[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Fun with Spelling and Grammar (was: Ultimate Guide)

[Kathryn Cawte]

-------Original Message-------
 
From: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com
Date: 25 February 2003 20:49:42
To: HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Fun with Spelling and Grammar (was: Ultimate
Guide)
 

 
Is it possible that some of the spelling and grammatical sins are due to the
poster being a non-native speaker 
(or writer, to be more exact)? I noticed that there are people from all over
the world here and when English is your 
second language, the correct application of their/there or its/it's or such
might can be really hard. 
 
Or can you native speakers tell another native speaker with language
problems from a non-native speaker? 
I'm not being sarcastic here, I'm really curious. Can you native speakers
tell wether a poster is native or not? I'm not being sarcastic 
here, I'm really curious. I'm not a native speaker myself, so I wonder if
you can spot us from a mile away or only notice it by accident.
 
I *was* able to spell my native language (German) for almost 20 years.
Really. Truely. And then... what happened? 
They went ahead and *changed* the rules!!! Now I am unhappily living ever
after in total Babylonian confusion. *Knowing* the 
rules is not enough to break 20 years of habit, training and indoctrination
it really *******s when your pupils know their spelling 
better than you do.  )-:
 
Greetings,
Ethanol
 
 
 I've found people who have English as a second language fall into two camps
 Those whose English is good enough to post/read it but only just (and that
s still fantastic because God knows I wouldn't want to be doing this in
German and I have a degree in that) and who, therefore, have a tendency to
use constructions which are clearly based in their own language. Sentence
structure, which while technically accurate, is totally un-English. Those
you can spot straight off. they also tend not to use any idiomatic language
and no slang of course (because those are things you can only really pick up
from native speakers rather than being taught them in a class). the other
category are those who speak the language as if it is their own - but do so
far more grammatically than a native speaker. You can't spot those because
they could just be well-educated native speakers. (obviously there's a third
camp of people whose English isn't good enough to fit into these categories
but you obviously don't run into them on English-speaking mailing lists)

As a general rule I find that non-native speakers have better grammar than
native speakers - because when you're learning a new language the grammar is
a big part of the building blocks you need to be able to make yourself
understood. Vocabularies grow organically as you pick them up over time but
grammar is drummed into you. I know my English grammar improved dramatically
when I started learning foreign languages. Up until that point I'd never
really learnt it. Things are corrected in essays and stuff at school but by
the time you get to that point (senior school usually) any bad habits are so
deeply ingrained you're pretty much screwed.

And i sympathise on the spelling, I really do. I was in the final year of my
degree when the changes came in. Bastards. They couldn't wait a year, oh no!
So i am totally confused when it comes to spelling in German - I stick to
what I was taught and let people figure it out for themselves :)

Oh and while my grammar and they're/their/there stuff is fine my spelling
online is awful because no matter how often I reset the preferences my
computer insists onkeeping setting all its spelling stuff back to American.
I spell in English, it spells in American and as such I'm in the habit of
ignoring my spell checker - sometimes even when it's right :)

K