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> Getting someone to look over your stuff and looking for spelling errors sounds like a simple and easy fix doesn’t it? There are a lot of people who don't spe
by wolfgke 9y ago
> Getting someone to look over your stuff and looking for spelling errors sounds like a simple and easy fix doesn’t it?
There are a lot of people who don't speak English as native language. I, as a non-native speaker learn about very subtle rules of the English language all the time, where the author often explains that even many native speakers are often not aware of these rules and thus write in their own native wrongly. It already occurred multiple times to me that I asked, say, 5 people at the floor of the institute where I work at, about some subtle grammar details in English. All of the persons who I asked were much more fluent in English than me (though not native speakers), but nobody could answer me the questions. I even sometimes confuse English native speakers with my questions about subtle details of English spelling, grammar, or word usage (side remark: it is my impression that native speakers of German are often much more aware of all the subtleties in their native tongue than native speakers of English).
So it is really not easy (even if you have English native speakers to ask) to find someone to proofread your English texts.
- tomc1985 9y agoThere is generally a recognizable difference between native-speaker-incompetence and foreigner-learning grammar errors/typos
- flamedoge 9y agoThe rules of language are simple to learn. Culture and Idioms must be lived and experienced.
- gugagore 9y agoWhat is "simple" is a matter of opinion, but in this case I think your opinion is pretty incorrect. The fact that the "rules" vary with region, generation, level of formality, and so on seems to fly in the face of your claim. Not to mention, most native speakers may speak correctly but cannot articulate a correct list of rules.
- flamedoge 9y agoWhat I referred to with 'rules of the language' was the national standard version of the language. Those are publicly well known and promoted by a majority body. I argue that these rules are much easier to learn than rules of dialects.
- gugagore 9y agoFirst of all, in numerous cases, the "national standard" (whatever that means) dialect is not the dialect spoken by the majority. Can you give an example of rules of "standard English" being easier to learn than some rule of non-standard English? Also note that English as far as I know doesn't even have an official codification of its rules and usage: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_language_regulators https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_language_regulators
- flamedoge 9y agoI'll argue that Korean spoken in Seoul, South Korea is vastly different from one in Pyong Yang, North Korea, and arguably harder to learn because one can trace some of the phrasing to old way Korean was spoken which is a mix of Chinese-derived words with Korean. This is due to the language having been invented by King Sejong circa 400(?) years ago when most written language was Chinese in Korea. It's harder because you have to trace the origins of these words to Chinese characters and it's not just learning one language anymore--language rules and meanings cross over across regions and boundaries that exist or existed in the past.
- lazyasciiart 9y agoThe language was not "invented" at all, you may be misremembering the invention of the Korean alphabet by Sejong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Korean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Korean
- gugagore 9y agoI think you're mostly talking about orthography (writing), and not language itself. You might be saying that because of the different writing systems, the spoken language is different today, which seems plausible. In any case, no matter how "mixed" a language's history is, I bet that for its native speakers, it is acquired as one language and feels like one language. When people learn and acquire language, they don't have to trace any origins of any words. Anyway, we migrated from arguing about the claim "The rules of language are simple" to arguing that some language rules are simpler than other, which to me makes room for the claim that language is, generally speaking, complicated and its rules are complicated.
- beat 9y agoYes, I pointedly confine my filter to spelling errors, not grammar, out of respect for non-native English speakers (or even native English speakers who grew up with other dialects). English grammar can be terribly difficult, even for well educated native speakers. Spelling, on the other hand, has a consistent reference.
- lazyasciiart 9y agoI'm curious, do you expect everyone to use American spelling, or would you also accept British variations like -ise, colour, etc?
- user5994461 9y agoHopefully, the reviewers are smart enough to know that color/colour is not a typo. ^^