You might have fallen into the Belgium linguistic conflict. Belgium suffers
from an historic "ethnic" divide between the French speaking Walloons and
the Flemings who speak a language not unlike Dutch. In the fairly recent
past there have been language riots in Brussels so when in Belgium it is
probably safer to start in English. In France on the other hand starting
off in even bad French is the best strategy. At least that is what this
long term Aussie expat would suggest.
--On 01 December 2004 8:19 +1000 Hargraves Gary
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This sort of thing is symptomatic of a wider malaise in all ISO/Brussels
> activities and thinking, IMHO. Belgium must be too close and inherited
> the worst aspects of Germany - or perhaps its that they aspire to be
> Hercule Piorot (a belgian detective character by an English novelist).
>
> You know, the only time I was insulted in Europe for attempting to speak
> French was in Belgium. Of course, I was insulted in perfect English - and
> being Australian I could recognise that ;). I think you can see where
> this craziness is going: the Belgians simply want to 'out-English the
> English' in formality.
>
> Off topic ... you bet ... relevant, you be the judge.
>
>
> Best regards
>
> Gaz
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fortran 90 List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf
> Of Richard E Maine
> Sent: Wednesday, 1 December 2004 2:34 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: F2003 has been published
>
>
> On Nov 30, 2004, at 4:21 AM, John Reid wrote:
>
>> The failure to communicate with me or Richard Maine is extremely
>> annoying. Many
>> thanks, David, for telling me about it.
>
> Yep. My guess was correct - that I'd first hear about it when someone
> happened to notice it in an ISO catalog. In fact, I first heard in
> comp.lang.fortran. I saw Dan's post there (citing John) about a minute
> before I saw John's email to this list.
>
> Now to figure out exactly what the standard looks like (since they
> haven't told me) so that I can make a base document for committee work
> that actually matches it. Not that the proposed changes were
> significant (as I'm sure you know, John - in fact none of them actually
> change a single word of text), but I'd still like to have the internal
> base document "right" (meaning that it matches the published one), or
> at least as close to it as practical.
>
> (And then I'll be free to update the OS on the box I was building the
> drafts on. For a while I've been in a strict configuration control mode
> of not changing anything at all until the standard was published.
> Didn't want to find that a version update of some software involved
> caused undesirable changes that didn't get noticed because it was so
> last-minute.)
>
> --
> Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience;
> [log in to unmask] | experience comes from bad judgment.
> | -- Mark Twain
>
>
> ************************************************************************
> The information in this e-mail together with any attachments is
> intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed
> and may contain confidential and/or privileged material.
> Any form of review, disclosure, modification, distribution
> and/or publication of this e-mail message is prohibited.
> If you have received this message in error, you are asked to
> inform the sender as quickly as possible and delete this message
> and any copies of this message from your computer and/or your
> computer system network.
> ************************************************************************
--
Dr. Lawrie Schonfelder
Honorary Senior Fellow, University of Liverpool
Home: 1 Marine Park, West Kirby, Wirral, UK, CH48 5HN
Phone: +44 (151) 625 6986
|
