[ RadSafe ] "German"/Criticism of Franz & others

[farbersa at optonline.net]

Colleagues [?],

This whole thread has become outrageous and terribly unprofessional. Trading personal insults of the worst sort back and forth is inexcusable.  The most recent post, by Syd Leving telling Franz what he might say or think about the dimensions of the Holocause is  obscene. This type of disingenuous guilt by association and character assassination should be repudiated.

Those who criticize Franz for misuse of an English word ought to try writing their posts in German or some non-native tongue and see how they fare. I studied 6 semester [24 semester course hours] German language and literature courses in college, and know what a difficult language it is to learn, speak, and write.  Even with that academic training, I would not dare to make a post in German to a German speaking bulletin board because knowing I'd make significant errors in usage, grammar, etc. I've also seen countless posts by English speaking members of radsafe with incorrect  choice of words, words spelled wrong, and incorrect grammar.  Should each and every one of these English speaking, native individuals making these posts be criticized as ignorant? 

BTW, of interest, after studying German in college I was able to converse with and understand my grandmother who largely spoke Yiddish which has many phrases very similar to words used in Hoch Deutsch.

Everyone should just take a breath, clear their minds, and stop trading insults. Despite criticisms of some members of Radsafe for the tone or style of their posts, let's not forget that even these posts often have significant and meaningful technical content. If not, USE YOUR DELETE KEY.  Let's keep Radsafe restricted to technical content and defuse the sorry ad-hominum attack situation which we've witnessed.

Stewart Farber

----- Original Message -----
From: "Syd H. Levine" <syd.levine at mindspring.com>
Date: Sunday, January 8, 2006 1:02 pm
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] "German"

> Franz:
> 
> Of course I know you speak German.  If you will reread my post, I 
> did not
> specifically mention Austria, but Europe in general.  Do you deny that
> absent US help, you would be under the thumb of some bad people?
> Incidentally, my ancestors spoke Yiddish (mostly German) and many were
> killed for it in Europe.  Next you will be telling me the six 
> million figure
> is exaggerated.
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Franz Schönhofer" <franz.schoenhofer at chello.at>
> To: "'Syd H. Levine'" <syd.levine at mindspring.com>; "'RADSAFE'" 
> <radsafe at radlab.nl>
> Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2006 8:12 AM
> Subject: AW: [ RadSafe ] "German"
> 
> 
> Syd,
> 
> What do you think we speak in Austria? What do you think my mother 
> tongueis?
> 
> I assure you that I speak German fluently and I learnt it since I 
> was a
> baby. German is spoken not only in Germany and Austria, but also 
> in the
> largest part of Switzerland, in Northern Italy ("South Tyrol), in 
> certainareas in Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, 
> Romania, Russia,
> Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium............. I