andy
Young Armadillo
Posts: 80
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Post by andy on Aug 22, 2011 6:17:14 GMT -5
But do you think anyone whose first language wasn't English would be able to decipher this? Some of these were extreme leaps -- how is "a'h" "at home"? -- but I had to use context and logic to get there, and I'm not even sure I'm correct. And I don't have a clue what that hyphen at the beginning is for. Out of context, "lve" could be "love or "live"; "tlkn" could be "talking" or "Tolkien" (no really I've seen that). Most non-native relatively fluent English speakers would be able to decipher that since it's not actually that hard (most of the chatspeak is very well known) and most non-native speakers are not complete idiots. |
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Post by Dodger Thirteen on Aug 22, 2011 7:36:07 GMT -5
But do you think anyone whose first language wasn't English would be able to decipher this? Some of these were extreme leaps -- how is "a'h" "at home"? -- but I had to use context and logic to get there, and I'm not even sure I'm correct. And I don't have a clue what that hyphen at the beginning is for. Out of context, "lve" could be "love or "live"; "tlkn" could be "talking" or "Tolkien" (no really I've seen that). Most non-native relatively fluent English speakers would be able to decipher that since it's not actually that hard (most of the chatspeak is very well known) and most non-native speakers are not complete idiots. It's not a question of their intelligence or common sense, it's a question of how experienced they are with the language. Someone who is just learning English compared to someone who has studied for years will have different ability and may or may not be able to decipher that. Additionally, generalizations will get you nowhere. |
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Post by Marina on Aug 22, 2011 17:04:34 GMT -5
Most non-native relatively fluent English speakers would be able to decipher that since it's not actually that hard (most of the chatspeak is very well known) and most non-native speakers are not complete idiots. It's not a question of their intelligence or common sense, it's a question of how experienced they are with the language. Someone who is just learning English compared to someone who has studied for years will have different ability and may or may not be able to decipher that. Additionally, generalizations will get you nowhere. Speaking as a non-native fluent English speaker, I wouldn't be able to understand that " a'h' " means at home. Sure, I would know what more popular chat-speaks like " lol, rofl, tgif, gtfo " but when you get to things like "a'h" it's a complete butchery of the language. Most of the time I still have to look up the chat-speak, thankfully, not too many people I know use it. And by the way, if I used chat-speak with a friend of mine who knows some English, but not fluently, he wouldn't be able to understand me. For chat-speak to be understandable it needs to be easily decipherable, and I would say popular too. |
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Post by Ayesha on Aug 22, 2011 22:48:49 GMT -5
 Grammar is important, sure. I just try not to be pretentious about it, because you never know when that's going to blow up in your face. |
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Post by Marina on Aug 22, 2011 23:20:16 GMT -5
I think it's both sad and ironic when a person goes to a length to point out other people's grammar mistakes, while breaking the rules themselves. I just want to slap them.
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Post by onlyaworkingtitle on Aug 22, 2011 23:43:50 GMT -5
I find it ironic that this self-styled grammar aficionado doesn't know how to capitalize or put commas before quotation marks. |
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Post by embonpoint on Aug 23, 2011 10:38:06 GMT -5
^If you mean the comma after joke, then that's actually a US/UK thing. We put punctuation outside.
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Post by pjthefey on Sept 10, 2011 1:46:20 GMT -5
So I ask you, English Majors:
Are the type to correct someone's grammar and spelling without hesitation?
I make the corrections, but I only say something if they ask me to or I am annoyed and the person seems to think they are smarter and more knowledgeable than everyone else on the planet.
Do you think less of someone who mixes up "there" and "their"?
Yes, but the degree of thinking less depends on the person. I have many non-native English speaking friends so I give them a little more wiggle room.
Why do you care so much if a mistake is made?
Mistakes are forgivable, willful ignorance is not.
There are times when my own mind switches to phonetic mode and, for reasons I can not explain, I misspell even simple words for a few seconds. This is a simple mistake, it doesn't repeat itself.
Willful ignorance is when people are too lazy to learn the proper rules and demand that everyone else pardon them for their lack of knowledge. This type of person will "mix up" there and their 50-100% of the time. It's easy to tell the difference when you read a writing sample that is more than a few sentences in length.
Do you not care at all?
Yes and no. People have a right to be uneducated, but in the case of native English speakers I choose not to interact with them if I can help it. I don't care if that is their choice, but don't impose the choice on me.
Proper grammar and spelling isn't a necessity for everyone, but it is if you want to be taken seriously within academia or amongst educated peers.
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Post by pjthefey on Sept 10, 2011 1:53:42 GMT -5
I find it ironic that this self-styled grammar aficionado doesn't know how to capitalize or put commas before quotation marks. I was thinking the same thing! There are a number of other errors too. |
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Post by KatjevanLoon on Sept 21, 2011 6:26:37 GMT -5
^If you mean the comma after joke, then that's actually a US/UK thing. We put punctuation outside. Yep. If I had a dime for every time someone has corrected my putting punctuation outside quote marks, I could fix the recession. Anyway. Grammar. It bugs me. It bugs me not because people are lazy, not because I'm a pretentious douchebag (I am, but that's not why bad grammar bugs me), but because it causes major cognitive dissonance in me and can actually give me a headache. I should probably clarify here that I have many different learning disabilities, some diagnosed, some more nebulous and not really diagnosable. (Also, there's not much point in getting some of them diagnosed -- what am I going to do with that info? I already know how to work around the damn things to live in our neurotypical society.) When I was a child, my mom was worried for a while that I wouldn't be able to read at all because I displayed classic signs of dyslexia. So getting to the level of proficiency that I've achieved has been hard. I did it by reading and reading and reading some more and educating myself. The things I read had proper grammar, generally speaking. Now, there are some things I still have problems with (who/whom -- I know the principle, but it's not automatic to me), and when I'm very tired I've been known to type like a drunk monkey. However, I can catch those mistakes and correct them usually before what I'm writing goes public -- if not, I usually correct myself in a post afterwards, if I do notice the mistake. (For example, I just typed "thing" instead of "the" in the last sentence. I didn't catch it until my third read-through of the post.) When someone switches out your and you're, or their/there/they're, it throws me out of the flow of their words. It's hard enough for me to concentrate on the written word without re-reading paragraphs or sentences; if there's a mistake I usually give up. Not to be elitist, but if I run into a mistake that jars me like that in the middle of a large paragraph, it's usually too much to ask me to continue. I have too many things going on to devote so much brain power to reading one post in a forum or a social networking site. Missed words don't bug me, however. I can read right over them. I've been on another forum for several years where the host continually misses words -- it's a running joke in board culture, being called "[Host's screenname]isms". Too long; didn't read: my messed up brain doesn't like homonym frak ups because of how jarring they are, and frequently bad grammar will cause me to stop reading a post because it's too much work for me to decipher. |
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Post by Julie on Mar 26, 2012 21:33:41 GMT -5
I will be absolutely brutal if asked to edit someone's paper or story for them--a friend of mine has forbidden me from doing so because I left a whopping 57 comments on his four-page story. However, in speech or in casual text conversations whether by phone or by net, I'll only usually correct a close friend's grammar, because I know they'll understand and won't get all huffy about it.
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Kori
Young Armadillo
Posts: 51
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Post by Kori on Mar 27, 2012 0:16:40 GMT -5
For me, it's a clarity thing. If I can understand what you are getting at, I am much less likely to correct you. Although I will correct my friends just because they expect me to. XP
I am a stickler for it when I'm critiquing other's short stories and whatnot, though. I figure that eventually, someone is going to want to send this to magazine, and if they don't have proper grammar and spelling, they're much less likely to be accepted.
I just try not to be annoying, because I know that I make mistakes and typos too, and I am not a paragon of correct grammar (my school was horrible about teaching it.) I'm working on it, I've got Elements of Style on my bookshelf, and I've finally bought a Chicago Style Guide, but mostly I'm just learning that grammar is incredibly difficult and is sometimes even subjective. So I try to lay off when I can.
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