um Euch mal einen Eindruck davon zu geben, wie es sich liest, wenn
man nur halb oder gar nicht derjenigen Sprache m=E4chtig ist, die man
da gerade vor sich hat: darum schreibe ich diese Einleitung in deutsch.
One of my colleagues here, Joern Scheer from Giessen, opened his
lecture to the latest International Congress for Personal Construct
Psychology <somewhere in Australia> with a similar foreign looking or
sounding paragraph.
In the following I quote mechanically from the past flurry of xmca
mails. Notice, please, the curious mixture of temporal signs in the
date-and-time stamps that my Mac-Eudora (a mailing program) automatically
produces (in world time there is a strict temporal order -- under the=20
condition, that is, that everybody has set her/his system clock with
the necessary caution):=20
At 20:04 16.4.1996, Eva Ekeblad wrote:
>... I could also say that English
>is my second skin: I wonder sometimes whether it is the English or me that
>has been most transformed in the entrance process. As if these things could
>be measured...
At 18:18 16.4.1996, JO=C3O BATISTA MARTINS wrote:
> Obviously I dont understand much things because I am not the englis=
h
>native speaker, much terms stay flying in my mind - I ruminate it. This
>experience make possible to me to get the proper sense to the e-mails as my
>life history, as cultural history...
At 20:45 16.4.1996, Robin Harwood wrote:
>The possibility of seeing things in genuinely new ways, of experiencing
>ourselves and others in ways that we never have before--and of
>offering others the opportunity to experience themselves differently
>through contact with us. The monolingual blinders of most Americans
>(myself included) are truly limiting...
At 00:53 17.4.1996, Ana M. Shane wrote:
>I also think that English (as a person!!!) is a most generous language
>allowing all kind of guest words and expressions to feel at home and become
>members of the household. More so than any other language I know.=20
At 14:46 17.4.1996, Alfred Lang wrote:
>In my view, participating in a community where the basic vehicle of
>interacting is not one's primary "nature" -- English language as a second
>language in my case -- is a privilege much more than a burden.=20
Well, Alfred, *I* think it is a very heavy privilege to bear on one's
shoulders if one hasn't the time slots necessary for diving into that
other way of expressing oneself. Not every academic tradition like the
ones of the small countries up north or right in the rich western core=20
of Europe have the soil for their Studenteng=E4rten to grow the sort of
scientists/scholars for whom modern latin is a second skin.
And, on conferences, there are sooo many unfeeling Americans these
days, talking like -- pick your favorite hi-speed metaphor here --
in their native US dialect...
And so on.
Sure, Jay is right about English being one of the best ways to
write/speak as a foreigner. But behind language is difference of=20
culture. And I am thinking these days=20
that Americans aren't Europeans anymore.=20
Remember my last one on that, Jay ?
Nevertheless, I enjoy reading the xmca English quite a lot.
ARa.
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