure to correctly use polite or familiar pronouns was a capital offense and she's complaining about English. English is difficult because the vocabulary is so extensive, but you can arrange the words just about any way and still be understood and the locals are so incompetent they would not notice any grammatical errors. And then there's Japanese, where one alphabet is not enough, and the alphabets have separate symbols for each syllable rather than each sound. It's enough to make you crazy. But interesting. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I'm grateful that the rest of the world now speaks English. Karen