On 5/31/12 7:46 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Simon Perreault <simon.perreault@xxxxxxxxxxx> > > > 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... 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