Yes, it is; but I deleted my post because, when I thought about it, it was unkind. First, we have posters here for whom English is not their native language. English is the only language in which I am fluent, indeed, super fluent (which is uncomfortablely close to “superfluous”!), so I respect and admire the polylingual people. More to the point, I’m not certain that written communication, as on a message board, is real evidence of fluency. There are three components to human communication: words, vocal inflection and tonality, and posture and gestures (body language). Someone may have a limited vocabulary and grammar and diction skills, but still be EFFECTIVELY fluent in a language. I stunk in French class as a little boy, but my teacher praised my hand gestures. I had a speech challenge as a pre-school little boy: I pronounced the letter “r” very broadly, so it sounded like “w” Given that my nickname was Raymie, this was socially difficult. “What’s your name?” “Waymie.” “Waymie?” “No! WAYMIE!” One day, my father and I were walking in the woods. I spotted a Robin. Excited, I tugged on my father’s sleeve. I said, “Daddy, see the bawd?” My father said, “Bawd? What’s a bawd?,” but not unkindly. I was his son. He loved me. I was SO frustrated! I said, “You know: BAWD!” Again, he didn’t understand, though he really wanted to. I pointed at the Robin, squatted down, tucked my little hands into my armpits, stuck out my elbows and flapped my “wings,” and said, “The bawd! You know? ‘Tweet, tweet?’” Then he understood. My point is that people can find a way to effective language fluency that is not apparent on an internet message board, so I regret and renounce my original post.
My father never tired of telling that story.
AmeriGirl, I agree with you, by the way (kind voice and compatible body language😋). I simply think my first post was wrong.
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AmeriGirl26 (12189)
5 years ago
It's not about people who don't speak English as a first language. I fully expect them to have difficulty, and it's perfectly natural not to write very well in a language you didn't grow up with. You should hear my Spanish. My grammar is horrible, hehe.
I'm talking about people who were born and raised in America, learned English as their first language, and went to school to learn how to read and write in English, and yet do terrible at it. I mean, they have Sentence Correction taught in school, and yet, I STILL see people doing the exact same typing mistakes in spelling and grammar online, and HEAR people using bad grammar or pronunciation, despite being raised in the same environment. It was especially awkward for me in high school when our English teachers would have the kids read parts of a story out loud, and you hear 16-year-olds reading as if they were still 6! It's like, "What the hell were you doing in First Grade when they taught you to read? Did you sleep through it, thinking you could get away with it?!" It's tragic and disgusting to witness.
Here's a few tips, people:
"Women" does NOT refer to a single woman
"They're" is the contraction for "they are," "their" indicates ownership, and "there" is a location.
"Vein" does not refer to someone who is obsessed with their appearance. It's a blood vessel that returns de-oxygenated blood to the heart. The correct spelling is "vain."
And when a place is "too" far, you do not use the word "to" when referencing it!
GOD it drives me up a wall how badly some people write in English! I can understand IM-speak, but not when it's in longhand.
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R_Kane (15828)
5 years ago
Corporate writing is as bad, if not culturally worse. The barbarians are storming the gates.
I admire your English language skills, AmeriGirl (what a Superhero name!). You make me happy. Like William Saphire, and John Ronald Ruel Tolkien, language matters to me. I know that there are those, here and elsewhere, who use language weakly, and I grieve for them.
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AmeriGirl26 (12189)
5 years ago
Thanks. I do screw up sometimes, but I try to fix it if I can :). On Discord I'm always correcting minor typos I have made when talking to people.
My name was inspired by the American Girls franchise, of which I was a huge fan of growing up.
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AndyKing (300)
5 years ago
We bought our little girl one 2 years ago when we were on holiday touring California. She named the doll Mela because "it looks like me" and we bought it in LA.
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AmeriGirl26 (12189)
5 years ago
Awww, that's sweet :D. I had one of the "She Looks Like Me" dolls, and had fun with her. The funniest moments were at airport security, where they had me put her on the belt for the x-ray, and you could tell they thought it was cute to see a little girl with her American Girl doll.
What's nice now is, there are 18-inch dolls that look similar to the AG brand, that are cheaper and more available to people who couldn't afford AG dolls, and they have a huge variety available.
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sslssg (27263)
5 years ago
I understand your frustrations. I will admit that my grammar isn't always perfect, and I make mistakes a lot more than I think I should, but when someone who I was in university with is so lazy on Facebook that they use cud instead of could I go a little batty.
'I seen' is one of my biggest pet peeves. It's horrible to hear it spoken and even worse to see it written.
I would also like to lament the death of the adverb. It did it's job perfect. (That hurts to leave like that)
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