8 ms·

"It’s almost impossible to feel like part of a community if you’re not highly proficient in the language. Even non-native speakers who are fluent enough to read

by soneca 13y ago

"It’s almost impossible to feel like part of a community if you’re not highly proficient in the language. Even non-native speakers who are fluent enough to read posts in their second or third languages often aren’t comfortable enough to write in them." Wow, this is true! I am brazilian and you have no idea how much effort I put in writing every single comment here on HN. And the longer de comment is, the more stupid mistakes I make; e.g., i usually write "no" instead of "know" or vice-versa, just because in my brazilian mind they sound exactly the same. And at my most voted comment ever I wrote "maked" instead of "made". No one mentioned (?) it, but I still feel the shame. I think it is a great move by SO, lots and lots of developers I meet here (i am not one) don't speak fluent english. Our basic education is very poor (in every aspect, including english language there). If we want a world where everyone can learn to code/develop early in life, this sure come in hand in Brazil, where there is a huge just-got-out-of-poverty youth that didn't learn english at all, but could easily learn to code. Congrats SO! edit: I noticed I just wrote "de" instead of "the". Stupidest mistake I often make. Again, just because in my mind they sound exactly the same - and "de" is a word (of) in portuguese. Gosh, I make this mistake for so long, I should have learned already.

waterside81 13y ago
Your written English is great - don't sweat it. Many native English speakers write worse than you.
- soneca 13y ago
  I am a little proud of my writing skills in portuguese (and always a little frustrated that I lose these skills in English). But the point is that it is not all that natural to me. Requires effort, a lot of thought. I know the final result can be good, but gets in the way of "being part of a community" as the OP put it. Example: i started to play a little with Dogecoin, but I gave up being part of their reddit community because of the language (it gets worse when it is coloquial, informal).
icelancer 13y ago
Your written English is better than the vast majority of our current undergraduate college students in America, so I really wouldn't worry about it.
- Aldo_MX 13y ago
  Although native-English speakers are always nice enough to tell me that my English is "good enough" to be understood, there are times that I feel uneasy with myself, because I just lack the practice to be able to communicate fluently in English.
  - arthurcolle 13y ago
    If you ever want someone to speak English with, I'm Arthur Colle, and you can find me at facebook (dot) com (slash) arthurcolle :)
  - icelancer 13y ago
    It's not that it's "good enough." It's actively better than most of the people I communicate with. Don't sell yourself short :)
  - jaimebuelta 13y ago
    Similar feelings here. I am Spanish, and work in Ireland since 4 years ago, so I have to communicate in English. Even if people had told me quite a lot of times that my English is very good, that they've never have problems understanding me, I still can feel all the extra effort that I have to put into it, as well as being aware of most of the grammar or pronunciation mistakes I do. Of course, practice is everything. I am clearly way more relaxed now than I used to be. But I still have to take some seconds from time to time to phrase correctly. On the other hand, I do that as well on Spanish. Communicating is hard! I guess that some Dunning-Krueger effects works here. You are aware of your limitations, even if they are not that big, and that stings.
  - reidrac 13y ago
    I have exactly the same problem, a little bit aggravated by the fact that I seem to be a little bit dyslexic and sometimes I type something but I read something completely different. People tend to be nice, so I just try to get the message through and don't think too much about it :)
michelutti 13y ago
Why not use http://ell.stackexchange.com/ http://ell.stackexchange.com/ or http://english.stackexchange.com/ http://english.stackexchange.com/ to learn English and maintain the stackoverflow one version? I agree with "soneca", I am from Brazil too and I'm not so confortable to answer in English, but this never stopped me to ask, to answer or whatever... I mean, the real insight is continous learning, we cannot be in the comfort zone. Distribute and divide will result in duplicate QA, duplicated knowledge and maybe feel a little "it is better to us, not mixing in with these people"
- _random_ 13y ago
  I agree. Any kind of English is way better then people asking questions without making their own effort first. If the language is not clear there will be comments asking for clarifications. Besides I have edited a couple of questions to try and improve grammar. Other people do the same. The world did not collapse.
- dudurocha 13y ago
  Because english (and any new language) is hard as fu*k. I'm a also a brazilian, and I think you can agree with me that not eveyone (actualy only 3%) of the brazilians have the condition to learn english. For condition I mean education and financial resources. I know that many of us learned english as we played chrono trigger or Metal Gear Solid, but we had a condition that many of our fellow brazilians did not have.
ardfard 13y ago
I can relate to this too. This is why I lack participation in HN discussions even though I've been here for about 3 years and always checking HN regularly. English is my third language and I barely speak it at home. So I still feel really uncomfortable and difficult to express my mind in English.
ansimionescu 13y ago
Agreed, writing posts/comments in English as a non-native speaker (with anxiety issues) is a real endeavour. Thankfully I've put so much time in it already that I can be reasonably certain that what I write is correct, and "flows" well, but I can definitely relate to your struggles.
- Natsu 13y ago
  You seem to be doing well. I would not have known that you were not a native speaker if you had not said so.
- devgutt 13y ago
  Would you mind to share what is your process?
  - ansimionescu 13y ago
    Just posting a lot on social media and news sites. I use Google Search, Google Translate, Mac's builtin dictionary, and Thesaurus.com (for synonyms/antonyms). Reading helps – you can "find" collections of ebooks for kindle/mobile quite easily (disclaimer: I don't support piracy, it's just that as a student I can't yet afford paying for 100% of what I consume).
    - elboru 13y ago
      I use google search a lot, when some sentence just doesn't sound right, I google it, if it has thousands or millions of results I accept it as right, if it has just some hundreds or less I rephrase it until I find a "popular" way of expressing what I want to say.
vacri 13y ago
No one mentioned (?) it, but I still feel the shame. I'm pretty verbose, I love my words, and people around me sometimes come to me with questions about words or their history and the like... and I still make the same mistakes you do. I often put the wrong word in when typing quickly, or edit the middle of a sentence forgetting to fix the overall context. Errors are not just due to proficiency in language, but also due to typing skills or low points in attention (pre-morning caffeine). The thing is, most people will forgive minor mess-ups if it's clear what you actually meant. It's not something to worry about in internet commentary, which is more like an informal chat than formal writing. If you were writing a scientific paper or a politician's speech, this is the time to be concerned about the formal structure and specifics of what's going on. Edit: it's not to say don't try, just to say don't beat yourself up over small mistakes.
zhte415 13y ago
> edit: I noticed I just wrote "de" instead of "the". Stupidest mistake I often make. I've worked with a lot of developers from China, who themselves work with developers in India. On a conference call the China sysadmin announces they've verified the C Jia Jia environment and the India developer totally knows what they mean. C++ in Mandarin is pronounced C Jia Jia. Don't sweat it.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  Weird, I work in China and have never heard C++ referred to as C加加. Many of my coworkers feel uncomfortable using English sometimes, but I never have a problem understanding them. The Indians speak English at work (in India at least) out of habit.
  - zhte415 13y ago
    Drop it in a conversation and try :)
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      I could try, but I can't get C加油 out of my head.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - est 13y ago
    > Weird, I work in China and have never heard C++ referred to as C加加. We actually call C++ C艹, and call C# C井
- nsoonhui 13y ago
  I am a Chinese but I don't understand what do you ( or they) mean by "they've verified the C Jia Jia environment". Care to elaborate?
MildlySerious 13y ago
Then again, a lot of people here (and elsewhere) aren't speaking english natively and might notice a mistake, but can relate to it because they're in the same boat. Writing a longer text like you just did can take quite a bit of time and attention, and I think everyone who is in the same situation will acknowledge that as long as the text isn't an unreadable mess. I hope that's a bit of a motivation!
moron4hire 13y ago
Luckily, English is a language that is tolerant of mistakes.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
  English speakers often aren't.
  - V-2 13y ago
    I've never seen anyone put down on StackOverflow because of language mistakes. Quite the contrary, people helpfully edit poorly worded questions to make them more comprehensible - insofar as it's possible at all
  - moron4hire 13y ago
    That is unfortunately so. I'm so glad I didn't encounter any such Germans when I was in high school and college.
zanny 13y ago
There is a real brutal grammar nazi trend I've been seeing recently on various sites - apparently, someone gets a buzz of self entitled superiority off of correcting someones grammar mistakes. Personally? I think English is insanely stupid, inefficient, and dumb. I speak it because I have to, not because I want to, because everyone else does it. If you think trying to get breakout success in a market with, say, a software product is, try thinking of a way to create an "optimal" language (ie, glyphs only trace to possible human vocalization, but it covers the entire range - English doesn't, for example. And your words are a huffman tree - the most popular ones are the shortest, though that can only ever be realized when the language is conceived since the common vernacular shifts over time). Now try to figure out how to get that market penetration.
- vacri 13y ago
  Having seen the grammar wars at the turn of the century, there is nothing like it going on at the moment. Modern day grammar nazis are just another part of general trolling, nothing particularly brutal going on.
- WildUtah 13y ago
  "thinking of a way to create an "optimal" language" The Korean tried inventing an optimal alphabet a few centuries ago and it caught on. [0] Traditional Korean writing (in Chinese characters) has been almost abandoned. The Korean Hangul alphabet doesn't include all possible sounds but I don't think that's really what you want. All those guttural consonants, tonal vowels, and clicks and snaps and buzzes that are possible add complexity, but the real breadth of words is mostly combinatorial rather than based on having a lot of letters. [0]http://www.learnkoreanlanguage.com/learn-hangul.html http://www.learnkoreanlanguage.com/learn-hangul.html
  - vukmir 13y ago
    Serbs did it too at the beginning of the 19th century and since then (in Serbian) every word is written exactly as it is pronounced. The rule is: "Write as you speak and read as it is written."[0] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Cyrillic_alphabet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Cyrillic_alphabet
Nicholas_C 13y ago
>edit: I noticed I just wrote "de" instead of "the". Stupidest mistake I often make. Again, just because in my mind they sound exactly the same - and "de" is a word (of) in portuguese. Gosh, I make this mistake for so long, I should have learned already. Thanks for explaining this! I work with a few people in South America and they write "de" all the time in e-mails. I kind of figured that's why it happens.
- pdpi 13y ago
  Neither portuguese nor (I think) spanish have either of the two 'th' sounds (/ð/ as in 'the', or /θ/ as in 'thing'), and the 'd' (/d/) sound is the closest thing we have in portuguese.
  - WildUtah 13y ago
    Ceceo Spanish dialects have the /θ/ sound but most accents don't.
fremn 13y ago
'de' also means 'the' in dutch, I thought you were just being clever. no vs know; natives makes this mistake as well.
dspillett 13y ago
> No one mentioned it We are used to subconsciously "translating" what is actually meant from the exact words used, in part because so many people speak English as a second language (that they aren't particularly fluent in), in part because English is such an irregular language in places due to its historical development so even native speakers get a pile of things wrong, and in part because a lot of people particularly online deliberately get it wrong (building their own slang, references, and linguistic in-jokes that often eventually leak out into the wider awareness), and of course also in part because people who do know what is right sometimes make genuine mistakes. The trick in any language is not to be perfect: it is about getting your message across and understanding other people's communication. If your English is good enough that I can understand your meaning without any great effort on my part, and you can understand what I'm trying to say, then your English is good enough (in fact possibly better, at least formally speaking, than some people native to the language!). Of course you should always strive to improve your skills, but try not to stress over it too much.

by soneca 13y ago

waterside81 13y ago

Your written English is great - don't sweat it. Many native English speakers write worse than you.

soneca 13y ago
I am a little proud of my writing skills in portuguese (and always a little frustrated that I lose these skills in English). But the point is that it is not all that natural to me. Requires effort, a lot of thought. I know the final result can be good, but gets in the way of "being part of a community" as the OP put it. Example: i started to play a little with Dogecoin, but I gave up being part of their reddit community because of the language (it gets worse when it is coloquial, informal).

icelancer 13y ago

Your written English is better than the vast majority of our current undergraduate college students in America, so I really wouldn't worry about it.

Aldo_MX 13y ago
Although native-English speakers are always nice enough to tell me that my English is "good enough" to be understood, there are times that I feel uneasy with myself, because I just lack the practice to be able to communicate fluently in English.
- arthurcolle 13y ago
  If you ever want someone to speak English with, I'm Arthur Colle, and you can find me at facebook (dot) com (slash) arthurcolle :)
- icelancer 13y ago
  It's not that it's "good enough." It's actively better than most of the people I communicate with. Don't sell yourself short :)
- jaimebuelta 13y ago
  Similar feelings here. I am Spanish, and work in Ireland since 4 years ago, so I have to communicate in English. Even if people had told me quite a lot of times that my English is very good, that they've never have problems understanding me, I still can feel all the extra effort that I have to put into it, as well as being aware of most of the grammar or pronunciation mistakes I do. Of course, practice is everything. I am clearly way more relaxed now than I used to be. But I still have to take some seconds from time to time to phrase correctly. On the other hand, I do that as well on Spanish. Communicating is hard! I guess that some Dunning-Krueger effects works here. You are aware of your limitations, even if they are not that big, and that stings.
- reidrac 13y ago
  I have exactly the same problem, a little bit aggravated by the fact that I seem to be a little bit dyslexic and sometimes I type something but I read something completely different. People tend to be nice, so I just try to get the message through and don't think too much about it :)

michelutti 13y ago

Why not use http://ell.stackexchange.com/ http://ell.stackexchange.com/ or http://english.stackexchange.com/ http://english.stackexchange.com/ to learn English and maintain the stackoverflow one version? I agree with "soneca", I am from Brazil too and I'm not so confortable to answer in English, but this never stopped me to ask, to answer or whatever... I mean, the real insight is continous learning, we cannot be in the comfort zone. Distribute and divide will result in duplicate QA, duplicated knowledge and maybe feel a little "it is better to us, not mixing in with these people"

_random_ 13y ago
I agree. Any kind of English is way better then people asking questions without making their own effort first. If the language is not clear there will be comments asking for clarifications. Besides I have edited a couple of questions to try and improve grammar. Other people do the same. The world did not collapse.
dudurocha 13y ago
Because english (and any new language) is hard as fu*k. I'm a also a brazilian, and I think you can agree with me that not eveyone (actualy only 3%) of the brazilians have the condition to learn english. For condition I mean education and financial resources. I know that many of us learned english as we played chrono trigger or Metal Gear Solid, but we had a condition that many of our fellow brazilians did not have.

ardfard 13y ago

I can relate to this too. This is why I lack participation in HN discussions even though I've been here for about 3 years and always checking HN regularly. English is my third language and I barely speak it at home. So I still feel really uncomfortable and difficult to express my mind in English.

ansimionescu 13y ago

Agreed, writing posts/comments in English as a non-native speaker (with anxiety issues) is a real endeavour. Thankfully I've put so much time in it already that I can be reasonably certain that what I write is correct, and "flows" well, but I can definitely relate to your struggles.

Natsu 13y ago
You seem to be doing well. I would not have known that you were not a native speaker if you had not said so.
devgutt 13y ago
Would you mind to share what is your process?
- ansimionescu 13y ago
  Just posting a lot on social media and news sites. I use Google Search, Google Translate, Mac's builtin dictionary, and Thesaurus.com (for synonyms/antonyms). Reading helps – you can "find" collections of ebooks for kindle/mobile quite easily (disclaimer: I don't support piracy, it's just that as a student I can't yet afford paying for 100% of what I consume).
  - elboru 13y ago
    I use google search a lot, when some sentence just doesn't sound right, I google it, if it has thousands or millions of results I accept it as right, if it has just some hundreds or less I rephrase it until I find a "popular" way of expressing what I want to say.

vacri 13y ago

No one mentioned (?) it, but I still feel the shame. I'm pretty verbose, I love my words, and people around me sometimes come to me with questions about words or their history and the like... and I still make the same mistakes you do. I often put the wrong word in when typing quickly, or edit the middle of a sentence forgetting to fix the overall context. Errors are not just due to proficiency in language, but also due to typing skills or low points in attention (pre-morning caffeine). The thing is, most people will forgive minor mess-ups if it's clear what you actually meant. It's not something to worry about in internet commentary, which is more like an informal chat than formal writing. If you were writing a scientific paper or a politician's speech, this is the time to be concerned about the formal structure and specifics of what's going on. Edit: it's not to say don't try, just to say don't beat yourself up over small mistakes.

zhte415 13y ago

> edit: I noticed I just wrote "de" instead of "the". Stupidest mistake I often make. I've worked with a lot of developers from China, who themselves work with developers in India. On a conference call the China sysadmin announces they've verified the C Jia Jia environment and the India developer totally knows what they mean. C++ in Mandarin is pronounced C Jia Jia. Don't sweat it.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
Weird, I work in China and have never heard C++ referred to as C加加. Many of my coworkers feel uncomfortable using English sometimes, but I never have a problem understanding them. The Indians speak English at work (in India at least) out of habit.
- zhte415 13y ago
  Drop it in a conversation and try :)
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    I could try, but I can't get C加油 out of my head.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- est 13y ago
  > Weird, I work in China and have never heard C++ referred to as C加加. We actually call C++ C艹, and call C# C井
nsoonhui 13y ago
I am a Chinese but I don't understand what do you ( or they) mean by "they've verified the C Jia Jia environment". Care to elaborate?

MildlySerious 13y ago

Then again, a lot of people here (and elsewhere) aren't speaking english natively and might notice a mistake, but can relate to it because they're in the same boat. Writing a longer text like you just did can take quite a bit of time and attention, and I think everyone who is in the same situation will acknowledge that as long as the text isn't an unreadable mess. I hope that's a bit of a motivation!

moron4hire 13y ago

Luckily, English is a language that is tolerant of mistakes.

GFK_of_xmaspast 13y ago
English speakers often aren't.
- V-2 13y ago
  I've never seen anyone put down on StackOverflow because of language mistakes. Quite the contrary, people helpfully edit poorly worded questions to make them more comprehensible - insofar as it's possible at all
- moron4hire 13y ago
  That is unfortunately so. I'm so glad I didn't encounter any such Germans when I was in high school and college.

zanny 13y ago

There is a real brutal grammar nazi trend I've been seeing recently on various sites - apparently, someone gets a buzz of self entitled superiority off of correcting someones grammar mistakes. Personally? I think English is insanely stupid, inefficient, and dumb. I speak it because I have to, not because I want to, because everyone else does it. If you think trying to get breakout success in a market with, say, a software product is, try thinking of a way to create an "optimal" language (ie, glyphs only trace to possible human vocalization, but it covers the entire range - English doesn't, for example. And your words are a huffman tree - the most popular ones are the shortest, though that can only ever be realized when the language is conceived since the common vernacular shifts over time). Now try to figure out how to get that market penetration.

vacri 13y ago
Having seen the grammar wars at the turn of the century, there is nothing like it going on at the moment. Modern day grammar nazis are just another part of general trolling, nothing particularly brutal going on.
WildUtah 13y ago
"thinking of a way to create an "optimal" language" The Korean tried inventing an optimal alphabet a few centuries ago and it caught on. [0] Traditional Korean writing (in Chinese characters) has been almost abandoned. The Korean Hangul alphabet doesn't include all possible sounds but I don't think that's really what you want. All those guttural consonants, tonal vowels, and clicks and snaps and buzzes that are possible add complexity, but the real breadth of words is mostly combinatorial rather than based on having a lot of letters. [0]http://www.learnkoreanlanguage.com/learn-hangul.html http://www.learnkoreanlanguage.com/learn-hangul.html
- vukmir 13y ago
  Serbs did it too at the beginning of the 19th century and since then (in Serbian) every word is written exactly as it is pronounced. The rule is: "Write as you speak and read as it is written."[0] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Cyrillic_alphabet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Cyrillic_alphabet

Nicholas_C 13y ago

>edit: I noticed I just wrote "de" instead of "the". Stupidest mistake I often make. Again, just because in my mind they sound exactly the same - and "de" is a word (of) in portuguese. Gosh, I make this mistake for so long, I should have learned already. Thanks for explaining this! I work with a few people in South America and they write "de" all the time in e-mails. I kind of figured that's why it happens.

pdpi 13y ago
Neither portuguese nor (I think) spanish have either of the two 'th' sounds (/ð/ as in 'the', or /θ/ as in 'thing'), and the 'd' (/d/) sound is the closest thing we have in portuguese.
- WildUtah 13y ago
  Ceceo Spanish dialects have the /θ/ sound but most accents don't.

fremn 13y ago

'de' also means 'the' in dutch, I thought you were just being clever. no vs know; natives makes this mistake as well.

dspillett 13y ago

> No one mentioned it We are used to subconsciously "translating" what is actually meant from the exact words used, in part because so many people speak English as a second language (that they aren't particularly fluent in), in part because English is such an irregular language in places due to its historical development so even native speakers get a pile of things wrong, and in part because a lot of people particularly online deliberately get it wrong (building their own slang, references, and linguistic in-jokes that often eventually leak out into the wider awareness), and of course also in part because people who do know what is right sometimes make genuine mistakes. The trick in any language is not to be perfect: it is about getting your message across and understanding other people's communication. If your English is good enough that I can understand your meaning without any great effort on my part, and you can understand what I'm trying to say, then your English is good enough (in fact possibly better, at least formally speaking, than some people native to the language!). Of course you should always strive to improve your skills, but try not to stress over it too much.