English

My, my, we do have some sensitive souls as part of this group.

America is a land of immigrants (many of whom happen to be from Asia) but these immigrants all try to acquire and use the language of the land as soon as possible (My own family for instance)

Fact1: English as spoken by the British is not the same idiom as spoken by Americans.

Fact2: The ASME codes are all written in standard American English.

Fact3 A wise man by the name of Pliny the Elder a noble Roman once said to his friend a Greek "When in Rome do as the Romans do." This said some 2000 years ago was good advice then and now. When I travel offshore I try to speak and behave as the people whose country I am in do.

When I visit my relatives in Austria I bend their ears with my fractured Americanized German. However when I cannot express myself adequately in German I don't whine or complain about it or them I try to acquire the words I need. If they correct me I don't get all bent out of shape about it like some people do.

Now the facts are as they are. So if you are unable to get your question across in American English that's unfortunate but its not my/our problem.

As for engineering not being specific to a language I disagree wholeheartedly with that statement. The ASME codes are all written in American English. You need to acquire these language skills so that you can learn the codes and apply them correctly.

Or I suppose as is often done by people offshore you could ask all sorts of poorly worded questions on web forums such as this one, or better yet send a poorly written inquiry to one of the code committees (we really enjoy these when they come in). The ultimate in poor judgment is a poorly worded inquiry that the committee considers a consulting question.... (In other words I haven't really read the code or tried to understand what it says.... could you just tell me what to do, because I'm lazy)

So there you go.... and by the way Pax is Latin for Peace another western language that some people don't grasp either. Received on Wed Feb 23 23:36:00 2005