OrionWorks - Steven Vincent Johnson <orionwo...@charter.net> wrote:
> For Krivit to have produced a technically accurate word-for-word > translation of Rossi's broken English, a typical Rossi-reply which was > filled with Italian inflections, and pauses, and "umms", and "as" and > "eh"s, was in my opinion deliberately manipulative. > It is worse than that. It is a transparent ploy. It is beneath contempt. I have been involved in teaching and learning second languages, and translation, since I was 16 years old. I have taught dozens of people English as a second language, and I have edited over a hundred papers in English by people who speak English as a second language. I spend 20 minutes a day reading 19th and 20th century literature in Japanese to keep my edge up, and it is sometimes still a struggle (depending on the book -- I do not recommend "Wagahai wa neko de aru" the best-seller of 1906). In my opinion, Rossi's spoken English is good. Not excellent. It is perfectly understandable, and better than many other Italian researchers I know. The point is, he is an engineer, not a writer, translator or television personality. His English skills are good enough for his purposes. He has clearly devoted a lot of effort and time to mastering English. The U.S. is a mono-lingual society, unlike Europe. Very few native-born Americans speak a second language as well as Rossi does. I doubt that Krivit does. I doubt he has any idea how difficult it is, or how well Rossi is doing it. In essence Krivit is making fun of a foreign accent. He is saying that a foreign accent is evidence of deception or low intelligence. Many people believed that in the 19th century. It is shocking that anyone still thinks this way in the 21st century. People use to say that about minority group dialects in the U.S., such as Appalachian ones -- commonly known as "hillbilly" accents. Needless to say, people also denigrated black dialects, Irish and others. Up the 1930s some native American children were forced into schools where English was the only language allowed, and they were beaten if they spoke their native language. Even today, some Americans take speech therapy to rid themselves of regional accents. From my point of view this is like tearing down ancient cathedrals to erect fast-food joints. It is a crime against linguistic diversity. I wish our society was beyond that, but there are still throwbacks such as Krivit, who appeal to our worst instincts and base prejudice. - Jed
