Where is your grammar?

[Sidhe]

I'm not fluent in English, and have to spend ages editing my posts just so they sound vaguely sensible, sometimes in the heat of the moment I forget to make it well written, if there is such a thing in my posts. I try my best though, if it's any consellation.

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

I'm not fluent in English, and have to spend ages editing my posts just so they sound vaguely sensible, sometimes in the heat of the moment I forget to make it well written, if there is such a thing in my posts. I try my best though, if it's any consellation.

What's your first language?

For the record, though it's probably helped by your location, I've never seen any problems with any of your grammar in posts, I would have thought it to be your first language.

To be fair though, as I think it was brought up, non-fluent speakers may be more likely to try and correct themselves.

 

[Sidhe]

English, that doesn't make me fluent though, although I have gotten over much of my crappy illiterate wrting, it took about twenty years, and now I'd say I still make plenty of spelling errors and grammatical errors.

I was being flippant, I'm dyslexic like most of my immediate and non immediate familly, compared to my brother and my mother and most of my uncles I'm Shakespeare though, few of our familly have any skill with writing it's alarmingly genetic.

 

[woody60707]

Originally Posted by Tycoon101
Excuse me for sounding snooty, but it irritates me to no end when I look at a thread, or a sentence, and I find that someone, who is an otherwise intelligent person, types paragraphs that are filled with grammatical errors, spelling typos, and/or uncapitalized letters.

Why can't people learn to make fully punctuated, and grammatically correct sentences? This applies to all age groups, inside and out of the CFC. I see improper grammar in a great deal of places, place where spelling and grammar are key to the interpretation of the paragraph. Even books for God's sake!

What do you think? What can we do to stop this menace from consuming us all? Or do you feel that improper spelling and grammar is not rampant? I would like your honest opinions.

How important is this to you?

Quote:
Excuse me for sounding snooty, but it irritates me to no end
Do you really mean "to no end"?

This implies there is no purpose to your irritation.
Did you instead mean to say "no end".
This would indicate your irritation is limitless.
Which is it?

Quote:
Why can't people learn to make fully punctuated, and grammatically correct sentences?

If you want the "and", you should omit the comma.
"Why can't people learn to make fully punctuated and grammatically correct sentences?"
or, possibly,
"Why can't people learn to make fully punctuated, grammatically correct, sentences?"

Quote:
I see improper grammar in a great deal of places, place where spelling and grammar are key to the interpretation of the paragraph.

As the "place" in the sub-clause does not match the original "places", should we take this as an imperative?

Quote:
Even books for God's sake!

A sentence without a verb is a sorry thing.

Quote:
Or do you feel that improper spelling and grammar is not rampant?

I assume you mean "are" not rampant.

Quote:
I would like your honest opinions.

You might possibly value my opinions.
I doubt you would like them.
I do not think you sound at all snooty.

Awesomeness!

Didn't your mom ever tell you that if you don't have anything nice to say, you shouldn't say anything at all. I feel close to going on a rant about how hard it is for some people to read and write well. but just try to understand that gammar isn't as easy for you that it is for some other people.

 

[Phlegmak]

English, that doesn't make me fluent though, although I have gotten over much of my crappy illiterate wrting, it took about twenty years, and now I'd say I still make plenty of spelling errors and grammatical errors.

I was being flippant, I'm dyslexic like most of my immediate and non immediate familly, compared to my brother and my mother and most of my uncles I'm Shakespeare though, few of our familly have any skill with writing it's alarmingly genetic.

Wait a minute. You used to complain all the time about pedantry when someone would correct your spelling (such as myself). What happened to your accusations of pedantry? For the record, correcting someone else's spelling is not pedantic in any way.

 

[Fifty]

prescriptive grammar is linguistically worthless. As someone here on CFC once said (I'd give credit if I could remember who), it is the "last refuge of pendantic fools".

the point of language is to convey meaning, not to follow arbitrary grammatical rules.

I was rather suprised in taking a linguistics course that linguists indeed tend to consider prescriptive grammar to be uninteresting and pointless.

 

[Phlegmak]

I'm not a native english speaker.. in fact, english is my third language.

I've made a point to learn english well, to the point that grammatical/spelling mistakes annoy the hell out of me.

So it gets on my nerves, but only because I've been trained to spot mistakes and avoid them. It's like somebody driving a sharp stick in my eye. I don't do it on purpose but if I see a baad mistake my brain just hurts.

Generally, I don't think many people who get annoyed at spelling and grammatical mistakes (such as myself) get annoyed at nonnative English speakers making those mistakes. It's easily forgivable when done by a nonnative English speaker.

 

[Phlegmak]

As someone here on CFC once said (I'd give credit if I could remember who), it is the "last refuge of pendantic fools".

Don't worry; he was wrong. That is, unless it's occurring during a debate, in which case it's an incredibly bad argument tactic.

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

the point of language is to convey meaning, not to follow arbitrary grammatical rules.

I was rather suprised in taking a linguistics course that linguists indeed tend to consider prescriptive grammar to be uninteresting and pointless.

Well said. I learned the same thing during my own linguistic course. As long as the general meaning is conveyed to everyone, then it passes.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Especially it should be remembered that grammatical rules are not unbreakable natural laws or anything but just guidelines made up by some people who claim authority. The aim should be ease of communication, not rigid obedience to an arbitrary set of rules. If that can be changed rules grammatical declare I, to me prevent who able is?

 

[Sidhe]

Wait a minute. You used to complain all the time about pedantry when someone would correct your spelling (such as myself). What happened to your accusations of pedantry? For the record, correcting someone else's spelling is not pedantic in any way.

It is pedantic if your in the middle of a discussion and then someone tries to destroy your argument by pointing out the flaws in your sentence structure though, you got to admit that's frustrating, you understand the points enough to respond to them, but you focus on the spelling, this says one thing, can't make a counter point or two so I'll pick on the spelling, everyone thinks that's annoying right? If it's burried in brilliant counterpoint it's easy to ignore, if it is the counterpoint, it's very annoying.

You have to understand this is not the only forum I visit, and I get corrected on my spelling allarmingly often, it's not easy to spot a their where a there should be, it does depend on the way someone corrects my spelling, but I freely admit I'm way way over sensative about it. I try not to be, but there's alot of history there.

prescriptive grammar is linguistically worthless. As someone here on CFC once said (I'd give credit if I could remember who), it is the "last refuge of pendantic fools".

the point of language is to convey meaning, not to follow arbitrary grammatical rules.

I was rather suprised in taking a linguistics course that linguists indeed tend to consider prescriptive grammar to be uninteresting and pointless.

Excellent point.

 

[Phlegmak]

It is pedantic if your in the middle of a discussion and then someone tries to destroy your argument by pointing out the flaws in your sentence structure though, you got to admit that's frustrating, you understand the points enough to respond to them, but you focus on the spelling, this says one thing, can't make a counter point or two so I'll pick on the spelling, everyone thinks that's annoying right? If it's burried in brilliant counterpoint it's easy to ignore, if it is the counterpoint, it's very annoying.

You have to understand this is not the only forum I visit, and I get corrected on my spelling allarmingly often, it's not easy to spot a their where a there should be, it does depend on the way someone corrects my spelling, but I freely admit I'm way way over sensative about it. I try not to be, but there's alot of history there.

I definitely remember that the times I corrected your spelling had nothing to do with arguing against your point. It was a frequent mistake you made ("would of" instead of "would have").

Anyway, yes, I agree that focusing on your opponent's misspellings during a debate is bad, as I stated in post #48. It's been done to me too at least once.

 

[Phlegmak]

If that can be changed rules grammatical declare I, to me prevent who able is?

No one, but at a certain point, your changes can make sentences unintelligible. Sometimes this happens with black Americans and their broken English. At that point, what good are your changes to the language?

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

No one, but at a certain point, your changes can make sentences unintelligible. Sometimes this happens with black Americans and their broken English. At that point, what good are your changes to the language?

Quite, to posters other confusion may cause I, scannable however sentences my to posters other are perhaps, in to which addition fun to way this write. If me understand listeners, grammar using am I correct. All understandability about is it.

 

[Fifty]

black Americans and their broken English.

For the record, African American Vernacular English is just as rule-bound and complex as "standard" English.

If it weren't for the process of Creole development (as in AAVE), language would fail to evolve and English probably wouldn't even exist.

 

[Padma]

I have no problem with people making true spelling and grammar mistakes. We're all (most of us, anyway) human. Also, it has been my observation that the non-native English speakers usually do a better job in their posts.

What I do object to is blatant, deliberate misspelling and bad grammar. "l33t 5p33k" and it's relatives.

I ran into the following on another board today, in the middle of a discussion about KDE vs Gnome vs Windows desktops. The discussion was proceeding clearly (if somewhat flamingly ), with people from around the world adding their two cents, when this poster brought up a perfectly good point, which I only read about a third of, because I didn't want to deal with "translating".

(This is just a small snippet.)

pls dun waste time to make comparison the OSS program, either to commercial product or OSS product too.
if someone feel that KDE, Gnome or whatever OSS app pls give the suggestion to them and help them to make it better, then U and me also can have the benefit from it.

I *think* he is a non-native English speaker, based on sentence construction. But his usage of "U", "R", "Y", "pls", "dun", etc. were so distracting that I gave up reading his post. (Actually, I can deal with most of that, if it's used sparingly, but "dun" for "don't"? )

 

[Padma]

Quite, to posters other confusion may cause I, scannable however sentences my to posters other are perhaps, in to which addition fun to way this write. If me understand listeners, grammar using am I correct. All understandability about is it.

Exactly. Which is why I object to posts like this. Understandable not it is. (At least not *easliy* understandable. )

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Exactly. Which is why I object to posts like this. Understandable not it is. (At least not *easliy* understandable. )

Ah, but rules grammatical follow I, English standard however not rules, rules languages other use as well I.

 

[Phlegmak]

For the record, African American Vernacular English is just as rule-bound and complex as "standard" English.

If it weren't for the process of Creole development (as in AAVE), language would fail to evolve and English probably wouldn't even exist.

I fail to see how you arrived at the bold part. I think language in England has survived without black American English. English has always been malleable without black American English

 

[Sidhe]

I definitely remember that the times I corrected your spelling had nothing to do with arguing against your point. It was a frequent mistake you made ("would of" instead of "would have").

Anyway, yes, I agree that focusing on your opponent's misspellings during a debate is bad, as I stated in post #48. It's been done to me too at least once.

I apologise in retrospect, I remember that although I can't remember what I said, no doubt a gross over reaction, I'll try and lighten up, it's not exactly the end of the world