{"id":390,"date":"2008-05-23T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-24T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=390"},"modified":"2009-01-14T21:49:15","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T01:49:15","slug":"the-risks-of-quirky-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=390","title":{"rendered":"The Risks of Quirky English"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I&apos;ve mentioned here a time or two, I&apos;ve been gradually recasting               my 1993 book <i>Borland Pascal 7 From Square One<\/i> for the current               release of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freepascal.org\/\">FreePascal<\/a>.               It&apos;s turned out to be a larger project than I had expected for a               number of reasons, some of them humbling (I was not as good a writer               in 1984 as I am today) and some completely unexpected. The one that               came out of left field stems from the fact that Pascal isn&apos;t used               in the US that much anymore. Most of the audience for the new book               is in Continental Europe, and while most of them understand English, they understand               correct, formal, university-taught English.<\/p>\n<p>Not slangy, quirky, down-home, Jeff Duntemann feet-up-on-the-cracker-barrel               English.<\/p>\n<p>This became clear some time back when I posted the first few chapters               for FreePascal users to look at. I got a few emails with detailed               critique (for which I am extremely grateful) and there was a certain               amount of puzzlement about some of the language. A few of the things               that puzzled my European friends were not a surprise:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>QBit stretches and climbs on my chest, wagging furiously as                 though to say, &#8220;Hey, guy, <b>tempus is fugiting.<\/b> Shake                 it!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><b>Ya gotta<\/b> have a plan.<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;and write the plan in German, <b>to boot<\/b>.<\/li>\n<li>&#8230;cats are pets, not hors d&apos;oerves <b>on the hoof<\/b>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But some were. The expression &#8220;to run errands&#8221; is not               universally understood there. Nor is the word &#8220;shack.&#8221;               (I changed it to &#8220;shed.&#8221;) I want very much for the book               to be accessible to those who are using Pascal the most, and that&apos;s               a new kind of challenge for me: Writing plain English without resorting               to clever coinages and Americanisms.<\/p>\n<p>Alas, I&apos;m not always aware of it when I&apos;m using Americanisms. (I               should find a book for English-speakers traveling here, just as               there are books on British English for those of us who visit the               UK.) There are other problems: Europeans are not intuitive with               Fahrenheit temperatures, any more than we&apos;re intuitive with Celsius               here. I mentioned in the book that it hit 123\u00b0 in Scottsdale               once in the summer of 1996, and although my European friends know               that that&apos;s hot, when I translate it to Celsius\u201450\u00b0\u2014they               gasp. We were gasping too\u2014Keith and I had to shut the Coriolis               offices down because the air conditioners were losing the race.               Solution: Put temps in Celsius. Americans know damned well how hot               it is in Scottsdale. (As I left in 2002, it seemed like most of               them had already moved there.)<\/p>\n<p>It&apos;s a two-edged sword. I like writing the way I talk, and for               those who haven&apos;t met me, well, I talk the way I write. It&apos;s <i>easy<\/i>.               On the other hand, having worked my way through the first hundred-odd               pages of the new book, straightening out my language quirks, I find               that it now reads very well. It doesn&apos;t sound quite as much like me,               but that&apos;s OK. The idea is to keep Pascal alive, wherever and however               it is to be done. Writing for the world\u2014and not strictly for               us American barbarians\u2014is a useful skill and good discipline.               If I stick with Pascal and Delphi, which I have every intention               of doing, you&apos;re likely to see more of it in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I&apos;ve mentioned here a time or two, I&apos;ve been gradually recasting my 1993 book Borland Pascal 7 From Square One for the current release of FreePascal. It&apos;s turned out to be a larger project than I had expected for a number of reasons, some of them humbling (I was not as good a writer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[33,16,20],"class_list":["post-390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daybook","tag-books","tag-publishing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":409,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions\/409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}