From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Thu Apr 17 2003 - 06:23:56 MDT
On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Amara Graps wrote:
> Ron h.
> >Brian, today with the Internet we have almost all the media of the
> >world available to us. If we don't speak other languages it means
> >little as English versions are readily available.
>
> You're joking, aren't you?
Ron, I have to agree with Amara here for at least two reasons.
First, most news in English is based on a financing model designed to
sell things to English speaking people (e.g. ads) -- as such there are
many topics that don't receive much attention (because they don't
"sell" papers, entice viewers to "watch", etc.) Second, there are
many language "features" that simply cannot be expressed in English
so one can never really properly understand some topics in English.
For example, there is an ethnic group in Russia, I think perhaps
Udmurtia (someone correct this if they know otherwise), where the
native language has verb tenses that properly reflect the "veracity"
of a statement. E.g. -- "it happened to me", "it happened to my
best friend or family member", "it happened to someone I consider
to be a friend", "it heard it 4th hand", "somebody somewhere said",
etc. Now, in the common "English" press one has to judge "veracity"
on whether it is published in Science or Nature vs. the NY Times vs.
the National Enquirer. That simply isn't as good as a language
that naturally reflects how good the information is.
Robert
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