Re: Campaign to improve posting quality for local boards
⭐ Merited by 1miau (4)
I have a small calendar at home, that kind where you remove the files as days pass. On one side of its files you can find important events which occurred in the past, while on the back side you may find some very interesting short writings. By pure chance, after I removed a file of this calendar I found an article on its page, which relates so much to our campaign of improving the posts quality in our local boards. And this campaign, in fact, vouches for the correct use of our mother languages.
The author of the article is unknown, signing it as "T.C.Z.". But, whoever this T.C.Z., is, he is so right with what he's saying!
I tried to translate the small article below, adapting as much as I could the Romanian idiomatic words in English. Although I could not fully adapt it, as some words make sense only in Romanian, I believe everybody will get the meaning.
Maybe this text would determine all of us to try to use our languages more correctly...
The author of the article is unknown, signing it as "T.C.Z.". But, whoever this T.C.Z., is, he is so right with what he's saying!
I tried to translate the small article below, adapting as much as I could the Romanian idiomatic words in English. Although I could not fully adapt it, as some words make sense only in Romanian, I believe everybody will get the meaning.
Quote
At World Linguistic Congress it's a debate about the differences between how you spell and how you write words. French say: "Most spectacular French word is beaucoup. It has 8 letters but you pronounce only 4 sounds, bocu.". English people say: "In our language, most spectacular word is enough, which you pronounce as inaf. A single letter becomes a phonem. Romanians say: "In Romanian, coolest word is poftim (n.b. poftim can be used for "here you are" and also for "what?"; the article refers to the lattest meaning). You spell it as p-o-f-t-i-m and you pronounce it as - Ăă? (n.b. this is a funny riddle, "Ăă?" meaning a sort of "Whaaaat?" 
).
Joke aside, things are not looking well. Just like in all other languages, we imported words and expressions which do not have an equivalent in Romanian, mostly being technical words: soft, hard, hard disk, mouse. However, without any proper justification, we also imported words which have Romanian equivalents: human resources, backstage, fashion.
We also have abbreviations: prof (n.b. like the proff as short of professor), [...] mate, geogra (n.b. similar to Math or Geogra used as short for Mathematics and Geography). Will we say one day ap instead of appartament, [...] or off instead of office?
And then we have acronyms stolen from English: FYI, BTW, ASAP etc.. Speaking of which, if we are in such a hurry (or we are so lazy at writing) RPD would be 25% shorter than ASAP (n.b. RPD is (abusively) used as short for repede, which means fast)!
The peaceful principle saying that "The language is a living phenomena" is a debatable one: terrorists are also a living phenomena. So are the sharks. Or real estate sharks. And so are also foolishness, cowardice or malice... This does not mean we accept them. And the idea that "The habit wins over the rule" is really a language killer. [...]
).Joke aside, things are not looking well. Just like in all other languages, we imported words and expressions which do not have an equivalent in Romanian, mostly being technical words: soft, hard, hard disk, mouse. However, without any proper justification, we also imported words which have Romanian equivalents: human resources, backstage, fashion.
We also have abbreviations: prof (n.b. like the proff as short of professor), [...] mate, geogra (n.b. similar to Math or Geogra used as short for Mathematics and Geography). Will we say one day ap instead of appartament, [...] or off instead of office?
And then we have acronyms stolen from English: FYI, BTW, ASAP etc.. Speaking of which, if we are in such a hurry (or we are so lazy at writing) RPD would be 25% shorter than ASAP (n.b. RPD is (abusively) used as short for repede, which means fast)!
The peaceful principle saying that "The language is a living phenomena" is a debatable one: terrorists are also a living phenomena. So are the sharks. Or real estate sharks. And so are also foolishness, cowardice or malice... This does not mean we accept them. And the idea that "The habit wins over the rule" is really a language killer. [...]
Maybe this text would determine all of us to try to use our languages more correctly...