Sorry English: A Shrine to Jun Urbano Reyes and His Works
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Barriers of [sic] Communcation
"Establishing commonness of undertanding is the true essence of communication."
"A communication barrier is any factor that intereferes to the success of the communication process... These barriers could be eliminated, minimized to a lesser degree, if we try the role of both sender and receive of the commuication process effectively."
-- Business Communication, p. 19, 22
I think the greatest communication barrier of all is poor language skills, as demonstrated by Mr Reyes' writing.
When discussing forms in business letters, he calls it "complimentary close," "complementary close", and "complementary clause."
And here's how he describes it:
"Just like the salutation, the complimentary close is conventional in form and meaning. It may be considered one of the small courtesies in life and is so to be neither omitted or overdone.
"The regular forms of Yours Truly and Yours Very Truly. The equivalents of these forms maybe used as Truly yours, Very Truly yours, and the like, but the forms first given fulfill all the requirements of a complimentary close in a business letter and are the more common."
-- Business Correspondence, p. 10
Insert the "sic's" yourself. I'm lazy.
BTW, I found the book. My wife wants me to set the record straight: she didn't hide it from me
Mr Reyes tells his readers on page 5: "... it is assume that the student of this course has practically learned the common grammatical terms and the uses of the different parts of speech just as the differences on the usage of an adjective to that of an adverb."
And what are we to assume about the author is this book? That he has learned practically nothing? I pity the students at Fatima University.
On pages 5-6 of his book, he describes "The 7 C's of Communication," without crediting anyone. By the style of writing I knew that it couldn't have been written by our dear Mr Reyes.
Mr Reyes wrote the following sentence on communication channels: "Difficult channels have different effects and serve in different stages of the diffusion progress." (p 6)
Perhaps the typist couldn't read Mr Reyes' writing. Maybe what Jun really wanted to say was: "Different channels have different effects and serve different stages of the diffusion process." Still a poorly worded sentence, but at least it makes a bit of sense!
This one really cracked me up. On page 3, he defines business correspondence as "communication between two entity [sic] in form [sic] of letter writing and agreement of both in some respect [sic]."
He goes on to discuss the social function of communication, and declares that when a newborn cries, it could actually be asking who its father is! All this to make his point that, "building from sights, sounds and sensations a person finds the means to express himself to be understood and to understand."
Last time we were in Manila, the relatives taught my daughter S how to do the "otso-otso". Good thing she forgot all about it soon after we got back to HK. Dance moves like that should be banned.
When my daughter learns to read, I will show her this quote from Business Correspondence. Our beloved Mr Reyes has managed to link the language, symbolism and signification with the "otso-otso" dance:
"The specialization [of ideas and thoughts] has not been restricted to language, people themselves in their own work and outside pursuits have specialized, there became specialization of thought patterns.
"Double eight or 'otso-otso' appeared as, to connote a dance due to television exposure that even a four year old boy or girl can demonstrate bending one's body, holding both knees while shaking to and pro." (Italics added)
-- Jun Urbano Reyes Business Correspondence, p 3
I wonder what Wittgenstein, Foucault and all those other Philo of Lang people would say? Duh????
"Alphabet is the source, greatest invention of mankind yet at times the troublesome one. It repeatedly get him into trouble with the other people yet, still the alphabet is potentially man's best means of getting along with other people."
Why this Blog: As a Filipino engineer working for a Hong Kong accounting firm, there isn't much I can do about the declining English competence among my compatriots. Nor can I hope to single-handedly rescue the Philippine education system from the cesspool that it's in. So instead, I have decided to blog and poke fun at one of the perpetrators of bad English in the Philippines -- Mr Jun Urbano Reyes of Our Lady of Fatima University.
I picked up my wife's copy of "Business Correspondence" by Jun Urbano Reyes, and I laughed so loud it started me blogging. (My wife was given that book to use in the English class she teaches. Instead, she gave the book to me in disgust.)
In his acknowledgments, the good Mr Reyes gave "Special thanks to Mr Giovanni Sy that good looking guy and owner of Merriam Webster whose 'words of wisdom' gave me more confidence to come up with it."
Thank you, too, Mr Sy, for publishing this hilarious book.
What is "Any other else?"
I got the phrase from another great Engrish teacher, Ms C. She was my English teacher in 3rd year high school at Xavier. She'd use the phrase instead of "anything else?", and my friend D and I would keep a running total of the number of times she made this particularly irritating linguistic faux pas.
Click on "Any other else?" to leave a comment on my blog entry.
