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Show ENGLISH AS SPOKEN. Is (From Shipping Illustrated.) J Illustrations of the disadvantages of j 'uhhating local vernacular and slang in one's own language are sometimes ri'usht sharply home to business men, as was the case in a letter re-eeived re-eeived the other day by a New York i-rni from one of their own correspon-i correspon-i !ems in the far east, which read, in I 1-art, as follows: j Will you kindly send us a modern I dictionary of American language, as : we are unable to understand some of the phrases in your letters. Writing on the th ultimo, you say, for instance: 'Do not let Messrs. hand you a lemon in this deal. If they try it on pitch one for fair right over the plate to Mr. . and if he fozzles, cable for a solar plexus." The terms used are foreign to us and we entirely fail to comprehend their significance. Another incident similarly illustrative illustra-tive occurred on board a big liner in New York a short time ago when a representative of Shipping Illustrated was conversing with one of the officers: offi-cers: "Have you been often in New-York?" New-York?" asked the visitor. "No. This is my first trip," was the reply. "You have been running to other English-speaking ports, then. You speak very good English," suggested the visitor. "No. This is the first English-speaking place to which I ever come." "May I ask where you learned English?" Eng-lish?" "In school in Sevastopol. We had. a good professor, and I understand you very well, but many of the people here with whom I speak I cannot understand, un-derstand, so that I have supposed that the American language is different. I am told by some of the other officers who do not speak English, but who speak French or German, that people here who speak those languages speak the same as at home, but English here seems too large a language. One cannot can-not understand the words. People say things and laugh and I am puzzled, but do not comprehend." The moral of such incidents is obvious. obvi-ous. If business men were to take advantage ad-vantage of the fact that English is now more widely spoken abroad than any other language, they must be at pains not to becloud their meanings by the use, especially in correspondence, of slang phrases which have merely local significance. |