5 ms·
I can really appreciate your point "When you're an adult, nobody corrects your grammar once it's good enough to be understood." It's true. I speak near-fluent
by siberianbear 7y ago
I can really appreciate your point "When you're an adult, nobody corrects your grammar once it's good enough to be understood." It's true. I speak near-fluent Russian as a second language, but it's hard for me to get better because people are too polite to correct my mistakes. If my idea clear, people don't want to appear impolite.
I can't be too critical: I do the same thing when people speak broken English to me. If the idea they want to express is clear, it seems improper to correct them.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago>If my idea clear, // Did you do that on purpose? "[M]y idea is clear" is better, but still not great, not UK native at least. But then you said "if the idea they want to express is clear" later, which is perfect; so just switch "they" <-> "I" and you have a better phrase.
- amaccuish 7y agoMaybe it was a typo?
- siberianbear 7y agoYeah, it was a typo on my part. I wanted to say something like, "If my idea was clear..."
- amaccuish 7y agoMay I ask from where in Siberia you're from (reading between the lines of your username). I studied for some time in Novosibirsk, absolutely loved it :)
- filoleg 7y agoI chuckled at that one, because that is the most common mistake I used to make when I was learning English, because Russian doesn't have articles
- ipince 7y agoMy rule of thumb: if I hear a mistake once, I let it pass (maybe it was just a one-off mistake instead of a misconception). If it hear it twice, I offer the correction kindly. All such interactions have been met with gratitude.
- dbchiem 7y agoThis is such a good rule. The biggest things I learned from this thread: - Stop worrying about how I sound to other people, make as many mistakes as possible to receive feedback - Stop being over-polite by not correcting others, this is how they get their feedback