Skip to main content

things i sometimes forget, in my enthusiasm

WikiHow: How to Communicate With a Non Native English Speaker
Avoid touching your listener. Even if you want to nudge them in the right direction or encourage them with a friendly pat on the back, your gesture may be misinterpreted. Many cultures view personal contact very differently and your friendly touch could be seen as aggressive or overly familiar.
And, no, “avoid touching your listener” is not a euphemism. The rest of the advice on that site is also quite good; I find I follow most of it already when trying to communicate in English here in Japan.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tony diTerlizzi and classic D&D monsters

The sixth entry of his series on drawings of classic D&D monsters is up. He's one of my favorite fantasy artists. His work tends toward the charming and cozy, rather than others' focus on machismo or melodrama.

sad fate

“Our legendary personalities are evergreen ‘brands’ with the benefit of worldwide recognition,” reads a message on the Richman agency’s website. Guardian UK Article *vomits* Where is the line drawn between “public figure” and “celebrity”? How can a dead person have an agent, particulary where there are no specific works concerned other than a sense of character? It’s one thing to insist that Duck Soup is a work that should be protected (which any more simply means controlled by whomever has the most buX0rs), but shouldn’t personalities and such pass into the public domain as well? ( boingboing : Bill Gates 0wns Einstein, Groucho , Freud, Asimov, Fuller, et al )