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Overwhelming spelling mistakes
14 years ago
A good lecture for most of you:
http://iampaddy.com/spell/
I rarely write journals but today my friend sent me this link. I noticed that the internet language is getting gradually worse a long time ago. Also I noticed the problem is the most significant for native English users. I speak English as a second language and I don't make as many mistakes as some people out there... I don't know whether it's a matter of me not being a native speaker or just because I DO care not to look like a moron when I write and I usually try to check twice before I send anything.
Of course typos are pretty common especially if we need to write fast and don't have time to correct mistakes. However it's quite sad when people don't see the difference between "your" and "you're"... It's just WOW... I see it ALL THE TIME and everywhere. It's hard to believe that it's happening. I really don't know whether English is so incredibly hard (but I think my language is much harder - don't believe? then try learning it) or people show a great amount of laziness (and ignorance) when writing stuff (which is more applicable in this case I think).
Yes you know much more words than I do, you know them well, you know slang, you know shit loads of meanings of any word... But grammar usually sucks like a fox XD... It's funny but it happens to adult people... I don't care about children up to 16 yo... They've got time to learn, but adults? I'm speechless.
You might wonder why I decided to write this journal. It's because I noticed this problem a long time ago and it was accumulating for some time until it exploded thanks to my friend :D...
http://iampaddy.com/spell/
I rarely write journals but today my friend sent me this link. I noticed that the internet language is getting gradually worse a long time ago. Also I noticed the problem is the most significant for native English users. I speak English as a second language and I don't make as many mistakes as some people out there... I don't know whether it's a matter of me not being a native speaker or just because I DO care not to look like a moron when I write and I usually try to check twice before I send anything.
Of course typos are pretty common especially if we need to write fast and don't have time to correct mistakes. However it's quite sad when people don't see the difference between "your" and "you're"... It's just WOW... I see it ALL THE TIME and everywhere. It's hard to believe that it's happening. I really don't know whether English is so incredibly hard (but I think my language is much harder - don't believe? then try learning it) or people show a great amount of laziness (and ignorance) when writing stuff (which is more applicable in this case I think).
Yes you know much more words than I do, you know them well, you know slang, you know shit loads of meanings of any word... But grammar usually sucks like a fox XD... It's funny but it happens to adult people... I don't care about children up to 16 yo... They've got time to learn, but adults? I'm speechless.
You might wonder why I decided to write this journal. It's because I noticed this problem a long time ago and it was accumulating for some time until it exploded thanks to my friend :D...
It doesn't help that phones sometimes auto-correct wrong, and the Internet and modern communications almost demand quick and instant replies. Still, people do definitely need to focus on learning their language more thoroughly.
PS. "thank" in the 3rd paragraph = than, right?
About the "its" thingy... Sometimes I make this mistake myself. Not because I don't see the difference but I just forget to hit an apostrophe :)
The problem with "affect" and "effect" is a bit different I think. These words are pronounced in a similar way and have related meanings because "effect" is a result of "affecting".
PS: thanks :D yeah it should be "than" hehehe :D
I learned English by myself, I can't say I know as many words as some American/UK guy-girl would, but still I attempt to write things error free and grammatically correct. I do fail sometimes..
I swear, next time a native English speaker makes one of these dreadful spelling errors, I'm gonna print out that list, find out where they live, climb through their bedroom window, and staple it to their forehead.
a) write too little
b) read too little
It seems they are not accustomed to written forms of words. They of course can use them very well but when it comes to writing they do it phonetically. Although the writing skills are still quite useful, the ability to read is not so much. Today we don't need to read newspapers, we can listen to some info-channels. We don't need to read books because we can watch movies and so on. If it goes on like that I don't even want to know how the world will look like in the future.
Ever seen the movie Idiocracy?
Yes I've seen. I'm a huge fan of it :)
I can imagine our society slowly developing into Idiocracy if people continue to neglect reading and writing. >__>
People staring into TV wouldn't be that bad if channels broadcasted any intelligent stuff. Saddly because you can select between so many of them you can always find one with useless shit XD. I can imagine how frustrated some people must be as they realise that all channels broadcast some scientific stuff and there is nothing "interesting" to watch :D...
Sweetheart... I don't know what we are developing into but certainly it is a fat <-> brain tradeoff XD. Still it's heart-warming to see that there are people of young age like you who care enough not to rape the language (too much at least because we all do from time to time XD)... ;)
Also, I think that people care less about doing spelling mistakes in their maternal language because they think they will be understood anyway, while, when you write in a foreign language, you are naturally more careful because you do want to make sure to be understood, and you'll never have the same ease with the foreign language than with your maternal language.
But, still, as it says in the site you linked, such mistakes makes the writer lose credibility, and, anyway, all browsers now comes with an in built grammar and spelling checker. Even though it's not perfect, it tends to spot such mistakes most of the time. And you are never in such a hurry to post that you can't check what you wrote yourself anyway.
Well, that's true what you said. However I'm aware of my writing level and I could write everything in much more sloppy way and I would still be understandable, but I've got some dignity and prefer to refrain from making TOO MANY mistakes in a single text :)
PS: Is "text" countable or uncountable? XD Or perhaps I can use it in two meanings: "some of text" and "one text" (text = article).
As well as I may not have been the best at grammar but good GOD there are some things that a native speaker should not fail at.
What annoys me is because I absorb nuances like a damn sponge, people who speak/write poorly affect me. I have noticed this. x.x
The worst was when I worked in fast food, my coworkers always got confused because I would use "big" words. I feel like I became dumber by association. Speak english they would say, I AM! is what I would say... Oh well.
I however did not escape Kentucky unscathed (I lived there about 5 years) The people there say aint . I catch myself saying it every now and then... makes me want to smack myself.
Funny thing is I was a bookworm as a kid even though I did poorly in my english classes. That was because I did not like speaking in front of the class and as such partly did not do my book reports and such out of not wanting to present them. I found homework boring and have a trouble with run on sentences to this day.
Run on sentences are in fact my biggest issue with writing. Grammar yes, but eh.
By the way, sometimes it almost physically hurts not to correct someone trying to speak to me in english here, but I understand it is not the native tongue so I grin and bear it.... with the exception of my love, and I annoy him by correcting him.
Heh so it seems we are a bit similar in this matter :D I had serious problems with polish classes back in the past... I was much worse than others... I learned how to write well maybe 8 years ago and now I'm better than most of my peers :D...
Correct me! Correct! :D I love when someone corrects me... Of course correcting every single typo is unnecessary but if I make a certain type of mistakes repeatedly I would love to learn the "good way" :D Sometimes I'm even a bit sad that people don't correct me at all... I know I'm not bad at it but I make mistakes and I'm sure of it :)... It would be good to fix some of them heh.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ain%27t ....For instance. I do not think it should be in there though.... But whenever I mentioned ain't is not a word, it was always pointed out that it WAS in the dictionary and thus has to be a word.
Precisely! Making mistakes is normal since we are flawed creatures but not wanting to learn from them is simply pathetic :D
I like your idea but we both know why it wouldn't work XD Also keep in mind that some people will NEVER communicate like grownups ;)
I think most people are fine with basics and don't need any more advanced stuff to live. But it's a dead-end. Without knowledge and skills we won't develop our society and technology any further. We have to build up our knowledge to reach higher.
As a case in point for this, I recently was helping a friend interpret comments left on her Japanese homework by her professor, who has god-awful handwriting (and Japanese uses a ton of short-hand and shortcuts in the first place). Because we don't know the language very well, this was a massive pain, but as soon as we showed it to someone who spoke it natively, they immediately laughed, said they saw why we were confused, and then easily told us what it was supposed to say, just because they're familiar enough to figure it out without even trying. Likewise, people can do this intentionally with other native speakers without even thinking twice about it because we know we don't have to worry about it.
I'll give you an example from my language. We use many syllables that can be written in two forms but they sound exactly the same like:
u <-> ó
h <-> ch
rz <-> ż
There are some basic words like "że" or "rzeka". If you don't know how to write them properly you look like a moron. Even dyslexics here can't make such simple mistakes because it just looks just bad... There are some words used ALL THE TIME which you're supposed to know very well... Otherwise you look like a moron especially if you're an adult. Dyslexia is not an excuse for words you use in every second sentence... It's just as if someone wrote "Eye" instead of "I".
Suddenly find myself wondering if other natively-English speaking countries see this sort of thing happening as often. Is it mostly an American thing?
Incredible argument of yours and I think I understood this problem a little better thanks to you.