14.04.09

discoragning

Posted in People, Rants at 7:17 pm by alby

Ooh I’m annoyed.  I’m going to write this here rather than where it should be written as I don’t wish to be too “discoringing”.

There’s a newbie on rec.j.  She sounds like a really enthusiastic young lass (she’s 12 I believe) and is regularly posting and wanting to participate.  All well and good.

However she has THE worst spelling and grammar I think I’ve ever come across.

Here’s a typical message:

i would lkike to all of my kind sponseres and jenoures passand not far ers by who donated money to comic relife as i unicycled 4 miles and did a spot of street performing on red nose day i rased in total 70 poundes

Now I had no clue what “jenoures passand not far ers” means.  After some debate, we came to “generous passers by”.

There have been one or two folk asking her to calm down a bit, maybe use a dictionary or spell checker and then to post.

But apparently that’s rude and “discoriging” (and sarcastic too).

Someone else rode to her rescue with this wonderful message:

“no need to feel so sorry. a spell checker is a good idea. i would be nowhere without it. but the real reason people post up all your spelling mistakes, which are clear as day what you mean, is because they feel they are the guardians of language. the level that people go into on this forum is a joke. most of it is in jest and quite tastefully done, but it dose change the subject far to often.
yes, get yourself a spell checker. its helps. but i think people should be more understanding. if someone spoke to you with a speech impediment you would not say “i will not talk to you unless you learn how to talk well”

Utter crap.

There have been a few occasions where I haven’t had a clue what this girl’s been talking about.  There goes the “clear as day what you mean” bit.  I don’t think I’m stupid but “jenoures” was one word I just didn’t get.

What about this effort?

“how do u no that were u that man who i met that also desighned that web page or r u the whoman that showed me some moves!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Or this one?

“i have been on here for a few months now and i have tryed to addapt to writing so the older people can read it,some people must realise it will take a while for me to ge the hang of it as strange as it may seem also
people have been sacasic about my puntuatoin and to encoriging for new members luckley im enfusyastic and it and it doesent bother me but others might be fritend off and also in chat i cant ussually understand what the
older people are talking about so they should addapt there langguage sllitally.”

What the hell?  There are no full stops in there.  Not a single capital letter either.  But ignoring those minor issues.  What on Earth has the age of the reader got to do with anything?  Perhaps this lass thinks that teachers and examiners only mark grammar and spelling because they have nothing better to do.  Maybe English lessons at school are pojntless because she thinks she can already speak English?

Apparently she feels that this shocking inability to articulate thoughts is in someway normal.

What the hell have the first 7 years of school been teaching her if not to “addapt to writing so the older people can read it”.  Adequate English is not for “older people” it IS, however, for “people”.

I cannot remember being remotely as bad at writing as this when I was 12 and heaven knows I was hardly a model student.

And “sllitally”?  What?  “Slightly” maybe?  Who knows?

I’m now a self-appointed “guardian of the language” now too.  Well woohoo.  It seems that being regularly unable to understand a native English speaker’s writing makes me an odious pedant now.

The point has been made that there are a lot of people on-line who don’t have English as their first language.

And also that if you mumble then expect people to ignore you.  These are the only points being made.  No-one (as far as I’ve seen) has been having a go at her just to show off their skills in the language.

The final point of this helpful soul who came in to give her a written hug was that

“i think people should be more understanding. if someone spoke to you with a speech impediment you would not say “i will not talk to you unless you learn how to talk well”

That’s a ridiculous argument.  Speech impediment = problem not of your making.  Such poor English skills = problem you can do something about.  Unless of course you just can’t be bothered to.  There’s nothing wrong with that course of action I should point out, just don’t be surprised if people mention that they can’t hear you.

I’d expect a stammerer gets annoyed by people not understanding.  That’s where lots of their problems come in I’d expect as they get more frustrated at the lack of communication.  But then the stammerer knows this so goes to speech and language therapy maybe to try and do something about it.  And it works.  SaL therapists get great results with stammerers.

But what then do kids who can’t be bothered to learn the basics of communication in the first 7 years of their schooling do?  Whinge that old people do them down.

NO!  Don’t whinge, just bloody do something about it!  And start by crawling back to the English teachers you’ve ignored for the past 7 years and ask them to actually teach you something.

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