A Couple of Real Gems from the "Harvey and Lee" Website

[Thomas Graves]

On 4/28/2017 at 6:29 AM, Thomas Graves said:

Jim,

I don't mean to sound overly rude or insulting, but it appears to me that you're simply never going to be able (or willing) to understand what I've been trying to convey on this thread to you and other members, i.e., how impressive a grasp of English syntax, grammar, and vocabulary (but obviously not spelling or punctuation, both of which are totally unimportant, as far as speaking is concerned) your "Hungarian-born, Hungarian-learning, then Russian-learning, and finally English-learning, HARVEY Oswald" had. LOL

Regarding your assertions that the different dialects the one-and-only Lee Harvey Oswald picked up while living in different parts of the country somehow suggest the existence of two Oswald boys who were confused for each other over the years by different witnesses, or that the one and only Lee Harvey Oswald's losing (By golly, there it is again! -- that unmistakable indicator of Tommy's superior English grammar skills -- his applying (OMG!, I can't believe it! Lightening strikes twice in the same sentence!) the rule "The Gerund Takes The Possessive Form Of The Pronoun"), LHO's losing, I say again, one of those dialects due to the smothering effects of a radically-different regional dialect that he naturally "picks up" while living in said different region, as well as the fact that many people become self conscious, and are even picked on, for having a strong regional dialect when the move to a different part of the country, and therefore make a conscious effort to "lose" said embarrassing-for-them dialect.

--  Tommy   

PS  You never answered the question I asked you some time ago:  What foreign language did YOU learn in high school?  Or did you go to a trade school or some such place that didn't require you to learn a foreign language (or at least "give it a shot")?

FWIW, mine was Spanish.

Adios.

Bumped

Because it's my thread.

And because Jim never answered my question.

[Jim Hargrove]

Since you seem to have an unending curiosity about my formal foreign language training, Tommy, I’ll give you a brief summary.  I took three years of Latin in high school, and then two years of German and two years of French in college.  The last time I was in France (around Toulon on the Mediterranean), I couldn’t find a single local who understood much of anything I tried to say and I couldn’t make any sense at all of any of their blatherings. (As far as I can tell, no resident of France outside of Paris speaks, or admits to speaking, English.)   

Of course, similar to Harvey Oswald and his reading of the Russian classics and his discussions of them in Russian with De Mohrenschildt, I do enjoy reading Zola, Balzac,  and Gide in the original French and discussing them in French with other French literati.  LOL.

[Sandy Larsen]

23 hours ago, Michael Clark said:

On 4/30/2017 at 7:37 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

Joe,

A few years after the assassination, Marina rather famously wrote that when she first met her future husband she thought he was from one of the Russian Baltic states because of his accent.  The clear implication of her statement was that she believed “LHO” was born in the USSR.

I don’t use this example in my arguments, however, because I think Marina was trying to minimize her own fluency in English while she was still living in Russia.  She also met Robert Webster a few months before meeting “LHO” and Webster said she spoke English fluently, although with a heavy accent.

Jim, that is, perhaps, disingenuous. To say that when she first met Lee she thought he was from a Baltic state, and then say that, years later, she believed that he was born in the USSR, is implying something that you may not have intended.

Did Marina, years later, believe that Lee was born in the USSR?

 

Michael,

I read what Jim wrote and never got the impression that he is saying Marina continued thinking that Oswald was born in the USSR. My understanding was that she recalled years latter that she had thought he was born in the USSR (one of the Baltic States, specifically) when she first met him.

Perhaps what Jim wrote can be taken two ways. But he clearly meant it the way I took it.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

22 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

On 4/30/2017 at 8:12 AM, Michael Clark said:

Jim, that is, perhaps, disingenuous. To say that when she first met Lee she thought he was from a Baltic state, and then say that, years later, she believed that he was born in the USSR, is implying something that you may not have intended.

Did Marina, years later, believe that Lee was born in the USSR?

 

Mr. McDONALD. At this time you were speaking in Russian together? 
Mrs. PORTER. Yes. He spoke with accent so I assumed he was maybe from 
another state, which is customary in Russia. People from other states do 
speak with accents because they do not speak Russian. They speak 
different languages. 
Mr. McDONALD. So when you say another state, you mean another Russian 
state? 
Mrs. PORTER. Yes, like Estonia, Lithuania, something like that. 
Mr. McDONALD. Did you suspect at all that he was an American? 
Mrs. PORTER. No, not at all. 

So Marina did not hear an American accent in Oswald's Russian. But she did hear what she thought was a Baltic accent.

Well that's interesting.

Could it be that Oswald didn't speak with an American accent?

Or could it be that back then, Russians weren't exposed to Russian-speaking Americans? (We as kids were certainly exposed to English-speaking Russians, in television shows.)

 

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

 

17 hours ago, Thomas Graves said:

17 hours ago, Ray Mitcham said:

 

Hmm.  So, that sneaky little Hungarian devil, HARVEY, did write "took," after all.

(Thanks for pointing that out, Young Master Mitcham.)

--  Tommy

That's odd... I took also thought that Oswald wrote "too." 

Next time I won't tae Tommy's word for it.

 

Edited May 1, 2017 by Sandy Larsen

[Thomas Graves]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

That's odd... I took also thought that Oswald wrote "too." 

Next time I won't tae Tommy's word for it.

 

It was my little test to see if Ray was paying attention.

Fortunately, he was.

--  Tommy

Edited May 1, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

So Marina did not hear an American accent in Oswald's Russian. But she did hear what she thought was a Baltic accent.

Well that's interesting.

Could it be that Oswald didn't speak with an American accent?

Or could it be that back then, Russians weren't exposed to Russian-speaking Americans? (We as kids were certainly exposed to English-speaking Russians, in television shows.)

 

 

 

 

Sandy,

I might be wrong, but I don't think a Russian would be able to differentiate an American from a Spaniard from a Frenchman, etc, by the way that person spoke Russian.

--  Tommy

 

 

Edited May 1, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

So Marina did not hear an American accent in Oswald's Russian. But she did hear what she thought was a Baltic accent.

Well that's interesting.

Could it be that Oswald didn't speak with an American accent?

Or could it be that back then, Russians weren't exposed to Russian-speaking Americans? (We as kids were certainly exposed to English-speaking Russians, in television shows.)

 

Jim,

So, you must be quite intelligent, then!

Have you ever tried teaching English to native Slavic language speakers (Poles, Slovaks, Czechs, Yugoslavs, Russians, etc)?

--  Tommy

Edited May 1, 2017 by Thomas Graves

[Jim Hargrove]

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

So Marina did not hear an American accent in Oswald's Russian. But she did hear what she thought was a Baltic accent.

Well that's interesting.

Could it be that Oswald didn't speak with an American accent?

Or could it be that back then, Russians weren't exposed to Russian-speaking Americans? (We as kids were certainly exposed to English-speaking Russians, in television shows.)

As I keep saying, I’ve been reluctant to use Marina’s testimony in my arguments about Harvey’s Russian fluency because  I think she was really put in a difficult position of having to hide her own English proficiency.  But here’s another part of her HSCA testimony that I do tend to believe, because it was confirmed by George De Mohrenschildt. 

Mr. McDONALD. Did he read a lot when he was in the Soviet
Union?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes.
Mr. McDONALD. What kind of books did he read there?
Mrs. PORTER. Novels mostly.
Mr. McDONALD. What kind of novels?
Mrs. PORTER. What you call maybe as classical novels, some
Russian classic writers.
Mr. McDONALD. The novels or the books that he read in the
Soviet Union, were they in Russian?
Mrs. PORTER. They were in Russian; yes.

And, of course, De Mohrenschildt added that “it amazed me that he read such difficult writers like Gorki, Dostoevski, Gogol, Tolstoi and Turgenieff - in Russian.”

Harvey Oswald arrived in Russia on October 15, 1959 and married Marina April 30, 1961.  Are we to believe that he taught himself enough Russian in a year and a half to read and discuss the “difficult writers” De M. talked about.  Really?

Edited May 1, 2017 by Jim Hargrove

[Ray Mitcham]

4 hours ago, Thomas Graves said:

It was my little test to see if Ray was paying attention.

Fortunately, he was.

--  Tommy

Took you long enough to own up.

Edited May 1, 2017 by Ray Mitcham

[Thomas Graves]

11 minutes ago, Ray Mitcham said:

Took you long enough to own up.

Ha Ha Ha

Good one, Ray.

Want a medal?

All you did was help me to prove that HARVEY wasn't a Hungarian boy, after all.

I mean.  I mean. I mean.

--  Tommy

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Mr. McDONALD. Did he read a lot when he was in the Soviet
Union?
Mrs. PORTER. Yes.
Mr. McDONALD. What kind of books did he read there?
Mrs. PORTER. Novels mostly.
Mr. McDONALD. What kind of novels?
Mrs. PORTER. What you call maybe as classical novels, some
Russian classic writers.
Mr. McDONALD. The novels or the books that he read in the
Soviet Union, were they in Russian?
Mrs. PORTER. They were in Russian; yes.

And, of course, De Mohrenschildt added that “it amazed me that he read such difficult writers like Gorki, Dostoevski, Gogol, Tolstoi and Turgenieff - in Russian.”

Oswald was a freakin' intellectual! Who would'a thunk it?

Why did the upper CIA guys want to sacrifice this guy? Oh yeah... because he was a freakin' intellectual.

 

[Thomas Graves]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Oswald was a freakin' intellectual! Who would'a thunk it?

Why did the upper CIA guys want to sacrifice this guy? Oh yeah... because he was a freakin' intellectual.

 

Huh?

Former active Forum member and ex Army Counterintelligence officer Jon G. Tidd said he didn't believe anything Marina said.

Why should you?

--  Tommy

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Thomas Graves said:

4 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Oswald was a freakin' intellectual! Who would'a thunk it?

Why did the upper CIA guys want to sacrifice this guy? Oh yeah... because he was a freakin' intellectual.

 

Huh?

Former active Forum member and ex Army Counterintelligence officer Jon G. Tidd said he didn't believe anything Marina said.

Why should you?

--  Tommy

I am skeptical of what certain witnesses say because they've proven themselves to be prevaricators. However, if they testify to something that is irrelevant to the governments case against Oswald, or actually opposes it, I am considerably less skeptical. I mean, why would a person lie when there is no motive for doing so?

Besides, in this case there is the testimony of De Mohrenschildt supporting what Marina said. I can think of no motive for them to lie about this.

Based on what I've heard Oswald say about Marxism and how it relates to communism, etc., I believe Oswald was a very intelligent young man. I just can't understand why his grades were so awful.

 

[Thomas Graves]

36 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I am skeptical of what certain witnesses say because they've proven themselves to be prevaricators. However, if they testify to something that is irrelevant to the governments case against Oswald, or actually opposes it, I am considerably less skeptical. I mean, why would a person lie when there is no motive for doing so?

Besides, in this case there is the testimony of De Mohrenschildt supporting what Marina said. I can think of no motive for them to lie about this.

Based on what I've heard Oswald say about Marxism and how it relates to communism, etc., I believe Oswald was a very intelligent young man. I just can't understand why his grades were so awful.

 

For them to lie about what?  "HARVEY's" facility with the Russian language?  LOL

When trying for 50 years to figure out who killed JFK, what does it matter how bad LHO's grades were?

 

Edited May 2, 2017 by Thomas Graves