Re: Today, 40 years ago

[Peter Moylan]

On 15/06/22 01:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:
>
> Dan Quayle writes "potatoe".
>
> (Actually, Quayle told a child in a school that "potato" was
> misspelled, and something at the end was missing. Then, after the
> child added an "e", Quayle said, "There you go!".)

Most people take this as evidence that Quayl was an idiot. They miss
seeing the wider story: that most of our politicians are idiots.

Most talented people manage to enter an occupation where their talents
are valuable. But what of people who have no talents? They are stuck
with having to enter either advertising or politics.

--
Peter Moylan Newcastle, NSW http://www.pmoylan.org

[occam]

On 14/06/2022 17:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:
>
> Dan Quayle writes "potatoe".
>
> (Actually, Quayle told a child in a school that "potato" was
> misspelled, and something at the end was missing. Then,
> after the child added an "e", Quayle said, "There you go!".)
>
>

I would like to slip this in, before 'arrison does:

<https://prolyrical.com/you-say-tomato-i-say-tomato-lyrics/

(Recommended but not mandatory: The Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong
rendition of the song on YouTube, bottom of the page.)

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2022-06-14 18:25:17 +0000, occam said:

> On 14/06/2022 17:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
>> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:

Hmm, if your calculator says that 2022 - 40 = 1992 you need a new calculator.

>>
>> Dan Quayle writes "potatoe".
>>
>> (Actually, Quayle told a child in a school that "potato" was
>> misspelled, and something at the end was missing. Then,
>> after the child added an "e", Quayle said, "There you go!".)
>
> I would like to slip this in, before 'arrison does:
>
> <https://prolyrical.com/you-say-tomato-i-say-tomato-lyrics/
>
> (Recommended but not mandatory: The Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong
> rendition of the song on YouTube, bottom of the page.)

--
Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2022 08:08:19 +0200
Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:

> On 2022-06-14 18:25:17 +0000, occam said:
>
> > On 14/06/2022 17:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
> >> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:
>
> Hmm, if your calculator says that 2022 - 40 = 1992 you need a new calculator.

Issit a deliberate Skitt? Bad at spelign, bad at soms.

> >>
> >> Dan Quayle writes "potatoe".
> >>
> >> (Actually, Quayle told a child in a school that "potato" was
> >> misspelled, and something at the end was missing. Then,
> >> after the child added an "e", Quayle said, "There you go!".)
> >
> > I would like to slip this in, before 'arrison does:
> >
> > <https://prolyrical.com/you-say-tomato-i-say-tomato-lyrics/
> >
> > (Recommended but not mandatory: The Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong
> > rendition of the song on YouTube, bottom of the page.)
>
>
> --
> Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.
>

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.

[occam]

On 15/06/2022 08:08, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2022-06-14 18:25:17 +0000, occam said:
>
>> On 14/06/2022 17:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:
>
> Hmm, if your calculator says that 2022 - 40 = 1992 you need a new
> calculator.

You are attributing to me a statement made by Stefan Ram. Accuracy of
headers makes all the difference. (Please refer to the original post.)

[Adam Funk]

On 2022-06-14, Peter Moylan wrote:

> On 15/06/22 01:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
>> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:
>>
>> Dan Quayle writes "potatoe".
>>
>> (Actually, Quayle told a child in a school that "potato" was
>> misspelled, and something at the end was missing. Then, after the
>> child added an "e", Quayle said, "There you go!".)
>
> Most people take this as evidence that Quayl was an idiot. They miss
> seeing the wider story: that most of our politicians are idiots.

Spelling skills are really the least of our problems in that area.

> Most talented people manage to enter an occupation where their talents
> are valuable. But what of people who have no talents? They are stuck
> with having to enter either advertising or politics.
>


--

I am at the moment writing a lengthy indictment against our
century. When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make
an occasional cheese dip. ---Ignatius J Reilly

[Peter Moylan]

The usual way to work out which attribution lines to snip is to count
the gazintas. That method can fail when, as in the present case, a
not-quoted person is in the middle of the references chain.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at 5:00:07 AM UTC-4, Adam Funk wrote:
> On 2022-06-14, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > On 15/06/22 01:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
> >> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:

> >> Dan Quayle writes "potatoe".
> >> (Actually, Quayle told a child in a school that "potato" was
> >> misspelled, and something at the end was missing. Then, after the
> >> child added an "e", Quayle said, "There you go!".)
> > Most people take this as evidence that Quayl was an idiot. They miss
> > seeing the wider story: that most of our politicians are idiots.
>
> Spelling skills are really the least of our problems in that area.

All may be forgiven. Pence turned to his predecessor Quayle for
advice on the throw-out-the-electoral-votes thing, and Quayle
advised him correctly. (Both Hoosiers, incidentally.)

[Ken Blake]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2022 09:59:22 +0100, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com>
wrote:

>On 2022-06-14, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>> On 15/06/22 01:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:
>>>
>>> Dan Quayle writes "potatoe".
>>>
>>> (Actually, Quayle told a child in a school that "potato" was
>>> misspelled, and something at the end was missing. Then, after the
>>> child added an "e", Quayle said, "There you go!".)
>>
>> Most people take this as evidence that Quayl was an idiot. They miss
>> seeing the wider story: that most of our politicians are idiots.
>
>Spelling skills are really the least of our problems in that area.

That's certainly true, however such a terrible misspelling tells us a
lot about the education, and perhaps intelligence of the person.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

It's not so much that he got it wrong, but more that he felt able to
correct someone who had it right.

[Mack A. Damia]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2022 08:50:01 -0700, Ken Blake <K...@invalid.news.com>
wrote:

What does it take to get elected?

A friendly personality, good image and an ability to speak to the
people, able to zero in on the right issues - usually hot button
issues.

But don't forget that Mike Pence called Quayle, circa January 6th,
about certifying the election, and Quayle told him that he had a
constitutional obligation to certify Biden.

[Lewis]

A characteristic of the shittier breed of adults is their disdain for
children as people and their assumption that they are all inferior and
stupider than any adult.

This describes Quayle to perfection.

The amazing thing is this is far from the dumbest thing he said or did
while VP.


--
Instant karma's going to get you!

[Snidely]

Wednesday, Peter Moylan quipped:

occam is quoted as having quoted Stefan Ram. This seems standard
procedure. The guzintas all match up for me.

/dps

--
Killing a mouse was hardly a Nobel Prize-worthy exercise, and Lawrence
went apopleptic when he learned a lousy rodent had peed away all his
precious heavy water.
_The Disappearing Spoon_, Sam Kean

[occam]

On 15/06/2022 20:47, Snidely wrote:
> Wednesday, Peter Moylan quipped:
>> On 15/06/22 18:27, occam wrote:
>>> On 15/06/2022 08:08, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>>> On 2022-06-14 18:25:17 +0000, occam said:
>>>>> On 14/06/2022 17:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
>>
>>>>>> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:
>>>>
>>>> Hmm, if your calculator says that 2022 - 40 = 1992 you need a new
>>>> calculator.
>>>
>>> You are attributing to me a statement made by Stefan Ram. Accuracy
>>> of headers makes all the difference. (Please refer to the original
>>> post.)
>>
>> The usual way to work out which attribution lines to snip is to count
>> the gazintas. That method can fail when, as in the present case, a
>> not-quoted person is in the middle of the references chain.
>

The anomaly is that the reply is to my message, having trimmed away all
my post. So, it is in fact a reply of the original message.

[NOTE: I have deliberately cut out Snidely's contribution here, while
responding to his message, just to make a point. Although the 'guzintas'
may match up, it is definitely not standard procedure. ]

[Madhu]

* Snidely <mn.7ac37e66bd41cd15.127094 @snitoo> :
Wrote on Wed, 15 Jun 2022 11:47:52 -0700:
> Wednesday, Peter Moylan quipped:

>> The usual way to work out which attribution lines to snip is to count
>> the gazintas. That method can fail when, as in the present case, a
>> not-quoted person is in the middle of the references chain.

> occam is quoted as having quoted Stefan Ram. This seems standard
> procedure. The guzintas all match up for me.

Same here, and usually they always matched all the times I did bother to
check on a seeing this sort of complaint. The problem was there was no
were no intervening lines of the author (whose reply-attribution line
comes last in the reply-attributions block) and the quoted text of
another earlier author.

Sometimes it bothers me and I do a Mark Brader style rearrangement of
the reply-attribution line, if it is appropriate. But that is unecessary
trouble and it doesn't always work well. I think the quoting style is
fine, even if may be superficially misleading.

My problem is with posts where there is no original text at all. The
text of the poster is on the same line as a gazintaed reply line. Every
time I checked, the problem is in the original article as retrieved from
the newsserver, so it isn't a problem in how my client renders it.

This seems to happen in followups to gg through tb (and more rarely on
posts through gg). I haven't kept stats but I coulnd't figure out the
pattern which causes this, I think it has to with with clients that use
html blocks-offset internally to display quoted parts with an indent,
and this gets lost when sending out plain text.

I expected others to complain, but so far I've not seen any complaints

[Madhu]

* occam <jh00brF93s6U1 @mid.individual.net> :
Wrote on Thu, 16 Jun 2022 08:19:38 +0200:

>
> The anomaly is that the reply is to my message, having trimmed away all
> my post.

But It wasn't trimmed out. Your message was but was quoted in full in
Athel's reply (maybe your client is hiding it), and it was obvious Athel
only responded to a comment by Stefan, but it is in the context of your
reply and presumably wished to keep your post for reference.

> So, it is in fact a reply of the original message.
>
> [NOTE: I have deliberately cut out Snidely's contribution here, while
> responding to his message, just to make a point. Although the 'guzintas'
> may match up, it is definitely not standard procedure. ]

I think it should be: I may not be responding to content in your post
but when your comments are relevent I won't trim them off even if I
responded to your post. I'd just follow-up directly on the poster you
responded to.

[Adam Funk]

That's the problem.

Lots of intelligent, educated people are bad at spelling in English.


--
You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
original Klingon. ---Klingon Programmer's Guide

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

I had a friend at Oxford who was hopeless at spelling. He has become a
very distinguished historian, with several successful books. I imagine
he has a good editor.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Thu, 16 Jun 2022 15:08:47 +0100

Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:

> On 2022-06-15, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>
> > On 2022-06-15 15:50:01 +0000, Ken Blake said:
> >
> >> On Wed, 15 Jun 2022 09:59:22 +0100, Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 2022-06-14, Peter Moylan wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On 15/06/22 01:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
> >>>>> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Dan Quayle writes "potatoe".
> >>>>>
> >>>>> (Actually, Quayle told a child in a school that "potato" was
> >>>>> misspelled, and something at the end was missing. Then, after the
> >>>>> child added an "e", Quayle said, "There you go!".)
> >>>>
> >>>> Most people take this as evidence that Quayl was an idiot. They miss
> >>>> seeing the wider story: that most of our politicians are idiots.
> >>>
> >>> Spelling skills are really the least of our problems in that area.
> >>
> >>
> >> That's certainly true, however such a terrible misspelling tells us a
> >> lot about the education, and perhaps intelligence of the person.
> >
> > It's not so much that he got it wrong, but more that he felt able to
> > correct someone who had it right.
>
> That's the problem.
>
> Lots of intelligent, educated people are bad at spelling in English.
>

Wot nonsence!

[Lewis]

You mispelt nonescents!

--
Happy Jack wasn't tall, but he was a man

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Being serious for a moment, you misspelt "misspelt". Some years ago
someone asked in this group "what is the word that you most often
misspell?" I said that the word I most often misspell is "misspell".

[Peter T. Daniels]

Assuming that Lewisssss was trying to continue the joke thread
(not quite a govende), it should have been <mispelled>.

[Ken Blake]

Although I make lots of typos, I'm very good at spelling, and rarely
misspell a word.

I think that the word "separate" is perhaps the most commonly
misspelled English word.

[Lewis]

Intentionally.

--
If at first you don't succeed, put it out for beta test.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

I did wonder that.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Fri, 17 Jun 2022 17:03:19 +0200

This is all getting a bit metta for me.

[Quinn C]

* Lewis:

You mean nonecents?
What a cheap shot.

--
Quinn: I'm not very good at talking to boys.
Zoey: It's easy! It's just like talking to girls, but you got to
use smaller words.
-- Zoey 101, Quinn's Date

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

last of the Wholly Innocents

[bruce bowser]

On Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at 8:41:47 AM UTC-4, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at 5:00:07 AM UTC-4, Adam Funk wrote:
> > On 2022-06-14, Peter Moylan wrote:
> > > On 15/06/22 01:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
> > >> Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:
>
> > >> Dan Quayle writes "potatoe".
> > >> (Actually, Quayle told a child in a school that "potato" was
> > >> misspelled, and something at the end was missing. Then, after the
> > >> child added an "e", Quayle said, "There you go!".)
> > > Most people take this as evidence that Quayl was an idiot. They miss
> > > seeing the wider story: that most of our politicians are idiots.
> >
> > Spelling skills are really the least of our problems in that area.
>
> All may be forgiven.

Who asked?

[Lewis]

Better than meth-a?


--
A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

methane or mundane?

[Peter Moylan]

On 17/06/22 00:08, Adam Funk wrote:

> Lots of intelligent, educated people are bad at spelling in English.

And, as far as I know, nobody knows why. Is there a spelling gene? Or is
it simply a question of how much attention each person paid in primary
school?

I attribute my own good spelling to the fact that I read a lot. That
means that a misspelt word looks wrong to me, and that will make me
revise it. I'd guess, though, that those intelligent educated people
cited above also read a lot.

[CDB]

On 6/17/2022 1:00 PM, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:
>> Lewis said:
>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:
>>>> Lewis said:
>>>>> Kerr-Mudd, John <ad...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>>>>>> Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>>>>>>>> Ken Blake said:
>>>>>>>>> Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:

The end? "Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar
tenn' Ambar-metta."

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Google Translate says this is Tamil, but it doesn't deign to translate
it. What does it mean?

Anyway ...

The Painter: And is this the end?
Hieronimo: O no, there is no end: the end is death and madness!
Thomas Kyd (about 1587) The Spanish Tragedy

[Richard Heathfield]

On 18/06/2022 1:00 pm, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2022-06-18 11:35:01 +0000, CDB said:
>
>> On 6/17/2022 1:00 PM, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:
>>>> Lewis said:
>>>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:

<snip>

>>>>>> Being serious for a moment, you misspelt "misspelt"
>>
>>>>> Intentionally.
>>
>>>> I did wonder that.
>>
>>> This is all getting a bit metta for me.
>>
>> The end?  "Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar
>> Hildinyar
>> tenn' Ambar-metta."
>
> Google Translate says this is Tamil, but it doesn't deign to
> translate it. What does it mean?
>

Google is wrong. It's not Tamil. It's Quenya.

It means: "Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In
this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world."

First said by Elendil, the words were used as a coronation oath
by Elessar when crowned King of Gondor.

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

[CDB]

On 6/18/2022 8:00 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> CDB said:
>> Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:

[a word's reach should exceed its grasp]

>>> This is all getting a bit metta for me.

>> The end? "Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar
>> Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta."

> Google Translate says this is Tamil, but it doesn't deign to
> translate it. What does it mean?

I didn't think of Googletranslate. If you put the first sentence into
your browser, all will probably be made clear.

> Anyway ...

> The Painter: And is this the end? Hieronimo: O no, there is no end:
> the end is death and madness! Thomas Kyd (about 1587) The Spanish
> Tragedy

A stately-written tragedy.
--
[Or what's a metaphor?]

[Lewis]

In message <t8kbss$mob$1...@dont-email.me> Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:
> On 17/06/22 00:08, Adam Funk wrote:

>> Lots of intelligent, educated people are bad at spelling in English.

> And, as far as I know, nobody knows why. Is there a spelling gene? Or is
> it simply a question of how much attention each person paid in primary
> school?

> I attribute my own good spelling to the fact that I read a lot.

That certainly did not make me a good speller.

> That means that a misspelt word looks wrong to me, and that will make
> me revise it. I'd guess, though, that those intelligent educated
> people cited above also read a lot.

Some people are good at spelling and most are not. Some people who are
naturally bad spellers make a great effort to spell correctly.

--
You couldn't say, 'I had orders.' You couldn't say, 'It's not fair.'
No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself.
... Not Thou Shalt Not. Say I Will Not. --Feet of Clay

[musika]

On 18/06/2022 13:00, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2022-06-18 11:35:01 +0000, CDB said:
>> The end?  "Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar
>> tenn' Ambar-metta."
>
> Google Translate says this is Tamil, but it doesn't deign to translate
> it. What does it mean?
>

"Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I
abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world."

--
Ray
UK

[Ken Blake]

On Sat, 18 Jun 2022 21:11:21 +1000, Peter Moylan
<pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

>On 17/06/22 00:08, Adam Funk wrote:
>
>> Lots of intelligent, educated people are bad at spelling in English.
>
>And, as far as I know, nobody knows why. Is there a spelling gene? Or is
>it simply a question of how much attention each person paid in primary
>school?

I've always been good at spelling, even before I started school. I
don't know why.

>I attribute my own good spelling to the fact that I read a lot.

Perhaps that's also the reason for me.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Saturday, June 18, 2022 at 7:11:29 AM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 17/06/22 00:08, Adam Funk wrote:
>
> > Lots of intelligent, educated people are bad at spelling in English.
> And, as far as I know, nobody knows why. Is there a spelling gene? Or is
> it simply a question of how much attention each person paid in primary
> school?

It's because psychologists instead of linguists who are in charge
of elementary education.

At the 2018 international meeting of the Society for the Scientific ]
Study of Reading, there was a keynote address by a very senior
scholar in the field -- from Teachers College, Columbia University --
whose name I didn't know and don't remember, who claimed that
it all went wrong in the 1930s(!!) when "linguists" began to take
an interest in the question.

I was not recognized to ask a question during the discussion,
and I couldn't catch up with her afterward to ask what the hell
she was talking about, since I am not aware that any "linguists"
took an interest in English spelling (they insisted that writing
was unimportant, only the spoken language matters) until the
1950s and didn't publish on the topic until the early 60s.

> I attribute my own good spelling to the fact that I read a lot. That
> means that a misspelt word looks wrong to me, and that will make me
> revise it. I'd guess, though, that those intelligent educated people
> cited above also read a lot.

According to the currently popular "Dual Route Theory" of reading,
most written English (they unfortunately try to apply findings from
studying English to all other written languages) bypasses the
"phonology" component (i.e. sounding out words according to the
letters found in them) and use the Gestalts of the written words;
the eye slows down only when it meets something unfamiliar (a
new word, a new proper noun).

At the moment I have for review an article for a supposedly
interdisciplinary journal on the effect of horizontal vs. vertical
construction of syllable blocks on reading Korean (e.g. 나 na
난 nan vs. 노 no 논 non), and every single moment of discussion
of the structure of a syllable (V, CV, CVC, CVCC are the possibilities,
but a vowel-initial syllable starts with a "dummy letter" instead
of a consonant letter) is from the ed psych literature instead of
from the phonology literature.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Sat, 18 Jun 2022 13:24:14 +0100
Richard Heathfield <r...@cpax.org.uk> wrote:

> On 18/06/2022 1:00 pm, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> > On 2022-06-18 11:35:01 +0000, CDB said:
> >
> >> On 6/17/2022 1:00 PM, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:
> >>> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:
> >>>> Lewis said:
> >>>>> Athel Cornish-Bowden <acor...@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:
> <snip>
> >>>>>> Being serious for a moment, you misspelt "misspelt"
> >>
> >>>>> Intentionally.
> >>
> >>>> I did wonder that.
> >>
> >>> This is all getting a bit metta for me.
> >>
> >> The end?  "Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar
> >> Hildinyar
> >> tenn' Ambar-metta."
> >
> > Google Translate says this is Tamil, but it doesn't deign to
> > translate it. What does it mean?
> >
>
> Google is wrong. It's not Tamil. It's Quenya.
>
> It means: "Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In
> this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world."
>
> First said by Elendil, the words were used as a coronation oath
> by Elessar when crowned King of Gondor.
>

Ah, I'm barely fluent in 1 language; you'd need some metalinguist to have spotted that.

[bil...@shaw.ca]

When I was 11 and my (Dutch) family immigrated to Canada, I spoke no
English, period. I learned to speak English at the same time I learned to
spell in English. Within a year, I was one of the better students at English
spelling and grammar in my grade, albeit in a small school. And yes, in
those years I vacuumed up any book I could get my hands on.

My best guess is that learning to speak and spell the language at the
same time, rather than speaking it for years before starting school,
made a big difference in how quickly I developed English language
skills. But reading a lot was certainly a big help.

bill

[Peter T. Daniels]

Do you know whether you have any residual Dutch accent?

Depends how "developed" you were at age 11.

I'll try to remember to ask whether there are any data on children
acquiring L2 simultaneously with L2 literacy. (I assume you were
fully literate in Dutch by then. Note that Dutch spelling is itself
pretty weird,.)

[bil...@shaw.ca]

On Saturday, June 18, 2022 at 12:35:29 PM UTC-7, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Saturday, June 18, 2022 at 3:24:29 PM UTC-4, bil...@shaw.ca wrote:
> >
> > When I was 11 and my (Dutch) family immigrated to Canada, I spoke no
> > English, period. I learned to speak English at the same time I learned to
> > spell in English. Within a year, I was one of the better students at English
> > spelling and grammar in my grade, albeit in a small school. And yes, in
> > those years I vacuumed up any book I could get my hands on.
> >
> > My best guess is that learning to speak and spell the language at the
> > same time, rather than speaking it for years before starting school,
> > made a big difference in how quickly I developed English language
> > skills. But reading a lot was certainly a big help.

> Do you know whether you have any residual Dutch accent?

Yes, I do, especially when I'm tense. Most people can't hear it but people
with a good ear for that kind of thing pick it up immediately. One old
press club drinking buddy who was a great mimic got a lot of laughs
exaggerating my accent.

> Depends how "developed" you were at age 11.
>
> I'll try to remember to ask whether there are any data on children
> acquiring L2 simultaneously with L2 literacy. (I assume you were
> fully literate in Dutch by then. Note that Dutch spelling is itself
> pretty weird,.)

I was in Grade 5 in the Netherlands and I read a lot, and I suppose
that means I was fully literate in Dutch. There was no instruction
in English whatsoever.

My first few months in Canada, I sat at the back of the Grade 5
classroom with a Grade 1 reader, and my helpful home room
teacher would take me for walks during lunch hour and say "Tree"
while pointing at one. That was helpful, but I spent every day
of the summer break that year in a playground, and by the fall,
I was reasonably proficient in playground English.

My best buddies at that time were Danish, Chinese and Scottish, all
recent immigrants, and I'm not sure whether we helped or hindered
each other in our quests to master Canadian English.

bill

[Tony Cooper]

I think I've read as many books as anyone here, and - like many here -
I started reading books at a young age that were books far higher than
my age level.

I don't think that contributed to my spelling ability. It certainly
contributed to my vocabulary, and my knowledge of terms that were not
of US origin.

I remain very dependent on spell-checkers. I'm never sure of words
like "dependent" (ant or ent?). What looks right to me often isn't.

--

Tony Cooper - Orlando Florida

I read and post to this group as a form of entertainment.

[Peter Moylan]

On 19/06/22 00:54, Peter T. Daniels wrote:

> [...] since I am not aware that any "linguists" took an interest in

> English spelling (they insisted that writing was unimportant, only
> the spoken language matters) until the 1950s and didn't publish on
> the topic until the early 60s.

That attitude influenced educational theory for a while. A whole
educational generation, or more, grew up with the fashion that said that
spelling was not important. On top of that, you had the following
generation in which teachers couldn't spell.

But, like most fashions in education, that has passed.

[Mark Brader]

Tony Cooper:

> I remain very dependent on spell-checkers. I'm never sure of words
> like "dependent" (ant or ent?). What looks right to me often isn't.

"dependant" - noun in British spelling
"dependent" - American spelling, or adjective in British spelling

--
Mark Brader What is it about
Toronto Haiku that people find so
m...@vex.net Infatuating? --Pete Mitchell

[Arindam Banerjee]

On Wednesday, 15 June 2022 at 01:40:20 UTC+10, Peter Moylan wrote:

> On 15/06/22 01:20, Stefan Ram wrote:
> > Today [2022-06-15], 40 years ago [1992-06-15]:
> >
> > Dan Quayle writes "potatoe".
> >
> > (Actually, Quayle told a child in a school that "potato" was
> > misspelled, and something at the end was missing. Then, after the
> > child added an "e", Quayle said, "There you go!".)
>
> Most people take this as evidence that Quayl was an idiot. They miss
> seeing the wider story: that most of our politicians are idiots.
>

> Most talented people manage to enter an occupation where their talents
> are valuable. But what of people who have no talents? They are stuck
> with having to enter either advertising or politics.

Or academics

[Ruud Harmsen]

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 12:35:24 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:

But a lot less that English spelling. A lot more predictable.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

I recall recoiling in horror when I first encountered COBOL's INDEPENDANT-ITEMS

I was a pedent even back then.

[CDB]

On 6/18/2022 7:17 PM, Tony Cooper wrote:
> "bil...@shaw.ca" <bil...@shaw.ca> wrote:

>> Peter Moylan wrote:
>>> Adam Funk wrote:

>>>> Lots of intelligent, educated people are bad at spelling in
>>>> English.

>>> And, as far as I know, nobody knows why. Is there a spelling
>>> gene? Or is it simply a question of how much attention each
>>> person paid in primary school?

>>> I attribute my own good spelling to the fact that I read a lot.
>>> That means that a misspelt word looks wrong to me, and that will
>>> make me revise it. I'd guess, though, that those intelligent
>>> educated people cited above also read a lot.

>> When I was 11 and my (Dutch) family immigrated to Canada, I spoke
>> no English, period. I learned to speak English at the same time I
>> learned to spell in English. Within a year, I was one of the
>> better students at English spelling and grammar in my grade, albeit
>> in a small school. And yes, in those years I vacuumed up any book
>> I could get my hands on.

>> My best guess is that learning to speak and spell the language at
>> the same time, rather than speaking it for years before starting
>> school, made a big difference in how quickly I developed English
>> language skills. But reading a lot was certainly a big help.

> I think I've read as many books as anyone here, and - like many here
> - I started reading books at a young age that were books far higher
> than my age level.

What kind of reading material did your school consider appropriate for
your age? We were started off with Dick and Jane, and they gave us
almost no incentive to learn. A few years later I happened on a
children's reader from the late Nineteenth Century and was delighted to
find it full of stories - excerpts from real literature - that were
actually interesting to read.

Die, Spot, die.

[Janet]

In article <70c774e2-94d0-4d3b...@googlegroups.com>,
banerjee...@gmail.com says...

" Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, teach teachers to teach."

Janet

[Peter Moylan]

On 19/06/22 21:12, CDB wrote:
> On 6/18/2022 7:17 PM, Tony Cooper wrote:

>> I think I've read as many books as anyone here, and - like many
>> here - I started reading books at a young age that were books far
>> higher than my age level.
>
> What kind of reading material did your school consider appropriate
> for your age? We were started off with Dick and Jane, and they gave
> us almost no incentive to learn. A few years later I happened on a
> children's reader from the late Nineteenth Century and was delighted
> to find it full of stories - excerpts from real literature - that
> were actually interesting to read.
>
> Die, Spot, die.

<applause>

I was generally a well-behaved child in primary school, but I did get
into a lot of trouble for taking a razor blade to my Grade 2 reader. My
teacher possibly cut short a promising career as a literary critic.

[Tony Cooper]

I don't remember any (pre-high school) school teacher suggesting any
kind of reading matter. That's not to say it didn't happen. It's
just that I don't remember it happening.

My mother was an avid book-reader, and made weekly trips to the
library, so I was used to being at a library at my early reading
stage. Indianapolis had branch libraries around the city. One was
right around the corner from my grade school, and on my route home.

It was the librarian who steered me to books. She'd ask me what I
thought of books I returned and what the book was about. Then she
started picking out books for me.

We also had a set of books that my mother had purchased at a church
thrift shop. There were, maybe, 20 volumes and each had short stories
or condensed stories that were in age-appropriate sequence. (Book 1
was the "Dick and Jane" type, and Book 20 was adult stories)

In those days of no TV or electronic devices, reading actual books was
a normal evening activity.

> We were started off with Dick and Jane, and they gave us
>almost no incentive to learn. A few years later I happened on a
>children's reader from the late Nineteenth Century and was delighted to
>find it full of stories - excerpts from real literature - that were
>actually interesting to read.
>
>Die, Spot, die.
>
>> I don't think that contributed to my spelling ability. It certainly
>> contributed to my vocabulary, and my knowledge of terms that were
>> not of US origin.
>
>> I remain very dependent on spell-checkers. I'm never sure of words
>> like "dependent" (ant or ent?). What looks right to me often isn't.
>

[Ken Blake]

Same with me,

By the time I started first grade, I had read many books, and I
remember thinking that no book was too difficult for me (I had never
heard of "Finnegans Wake"). I had even written a short story around
the age of 4 or 5.

[Mack A. Damia]

Those who can't teach become politicians and indoctrinate.

[Sam Plusnet]

I have always read a great deal, yet my spilling is quite poor[1].

I have the impression that my eyes somehow hoover[2] up the text on the
page and the words assemble themselves in my brain without any more than
a vague outline of the individual words being noticed.

[1] It is quite poor, but in a large Engineering department, mine was
actually better than the average.

[2] I was tempted to change it to "vacuum up" for an international
readership, but that phrase doesn't work for me.

[Sam Plusnet]

On 19/06/2022 00:17, Tony Cooper wrote:

> I think I've read as many books as anyone here, and - like many here -
> I started reading books at a young age that were books far higher than
> my age level.
>
> I don't think that contributed to my spelling ability. It certainly
> contributed to my vocabulary, and my knowledge of terms that were not
> of US origin.
>
> I remain very dependent on spell-checkers. I'm never sure of words
> like "dependent" (ant or ent?). What looks right to me often isn't.
>

I'm with you on that sort of uncertainty in spelling.
I think it's because (when reading) the word shapes on the page would be
very similar, and pronouncing the word doesn't really provide a clear
answer.
All that's left is looking it up

[Arindam Banerjee]

Yes, like myself, who has made a gun lighter than its bullet.

> Those who can't, teach.

True up to a point, meaning for university types. Academics.
Schoolteachers are fantastic. They do a great job.

> Those who can't teach, teach teachers to teach."

You have to be a great-great professor to be paraded on TV, as a show pony,
to show off some nonsense that suits certain commercial or political purposes.

Such characters are envied by the wannabes.
>
> Janet

[lar3ryca]

On 2022-06-19 13:30, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Sam Plusnet <n...@home.com> writes:
>> I have the impression that my eyes somehow hoover[2] up the text on the
>> page and the words assemble themselves in my brain without any more than
>> a vague outline of the individual words being noticed.
>

> When reading, the brain observes the text, it does not observe itself.
>
> The World-Wide Web explains to us:
>
> |In order to read, the eye has to stop at a part of the text,
> |this is called fixation. Next, it must make a quick movement
> |to the next fixation point, this is called a saccade.
> |Finally, after you jump a few points, the brain has to
> |assemble all this information so you can comprehend what
> |you've just seen.
> The World-Wide Web.
>
> Although speed-reading advocates claim to the contrary,
> "anything above 500-600 words per minute is improbable
> without losing comprehension".
>
> And Pelli has shown in 2003 that even as adults we still
> read letter-by-letter.
>
> |Here we show that in identifying familiar English words,
> |even the five most common three-letter words, observers
> |have the handicap predicted by recognition by parts:
> |a word is unreadable unless its letters are separately
> |identifiable. Efficiency is inversely proportional to word
> |length, independent of how many possible words (5, 26 or
> |thousands) the test word is drawn from.
> Denis G. Pelli in "The remarkable inefficiency of word
> recognition"
>
> I sometimes skim text by reading only the first few words of
> each paragraph.
>
> Recently, people started to experiment with printing certain
> letters in bold so as to lead the eye as it is looking for
> the next fixation point.

I took a speed reading course. Then I read 'War and Peace' in about 5
hours.
I think it may have been about Russia.

--
Which odd number becomes even if you take away a letter?
(S)even.

[Ken Blake]

On 19 Jun 2022 19:30:43 GMT, r...@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram)

wrote:

>Sam Plusnet <n...@home.com> writes:

>>I have the impression that my eyes somehow hoover[2] up the text on the
>>page and the words assemble themselves in my brain without any more than
>>a vague outline of the individual words being noticed.
>

> When reading, the brain observes the text, it does not observe itself.
>
> The World-Wide Web explains to us:
>
>|In order to read, the eye has to stop at a part of the text,
>|this is called fixation. Next, it must make a quick movement
>|to the next fixation point, this is called a saccade.
>|Finally, after you jump a few points, the brain has to
>|assemble all this information so you can comprehend what
>|you've just seen.
>The World-Wide Web.
>
> Although speed-reading advocates claim to the contrary,
> "anything above 500-600 words per minute is improbable
> without losing comprehension".

I strongly disagree. I read at about 1000 words a minute. I've long
read at that speed and I don't lose comprehension.

> And Pelli has shown in 2003 that even as adults we still
> read letter-by-letter.

I strongly disagree with that too. I read word by word, and sometimes
phrase by phrase.

[Ken Blake]

On Sun, 19 Jun 2022 21:45:51 -0600, lar3ryca <la...@invalid.ca> wrote:

>I took a speed reading course. Then I read 'War and Peace' in about 5
>hours.
>I think it may have been about Russia.

It was about 1970 when I took an Evelyn Wood speed reading course. I
got my speed up to about 5000 words a minute on some texts, not all.

I did so well in the course that they offered me a job teaching. I
didn't take it.

I no longer used the Evelyn Wood reading techniques (using your hand
as a pacer), so my speed has dropped back to the 1000 wpm it was when
I started the course.

[Tony Cooper]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:05:01 -0700, Ken Blake <K...@invalid.news.com>
wrote:

I have mentioned this before, but I took a class in high school on
speed reading. A machine was used where the book was opened to the
pages, and a bar of light illuminated a few sentences and moved down.
The speed in which the bar of light moved was increased as the reader
progressed in speed reading.

At the end of a section, the reader took a quiz on the material. The
objective was to increase the reading speed while maintaining
comprehension and retention of what was read.

I don't remember my speed ratings, but I do remember the teacher
having to set the machine at the beginning of my sessions to the
speed many people worked up to.

It was an assigned course, not an option I chose. Not all students
were assigned, but I don't know why those of us who were assigned were
chosen.

[Ken Blake]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2022 10:27:42 -0400, Tony Cooper
<tonyco...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:05:01 -0700, Ken Blake <K...@invalid.news.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 19 Jun 2022 21:45:51 -0600, lar3ryca <la...@invalid.ca> wrote:
>>
>>>I took a speed reading course. Then I read 'War and Peace' in about 5
>>>hours.
>>>I think it may have been about Russia.
>>
>>It was about 1970 when I took an Evelyn Wood speed reading course. I
>>got my speed up to about 5000 words a minute on some texts, not all.
>>
>>I did so well in the course that they offered me a job teaching. I
>>didn't take it.
>>
>>I no longer used the Evelyn Wood reading techniques (using your hand
>>as a pacer), so my speed has dropped back to the 1000 wpm it was when
>>I started the course.
>
>I have mentioned this before, but I took a class in high school on
>speed reading. A machine was used where the book was opened to the
>pages, and a bar of light illuminated a few sentences and moved down.
>The speed in which the bar of light moved was increased as the reader
>progressed in speed reading.

Much like the Evelyn Wood methodology, but automated.

[bruce bowser]

On Sunday, June 19, 2022 at 7:40:26 AM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 19/06/22 21:12, CDB wrote:
> > On 6/18/2022 7:17 PM, Tony Cooper wrote:
> >> I think I've read as many books as anyone here, and - like many
> >> here - I started reading books at a young age that were books far
> >> higher than my age level.
> >
> > What kind of reading material did your school consider appropriate
> > for your age? We were started off with Dick and Jane, and they gave
> > us almost no incentive to learn. A few years later I happened on a
> > children's reader from the late Nineteenth Century and was delighted
> > to find it full of stories - excerpts from real literature - that
> > were actually interesting to read.
> >
> > Die, Spot, die.
> <applause>
>
> I was generally a well-behaved child in primary school,

As everyone usually claims.

> but I did get into a lot of trouble for taking a razor blade to my Grade 2 reader.
> My teacher possibly cut short a promising career as a literary critic.

The story is still being told, no?

[Peter Moylan]

Many years ago I studied something called the Trachtenberg method of
speed arithmetic. For a while I could do lightning-fast calculations,
including things like multiplying two six-digit numbers without writing
down any intermediate results.

But it has nearly all evaporated. I am still good at using the sort of
arithmetic I learnt in primary school, but all those "speed" methods
didn't stick.

The one trick that has remained with me is a fast method of calculating
squares of numbers. I rarely need it, though.

My reading speed is still good, except that I still haven't mastered the
trick of reliably finding the beginning of the next line.

[Adam Funk]

When did they start teaching (almost?) everyone in the Netherlands
English? I've only met one person there who didn't speak it.

He was one of a pair of neighbourhood watch people who wanted to know
why I was poking around under a footbridge in The Hague in the
dark. After "ik spreek geen Nederlands", I told person B I was looking
for a geocache. He said that (in Dutch) to person A, then said to me,
"He doesn't speak English but he knows what that means & says it's
OK." (I did find the cache.)

> My first few months in Canada, I sat at the back of the Grade 5
> classroom with a Grade 1 reader, and my helpful home room
> teacher would take me for walks during lunch hour and say "Tree"
> while pointing at one. That was helpful, but I spent every day
> of the summer break that year in a playground, and by the fall,
> I was reasonably proficient in playground English.
>
> My best buddies at that time were Danish, Chinese and Scottish, all
> recent immigrants, and I'm not sure whether we helped or hindered
> each other in our quests to master Canadian English.
>
> bill
>
>

--
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him
whose? ---Don Marquis

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2022-06-21 09:54:32 +0000, Adam Funk said:

[ … ]

>
> When did they start teaching (almost?) everyone in the Netherlands
> English? I've only met one person there who didn't speak it.

I don't know when it started, but it goes back a long way. I first went
to The Netherlands in 1961 (Amsterdam, The Hague, Amersfoort) on a
swimming tour. I only encountered one person who didn't speak English.
One could tell from about 50m away that she was a Jehovah's Witness and
would be wanting us to buy the Dutch edition of Awake! and Watchtower.
The simplest thing wuld have been to look blank and say we didn't
understand Dutch. However, it so happened that our captain was an
anglophone South African who could manage in Afrikaans, so we suggested
she talk with him. He wasn't pleased.

>
> He was one of a pair of neighbourhood watch people who wanted to know
> why I was poking around under a footbridge in The Hague in the
> dark. After "ik spreek geen Nederlands", I told person B I was looking
> for a geocache. He said that (in Dutch) to person A, then said to me,
> "He doesn't speak English but he knows what that means & says it's
> OK." (I did find the cache.)

[ … ]


> --
Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Monday, June 20, 2022 at 9:33:01 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:

> Many years ago I studied something called the Trachtenberg method of
> speed arithmetic. For a while I could do lightning-fast calculations,
> including things like multiplying two six-digit numbers without writing
> down any intermediate results.

Hey, I have that book! I read about it in the Old Farmer's Almanac
and begged my parents for it. I didn't get nearly as far as you.

The other two books I begged for were the Peterson Field Guide
to the Stars and Planets,* and Stonehenge Decoded (which was
also written up in the OFA).

*The 1st ed. used the H. A. Rey constellation drawings from The
Stars: A New Way to See Them, which I'd known from the library,
but the 2nd ed. reverted to the shapes seen everywhere else.

[lar3ryca]

On 2022-06-21 07:50, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2022-06-21 09:54:32 +0000, Adam Funk said:
>
> [ … ]
>
>>
>> When did they start teaching (almost?) everyone in the Netherlands
>> English? I've only met one person there who didn't speak it.
>
> I don't know when it started, but it goes back a long way. I first went
> to The Netherlands in 1961 (Amsterdam, The Hague, Amersfoort) on a
> swimming tour. I only encountered one person who didn't speak English.
> One could tell from about 50m away that she was a Jehovah's Witness and
> would be wanting us to buy the Dutch edition of Awake! and Watchtower.
> The simplest thing wuld have been to look blank and say we didn't
> understand Dutch. However, it so happened that our captain was an
> anglophone South African who could manage in Afrikaans, so we suggested
> she talk with him. He wasn't pleased.

A cow orker of Dutch ancestry, moved to Canada when he was young.

We were discussing the problem of getting directions to a place in a
foreign country. I had mentioned that quite often, when asking someone
if they spoke English, they would say, "A little bit" or words to that
effect. Then, after asking directions, they would respond with a heavily
accented, but perfectly understandable English.

He told me that he once got a chance to do that, with commic effect.
He and his parents were visiting Holland when he was in his teens. One
day, he was talking with someone in Dutch, when an (obvious) American
asked if either of them spoke English.

He answered "Leetle beet".
The fellow asked the way (very slowly) to the train station.

He pretended to ponder the question for a few seconds, then answered.
"Sure, just go about three blocks that way, hang a left, and the station
is another block or so, on your right."

The guy said "Leetle beet, huh?", laughed, and thanked him.

--
As far as I know, my computer has never had an undetected error.

[Richard Heathfield]

On 21/06/2022 5:39 pm, lar3ryca wrote:

<snip>

> A cow orker of Dutch ancestry, moved to Canada when he was
> young.
>
> We were discussing the problem of getting directions to a
> place in a foreign country. I had mentioned that quite often,
> when asking someone if they spoke English, they would say, "A
> little bit" or words to that effect. Then, after asking
> directions, they would respond with a heavily accented, but
> perfectly understandable English.

In /Shibumi/ by Trevanian, 1979, we find:

Diamond had tried to ask the guide how much longer they would be
groping through this soup, how much farther it was to where the
Gnome was hiding out. But the only response was a grin and a nod.
When they were turned over to the guide in the mountains by a
Spanish Basque who had contacted them in the village, Diamond
had asked if he could speak English, and the little old man had
grinned and said, "A lee-tle bit." When, some time later, Diamond
had asked how long it would be before they arrived at their
destination, the guide had answered, "A lee-tle bit." That was an
odd-enough response to cause Diamond to ask the guide his name.
"A lee-tle bit." Oh, fine! Just wonderful!

[...]

Diamond almost bumped into the grinning guide, who had stopped in
the middle of a rock-strewn little plateau through which they had
been picking their way, avoiding the dangerous gouffres on all sides.
When Starr and Haman joined them, the guide mimed that they must
stay there, while he went ahead for some purpose or other. "How
long will you be gone?" Diamond asked, accenting each word
slowly, as though that would help.
"A lee-tle bit," the guide answered, and he disappeared into the
thick cloud. A moment later, the guide's voice seemed to come
from all directions at once. "Just make yourselves comfortable,
my friends."
"That shithead speaks American after all," Starr said.

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line 4 vacant - apply within

[bruce bowser]

Who knows how far back? I suspect that being a few miles across the water plus seeing words like 'Dunkirk', 'Occasion' and 'Vest' appearing also in the Dutch language might have sparked curiosity amongst each other all those many years ago.

> I've only met one person there who didn't speak it.

Then again, how many did you specifically ask?

> He was one of a pair of neighbourhood watch people who wanted to know
> why I was poking around under a footbridge in The Hague in the
> dark. After "ik spreek geen Nederlands", I told person B I was looking
> for a geocache. He said that (in Dutch) to person A, then said to me,
> "He doesn't speak English but he knows what that means & says it's
> OK." (I did find the cache.)

Gee. Most people wouldn't have even caught that.

[Ruud Harmsen]

>On 2022-06-18, bil...@shaw.ca wrote:
>> I was in Grade 5 in the Netherlands and I read a lot, and I suppose
>> that means I was fully literate in Dutch. There was no instruction
>> in English whatsoever.

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 10:54:32 +0100: Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com>
scribeva:

>When did they start teaching (almost?) everyone in the Netherlands
>English? I've only met one person there who didn't speak it.

At age 10 in 1965, we could chose between French and English, one hour
a week, for two years. I chose French. It is now my weakest language.
But I still have something of a working knowledge, if I have to.

It seems I also had French in school from age 12 to 16, but I can't
recall much of that.

>He was one of a pair of neighbourhood watch people who wanted to know
>why I was poking around under a footbridge in The Hague in the
>dark. After "ik spreek geen Nederlands", I told person B I was looking
>for a geocache. He said that (in Dutch) to person A, then said to me,
>"He doesn't speak English but he knows what that means & says it's
>OK." (I did find the cache.)
>
>
>
>> My first few months in Canada, I sat at the back of the Grade 5
>> classroom with a Grade 1 reader, and my helpful home room
>> teacher would take me for walks during lunch hour and say "Tree"
>> while pointing at one. That was helpful, but I spent every day
>> of the summer break that year in a playground, and by the fall,
>> I was reasonably proficient in playground English.
>>
>> My best buddies at that time were Danish, Chinese and Scottish, all
>> recent immigrants, and I'm not sure whether we helped or hindered
>> each other in our quests to master Canadian English.
>>
>> bill
>>
>>

--

Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

[Ruud Harmsen]

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:27:45 -0700 (PDT): bruce bowser
<bruce2...@gmail.com> scribeva:

>Who knows how far back? I suspect that being a few miles across the
>water plus seeing words like 'Dunkirk', 'Occasion' and 'Vest' appearing
>also in the Dutch language might have sparked curiosity amongst each
>other all those many years ago.

How do you mean "also"? Duinkerke, a church in or near a dune, or the
dunes, IS a Dutch name originally. OK, it's now in France, such are
the facts of life.

[bil...@shaw.ca]

On Tuesday, June 21, 2022 at 3:00:08 AM UTC-7, Adam Funk wrote:
> On 2022-06-18, bil...@shaw.ca wrote:
>

[age 11]

> >
> > I was in Grade 5 in the Netherlands and I read a lot, and I suppose
> > that means I was fully literate in Dutch. There was no instruction
> > in English whatsoever.

> When did they start teaching (almost?) everyone in the Netherlands
> English? I've only met one person there who didn't speak it.

My impression -- I have partial memories of being 11 to back this up --
is that there was a huge ringing sound in the air like a great bell
on Jan. 1, 1960, and everything changed.

As an adult, looking back, I can see that isn't quite accurate, but the
terrible economic conditions left by WWII were rapidly improving,
especially in the countries where the war was fought; the Netherlands
began to experience its most prosperous era since the Golden Age
of the Dutch Republic; and families like mine, worn down by the
Depression and the war, emigrated by the hundreds of thousands,
mostly to English-speaking countries.

My family had ties in Canada, and that's where we went, in 1959.
We initially stayed with relatives in the Kootenays, which was in
an economic mess at the time with both the lumber and mining
industries going through rough times.

In retrospect, our timing was terrible, with prosperity just beginning
to knock at the Dutch door, but Canada was also a good place to be.

We soon moved to Calgary, which was -- and I think still is --
in a perpetual construction boom. My father and my older brother,
both carpenters, did very well there. I moved to other interesting
cities, notably Toronto and Vancouver, and made an interesting
living for the next 40 years or so in English-language journalism.

I think the teaching of English in Dutch schools really accelerated
at the end of the 1950s, but I was in Grade 5 when we left, and I
don't know the details. It could be that English was taught all along.
If it wasn't, it certainly would have come to the fore in the 1960s
as the Dutch reached for their share of the postwar boom and, with
the U.S. suddenly a major player in world affairs, English became
the lingua franca of the postwar world.

I think it's a nice piece of irony that the immigrant ship that took us to
Canada, the Groote Beer (Great Bear) a Victory ship, had been built
as a troop carrier shortly before the end of the war. It was broken up
on a Greek beach in 1970, but in the years before Dutch emigrants
mostly flew to their new homes they carried the lion's share of Dutch
emigrants, especially those headed for North America. My parents had
a depiction of it on a Delft blue tile; I think you can still buy those
souvenir tiles in Vancouver's local Dutch deli.

bill

[Peter Moylan]

On 21/06/22 23:51, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Monday, June 20, 2022 at 9:33:01 PM UTC-4, Peter Moylan wrote:
>
>> Many years ago I studied something called the Trachtenberg method
>> of speed arithmetic. For a while I could do lightning-fast
>> calculations, including things like multiplying two six-digit
>> numbers without writing down any intermediate results.
>
> Hey, I have that book! I read about it in the Old Farmer's Almanac
> and begged my parents for it. I didn't get nearly as far as you.

The background to it is interesting. In the Hitler era Trachtenberg
spent years in a concentration camp. To preserve his sanity, he spent
the time working out how to do calculations in his head. He had no paper
to write down his method, so he had to focus on things that could be
done purely mentally.

[Anders D. Nygaard]

Den 21-06-2022 kl. 15:50 skrev Athel Cornish-Bowden:
> I first went to The Netherlands in 1961 (Amsterdam, The Hague,
> Amersfoort) on a swimming tour. I only encountered one person who didn't
> speak English. One could tell from about 50m away that she was a
> Jehovah's Witness and would be wanting us to buy the Dutch edition of
> Awake! and Watchtower. The simplest thing wuld have been to look blank
> and say we didn't understand Dutch. However, it so happened that our
> captain was an anglophone South African who could manage in Afrikaans,
> so we suggested she talk with him. He wasn't pleased.

The way I understand it, JWs on the street will never approach you,
but wait for you to approach them. Was it different then, in Dutchia,
or have I misunderstood?

/Anders, Denmark

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

I doubt whether you have misunderstood, but I may have misremembered.
It was, after all, 61 years ago.

[Adam Funk]

On 2022-06-19, Kerr-Mudd, John wrote:

> On Sat, 18 Jun 2022 19:17:43 -0400
> Tony Cooper <tonyco...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I remain very dependent on spell-checkers. I'm never sure of words
>> like "dependent" (ant or ent?). What looks right to me often isn't.
>
>

> I recall recoiling in horror when I first encountered COBOL's INDEPENDANT-ITEMS
>
> I was a pedent even back then.

More recently, the HTTP "Referer" header.


--
From east of Needles to eternity,
Space truckin', son, ain't what it used to be

[Adam Funk]

Interesting story, thanks.


--
Unix is a user-friendly operating system. It's just very choosy about
its friends.

[Anders D. Nygaard]

I'm sure you remember events from 1961 better than I do.

/Anders, Denmark

[Snidely]

Just this Sunday, Ken Blake puzzled about:
> On Sun, 19 Jun 2022 08:50:51 -0400, Tony Cooper
> <tonyco...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>> On Sun, 19 Jun 2022 07:12:42 -0400, CDB <belle...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 6/18/2022 7:17 PM, Tony Cooper wrote:

>>>> "bil...@shaw.ca" <bil...@shaw.ca> wrote:

>>>>> Peter Moylan wrote:
>>>>>> Adam Funk wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>> Lots of intelligent, educated people are bad at spelling in
>>>>>>> English.
>>>
>>>>>> And, as far as I know, nobody knows why. Is there a spelling
>>>>>> gene? Or is it simply a question of how much attention each
>>>>>> person paid in primary school?
>>>
>>>>>> I attribute my own good spelling to the fact that I read a lot.
>>>>>> That means that a misspelt word looks wrong to me, and that will
>>>>>> make me revise it. I'd guess, though, that those intelligent
>>>>>> educated people cited above also read a lot.

>>>>> When I was 11 and my (Dutch) family immigrated to Canada, I spoke
>>>>> no English, period. I learned to speak English at the same time I
>>>>> learned to spell in English. Within a year, I was one of the
>>>>> better students at English spelling and grammar in my grade, albeit
>>>>> in a small school. And yes, in those years I vacuumed up any book
>>>>> I could get my hands on.
>>>
>>>>> My best guess is that learning to speak and spell the language at
>>>>> the same time, rather than speaking it for years before starting
>>>>> school, made a big difference in how quickly I developed English
>>>>> language skills. But reading a lot was certainly a big help.

>>>> I think I've read as many books as anyone here, and - like many here
>>>> - I started reading books at a young age that were books far higher
>>>> than my age level.
>>>
>>> What kind of reading material did your school consider appropriate for
>>> your age?
>>

>> I don't remember any (pre-high school) school teacher suggesting any
>> kind of reading matter. That's not to say it didn't happen. It's
>> just that I don't remember it happening.
>
>
> Same with me,

I blame my 5th Grade teacher for my Heinlein reading. _Rocketship
Galileo_ and his other junior SF, although I think I got to _Have
Spacesuit Will Travel_ by Jr High, and _Stranger in a Strange Land_ by
Sr High.

(I blame my brothers for leaving around Silverberg short stories, also
about the time I was in 5th Grade.)

> By the time I started first grade, I had read many books, and I
> remember thinking that no book was too difficult for me (I had never
> heard of "Finnegans Wake"). I had even written a short story around
> the age of 4 or 5.

I couldn't make those claims, but by 2nd Grade I was considered an
advanced reader.

/dps

--
"This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away be excitement,
but ask calmly, how does this person feel about in in his cooler
moments next day, with six or seven thousand feet of snow and stuff on
top of him?"
_Roughing It_, Mark Twain.

[Peter Moylan]

On 24/06/22 16:56, Snidely wrote:
> Just this Sunday, Ken Blake puzzled about:
>> On Sun, 19 Jun 2022 08:50:51 -0400, Tony Cooper
>> <tonyco...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 19 Jun 2022 07:12:42 -0400, CDB <belle...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> What kind of reading material did your school consider
>>>> appropriate for your age?
>>>
>>> I don't remember any (pre-high school) school teacher
>>> suggesting any kind of reading matter. That's not to say it
>>> didn't happen. It's just that I don't remember it happening.
>>
>> Same with me,
>
> I blame my 5th Grade teacher for my Heinlein reading. _Rocketship
> Galileo_ and his other junior SF, although I think I got to _Have
> Spacesuit Will Travel_ by Jr High, and _Stranger in a Strange Land_
> by Sr High.
>
> (I blame my brothers for leaving around Silverberg short stories,
> also about the time I was in 5th Grade.)

Your teacher was more sophisticated than mine. I changed schools in Form
3 (grade 9?) and that gave me access to a decent school library. I
suddenly started borrowing huge numbers of books. The assistant
librarian, who was a friend of my parents, was bothered by the large
amount of science fiction I was borrowing. (I think she thought it was
pornography.) Luckily I had the head librarian on my side, because I had
also borrowed "Teach Yourself Classical Greek", and after that I could
do no wrong.

That head librarian probably had more influence that any other teacher
on my subsequent career. His helpfulness with Classical Greek (I was
probably the only pupil who had ever borrowed that book) taught me a lot
about the value of learning, and I give him the credit for my subsequent
career as a successful electrical engineer. Don't knock classical Greek;
we engineers value it.

For all his virtues, that teacher was weak on the topic of SF. Most of
the SF in the library dealt with a character called Kemlo who lived in a
world where everyone's name started with K. Heinlein and Silverberg were
absent. More advanced authors like Le Guin didn't get a mention.

As it happens (as it was meant to happen) I am currently re-reading
Heinlein's "Starship Troopers". That's an important book, in many ways.
In terms of moral and ethical values, I would give it an F-. As a
literary work, though, I rate it highly.

[bruce bowser]

Incredible. Did that 1960 ringing sound come from being hit over the head with a 2 by 4 or something?

[J. J. Lodder]

bil...@shaw.ca <bil...@shaw.ca> wrote:

> I think the teaching of English in Dutch schools really accelerated
> at the end of the 1950s, but I was in Grade 5 when we left, and I
> don't know the details. It could be that English was taught all along.
> If it wasn't, it certainly would have come to the fore in the 1960s
> as the Dutch reached for their share of the postwar boom and, with
> the U.S. suddenly a major player in world affairs, English became
> the lingua franca of the postwar world.

Dutch high schools, for age 12-17 had three obligatory foreign languages
(English, German, and French) from the late 19th century onwards.
(the HBS) Gymnasia in addition did Latin and Greek,
and took a year longer, so for age 12-18,

Jan