English Language Usage

[rockershovel]

Not quite going by the way the word was used amongst welders that I knew.

A fillet weld was a term applied to the whole weld of a particular type and not just to the capping layer.

It was usually used when two pieces of metal were welded together at around the 90 degree angle and would be further defined by leg length and throat thickness.

A butt weld was the term used for welding two pieces of metal side by side. This would normally entail them having a v ground out where the weld was to go and would be completed with a capping weld.

Bernard

Welding is a big subject. I don’t really have experience of fabrication. Most of my experience is large (over 24” diameter) pipelines where welds at 90 degree angles don’t really exist, except for pedestals etc which are just generic details, and most welds are butt welds and comprise root, one or more fill, and capping passes.

 

Terminology varies quite a lot, too.

[Welchester]

I seem to remember learning at school a particular form of French past tense which is only used in printed matter. Can't recall what the form was called; however one section of the O level paper was to write a small newspaper or magazine article (two or three paragraphs I suppose) about a past event, which indicates that the particular form was being examined.

 

I can't think of any time in which I have used that form since! I also rarely see it in printed form either these days. For example I saw it in some publication last year, and didn't know what it was at first. Clearly, my schoolboy French has a built-in obsolescence beyond that caused by senility!

 

Past historic. Beloved of W.F.H. Whitmarsh.

[Neil]

Further annoyance, politicians (particularly the PM) who say 'I'm clear that ....' when what they should really be saying is 'I want to make it clear that ...'.

[chaz]

Further annoyance, politicians (particularly the PM) who say 'I'm clear that ....' when what they should really be saying is 'I want to make it clear that ...'.

 

 

Particularly when what they then go to say is anything but....

[Bernard Lamb]

Welding is a big subject. I don’t really have experience of fabrication. Most of my experience is large (over 24” diameter) pipelines where welds at 90 degree angles don’t really exist, except for pedestals etc which are just generic details, and most welds are butt welds and comprise root, one or more fill, and capping passes.

 

Terminology varies quite a lot, too.

 

Fully in agreement with your comments on butt welds. 

I was more involved with fillet welds. Designing the correct size of a weld was quite a complicated task. I presume there are computer programs that can do it these days.

There was a chap at The Welding Institute who could fill a gap from the width of a hairline crack up to around 6mm in one pass. No messing about with the procedure that you describe.

He was in great demand in the repair of old cars.

Bernard

[Black Marlin]

Just because someone uses a nail-file to tighten a screw doesn't mean that a nail-file is a screwdriver, though of course it would be true to say that such a person would be using a nail-file as a screwdriver in the absence of the correct tool.

 

But do take what I say with a little pinch of salt! I know just how pedantic I'm being. Oh, and in swimming pool, swimming is probably a gerundive, rather than a gerund, though other interpretations are possible.

 

Ah, excellent - let's have a pedant-off!

 

When I say 'I am swimming', 'swimming' is a present participle; when I talk about 'a swimming pool', 'swimming' is not a present participle. The word might look identical, but its nature is determined by its context. But you know this - you must do! 

 

If anyone else wants to play, and isn't sure what I mean by context determining a word's nature, answer me this (or at least consider the question): is 'ford' (or 'forge', or 'plough') a noun or a verb?

 

P.S. Gerundive? Really? It's a brave man who'd make that argument... shall we debate it in the for-swimming pool?!

[Fenman]

...

Sort of related to this...a bit...is that I've seen complaints by non native English speakers that at scientific conferences they have difficulty following talks because the speaker is using much more colloquial langauge than they are used to reading in papers.

Exactly this. I work for an international organisation with 5 official languages. The administrative working language is English. Fairly often I’m the only person in the room with English as my mother tongue, and I’m always in a minority.

 

If you want to be understood in this environment it is impossible to speak English as you normally would. Simple Anglo-Saxon words, simple sentences, no colloquialisms, leave an “unnatural” gap between each word, slow down your pace.* It’s fascinating (and embarrassing) how often after a colleague from, for example, New Zealand or Canada has spoken that I am asked to “summarise” what has just been said (they actually mean “translate it into a form of English that I can understand”). New staff who’ve only worked in England also find it tough to learn this new way of speaking.

 

Because speaking English like that doesn’t come easy - and it makes you realise, if you were in any doubt, how tough it is for most of them to work all day in English. As soon as you relax, you risk being badly misunderstood (whereas technical/professional “jargon” words are usually commonly understood). Yesterday I had to dissuade a Spanish speaker from using the word “singularity” in English (perfectly clear in Spanish) when what she meant were “the specific circumstances of each case”. It was tricky to explain that that word in English was only really used in astrophysics.

 

The joke that some of them make is that the official working language of our organisation is “bad English”.

 

But the real problem usually comes when you assume everyone shares the same context. So, for example, I may be talking about tendering contracts competitively and avoiding conflicts of interest, and some of the Latin Americans are thinking: “wait: you want me *not* to give a contract to my friends and relatives, who I know and who will do the job well; but to deliberately give it to a complete stranger that I’ve never met and who will probably rip me off...?”.

 

Paul

 

* Yes, I’m well aware of how perilously close this is getting to the stereotype of the monolingual Englishman abroad, speaking English Slowly and Loudly at a bewildered-looking local.

 

It can work otherwise: my Spanish is poor to ugly, but I recently found myself translating from an Argentine colleague’s Spanish to a Madrid waiter’s Spanish because, bizarrely, the two found each other mutually incomprehensible.

[Ozexpatriate]

The joke that some of them make is that the official working language of our organisation is “bad English”.

I'd settle for bad English if it helped comprehension.

 

I'm finding myself more regularly on conference calls with English speakers in India. I have worked with English speakers from India (living both in and out of India) my whole professional career and while they have an "accent" (as do we all) and an odd affinity for using the word "thrice", what they spoke was clearly English. What I have recently observed is my ability to comprehend younger professionals living in India, speaking words that are intended to be English is actually decreasing and dramatically so, to the point where I can barely comprehend them at all.

 

Their professional language is almost exclusively English. While they may have been raised first with Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Telegu. Kannada, Tamil or any of the myriad other languages native to India, they all do speak English. What I hear however is increasingly unlike English pronunciations (including the white colonial spread of pronunciations, separate from accents, (including British. US, Canadian, Australian, South African etc) to the point where I cannot comprehend it at all.

 

I'm not sure why this is.

Edited April 27, 2018 by Ozexpatriate

[Fenman]

... What I have recently observed is my ability to comprehend younger professionals living in India, speaking words that are intended to be English is actually decreasing and dramatically so, to the point where I can barely comprehend them at all.

 

Their professional language is almost exclusively English. While they may have been raised first with Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Telegu. Kannada, Tamil or any of the myriad other languages native to India, they all do speak English. What I hear however is increasingly unlike English pronunciations (including the white colonial spread of pronunciations, separate from accents, (including British. US, Canadian, Australian, South African etc) to the point where I cannot comprehend it at all.

 

I'm not sure why this is.

I think this will become increasingly common: “global English” (or ESL) is already quite far from “native English”. I’ve observed it is often easier for two people speaking ESL to understand each other, than one ESL speaker and one mother tongue speaker.

 

Maybe it’s like Papua New Guinea where “pidgin English” has mutated into an entirely new creole language (which is utterly incomprehensible to me as English).

 

I think there are now more ESL speakers than English mother tongue speakers, so we should expect to find ourselves increasingly linguistically marginalised.

 

Paul

[pH]

I play soccer here in Canada with guys from (literally) all over the world. The common language is swearing.

[peterfgf]

Welding is a big subject. I don’t really have experience of fabrication. Most of my experience is large (over 24” diameter) pipelines where welds at 90 degree angles don’t really exist, except for pedestals etc which are just generic details, and most welds are butt welds and comprise root, one or more fill, and capping passes.

 

Terminology varies quite a lot, too.

Engineering has a very precise vocabulary but a picture is worth many words: the difference between fillet welds and butt welds:

Peterfgf

[jjb1970]

And then there is the sort of welding I do.....

[jjb1970]

On multi-national environments, having worked most of my life in such environments and being married to a lady whose first language is not English I think it makes you think a bit more before speaking, which is probably a good thing. Also perhaps more slowly, I have been doing it so long it is probably my normal way of speaking now. Something that I find interesting is that when I attend meetings with simultaneous translation most people seem to be much more comfortable speaking in English than via translators on technical matters and tend to do so when they can get away with it.

[jjb1970]

Good welders can earn a lot of money. Good coded welders are hard to find, and good coded welders who can work quickly and have their welds pass all the necessary NDE are as rare as rocking horse droppings these days. I found there were still enough good welders, and enough welders who could work quickly if it wasn't an important weld but getting good welders who would come in, get the job done quickly and efficiently and pass all the NDE was becoming painfully difficult with the result that those who were available could charge £££££££££££'s. If you consider how much money a major asset like a steam turbine unit is losing for every hour it is offline then whatever you pay a good welder in order to expedite its return to service is chump change.

[peterfgf]

Good welders can earn a lot of money. Good coded welders are hard to find, and good coded welders who can work quickly and have their welds pass all the necessary NDE are as rare as rocking horse droppings these days. I found there were still enough good welders, and enough welders who could work quickly if it wasn't an important weld but getting good welders who would come in, get the job done quickly and efficiently and pass all the NDE was becoming painfully difficult with the result that those who were available could charge £££££££££££'s. If you consider how much money a major asset like a steam turbine unit is losing for every hour it is offline then whatever you pay a good welder in order to expedite its return to service is chump change.

I agree whole-heartedly. 

 

The most impressive work I've ever seen was a welder fitting replacement evaporation tubes connected to stubs on the drum of a marine water tube boiler and producing absolutely superb, defect free, full penetration welds,

 

Peterfg

[rockershovel]

Re #314 above, there you go... pipeline welding is (very largely) done from one side only, the outside (I say “very largely” because there ARE automatic welders which can run a bead inside the pipe, but they are certainly not the norm or even commonly seen); there are also tasks like large diameter water pipe in tunnel, which are welded from the INSIDE only. Hence the root/fill/cap sequence, to create welds which are not only deeper than would normally be used, but can stand the subsequent flexure of the pipe during ditching or on barges, going round the drum/over the stinger/past touchdown

 

Big subject.

[rockershovel]

Regarding working with ESL speakers, I have long since developed a “working pronounciation” which differs markedly in both tempo and enunciation from my “natural” cockney/Cambridgeshire accent. I also use a more “RP” voice for meetings and presentations, but I have to do that consciously, which slows me down.

 

I speak French quite fluently, although with a strong accent derived from working in North Africa, but I rarely do so. “French” French speakers find it grating, and usually English is spoken anyway.

 

I definitely agree about Indian pronounciation of English, which I find is increasingly unintelligible - even from individuals whose WRITTEN language is quite good, and can understand spoken English well enough. Then again, as I drift into semi-retirement I find the issue best treated by disregarding it, I greatly doubt that I’ll be getting any more ME work at my time of life.

Edited April 28, 2018 by rockershovel

[E3109]

Just to add, although these forms are somewhat archaic nowadays, it pleases me no end when I see compound words such as 'today' written as 'TO-DAY'.

 

Ah. The Past.

[Colin_McLeod]

Or Triang written as Tri-ang :)

[rockershovel]

Or Triang written as Tri-ang :)

 

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Just going off on a tangent, but interesting that Tri-ang introduced a new range of buildings (see above), but kept the old style water tower.

[rockershovel]

Just going off on a tangent, but interesting that Tri-ang introduced a new range of buildings (see above), but kept the old style water tower.

I dare say that dieselisation meant that no new style water tower existed?

[Il Grifone]

Exactly this. I work for an international organisation with 5 official languages. The administrative working language is English. Fairly often I’m the only person in the room with English as my mother tongue, and I’m always in a minority.

 

If you want to be understood in this environment it is impossible to speak English as you normally would. Simple Anglo-Saxon words, simple sentences, no colloquialisms, leave an “unnatural” gap between each word, slow down your pace.* It’s fascinating (and embarrassing) how often after a colleague from, for example, New Zealand or Canada has spoken that I am asked to “summarise” what has just been said (they actually mean “translate it into a form of English that I can understand”). New staff who’ve only worked in England also find it tough to learn this new way of speaking.

 

Because speaking English like that doesn’t come easy - and it makes you realise, if you were in any doubt, how tough it is for most of them to work all day in English. As soon as you relax, you risk being badly misunderstood (whereas technical/professional “jargon” words are usually commonly understood). Yesterday I had to dissuade a Spanish speaker from using the word “singularity” in English (perfectly clear in Spanish) when what she meant were “the specific circumstances of each case”. It was tricky to explain that that word in English was only really used in astrophysics.

 

The joke that some of them make is that the official working language of our organisation is “bad English”.

 

But the real problem usually comes when you assume everyone shares the same context. So, for example, I may be talking about tendering contracts competitively and avoiding conflicts of interest, and some of the Latin Americans are thinking: “wait: you want me *not* to give a contract to my friends and relatives, who I know and who will do the job well; but to deliberately give it to a complete stranger that I’ve never met and who will probably rip me off...?”.

 

Paul

 

* Yes, I’m well aware of how perilously close this is getting to the stereotype of the monolingual Englishman abroad, speaking English Slowly and Loudly at a bewildered-looking local.

 

It can work otherwise: my Spanish is poor to ugly, but I recently found myself translating from an Argentine colleague’s Spanish to a Madrid waiter’s Spanish because, bizarrely, the two found each other mutually incomprehensible.

 

There is an offical NATO version of English intended to be simple and clear....

[rockershovel]

There is an offical NATO version of English intended to be simple and clear....

Listen ver’ carefully, I will say zis on’y wurnce...

[royaloak]

I foresee the appearance of one of these in the (very?) near future of this thread

 

Why cant people take a thread as it is without bringing all the doom and gloom into it, why bother buying a new model while people are starving in other parts of the world, surely their conscious should have them donate the money to a charity to help the starving or terminally ill instead?