Language

Being my second language, I had difficulty to discern the difference between conference and meeting, and, in the past, used to call a three-day program of lectures and symposia the latter. As I grow older, I could now tell the difference very well – largely to the credit of the US Immigration staff.

(Alas, that’s another story.)

The irony is, I am more and more likely to attend activity of this kind for meetings – seeing people face to face for discussion rather than attending lectures.

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I actually came to think of all these differences in language during one of the meetings, when a highly respected senior American nephrologist across the other side of the table kept saying, “This idea is fabulous…”

Oh, don’t get me wrong. He was entirely sincere. But that’s just the point: It is common for our friends from America to make comments like fabulous, gorgeous, fantastic, brilliant, and so forth. Around the other corner of the earth, we have the same words – but we only use it for irony.