[rules-dev] English as a 2nd Language

[James Owen]

Greegings:

Here I am returning to Drools list again as an interloper.  I think  
perhaps that we should all revisit "My Fair Lady" [based on  
"Pygmalion"] and the very first so-called song, "Why Can't the English  
Teach Their Children How to Speak?" as spoken-sung by Rex Harrison  
(the Professor Dolittle character).  You see, even the English  
themselves very rarely know the proper English constructs of their own  
language, especially when spoken, and even when written they seem to  
leave dangling prepositions and intransitive verbs, such as "to" or  
"from", at the end of a sentence.  It virtually makes ones skin crawl  
at times.

Here in the colonies even the national news casters make the most  
appaling mistakes.  It's no wonder that the children in either country  
can make themselves understood these days without making a mistake in  
a single spoken sentence.  Here in the Southern and Texan climes,  
"can't" often rhymes with paint and ain't, "get" rhymes with hit and,  
most dredfull of all, we most often hear, "Where are you going to?"  
quite often.  The other phrase in the South is, "What are you fixing  
to do?" meaning, "What you about to do?"  Only in the South...

So, even though you find many mistakes in the English language in  
Drools code and documentation, bear with it.  It is NOT as bad as it  
appears and, if you can understand the overall meaning and if the  
general intent is clear, leave it alone and let it ride.  Correct it  
only if the meaning is not clearly understood or if the meaning is  
muddled and not clear to the ordinary mortal, such as the beginner or  
the intermediate programmer.

-- 
SDG
jco