How do we communicate?

Dive Bar Casanova said:
About 2002 my son and I visited Pismo Beach Ca.
We stayed at a 1950’s shop worn but clean Motel that was staffed by girls exiting the States prison system.
We didn’t know this. The indoor heated swimming pool, cheap rate and decent parking is why we booked it.

One of the first trips I ever posted on a travel forum site telling about our interaction with the staff.

The girls staffing the motel spent their lives suffering indignities. Maybe some self inflicted but most as a result of a bad environment they were born into. Not dealt a good hand at birth.

From that experience I learned how the written word can be understood much different than the spoken word. One can make enemies quick if you don’t word it all proper.

Some readers took it as condescending, some took it as a sincere, butt naked truth but fun descriptions of our experiences, some loved it and booked a trip there.

I meant it to be a positive adventure we just happened upon but some didn’t see it that way.

It was an eye opener.
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Post at least as interesting as the experience you and your son did.
Yes, the written word has a weight and a responsibility in itself totally different from the spoken word.

In general I believe that, although with the best intentions and avoiding being too partisan or partisan, certain subjects - above all written ones - are in any case more easily attacked precisely because despite being a personal experience that you lived, you lived it in a 'social' situation that inevitably lends itself to every kind of comment and point of view.
 
I just communicated with my daughter in a very new way to me.
She called me from Key West. They were having lunch at this rest. that had a camera. She sent me an e-mail with a link to their camera. So while I am talking on the phone to my daughter, I also could see where she was having lunch. The camera was across the way and swinging around and I could see the docks, out over the water, the whole rest. and the motel/hotel, big bridge. I also saw my daughter waving to me. I am going to try and post the link if anyone wants to see it.
Key Largo North Anchorage Streaming Cam - Webcams in the Florida Keys
 
cookieee said:
I just communicated with my daughter in a very new way to me.
She called me from Key West. They were having lunch at this rest. that had a camera. She sent me an e-mail with a link to their camera. So while I am talking on the phone to my daughter, I also could see where she was having lunch. The camera was across the way and swinging around and I could see the docks, out over the water, the whole rest. and the motel/hotel, big bridge. I also saw my daughter waving to me. I am going to try and post the link if anyone wants to see it.
Key Largo North Anchorage Streaming Cam - Webcams in the Florida Keys
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Webcams are great! I remember in the first days of webams (a long while back - maybe mid 90's?), I found a site in the US which was set up in someone's garden/back yard. If you logged in and clicked on a button, a bubble machine would release bubbles in their garden. So they would know someone was looking in and you could see the bubbles you had released. Wonderful! I can release bubbles in the US from my computer in the UK. :D
 
There's a very obvious reason for English being such a universal language. but in many ways, it's illogical. English is a mishmash of all sorts and one thing we lack is accents that tell people how to pronounce letter sounds. So:

A duck may paddle and then waddle.
Someone may be reading history at Reading University.
We might hear a bear growling (but what would we wear, dear?).
And so on.

Also consider this one. The verb to cleave has two meanings, which are the exact opposite of each other. You'd have to work hard to tell anyone that this is a nice simple language.
 
Our youngest and his friends felt their English teachers only mission in life was to ruin theirs.
They had him two years in a row. They were lined up to have this teacher again for a third year.

But the teacher retired and the kids reaction was like their favorite pet died. They were beside themselves with grief at the loss.
 
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One of our kids was bored in public school.
We enrolled him in a private school that was a crucible of tests and high GPA to get into.

What blindsided us was this is THE school that A list sports elites, Hollywood celibs (spell check changed that to celibacy) and the rich and famous rock and rollers send their kids too as well. Some famous kids attended too.
We had no clue. It was just a highly rated school is all we were concerned with.

We became Benefactors and were invited to schools social functions and mixed with these famous parents.

It was often a leave me alone but you better know who I am attitude from most of the celebs. I rarely recognized them and they sensed that and it didn’t sit well. Conversations ended abruptly and they’d default to a 100 mile, aloof gaze.

Kinda like your cat doesn't want you to pick them up, but you better try.
 
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Duck59 said:
There's a very obvious reason for English being such a universal language. but in many ways, it's illogical. English is a mishmash of all sorts and one thing we lack is accents that tell people how to pronounce letter sounds. So:

A duck may paddle and then waddle.
Someone may be reading history at Reading University.
We might hear a bear growling (but what would we wear, dear?).
And so on.

Also consider this one. The verb to cleave has two meanings, which are the exact opposite of each other. You'd have to work hard to tell anyone that this is a nice simple language.
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Its complicated further by different regional pronunciations - more variety perhaps than in other countries. At least, that is my experience. In France for example, there are some differences in accents, particularly between North & South. But even with my limited French I can understand them. In the UK there are people living in the South who would be hard pushed to understand a strong North East accent.
 
A language, whatever it is, is not at all simple. I imagine a people's language as a city, built brick by brick.

There is no simple language, unless you talk to someone only with gestures (yes I know, the Italians gesticulate ...)

As for my experience with English, which I find a fascinating language in spite of being completely opposed to Neo-Latin languages like Italian, obviously it was difficult for me to have to make a clean slate to make room for a language that writes in one way but pronounces in another. Absurd for us. But I can say with a certain personal pride that every time I am in the UK I feel much safer when I speak or listen to someone who speaks to me in English. Well yes, I still have the face with the question mark, but I try to understand the keywords)
One day (maybe) I will also come to understand and distinguish the various accents.

It is curious how even in Italy there are regions that, rather than accents and dialects, maintain a real language of their own, such as in Sardinia. The Sardinian language is spoken on the island, not the Sardinian dialect. And each area of Sardinia has its own language in turn.

Returning a moment to gesturing, apart from the horrendous folkloristic caricature that many make of it, is part of communication and I find this way equally fascinating.
 
Webcams can be quite revealing as well. Karen was the president of our HOA where we used to live. There were cams set up at the community entrance and pool area. One of the residents didn't
believe it when he was told about his underage daughter being at the pool when it was closed, engaging in questionable behavior with her boyfriend. Until he was shown the video.
 
morning glory said:
Its complicated further by different regional pronunciations - more variety perhaps than in other countries. At least, that is my experience. In France for example, there are some differences in accents, particularly between North & South. But even with my limited French I can understand them. In the UK there are people living in the South who would be hard pushed to understand a strong North East accent.
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Hadaway man, it's stottin' doon, we cannae gan up the toon reet naw.
 
Once we had a television series on the history of English.
The show went to public business in towns around America and recorded people's conversations.
Then they went to the specific area in England where that USAs town's first inhabitants came from and recorded locals conversations there too. Dozens of different locations all around the USA and the UK.

They then compared and dissected the accents between the US town and that corresponding English town and they were so similar it was really interesting. Amazing really. The Southern USA towns speak english with a little teardrop mixed in the accent, East coast towns they drop or stretch out a Vowel. Just like back in the UK.

I once spent some time in London with family.
We'd go to various pubs near points of interest we were touring. We'd mingle and talk to people and my cousins could tell what part of London a person was from by their accent. Not what part of the country but what specific neighborhood in London they came from. Now that's really interesting.

I was working with some German engineers once.
They had directions they wanted me to instruct all the other crews with.
"I'll spread the word" I'd reply.
The Germans would get this puzzled look on their faces. They weren't hep to US slang.

No harm no foul = Sixpence none the richer = Don't make no nevermind.
The Germans didn't get it.
 
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Another episode the show went to places around the world with their own local language.
These places did business with English speaking traders for centuries.

They developed a dialect that was more than simple Pidgin English.
They were fantastic blends of both english and their native language, even down to mixing and blending syllables that if you were native in either language, not knowing one from the other, you could immediately, clearly understand the dialect and pick it up quick and speak it.
Absolutely fascinating how they demonstrated it.
 
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All of which reminds me of a programme shown on the BBC a few years ago. Someone had discovered recordings of former WW1 prisoners of war in a building in Berlin. The prisoners were all British and had spoken various texts. There appeared to be no evil motive, just a curiosity about accents.

The programme makers had traced descendants of some of the prisoners and naturally, these people were very moved at hearing the voices of people who were their great-grandfathers, etc. The thing that was truly intriguing was how much accents had changed over (just under) a hundred years. The POWs had much stronger regional accents than their descendants.

This rang true for me. I have a friend who comes from Reading, a town about 25 miles west of London. My friend has a London-ish accent that is, he would admit, pretty nondescript. I met his father several times and his accent, though growing up in the same town, was very different. It had a rural burr to it, not unlike the accent of the cricket commentator John Arlott, who will be familiar to many of the, um, older British people here.
 
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