Way OT: Minimum hardware capacity for 35k e-mail scans/day

[Glenn Steen]

On 19/11/2007, Rob Sterenborg <R.Sterenborg at netsourcing.nl> wrote:
> mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info wrote:
> > Drew
> >
> > Well yes I'm from the UK, but my English grammer is terrible
> > - results of a dodgy 1970's edukashun ;-)
> >
> > But as for my Swedish - well I won't starve (used to work for
> > Swedish co. about 10 years ago), but it's no-where
> > approaching the fluency Glenn has for English. But then
> > anyone under 50 in Sweden/Holland seems to have a better
> > command of the Ebglish language than I do..
>
> Hopefully not. ;-)
>
> You have to know that..
> - We get educated in English for at least 4 years (in the 70's-80's, may
> be more now).
> - A lot of/Most usefull information of any kind is available in English.
> - Almost every movie we see is English spoken and subtitled in
> [Dutch/your language here].
Quite true. We have at least 7-9 years English education in Sweden
(most have more)...

> So, we read and hear a lot of English although our pronunciation may be
> horrible. However, there are a lot of words less commonly used that a
> lot of people have never heard of and would never use so I think, as a
> native English speaker, you'd spot the difference.
If we ever meet in person... Your view of my command of the language
will degrade pretty fast:-):-). One might know a word intimately, but
have never ever heard it pronounced... Makes for some quite hilarious
misconceptions/misunderstandings....:-)

> If that's specific to the Dutch and Swedish I don't know. I do know that

The other nordic countries *should* have pretty much the same "setup".
Results vary wildly though:-).

> e.g. in Germany virtually every English(foreign)-spoken movie is
> translated into German (with horrible German voices not even close to
> the original voices), which IMHO is a reason for picking up the language
> less easily. Other countries may very well do the same thing.
>
> And yes, the magical age seems to be around 50. When my parents grew up,
> German was the predominant second language and they still prefer to
> watch German broadcastings over English (without subtitling).

I'd put the age (in Sweden, of course:) slightly higher ... most
persons in their 55-60's are ... less fluent, and above 60 it's not
uncommon to have no English at all.

>
> Grts,
> Rob

Cheers
-- 
-- Glenn
email: glenn < dot > steen < at > gmail < dot > com
work: glenn < dot > steen < at > ap1 < dot > se