It's the curse of not being native English speakers. It _can_ be a source of misunderstandings, but in general I believe both brits and americans are more forgiving than your boss would have you think. Especially about business/science/problem-solving/etc. topics. That's my experience anyway.
To me, smalltalk is where intonation suddenly conveys strange and unfathomable things.OTOH, that could speak more about the shortness of my social antennae than anything else, I guess. :-) Jostein 2010/2/1 Boris Liberman <bori...@gmail.com>: > Having returned from the trip to USA, my boss pointed out that I spoke > rather harsh language. Here is an example. > > I would say something like "I suggest that we do so and so" and > according to my boss "I suggest" was interpreted specifically as an > order, not as a suggestion or as an indication of one option among > several possible courses of action. My boss indicated that wording it > something like "Perhaps we could proceed like so or so" would have > been interpreted properly. > > Few questions: > > 1. Is indeed this is the case? To the point, my trip was to Maryland > not far from Washington, DC, if that matters. > 2. Is there any place where I could read about common phrases so that > I would at least word things in exact way in which I want myself to be > understood. As you realize, it is rather frustrating to say something > and be understood very differently than originally intended... > > Thanks in advance. > > P.S. Replies off-list will be appreciated as well. > > -- > Boris > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. > -- http://www.alunfoto.no/galleri/ http://alunfoto.blogspot.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
