This and That – Speak Up!

~ Amusives

LEST WE FORGET
My Memorial stories about family who gave the ultimate: In Flanders Fields;  Calgary’s Field of Crosses

Thoughts about Accurate and Honest Communication – something we need more than ever these days:

Chinese Whispers – Have you ever played it? It is when a person whispers a sentence to another person and so forth down a line of people; then they compare the original sentence to what the last person in the line heard. Invariably there is  cumulative error. It is a good demonstration of the inaccuracies of rumours or gossip… or news, for that matter…

I don’t call it gossip, I call it ’emotional speculation’.
– Laurie Colwin –

Taken a step further, how might a sentence change if it has to be translated to another language before it is passed along?

You can test this idea by using a translation program on the internet. Start with your language, then translate it to another language and so on before translating it back to your language. Here is one that I tried.

English: It is unusual for it to snow here in the fall.
The English translated to French: Il est inhabituel de neiger ici à l’automne.
The French translated to German: Es ist hier ungewöhnlich im Herbst.
The German translated to Thai: ฤดูใบไม้ร่วงนี้เป็นเรื่องผิดปกติ
The Thai translated to Welsh: Mae’r gostyngiad hwn yn anarferol.
The Welsh translated back to English: This reduction is unusual.

Timing is Everything – maybe don’t try to talk to your spouse first thing in the morning…

Types of Conversation:

Another one of those Clever Misinterpretations

“We built this city on rock and roll” – song by Starship

And Then There are Lies


This is what happens when your mouth starts working before your brain is fully in gear:

I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
– Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman, attributed –

For more Quotations of this ilk: Speaking Quotations

23 thoughts on “This and That – Speak Up!”

    1. I think Margy’s fantastic example of the translation (I love it!!!) and my experience in general leads me to believe that most of us suffer from a serious hearing impairment, physical or otherwise 😀

      Loved the quotes as well, reminded me of that old quote “A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its pants.” 🙂

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        1. This is difficult. Most of what you read in social media and even mainstream media is not a statement about facts ( which can be a true or false statement). It is mostly opinions. Opinions are just that, so we can share/agree with that opinion or we can disagree.

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          1. I agree with your assessment. Unfortunately opinion journalism has taken the place of balanced journalism. I often wonder whether readers realize how much they don’t know when they accept and support a particular opinion.

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    2. I met a man recently whose hearing was damaged in the workplace. He has invested (or at least the WCB has invested) in state-of-the-art hearing aids. We had a normal conversation at a noisy function. He says hearing aids have come a long way – at least they have for his type of hearing impairment.

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    1. Halfalogues themselves aren’t the problem; rather that some people think they’re socially acceptable. Drives me nuts. “Rock and roll” – love it!

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  4. We used to call the game of Chinese Whispers, Telephone.
    Mentioning gossip made me think of the Gossip Girls from the old Hee-Haw show, singing,
    “We’re not ones to go around spreading rumors,
    Really, we’re just not the gossipy kind,
    You’ll never hear one of us repeating gossip,
    So you better be sure and listen close the first time…”

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  6. We used to play Chinese Whispers as kids only we called it Telephone. I wonder if that is because we had party lines back then and the story changed with each telling?

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    1. Apparently it was called Chinese Whispers in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Telephone was an American and probably Canadian name for the game. It was also called Broken Telephone, Gossip, and Rumors!
      Party Lines! I don’t know if we had a party line when I was a kid, but I also don’t remember when we got a telephone! My husband’s family talks about having a party line when they lived on the farm.

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