Off-Topic /
The "Anglicization" of Europe [132]
But if the precise nature of an idea, any idea, is in fact MIScommunicated because nobody's listening to the answer since their brains are sleeping at the switch, so to speak, we're not really communicating, we're approximating, aren't we.
Could be too that one of many reasons for the rampant rate of divorce throughout the world, particularly since the advent of digitalization, is that couples are too busy fighting over what something is "like" (that maddening filler word of the empty-headed) rather than what it "is"!
Not too long ago, a youngish woman at a party my wife and I attended, who it turns out was from Turkey, was chatting with us at our table amid a sumptuous buffet supper, and happened to ask me what I do for a living. I replied that I'm a college professor, at which point she chimed in, "Oh, you're like a teacher?" I answered her in what I thought was a witty rejoinder, "As a matter of fact, I really am a teacher, no foolin'!" Her English sounded as though she just arrived from California, and so not hearing any interference, I figured she understood American-style sarcastic humor.
Well, I was wrong. She got the tip of the iceberg as though she were an American, yet missed the subtlety of the joke by a country mile.
