Are you a native English speaker? Do you find poorly written messages to be annoying as hell? Are you willing to help other people? If so, unleash your inner teacher in this thread and make this place somewhat less annoying. Feel free to rip my posts apart, copy-paste any broken sentence with poor syntax, misspelled words, or other garbage here with your correction, please. Don't be afraid to elaborate if you feel so, have good laugh as well, jump on your high horse if you want. Let me assure you that I won't find it offensive in any way. Thanks in advance!
(As long as other folks with poor English are willing to participate in this experiment, just raise your hand here, so your posts could be ripped apart freely as well.)
Hmm, I usually prefer just addressing grammatical mistakes with corrections in their quotes (if I'm addressing the individual) highlighted by brackets, or if they're douchebags who rushed their message so they could share their douchery, highlight the fixed errors in bold. Most of the time, however, I prefer private messages. A couple people feel like they're... well, NOT "lost causes", just not far along in the process of learning English that I doubt little pointers will help them. Not naming any names, but I think a couple of you guys might be able to think of one poster here who fits the bill. NOT saying he's an idiot or a bad guy. Just saying... I don't think he's progressed far enough for a few tips to be of help. But hey, I could be totally mistaken.
I'm mostly all for what you're saying, though I don't know what that "jump on your high horse if you want" part was about. Correcting errors isn't really a matter of arrogance, after all. While language may be subject to change, it changes over GENERATIONS, so there are present states of appropriateness in any given language. Anything else is, rightfully, regarded as either slang or linguistic butchery. Most are quick to jump to the conclusion that the latter is always the case. But anyway, not every spelling or grammar correction is someone being a "Grammar Nazi".
I suppose I would've preferred to keep my methods largely to PMs, though the prospect of "other folks with poor English are willing to participate" does make a public effort of addressing these errors much more effective to a larger group of people.
Regardless, you gotta MAKE some mistakes in order for them to receive corrections, so... get typing! =P
Languages change over time no matter what. It's just that most people don't notice because it's a gradual enough process that changes to lexicons happen without most people really noticing.
Yes, everything gets shortened, though at various degrees of time. In my native language (lithuanian) i can still read and understand a book from 1500', so in my language you spell as it is written. This is why i often find english a bit crazy.
I'm often reminded of words my Uncle said when we were traveling Europe while I was in my teens. A fluent speaker of several languages, Serbian (mother tongue) and German being two, he once went on a tirade about how "German language is SO STUPID! One sound, THREE letters! Serbian language is PERFECT! One sound, ONE letter!" The thought of it makes me smile, even now. It was a lovely, hilarious, and endearing moment to share with family while all-too happy to get out of a cramped bus.
As for English..... it's a conquered language. It follows rules that then turn around and break themselves and say they're "exceptions" all the time because it's a language made as an amalgamation of several other languages. I enjoy my handle of it, but I'm not necessarily "in love with" English, despite the fact that it's my first language. I enjoy Serbian and Japanese much more. Studying those languages has been a real delight for me, over the years.
). You are fully comprehensible and you make good use of more complex language and sentence structures.
