William, the things you report from your wife's experience could also have happened in Germany, or rather happen over here every day. Seems to be a global development. (Or has it always been that way?)

If I were Dave Douglas, I'd be nervous and irritable at interviews too. If I thought American interviewers were bad, I might be even more defensive and precise when interviewed by someone for whom English is not their first language. Most likely a foreign interviewer will work harder to be precise than an American interviewer, but how can he know that going into the interview?

Just a proposal: let him complete his sentences, at least one sentence. I'd rather try to be more patient in correcting all those terrible, carreer-destroying misunderstandings and thereby avoid appearing rude to the interviewer with my paranoia which could, more paranoia!, annoy him and get him to misunderstand me on purpose!

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And to make my interviewer working harder after him saying not even a whole sentence: I beg your pardon.

[...] Is the "I beg your pardon" part you begging my pardon, or DD begging EdV's pardon, or EdV begging DD's pardon? Or something else? (In this version, I provide the second point of perspective. Which is better?)

It was your pardon I was begging. I thought it to be an odd, 19th century-ish pedagogical method to try to make someone work harder by interrupting him after a couple of words. But I think I didn't get the whole point of your alternative responses, surely due to the language barrier.

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If DD had considered Efrén's English as dangerously weak (why should he?) there would have been many more polite / didactic / operational ways to tackle that.

I agree. But in a world where John Zorn can get away with the rudeness he gets away with, I found Dave Douglas' responses blunt, but not outright rude.

I think this is the ideal point to confess my deep admiration for Dave Douglas as a musician. And to confess my admiration for some outright rudenesses of Zorn I had the luck to witness. But nevertheless... Fritz ############################################## Fritz Feger mail@fritzfeger.de www.fritzfeger.com ##############################################