Who writes this stuff?

[Tiberius]

"The car vendor hopes to gather cognitions in the field of electromobility"

A line from an article on e-vehicle trials

| Automotive DesignLine Europe

Nick

 

[Rad]

People who are paid far too much money. In hopes of bamboozling people who are too scared to ask what it all means into parting with yet more money.

Money's great!

 

[musicbooks]

"The car vendor hopes to gather cognitions in the field of electromobility"

A line from an article on e-vehicle trials

| Automotive DesignLine Europe

Nick

Sounds like a Fleccism

bw
musicbooks

 

[Hooligooner]

I hypothesize that the language used does not fall naturally to the lingua of the author, exhibit B:

Besides user behavior and acceptance, technical aspect are in the focus of the scientists.

 

[bode]

I remember these from the manual of a Honda motorbike I had in the 60s:
"Depress gently upon the alarming horn" and "use only our genuine spare parts upon your beloved cycle for ever".

 

[flecc]

Yes, it's a language thing. I dread to think what would happen if I tried to write that page in German, maybe the outbreak of world war three.

Christoph put "energy dispensers" in inverted commas to show he knew it wasn't really right, perhaps confused as to why a horse carrying a knight into battle was needed for battery top up.

Cognition instead of recognition is also understandable in someone who has learnt the rules of English in classrooms and expected the prefix "re" to only apply on a second incidence.

All part of the joys of globalisation.
.

 

[Tiberius]

Ah, but the beauty of this one is that its gone beyond nonsense and out the other side.

"...gather cognitions in the field of electromobility" actually sounds like a genuine concept in solid state physics.

Flecc, you are right, that we should be kinder about it if its a translation problem, but at first reading it struck me as typical management guru speak.


Nick

 

[flecc]

I agree Nick, it certainly sounds like that and I've often seen very similar from English speakers.

Of course the answer is simple, Europe wants us all to have one currency and the quid pro quo is that it should have one language, the dominant one.
.

 

[torrent99]

I agree Nick, it certainly sounds like that and I've often seen very similar from English speakers.

Of course the answer is simple, Europe wants us all to have one currency and the quid pro quo is that it should have one language, the dominant one.
.

You mean Spanish?

 

[Mussels]

I vote for Esperanto.

 

[flecc]

On the basis of usage, the dominant one by far is English, French a poor second.

It's logical that everyone else should learn English, only one language for them to learn instead of many, and we should be excused from learning another on the grounds that most English people haven't learnt their own language yet.
.

 

[Mussels]

On the basis of usage, the dominant one by far is English, French a poor second.

It's logical that everyone else should learn English, only one language for them to learn instead of many, and we should be excused from learning another on the grounds that most English people haven't learnt their own language yet.
.

I'm in a bit of a hurry so a very quick Google turned up these stats at the turn of the century:

• 1. Mandarin 885 million speakers
  2. Spanish 332 million speakers
  3. English 322 million speakers
  4. Bengali 189 million speakers
  5. Hindi 182 million speakers
  6. Portuguese 170 million speakers
  6. Russian 170 million speakers
  8. Japanese 125 million speakers
  9. German 98 million speakers
  10. Wu 77 million speakers

• Best get learning.

• 

 

[Tiberius]

I'm in a bit of a hurry so a very quick Google turned up these stats at the turn of the century:

• 1. Mandarin 885 million speakers
  2. Spanish 332 million speakers
  3. English 322 million speakers
  4. Bengali 189 million speakers
  5. Hindi 182 million speakers
  6. Portuguese 170 million speakers
  6. Russian 170 million speakers
  8. Japanese 125 million speakers
  9. German 98 million speakers
  10. Wu 77 million speakers

That must be native speakers, or first language only.
To get the total number of fluent speakers, you have to add hundreds of millions of non-native speakers to the English total, and remove a few tens of millions of Brits.

Nick

 

[flecc]

I meant usage in international communication rather than internal which isn't relevant in this context. As Nick says, the totals of non-native speakers of English radically alters the position. With English so dominant in trade and technical communication now, choosing any other language as a standard would be madness, particularly since so many languages are unsuitable for technological purposes. French is still the intermediate translation language in the odd area like the UN assembly, but that would become less relevant with larger blocks using one language.
.

 

[Danny-K]

Off on a slightly different tack -

This thread reminds me of an interesting article I read a year or so back in which the academic concerned lambasted television newsreaders and the media in general for repeating time, and time again, without any corroboration, an unsubstantiated claim made by self-interest groups, namely that Islam is the world's fastest growing religion.

Apparently it's not the fastest growing in the world - it's some obscure 'new' religion in China that has only been established since 1992! And is growing at a phenomenal rate. I think it's called: Falun Gong or something. All depends how you define 'world's fastest growing'. Not difficult for a religion in China to gain world prominence, what with China's population of 1.3 billion currently representing 20% of the entire population of the world.

Anyway, fantabulous pop-pickers and chart-pickers, here's the latest top ten world religious league tables, how does your favourite fairy-in-the-sky rate? Up for promotion or relegation? - After all they can't ALL be true.

1st) Christianity: 2.1 billion

2nd) Islam: 1.5 billion

3rd) Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion

4th) Hinduism: 900 million

5th) Chinese traditional religion: 394 million

6th) Buddhism: 376 million

7th) primal-indigenous: 300 million

8th) African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million

9th) Sikhism: 23 million

10th) Juche: 19 million

NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Claims to be the fastest growing religion

 

[RedSkywalker]

Cognition is perfectly good English and is in perfect context in the article.

The dumbed down language used by the tabloid comics typically read by the majority of adults throughout the UK as "Newspapers" has a lot to answer for imho.

Ok, rant over

 

[bode]

• 1. Mandarin 885 million speakers
  2. Spanish 332 million speakers
  3. English 322 million speakers
  4. Bengali 189 million speakers
  5. Hindi 182 million speakers
  6. Portuguese 170 million speakers
  6. Russian 170 million speakers
  8. Japanese 125 million speakers
  9. German 98 million speakers
  10. Wu 77 million speakers

I think it would be fair to say that while Mandarin is spoken by the most people, English is the most widely spoken.

Cognition is perfectly good English and is in perfect context in the article.

But not as a plural noun, as quoted.

 

[nigel]

BY
redsykwalker the dumbed down language used by the tabloid comics typically read by the majority of adults throughout the UK as "Newspapers" has a lot to answer for imho.
ear i luv the sun comic nigel.

 

[RedSkywalker]

As mere males that might be a reasonable argument in our case, however, as we all know that the female of the species has superior multi-tasking cognitive ability I think its fair to allow them more than one thought at a time

 

[bode]

As mere males that might be a reasonable argument in our case, however, as we all know that the female of the species has superior multi-tasking cognitive ability I think its fair to allow them more than one thought at a time

"Cognition" is an abstract noun, describing a mental process, like "comprehension", and as such does not take a plural form. It is not synonymous with "a thought" or "an idea".