Got a Doubt ! Wanting for your Help ! Plz make it ASAP !

Ned Batchelder ned at nedbatchelder.com
Wed Nov 27 10:25:05 EST 2013


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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