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Was the comment above edited or something? Because I don't get how it's interpreted as a personal swipe as is. That the parent comment would make such sweeping

Was the comment above edited or something? Because I don't get how it's interpreted as a personal swipe as is. That the parent comment would make such sweeping statement and dismiss regional accents as "untreated speech problems" is incredibly offensive, and in fact does indicate that they have not done much study on linguistics. Literally the first chapter of a Linguistics 101 book explains how dialects are a natural and healthy part of language and the existence of a dialect is not relative to someone's communication ability overall. As a person who had actual speech problems that required years of speech therapy - it's incredibly frustrating to see someone try to equate learning to read with speech therapy and then see you say that it's a "personal swipe" when that person is correctly called out as ignorant on the specific subject matter it relates to.

dang 7y ago
"You are betraying your ignorance" makes the discussion personal and expresses a pejorative. That's what I mean by personal swipe. Even if another comment was bad and provocative, the guidelines ask you to omit those. The issue isn't whether the other commenter deserved it—it's the effect that including such things has on subsequent discussion. We know from long experience that the effect is degrading, whether someone deserved it or not.
burfog 7y ago
Disagreement is not ignorance. The fact that a Linguistics 101 book contains a politically motivated viewpoint is unsurprising. That viewpoint is not factual. I have a relative who drops the R. He was raised around people (family and city) without that error, so clearly it didn't come about due to accent or dialect. Well, he invented his own, which is what a speech problem is. He was thus taken to speech therapy. Sadly the problem was not easy to fix. The speech therapist told his mother to not worry too much, because he sounded like he came from Boston. It does impact communication ability. Nearly everybody can clearly understand the speech of the national news anchors, particularly those of the 1970s and 1980s. Just the other day I met somebody with a thick native Florida accent, and communication was impeded. This matters. Getting back to reading, the more your speech differs from simple phonetics the more trouble you will have. Typical Russians learn to read a year or two before typical English speakers, and typical English speakers learn to read a year or two before typical Chinese speakers. If your speech is far from phonetic, your situation is closer to Chinese. That delays reading.

dang 7y ago

"You are betraying your ignorance" makes the discussion personal and expresses a pejorative. That's what I mean by personal swipe. Even if another comment was bad and provocative, the guidelines ask you to omit those. The issue isn't whether the other commenter deserved it—it's the effect that including such things has on subsequent discussion. We know from long experience that the effect is degrading, whether someone deserved it or not.

burfog 7y ago

Disagreement is not ignorance. The fact that a Linguistics 101 book contains a politically motivated viewpoint is unsurprising. That viewpoint is not factual. I have a relative who drops the R. He was raised around people (family and city) without that error, so clearly it didn't come about due to accent or dialect. Well, he invented his own, which is what a speech problem is. He was thus taken to speech therapy. Sadly the problem was not easy to fix. The speech therapist told his mother to not worry too much, because he sounded like he came from Boston. It does impact communication ability. Nearly everybody can clearly understand the speech of the national news anchors, particularly those of the 1970s and 1980s. Just the other day I met somebody with a thick native Florida accent, and communication was impeded. This matters. Getting back to reading, the more your speech differs from simple phonetics the more trouble you will have. Typical Russians learn to read a year or two before typical English speakers, and typical English speakers learn to read a year or two before typical Chinese speakers. If your speech is far from phonetic, your situation is closer to Chinese. That delays reading.