On 11/27/13 8:18 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
On Wednesday 27 November 2013 07:44:18 rusi did opine:
On Wednesday, November 27, 2013 7:41:54 AM UTC+5:30, Ned Batchelder
wrote:
On 11/26/13 8:26 PM, Rick Johnson wrote:
<Classic Rick Rant>
And will you be here to explain to time-travelling Shakespeare why we
are all of us speaking English completely wrong (to his ears)?
And to my (Indian!!) ears when Tim says 'plank in the eye' where King
James says 'beam' it does not cut it.
And around here, when something comes out correct, it is "better than a
poke in the eye with a sharp stick" if you want to say it in the local
idiom. I used to have a B.I.L. who was always claiming "it was good enough
for the girls I go with".
I think we, who have American English as our first and only language,
should be giving allowances for the local idioms where the poster may be
from, and really try to understand what the other posters mean when their
unfamiliarity with what each of us might define as proper English might
result in some ambiguity of our understanding of the question. If after
careful re-parsing of the statement, I still haven't understood it, then I
am not allergic to asking for clarification IF I CAN CONTRIBUTE. Otherwise
I sit here and lurk, hoping to learn.
+1
But in no case do I think we have a right to berate the original poster,
who may not even speak the internet's default language, and may be looking
up every word in a translation aid book, and doing it both ways to read
what we might have written in response to what he/she posted.
Someone doing that, is in fact making 200x the effort to communicate
compared to me. We should be willing to deal with it, and do our best to
return the favor.
+1
We aren't doing that at all well when we start a week long thread over a
miss-spelled word, which while humorous to some, are really nothing but
contests to see who can come up with the next multi-syllable but totally
meaningless word. Its not humorous to those who are making the effort to
communicate with those of us to whom some dialect of English is the first
and only language. Contributing to the confusion should not be the object
here, but I think that is what we are doing by such action/reaction.
Thanks, I think this sums up the situation very well.
--Ned.
Cheers, Gene
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