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<p>I grew up with street Spanish (arroyo?) as a second language.
2/3 of my peers were descendants of Spanish (by then Mexico)
settlers from the Socorro area who moved to the upper Gila
watershed (San Francisco/Tularosa river confluence) whose
grandparents may well have spoken no English, in spite of living
300 miles from the border of MX. The Anglos in the area who were
multi-generational also spoke their own unique version of
Spanglish with those grandparents in response. I later (age 12)
moved to the border of MX where once again, 2/3 of my peers had
Spanish surnames and grandparents that were likely *born* when
that area was still part of MX (Gadsden Purchase). I found myself
in a Spanish class halfway through the 6th grade with absolutely
NO formal language training, but a broad (if hacky) vocabulary and
a practical sense of the grammar, gender and conjugation but no
clue what a language class was supposed to be about... it was
fascinating but confounding! <br>
</p>
<p>My sister, two years older than me, growing up in the same
context, managed to be almost entirely without Spanish when at 24
she moved to Spain (and later Chile). The difference, I have
judged, is that she was a better student than I and whatever
failures she encountered in formal Spanish Class dominated her
experience of the language while I simply muddled my B-student way
through Spanish class while speaking street/arroyo Spanish
comfortably the whole time. <br>
</p>
<p>What is being described here is really he subject-object
ambiguity/conflation which I find really cool/inspiring.
Similarly, the Germanic habit of not giving one a sense of the
*sense* of a statement until the end of the the sentence. Two
sentences can be structured (almost) identically excepting that
one is ended with the sense "nicht!" so that the listener has to
wait for the whole sentence to complete to make a judgement. I am
not very proficient in German, but while reading it, it seems so
easy to scan (with peripheral vision) forward to notice the (lack
of) "nicht!" at the end. To those (Jochen?) who are much more
familiar with German, I may be bastardizing the whole concept, but
that has been my working experience with the little bit of German
I've tried to read/listen-to.</p>
<p>The subject-object ambiguity is a *feature* in Bohm's
Rheomode... with the idea (IMO) of trying to lower the level of
intentionality/willfulness/precedence. <br>
</p>
<p>What is being referred to as "avoiding responsibility" (possibly
a judgement applied by northern/cold cultures applied against
southern/warm cultures?) may also be about holding a larger
perspective? I remember a step-son figure who disappeared during
a home-tour who said when we finally found him in the backyard
"the dog made me play with him!" which on the surface seemed to
be "avoiding responsibility" but in fact was pretty close to the
fact. <br>
</p>
<p>Similarly, I recently introduced Mary to archery (for many
reasons) and I chose to give her carbon-fiber arrows, to avoid the
circumstance of having "the arrow break itself in the bow" which
always turns out badly for the archer.</p>
<p>Since the theme of this bent-thread has been "how does language
effect our thinking/expression", first in the context of
programming languages, but now in the context of natural
languages. I was trained in the idea of Universal Computation,
as well as Chomsky's Universal Grammar, but I think this audience
is sophisticated enough to recognize that the simple fact that one
*can* (in principle) translate any (natural language) statement or
(computer) program into any other is not the same as to consider
how easy/facile these are for the purpose. <br>
</p>
<p>When I worked as Private Investigator I was fascinated to realize
that law libraries, by their intrinsic nature grew unboundedly
with legal precedent. I also noted that (almost?) without
exception a multilingual user or assembly manual is *shortest* in
the language it was written in, and all translations are less
parsimonious. <br>
</p>
<p>ramble,</p>
<p> - Steve<br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CANr4ZeO9i-kDNGiOv4YOf_=qYsqh9K+ZT36ye98BftCZPiRhrw@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr">Despite living in a Spanish speaking country for 12
years, I still struggle mightily with Spanish grammar. This is
mainly due to laziness on my part, as well as lack of necessity
to immerse myself in the language (there are a lot of English
speakers here, not to mention expat groups on Facebook in
English). Still, Spanish is *so* much more consistent in all
respects than English - pronunciation especially. But the
reflexive verbs are still somewhat of a mystery to me. I've
wondered exactly the same thing that Frank mentioned: does "the
cup fell itself on me" and "the pencil broke itself on mf"
represent desire to avoid responsibility? Maybe even blame the
victim? Ouch! Your nose nearly broke my fist!</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 2:06 PM
Tom Johnson <<a href="mailto:tom@jtjohnson.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">tom@jtjohnson.com</a>> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">Or the equally famous Spanish phrase, "The
pencil broke itself." A phrase which you think I would
remember.
<div>TJ<br clear="all">
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<div><br>
============================================<br>
Tom Johnson - <a
href="mailto:tom@jtjohnson.com"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">tom@jtjohnson.com</a><br>
Institute for Analytic
Journalism -- Santa
Fe, NM USA<br>
505.577.6482(c)
505.473.9646(h)<br>
<a href="http://nmfog.org"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><b><font
color="#0b5394">NM
Foundation for Open
Government</font></b></a><br>
<b><font color="#0000ff">Check
out <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-The-Peoples-Data/1599854626919671"
target="_blank"
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The People's Data</a></font></b>
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<div>============================================</div>
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at
12:55 PM Frank Wimberly <<a
href="mailto:wimberly3@gmail.com" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">wimberly3@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
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0.8ex;border-left:1px solid
rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="auto">In Spanish if you drop your cup you say,
"See me cayó la taza". A literal word--for-word
translation is "The cup fell itself on me". Some people
say this is an effort to avoid responsibility.
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Frank<br>
<br>
<div dir="auto">---<br>
Frank C. Wimberly<br>
140 Calle Ojo Feliz, <br>
Santa Fe, NM 87505<br>
<br>
505 670-9918<br>
Santa Fe, NM</div>
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<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 7, 2020,
9:01 AM Barry MacKichan <<a
href="mailto:barry.mackichan@mackichan.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true">barry.mackichan@mackichan.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
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<p dir="auto">Very much so. We hired a grad
student a long time ago (he stayed with us
until he retired). He wrote great Pascal
programs. He wrote great Pascal programs in
C++, and in JavaScript. The effect of your
first programming language on style, idioms,
and your feelings about recursion and
encapsulation.</p>
<p dir="auto">—Barry</p>
<p dir="auto">On 6 Aug 2020, at 23:24, <a
href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>
wrote:</p>
<blockquote style="border-left:2px solid
rgb(119,119,119);color:rgb(119,119,119);margin:0px
0px 5px;padding-left:5px">
<p dir="auto">Nah. He means more than that.
Even ordinary languages predispose users to
one kind of discourse or another. I assume
that programming languages do the same. <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
N</p>
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