Dear Grammar Police

[Anonymous]

How do you feel about people's accent?

I've been working on my English for 6 years. I came to the US knowing very basic stuff like how to spell my name and the use of the verb to be in the present tense. It's been a long road and nowadays people barely notice I have an accent; actually I had people thinking I was from certain states but never a foreigner.

I'm very a confident person but thinking that people might judge me based on my weak writing skills kinda saddens me a bit and I find myself justifying my grammatical and orthographic mistakes all the time.

So, if you judge a person based on their writing skills, do you cut them some slack when you hear they have an accent or if you learn they're not native speakers?

[Anonymous]

I cut them slack. I would never be able to write particularly well in another language even after years in a country with that language.

[Anonymous]

Concur with PP. I am often able to detect from someone's writing that English is not his/her first language. Yet I am in awe of how weak my skills are in French and Spanish (and forget written!). Practice makes perfect. Your writing will only improve by taking chances and making mistakes. We have a sitter who asked me to correct her English and I enjoy helping her learn grammar as well as pronunciation and new words.

OP, good luck! Most, but not all grammar police, are too provincial to realize that you are writing in a language other than your mother tongue.

[Anonymous]

I'm generally impressed if somebody whose first language is not English can write reasonably well in it. I'm like you, I used to be mistaken by the Swiss for a person from southern France, and by the French for a native of Switzerland, but my French writing never came near perfection.

The only person on here who seems to get a lot of flak for bad English is the DCUMMIE poster. People seem to think she's fair game because she's pretty off-the-wall and she's abusive to everybody else. Well, her and the Brazillians who keep starting threads about "why are Americans so bad at XYZ?" I think if you're polite and reasonable, people will respect you rather than think less of you.

[Anonymous]

OP, if DCUM writing is the standard, you're doing exceptionally well. Keep up the good work!

Signed,

Chief of Police

[Anonymous]

I cut them slack. I very much admire people who speak more than one language. My 10 years of studying French convinced me that I was never going to be bilingual. So kudos to those who are!

[Anonymous]

OP, I cut them some slack, as my DH is similar to you -- however, he has gotten so good at written English that I rarely see any mistakes in his written communications now. What a difference from 10 years ago when we first met!

Keep at it, and don't worry about what (very few) grammar-conscious people may think. Many more will hear your accent and be impressed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, I cut them some slack, as my DH is similar to you -- however, he has gotten so good at written English that I rarely see any mistakes in his written communications now. What a difference from 10 years ago when we first met!

Keep at it, and don't worry about what (very few) grammar-conscious people may think. Many more will hear your accent and be impressed.

Full of punctuation errors

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I cut them some slack, as my DH is similar to you -- however, he has gotten so good at written English that I rarely see any mistakes in his written communications now. What a difference from 10 years ago when we first met!

Keep at it, and don't worry about what (very few) grammar-conscious people may think. Many more will hear your accent and be impressed.

Full of punctuation errors[/quote]

You have grammar and punctuation problems yourself, pp.

[Anonymous]

In all honesty, I really don't like reading anything that isn't well-written. I just can't understand how some adults don't seem to know basic spelling (their/there, your/you're/etc). I do cut ESL folks some slack. I'm not as rigid when it comes to punctuation...don't mind if you screw that up a bit.

[Anonymous]

But why then some folks get so anal abt it here on DCUM? (and other discussion forums)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In all honesty, I really don't like reading anything that isn't well-written. I just can't understand how some adults don't seem to know basic spelling (their/there, your/you're/etc). I do cut ESL folks some slack. I'm not as rigid when it comes to punctuation...don't mind if you screw that up a bit.

This used to be me. Then I found I made some of the same mistakes - not because I didn't know any better, but because my brain was ahead of my fingers. I am a very bad typist. When I was in high school (this was pre-internet and even pre-home desk top for most people), I thought if I knew how to type it woudl limit my career options, so I skipped it so I couldn't be forced into a pink collar job. Of course, now typing is a life skill.

In any event, on top of my numerous typos, the part of my brain working on typing is behind the part thinking, so the typing part types hominems (or is it hominyms - don't know how to spell check on DCUM either).

Now I just get fussed about eggregious stuff or completely incoherent posts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In all honesty, I really don't like reading anything that isn't well-written. I just can't understand how some adults don't seem to know basic spelling (their/there, your/you're/etc). I do cut ESL folks some slack. I'm not as rigid when it comes to punctuation...don't mind if you screw that up a bit.

This used to be me. Then I found I made some of the same mistakes - not because I didn't know any better, but because my brain was ahead of my fingers. I am a very bad typist. When I was in high school (this was pre-internet and even pre-home desk top for most people), I thought if I knew how to type it woudl limit my career options, so I skipped it so I couldn't be forced into a pink collar job. Of course, now typing is a life skill.

In any event, on top of my numerous typos, the part of my brain working on typing is behind the part thinking, so the typing part types hominems (or is it hominyms - don't know how to spell check on DCUM either).

Now I just get fussed about eggregious stuff or completely incoherent posts.

Sometimes it's just funny.