On 5/31/12 7:46 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> From: Simon Perreault <simon(_dot_)perreault(_at_)viagenie(_dot_)ca>
> I think colloquialisms may often be as hard to understand as excellent
> but seldom-used vocabulary.
Indeed - and now that we have this really cool Internet thingy (it's odd to
think that young people have no memory of what the world was like before a
large fraction of its information was instantly at one's fingertips - and in
80 years or so, _nobody_ will remember that age personally), one can very
easily look up either a recondite word, or an obscure colloquialism, in
moments...
So the way we introduce some people to the IETF is to expect that they
will look up fifty unfamiliar words and phrases? Having taught English
as a second language, I can attest that some of the idioms and
colloquialisms included in this document would have caused puzzlement in
my students.
It's bad enough that many IETFers speak in a highly colloquial fashion
at our meetings. I think it would be a shame if we do not avoid such
confusion in our written (and supposedly user-friendly) introduction to
the IETF.
Showing up at your first IETF meeting is quite enough of "taking the
plunge" [1] for most people. Why make it even more difficult?
Peter
[1] http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/take+the+plunge