Subject: Re: Colloquial language [Re: Last Call: <draft-hoffman-tao4677bis-15.txt> (The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force) to Informational RFC]

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 09:46:17 -0400 (EDT)

> From: Simon Perreault <[email-masked]>

    > I think colloquialisms may often be as hard to understand as excellent
    > but seldom-used vocabulary.

Indeed - and now that we have this really cool Internet thingy (it's odd to
think that young people have no memory of what the world was like before a
large fraction of its information was instantly at one's fingertips - and in
80 years or so, _nobody_ will remember that age personally), one can very
easily look up either a recondite word, or an obscure colloquialism, in
moments...

	Noel

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From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 09:35:30 -0600

> easily look up either a recondite word, or an obscure colloquialism, in

So the way we introduce some people to the IETF is to expect that they
will look up fifty unfamiliar words and phrases? Having taught English
as a second language, I can attest that some of the idioms and
colloquialisms included in this document would have caused puzzlement in
my students.

It's bad enough that many IETFers speak in a highly colloquial fashion
at our meetings. I think it would be a shame if we do not avoid such
confusion in our written (and supposedly user-friendly) introduction to
the IETF.

Showing up at your first IETF meeting is quite enough of "taking the
plunge" [1] for most people. Why make it even more difficult?

Peter

[1] http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/take+the+plunge

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From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 09:02:15 -0700 (PDT)

I fully agree. One could (perhaps) argue that this document would be a 
suitable place to INTRODUCE non-native speakers to such language, but
then the document really needs to do that rather than have the reader
infer meaning based on context.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   Mobile: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj
Skype: organdemo