{"id":1196,"date":"2015-08-03T05:00:13","date_gmt":"2015-08-02T21:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ywo.id.au\/blog\/?p=1196"},"modified":"2015-08-02T21:24:33","modified_gmt":"2015-08-02T13:24:33","slug":"the-quirky-language-that-is-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/2015\/08\/03\/the-quirky-language-that-is-english\/","title":{"rendered":"The quirky language that is English"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Conversation<\/em>\u00a0published an article by Baden Eunson on the absurdity of English spelling<\/a>\u00a0recently.\u00a0With the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web over the past 20 years, I think the topic of language in general has become more prominent. When we communicate with people from other countries and other cultures, even if in the same language (English), we quickly find that we do many things differently. To me, this is probably a good thing.<\/p>\n

Exposure to other cultures broadens one’s outlook. One might not necessarily agree with everything one sees elsewhere, but it does raise awareness of how other people might look at an issue. Cross-cultural communication is a fascinating topic.\u00a0When I studied it briefly, many years ago, I could immediately understand better\u00a0why some historical\u00a0conflicts had occurred\u2014or at the least, had been catalysed.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, Culture A, in which direct eye contact during conversation is an extremely confrontational behaviour. Contrast that with Culture B, in which direct eye contact during conversation is a sign of honesty, and where avoiding eye contact is usually a sign of dishonesty. Now imagine that people from Culture A are meeting people from Culture B for the first time in history …<\/p>\n

As another example, take Culture C, in which “yes” during conversation normally\u00a0means “yes, I have heard what you have said”\u2014in other words, a\u00a0simple\u00a0acknowledgement of hearing without any commitment to agreement. In Culture D, “yes” normally\u00a0means “yes, I agree to what you have said.” Again, imagine if people from those two cultures are communicating without an understanding of the different meanings that “yes” might have for each other. There’s tremendous potential for misunderstanding, where probably none had been intended.<\/p>\n

It is sad to consider that many, many people would have died through the course of human history due to misunderstandings. Hopefully, with the increasing use of English\u2014as quirky and imperfect a language as it might be\u2014we can decrease the risk of misunderstandings\u00a0happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Conversation\u00a0published an article by Baden Eunson on the absurdity of English spelling\u00a0recently.\u00a0With the rise of the Internet and World Wide Web over the past 20 years, I think the topic of language in general has become more prominent. When we communicate with people from other countries and other cultures, even if in the same… Continue reading The quirky language that is English<\/span> →<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[265,165,266,247,267],"class_list":["post-1196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-baden-eunson","tag-english-language","tag-internet","tag-the-conversation","tag-www"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ywo.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}