I think it's kind of funny...

[jim100361]

To answer his (Rick's) comment: The reason being is probably because my wife is from Italy and spoke no English when we first met. So after 26 years of listening to her speaking (especially in the earlier years of our marriage) in broken English, I had to decypher the best I could to try to understand the point she was trying to convey.

Though it's a learned talent(?), I do have a hard time with other folks in these forums trying to understand their questions and comments.

[minners71]

I too was amazed at you getting a question from that, well done

[delpart]

(Trying to be careful about all the potential politically incorrect things that can be said about this ... )

To parrot something Jim was getting at: Even if someone solely speaks in English as a primary language, it is often very difficult to actually communicate with them. Localized idioms and other such things turn English into a true test of will. You have to actually want to connect with someone else in the first place or it never works. Then you can throw in education levels, comparative lexicons, etc and throw a monkey wrench at even the best of wills.

The complexities involved with less "open" languages (English is the ultimate bastardization of many for all that) is often amplified to the point of often being comical to all parties. The whole Engrish sites, books, and other errata speak volumes to that.

My first impression was that post was generated by a spam bot. Because most of the clever one's end up "sounding" like the same broken English used by non-native English speakers.

Even my use of the language is often horrible in text. So I opt for stream of consciousness most of the time as it comes closest to a conversational tone and impression. Otherwise, if I actually matched my head-space, it would read like a very dry text-book with random influences from Hunter S Thompson thrown in.

Kudos for trying Jim. I'm hoping after that effort you made it wasn't a bot ...

(Random pontification ftw!)

[pdnnoob]

My first guess at the sentence was that the person was saving as a jpeg image

[jim100361]

... sounds like it could be bliss

Sometimes I wonder how she dealt w/me, with my broken Italian! lol

[Lance McKnight]

It's like what delpart said. Same is said about American Sign Language, the language I fluently speak in since it's my primary language and English as my second. If I had studied Latin more thoroughly, I would have mastered at least 3 languages. Anyway, back to my point, it's widely misunderstood that American Sign Language (or ASL as it's known) is universal. It is not. The British Sign Language is completely different from ASL. In an interesting twist of irony, ASL was developed from French sign language.

Jim, I can understand what you mean by broken English. I have had friends who could not write a complete sentence in English, let the record also show that ASL is not a written language either, and I have to "fill in" the blanks of missing conjunctive words, etc. I have been blessed to be able to use sign language and talk in plain English. I usually surprise many folks when I tell them I am deaf, and need to read their lips, they sometime compliment how well I speak, or pretend to understand me. I have a co-worker who is deaf and cannot talk at all. His English comprehension is almost elementary, sadly, so when I communicate with him, I have to use straight ASL. It's tough to explain how ASL works without going into long, boring detailed explanation (look it up, and you'll see what I mean, plenty of articles out there for it). I am often considered as a high-functional deaf individual that speaks in two languages.

One story I like to share is humorous. I was attending a company-wide meeting with a CEO, and approached a human resource officer and asked if they have secured an sign language interpreter for the meeting. When the officer said no, she then proceeded to ask me if I could interpret for the other deaf co-worker! I have often found myself playing the role as an "interpreter" when a co-worker is trying to talk with the other deaf co-worker. Kinda funny really.