A curious sort of troll

[fpb]

I just had a weird troll. Someone posted a comment in Russian. When I pointed out that it is very rude to post in a language that nobody else on the thread understands, I got more Russian. So I deleted and banned the poster as a troll. I wonder whether I ought to have answered in Italian, or, even better, in Milanese.

Comments

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

why not Latin?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Because an educated Russian is more apt to know Latin, or know someone who knows some, than to know Italian, let alone Milanese.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

In the event that he truly did not know English, you would have then found a way to communicate. In the more likely event that he is the sort of person who refuses to use any language other than his won, he is unlikely to have learned a langauge that he wasn't forced to.

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

>I wonder whether I ought to have answered in Italian, or, even better, in Milanese.


I'm not sure it would have been wise, but it would have had a definite sense of ironic poetic justice.

One wonders how long that (the posting in two completely different languages) could have gone on.

Speaking of languages

[deansteinlage.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, you are a translator.
Perhaps you could recommend a program for learning Italian.
I have a travelling type job where I can spend 9 or more hours driving a day
and the best of AC/DC, Jethro Tull, Dire Straights and Mozart gets repetative.

Re: Speaking of languages

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I haven't taught Italian for a few years now, and even then my practice was to just take whatever my clients had been using. I never met any course that really made me jump up and down and say "Yes, that's it, that's how it should be taught"; besides, Italian can be taught for different purposes - modern conversational, business, literary and historical - and each has different issues. On the whole, I would always recommend anything that has a strong grammatical basis rather than insisting on pronunciation and conversation. And at some point you would have to spend some time in Italy, but that is in the future.

Re: Speaking of languages

[deansteinlage.livejournal.com]

A future I look forward to.
Thank you for the response.