> It doesn't mean anything in Dutch and my point is that it is not a 
> mistake. People tend to think it is a mistake, but they are wrong. The 
> only objection you could have is that there is another language where it 
> does have a different meaning and that people who know that will be too 
> occupied by that to listen to what you have to say.

And if you expect a significant number of your audience to "get it" and thus 
lose concentration, you are making a mistake by saying it.  Know your 
audience, including where they come from and what languages they know.  Of 
course it's very hard to avoid everything like this, but if you know your 
audience you can make a good effort, asking for advice from natives if 
necessary.

> I wouldn't refer to Star Wars in a talk at a conference. I have never see 
> anybody do that and would frown if they did. Unless in a cartoon as the 
> last slide if it gives a comment on the talk.

Someone I know once did a whole presentation for about 30 mins based on Star 
Wars to explain how his department worked.  He had cleverly renamed each 
character from Star Wars with people in his department, and made up a good 
number of very funny animated slides.  I'd say that the majority of the 
audience "got it" and everyone I spoke to afterwards was talking about it 
being the best presentation of the day (this was the last day, which was a 
bit more light hearted than the previous days).  Certainly was a very stark 
contrast to the previous slot which was taken up with 519 slides of 
financial data and a very boring commentary.

>> I've found that most non-native speakers understand *much* more easily if 
>> there's a distinct if brief break between words, so it's obvious where 
>> the word breaks are. It also helps me immensely when trying to understand 
>> a foreign language (of which I barely understand one, so ... :-)

You're screwed though if the language you are trying to learn just joins 
words together to make longer ones!  Even if you see them written you get 
stuck trying to work out where they join, and which sequence of letters you 
should be looking up in the dictionary.

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