You (might) Have to Speak English

[phil-b259]

3 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

This is going nowhere because you assume that I'm ignorant and don't know about any sort of driving and mobile usage! Give it a break, please.  Driving and mobiles are always a distraction - please point out where I have ever stated anything different.

 

This started when it was stated that the mobile number was given on possession work as an exception and also that mobiles had to be off when train drivers were driving - which is fair enough.

 

My question was why give your number out for emergency contact, if it's off?

 

Sorry you see that as insulting.

 

Its OK, I was indeed rashly assuming your comments were made by a layperson rather than an industry insider and apologise for any offence given.

 

As for giving out a phone number when its turned off - the most logical observation is that it won't be turned off all the time and there will be breaks in driving duties when mobiles can be used.

 

[TheQ]

On 26/05/2023 at 10:13, Michael Hodgson said:

Didn't know that was there - I used to be in the area fairly often as I had a static caravan at Mundesley.  I think my late father would have been particularly interested.  There's not many folk still spell R.A.D.A.R. with its full stops and still fewer who remember R.D.F.

I've two hundred Radar museum leaflets in my bag to be distributed at the Broadland MRC show in Hoveton tomorrow.

I decide to use R.A.D.A.R. rather than radar went I think it's appropriate, as for knowing about R.D.F I was a radar tech for 26 years directly and indirectly for another 14. I now volunteer in the History of Radar room and occasionally throw in R.D.F. when talking about Chain Home, Chain Home Low and Chain home Extra low.

 

Just up the road from Mundesley, Trimmingham was a Chain Home station.  Whereas Neatishead was originally a GCI station then Rotor, then Linesman, then IUKADGE.

 

Now the terminology I've just used will be a foreign language to almost everyone.

[Michael Hodgson]

20 minutes ago, TheQ said:

Just up the road from Mundesley, Trimmingham was a Chain Home station

Last time I was there it still had a radar station - a  "golf ball" looking like a smaller version of the ones that used to be at Fylingdales, though I have been told it was recently dismantled.  The railway station nearby is also long gone, all I could see of the line was the parapet walls of bridges over filled in cuttings.  Trimingham is going the way of Happisburgh and Hemsby.  The caravan site lost several plots to coastal erosion a couple of years ago and the vans on them had to be hastily removed.

[TheQ]

8 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Last time I was there it still had a radar station - a  "golf ball" looking like a smaller version of the ones that used to be at Fylingdales, though I have been told it was recently dismantled.  The railway station nearby is also long gone, all I could see of the line was the parapet walls of bridges over filled in cuttings.  Trimingham is going the way of Happisburgh and Hemsby.  The caravan site lost several plots to coastal erosion a couple of years ago and the vans on them had to be hastily removed.

The Trimmingham golf ball has gone, in fact there's a section of it in the room I look after in the museum. the TPS 77 Radar that was in it is now in a new golf ball at RAF Neatishead . This is for the reason you said, the building was beginning to move. Under that is a huge bunker built back in the 1950s. when that goes over the cliff  there is going to be a very big bang..

[Michael Hodgson]

The coast road will go first - perhaps under the weight of a No 5 bus !

[KingEdwardII]

On 25/05/2023 at 16:49, jjb1970 said:

simultaneous translation is not available in all six UN languages

My experience of such translation is that it can often be hilarious in the translated language as the translators have to "think on their feet" when dealing with native idioms in the source language.

 

Yours, Mike.

[Wickham Green too]

I think it was at one of the Nuremburg war trials when the German to English translation went quiet for ages ........ then the silence was punctuated by a muttered "The VERB, man, the VERB ?". 

[jjb1970]

2 hours ago, KingEdwardII said:

My experience of such translation is that it can often be hilarious in the translated language as the translators have to "think on their feet" when dealing with native idioms in the source language.

 

Yours, Mike.

 

That's a big part of why important statements are pre-drafted and sent to the translators in advance. Written language tends to be more dense and less susceptible to misinterpretation. And it means central authorities are in control and stops delegates going off-piste.

[CloggyDog]

On 25/05/2023 at 21:36, APOLLO said:

Saw this LP in a music shop window in Freiburg Germany many years ago, caused a laugh or two !!

 

 

Good lord! I had a copy of that album.

 

Bought it in a sale at HMV, think it cost either 50p or a quid. 

 

Loud and very thrashy. 🤘😁🤘

[Enterprisingwestern]

19 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

That's a big part of why important statements are pre-drafted and sent to the translators in advance. Written language tends to be more dense and less susceptible to misinterpretation. And it means central authorities are in control and stops delegates going off-piste.

 

Another issue is the lack of words in any given language, I believe there are 180,000 words in the English language, more than most other non cryllic scripts, but here in Spain we have 120,000, so some translations get a bit fudged and you have to work out the intention of the sentence rather than it's absolute meaning.

Also phraseology differs between countries which can alter the inflection of the translation.

 

Mike.

Edited May 29, 2023 by Enterprisingwestern

[fulton]

Not just the English who expect others to speak their language, just on our way back from a holiday on the Polish Baltic coast, most guests were German, some Polish, I was the only Briton, we booked with a German travel agent, staff quite emotionless and reluctant to speak German, but lit up when my wife used her limited Polish, at six years old she had to forget her native Polish and learn German very quickly, when the family escaped to Germany.

Edited May 29, 2023 by fulton
Correction

[jjb1970]

34 minutes ago, fulton said:

Not just the English who expect others to speak their language, just on our way back from a holiday on the Polish Baltic coast, most guests were German, some Polish, I was the only Briton, we booked with a German travel agent, staff quite emotionless and reluctant to speck German, but lit up when my wife used her limited Polish, at six years old she had to forget her native Polish and learn German very quickly, when the family escaped to Germany.

 

I think it's a universal truism that people anywhere appreciate efforts to communicate in their language, and it's common to find people who can be a bit precious about people who can't. I get it when people get sick of English speakers making little effort to learn other languages but it can be a bit rude when it concerns people who communicate in English as a second language. It's not practical to be fluent in every language in the world, and if people have made the effort to learn English I think that deserves respect. My wife made business trips to Paris when we were dating (going back over 20 years) and met a very frosty response for trying to use English after exhausting her very rudimentary efforts to learn key words and phrases in French, my assistant (fluent in Mandarin and Malay as well as English) has had similar experiences in Paris. 

[Steamport Southport]

On 25/05/2023 at 21:36, APOLLO said:

Saw this LP in a music shop window in Freiburg Germany many years ago, caused a laugh or two !!

 

 

My wife's sister is Thai and is married to a German, for quite a while after their marriage they conversed in English !! Their two children are now grown up and fluent in Thai, German and English, as is now my wife's sister and husband.

 

I can speak "nit noy" (a little) Thai but my wife is very fluent in both spoken and written English. It is true that we Brits are a little lazy to learn foreign languages as when "over there" (anywhere) English is spoken and written (menus etc) virtually everywhere.

 

One incident i remember was on a day trip from Hong Kong to Macau. A large Yank turned to me and loudly asked "Say, do you speak American ?" - Sorry, never heard of that language was my reply, his face was a picture !!!!!

 

Brit15

 

Saw them actually in Germany a few years ago.

 

It was a Hardcore Punk/Metal band featuring members of Anthrax and Nuclear Assault in the 1980s and occasionally got together to do a few shows. Slightly tongue in cheek rather than anything sinister.

 

When one of my mates bands toured the US we stayed in the singers house in Texas. Comes across as a brash New Yorker, but is a vegan, teetotal pacifist IRL.

[caradoc]

1 hour ago, jjb1970 said:

I think it's a universal truism that people anywhere appreciate efforts to communicate in their language

 

I agree, but it can bring its own problems; I did German A-level more than 40 years ago, so on my last visit to Germany, checking in to our hotel in Berlin, I introduced ourselves to the receptionist in German, only for her reply to be way beyond my limited comprehension! So we resorted to English.....

 

And the point regarding which foreign language(s) should us Brits learn is well made; I did French, as well as German, A-levels, but neither was any use when visiting Spain, Italy, Denmark, (parts of) Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Norway and Finland. 

[Morello Cherry]

A friend of mine is British born but his mother is Romanian. He studied Romanian for his degree, I saw him a while later when he was working for National Rail. I passed comment that he was a world away from Romanian studies, to which he commented that he was using Romanian everyday at work to communicate with Romanians and Moldovans.

 

I had the good fortune to work for a while in Eastern Europe and among my friends were a diverse group of people from the former USSR (Moldovans, Ukrainians, Azerbaijanis, Georgians) and when chatting with me, we would use English, when chatting among themselves the language of choice was Russian (even though no one was Russian). Being trilingual is almost taken as par for the course.

 

I remember being in Cluj and eating in a 'Hungarian' restaurant (ie it was run by Hungarians), the waitress asked me for my order in Hungarian, I replied in Romanian, she switched to English, after taking my order she moved to the next table and conducted the order in German.

 

I have a friend from Berne and he was invited to talk about something or other in Berlin, and it was all going swimmingly for the first 5 minutes, then someone stopped him and asked him to give his talk in German, something which he was very offended about. (The same thing happened to the Nobel Prize winning writer Herta Muller when she moved to Germany after fleeing Romania under Communism. Muller, (who is Swabian hence German speaker and writer in German from Romania) found herself being corrected by shop assistants in what was then West Germany.

 

Historically, French and German were more popular and useful choices for languages in Eastern Europe.

 

Personally, I've found learning one language has helped me understand others. Knowing one Romance or Germanic language has helped with learning the others, if not in terms of the vocab but more in terms of understanding how the language is structured. (Although the flipside is that I found Polish easier to learn than some other languages because it was so different).

 

I find it interesting travelling on Eurostar that I hear a lot more French, Belgian and Dutch staff speaking English, than I hear English staff speaking French, Dutch or Flemish. Which I think says a something about the linguistic engagement of many people from the UK.

[TheQ]

On 27/05/2023 at 22:24, Michael Hodgson said:

The coast road will go first - perhaps under the weight of a No 5 bus !

The original radar station was on the seaward side of the road, the bunker is beneath both. They'll likely all go together.

[keefer]

4 hours ago, caradoc said:

checking in to our hotel in Berlin

I have heard that German from the former East Germany is quite different - though whether that's down to different vocab or grammar etc I don't know, just that's it's different enough to cause problems!

The previously mentioned example of 'Le Phonecard' in French surprised me. I'm sure I heard, many years ago that there was a concerted effort by the French Government (or other official body) to eradicate words and terms which were from other languages, particularly English.

e.g. le Phonecard, le camping etc.

So a simple term understood by many would have to be replaced by some other (longer) term.

[Bucoops]

7 minutes ago, keefer said:

I have heard that German from the former East Germany is quite different - though whether that's down to different vocab or grammar etc I don't know, just that's it's different enough to cause problems!

The previously mentioned example of 'Le Phonecard' in French surprised me. I'm sure I heard, many years ago that there was a concerted effort by the French Government (or other official body) to eradicate words and terms which were from other languages, particularly English.

e.g. le Phonecard, le camping etc.

So a simple term understood by many would have to be replaced by some other (longer) term.

 

Sort of (ish...) like the US tried with "Freedom Fries" - soon went back to French Fries though.

[APOLLO]

Of course here in Wigan we have our own language. All is revealed in the subway at Wigan North Western station, a quick A to Z !!

 

 

 

 

Brit15

[Michael Hodgson]

40 minutes ago, keefer said:

 

The previously mentioned example of 'Le Phonecard' in French surprised me. I'm sure I heard, many years ago that there was a concerted effort by the French Government (or other official body) to eradicate words and terms which were from other languages, particularly English.

 

That would be the Académie Française.  I had a boss who came back from a business conference in France.  His French had been good enough to follow most of what was said about le computer, but he was baffled by this ordinateur that they kept talking about.

 

There was a similar movement in pre-war Germany.  So they officially have der Fernseher rather than die Television,  As it happens my old Latin master didn't like the English word either - because it's a mongrel word -  tele is Greek and Vision is from the Latin.

 

[Nick C]

22 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

I think it's a universal truism that people anywhere appreciate efforts to communicate in their language, and it's common to find people who can be a bit precious about people who can't. 

Especially so when the other language is that of an opressor - in @fulton's example, Poland was variously under German (and Austrian) and Russian occupation for much of the last few centuries, and those languages are associated with very severe opression, so it's no surprise the locals don't like them!

[Enterprisingwestern]

29 minutes ago, Nick C said:

Especially so when the other language is that of an opressor - in @fulton's example, Poland was variously under German (and Austrian) and Russian occupation for much of the last few centuries, and those languages are associated with very severe opression, so it's no surprise the locals don't like them!

 

Well that's me not going to Scotland again!

 

Mike.

[Steamport Southport]

16 hours ago, keefer said:

I have heard that German from the former East Germany is quite different - though whether that's down to different vocab or grammar etc I don't know, just that's it's different enough to cause problems!

The previously mentioned example of 'Le Phonecard' in French surprised me. I'm sure I heard, many years ago that there was a concerted effort by the French Government (or other official body) to eradicate words and terms which were from other languages, particularly English.

e.g. le Phonecard, le camping etc.

So a simple term understood by many would have to be replaced by some other (longer) term.

 

They are still very much Prussian in the East.

 

The Germans reckon the Austrians sound like farmers. But my Austrian ex's family thought I spoke with a proper German accent (even when speaking English bizarrely).

 

However in Germany I've been told I speak with a "North German" accent from around Hamburg, but whilst in Hamburg I was told I was Danish!

 

I probably sound more like an Allo Allo character than anything as I wasn't taught properly, just a few words and phrases that I picked up and much of it stuck. I could have a conversation in a pub and go shopping, watch a film without subtitles, etc. but not much more. My written German is virtually non existent.

 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, Nick C said:

Especially so when the other language is that of an opressor - in @fulton's example, Poland was variously under German (and Austrian) and Russian occupation for much of the last few centuries, and those languages are associated with very severe opression, so it's no surprise the locals don't like them!

Poland isn't a fixed place.  Its size has varied and its map has moved around that part of Europe every time we've had a European war.  The border is generally where the opposing forces happened to be at the time when they eventually managed to get a cease-fire to last.

Rather as I fear will happen in Ukraine.

 

There's a lot to be said for surrounding our country with a ruddy great moat.

[Nick C]

12 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Poland isn't a fixed place.  Its size has varied and its map has moved around that part of Europe every time we've had a European war.  The border is generally where the opposing forces happened to be at the time when they eventually managed to get a cease-fire to last.

Rather as I fear will happen in Ukraine.

While the borders have indeed moved rather a lot, the point with the language is that it was often used as a weapon to suppress the local culture - by fobidding anyone from speaking or teaching their own language, and so prevent any thoughts of independance or self-determination by the inhabitants of the occupied region(s) - to the extent that both Germany and Russia tried at various times to wipe out the Polish nation (and others) and assimilate the survivors into their own.

 

Other opressing and opressed nations are of course available...

Edited May 30, 2023 by Nick C