I agree! But what what does an icy stomach mean - to be strong? There are lots of Dutch expressions that my family has taken over and use regularly in English now such as "Now comes the monkey out of the sleeve" (revealing the hidden agenda), "Go your gang" (go ahead) and "That's mustard after the meal" (too little too late)
On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 10:45 AM, Anders Wennersten <mail@anderswennersten.se
wrote:
Very good and also very accurate.
It reminds it also works the other way. When I was in Australia 1979 discussing a delicate project proposal, I stated "to resolve this we need to have ice in the stomach " and getting a big question mark on everyone's face as a response. Iit seemed this well used Swedish expression was not as international as I had taken for granted (and they still make jokes on me for this) .:-)
Anders
Den 2016-07-05 kl. 21:59, skrev Nick Wilson (Quiddity):
https://medium.com/@mollyclare/taming-the-steamroller-how-to-communicate-com... A good essay.
TL;DR: Some detailed examples of how to improve communication and interactions, for the benefit of anyone who uses English as a second language.
Excerpts, to whet [sharpen or stimulate] your appetite:
Phrasal verbs in English can be particularly hard to master. Just think
about “cut off” vs. “cut up” vs. “cut over” vs. “cut in” vs. “cut out” vs. “cut down” vs. “cut back” and you’ll see how confusing it can be when you recommend “cutting back” on something, or asking someone to “cut it out”. [...]
Make your message very clear, especially your request. This is doubly
true for me, because I work with Germans, who are famously direct. The American habit of softening and burying a request is just confusing and pointless to them.
The last thing you and I want to do is overwhelm. We work across language
barriers, not because it’s glamorous or fun or easy, but because we care about collaborating with people who are different from us [...]. And non-native speakers are committing to this collaboration even more than we are: they’re reaching out to us by working in English. [...]
n.b. Yes, there are some over-generalizations and stereotypes in there. It's still good overall, though! ;-)
I'd like to link it on Metawiki, but I'm not sure where; Any suggestions? I've gotten (happily) lost in the [[Multilingual]] disambig page, and the [[Grants:Learning patterns]] pages, but the only place I can find that collects advice like this, is the first section at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/Manual#Guidelines - What page might I have missed?
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