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Topic: Making fun of grammar/spelling mistakes (non-native speakers, please participate  (Read 5616 times)

Ambious

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I enjoy most readings of TFP as much as the other listener, but not being a native English speaker I am myself sometimes prone to spelling and grammar mistakes that - had any of my posts been read on the show, gods forbid, would have caused a lot giggles and ridicule from the ridiculists.
Now I'm a good sport about it most of the time, and most of the time in the context of the episode the spelling and grammar aren't the topic of discussion but rather an amusing side-effect of whatever craziness the subject text is depicting, but every now and again there are posts with nothing wrong about them BUT the spelling and grammar, and TBH it makes me sometimes a bit uncomfortable.
Which is completely my own problem, but I was wondering if any of the other non-native English speakers in the crowd have ever thought about it or had the same feeling.
On the other hand, some mistakes are actually MORE common among native speakers (such as confusing "affect" and "effect", "your" and "you're", etc. No idea why).

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p.s. there's no real point to this post. It's not a complaint, I'm just thinking out loud.

Fanzay

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I wouldn't worry too much about it, really. Remember that the point of this podcast isn't to make fun of people's grammar or spelling – like you said, that's just an amusing side-effect – but making fun of the insanity of the internet is.

I often make fun of my dad for his extremely Norwegian accent when he speaks English, but he always takes it with a smile, saying that the most important thing is to make sure that the person you are talking to (or in this case, typing to) understands what you are trying to say. As long as you're able to make yourself understood, don't worry too much about it.

Don't feel like you need to compete with native English speakers. After all, they usually don't have to practice a second language. We do. So don't worry about it.

Ambious

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I don't personally take offense, even if I was being directly ridiculed for it. I just wonder if maybe sometimes the readers are focusing on those things when the content itself just isn't funny enough.

Isfahan

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I don't know if this helps your feelings, but to a native speaker, mistakes stemming from second-language English versus just being a moron are usually pretty clear.

For example, the "Palace of Pressure" story that we read at the end of the crushing episode was very obviously written by someone whose first language isn't English. His tenses and choice of adjectives were off, but in a way that you could tell he was either in the middle of studying English or engaging in some rather rusty practice. For example, the opening line "Where has he been?" should have been "Where was he?" and later on he uses "foots" instead of "feet," which is a mistake you almost never see from native English. Toast even mentions immediately after that he never thought he'd see someone use "foots" and the reason for that is because "foots" just isn't a word that exists. The plural of "foot" is always "feet," but if you're more familiar with the general rules of English rather than the practice of it, you would normally put an S on the end of any word to try and pluralize it.

As for adjective choice, there's "So you're the neat guy who want to welcome me? *gulp*" which is a baffling word to use, given the context.

Now look at the Spells of Magic episode(s) and the last-dance song from the Song Lyrics episode. The horrific brutalizing of English present there is obviously from native-English teenagers who give less than a shit about putting effort into communicating effectively.

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the difference between affect and effect is pretty subtle, and they are pronounced identically in 'murican. in general native speakers have trouble with spelling homonyms.

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the difference between affect and effect is pretty subtle, and they are pronounced identically in 'murican. in general native speakers have trouble with spelling homonyms.
jack chick, August 30, 2015, 10:55:52 am

Affect and effect are pronounced the same by most people, except when you're talking about someone's affect (AH-fect) vs. the affect a chemical will have on another ("How will this affect the results?") Or when you're talking about the effect in the past tense (eh-FECT) as opposed to the future tense ("What effect will this have?" where "effect" is prounounced with no emphasis on either syllable.)

English is stupid.

Cleretic

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I don't know if this helps your feelings, but to a native speaker, mistakes stemming from second-language English versus just being a moron are usually pretty clear.

For example, the "Palace of Pressure" story that we read at the end of the crushing episode was very obviously written by someone whose first language isn't English. His tenses and choice of adjectives were off, but in a way that you could tell he was either in the middle of studying English or engaging in some rather rusty practice. For example, the opening line "Where has he been?" should have been "Where was he?" and later on he uses "foots" instead of "feet," which is a mistake you almost never see from native English. Toast even mentions immediately after that he never thought he'd see someone use "foots" and the reason for that is because "foots" just isn't a word that exists. The plural of "foot" is always "feet," but if you're more familiar with the general rules of English rather than the practice of it, you would normally put an S on the end of any word to try and pluralize it.

As for adjective choice, there's "So you're the neat guy who want to welcome me? *gulp*" which is a baffling word to use, given the context.

Now look at the Spells of Magic episode(s) and the last-dance song from the Song Lyrics episode. The horrific brutalizing of English present there is obviously from native-English teenagers who give less than a shit about putting effort into communicating effectively.
Isfahan, August 30, 2015, 10:03:06 am
I'd also say that, in my mind, the ESL mistakes are a lot more endearing and pleasant. They're trying, they're just not doing well at it, their mistakes just come from honest misunderstandings of how one of the world's stupidest languages works.

People who speak English natively and write poorly almost always just seem lazy in comparison. The language is well within their grasp, and they might even understand that they aren't writing well, but they don't give a shit.

Fatty Bo Batty

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It always seems to me that the humor from ESL errors isn't at the expense of the person making the mistake. In most cases, it's not malicious. It's more of a reaction coming from a point of never hearing English written and spoken like that. Like Cleretic said, it's more endearing. Almost cute.

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When it's obviously ESL, the humor for me is that it's pretty relatable; a comment that gets tossed around every so often is "this is what I'd sound like if I tried to speak [any foreign language]!" English is notoriously stupid, so the fact that you can even get what the author is going for is actually impressive on its own. When I hear it I usually think "dude, I'm right there with you. Even if this is only maybe 20% accurate, that's 20% more than I know of any other language so I feel ya."

However, when it's people who just type like that because they don't give a shit and have no excuse, then it's just funny how little effort they put into it. I've known quite a few people who were native speakers and can get an idea across just fine when talking, but in text they are in-fucking-comprehensible with absolutely no valid explanation as to why. In these situations it's the opposite; I absolutely can't figure out why someone who knows how to communicate an idea in theory star ts type liek they dont no how thing wrok so mak ethis anim bettr ok c u firday lol :)

Lemon

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Speaking purely from my own perspective, I'd echo some of the perspectives above, Isfahan's especially. At it's core, I just think reading the misspellings verbatim is funny, because (in one way or another) it reflects the mind that wrote the piece. Be they ESL, in a hurry, inattentive, lazy, misspelling on purpose, has language gaps, or purely stupid, and I think the posts can be any combination of those.

I have friends who spell very poorly indeed, and I'm enough of a pedant that I always send text messages with accurate spelling and capitalization, so much so that I correct spelling or autocorrect mistakes when the intention is clear anyway. I never use U or 2 or whatever as word substitutes, primarily because I don't feel like it's a worthwhile sacrifice of clarity to type one or two less characters. But if I was reading the writing of my poor-spelling friends aloud, I would include their spelling mistakes - the message is slightly opaque because of these mistakes, but that doesn't carry the inferrence that my friends are dumb.

I think over the years, we've scaled back on our focus on making sure we nail each and every misspelling in what we read (for example, it's really incorrect of us to assert that "u" by itself would be pronounced "ooo"), but I still do love it when one reader will correct another for reading something correctly.

Ambious

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It is amusing if nothing else :-P