Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Thomas Heger Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.physics.relativity,rec.arts.sf.written,alt.astronomy Subject: Re: by albert einstein Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2017 21:05:14 +0200 Lines: 53 Message-ID: References: <598C989F.148A@ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net +WZAT2j/8pmaS9Mxu2KVhQr0CVXc7lfi9HD5/E/hkyKuqdlCfn Cancel-Lock: sha1:sPI7OtYmfWC40EmEDusfCeWJXsU= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.6.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: csiph.com sci.physics:645747 sci.physics.relativity:428548 rec.arts.sf.written:476887 alt.astronomy:292705 Am 13.08.2017 um 00:01 schrieb J. Clarke: >> But Einstein spoke with a very strong German accent (like e.g. Wernher >> von Braun), hence he did not learn the new language English too well. >> >> Since the quoted text about socialism is flawless, I assume that >> Einstein could not have written it (himself). >> >> But possibly the text was edited or corrected on the foundation of a >> text of Einstein himself. Possibly he wrote in German and that was >> translated by a professional translator. > > I think that Einstein's command of English was considerably better than > yours. I'm pretty sure that he understood that one would only refer to > _writing_ with an accent if one was attempting to be facetious. > > If you mean that people with certain backgrounds make characteristic > grammatical errors, that may be true, but it is not an "accent", and when > one is writing for publication and (a) has time to review one's work, (b) > hand it to someone in the English department at a major university to vet, > and (c) also has it reviewed by the publication's professional editor, such > errors can be easily eliminated. I found this nice video about typical German errors in speaking (or writing) English: "5 (more) mistakes made by Germans in English - 5 häufige Fehler im Englischen" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhkZU-_xikY Something along this line would allow to estimate the origin of the speaker and how good someone can speak a foreign language. It is mainly not the accent in a written text, but typical errors in grammar, that are characteristic for the origin of the author. So you are actually correct and 'accent' was the wrong word. But which wrong word I use is typical for me as a German, who writes English as a second language. So these errors are, what we recognize as personal style of the speaker. And this style we can compare with a kind of 'picture' we have about a voice. If these impressions match, we regard the person and the author of a text as identical, otherwise not. TH