Skip to main content

Timeline for answer to Advice for non-native English speakers by halfer

Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Post Revisions

19 events
when toggle format what by license comment
Feb 15, 2024 at 11:30 comment added Stéphane I do not consider “Thanks in advance” a mark of politeness. I mean, real politeness. Simply because it implies that you just don’t let the choice to do, or not do, what you’ve asked to the person. I wonder in which language/culture it may be?
May 7, 2022 at 18:12 comment added Peter Mortensen Definitely is definitely misspelt a lot more than a lot —often as definately.
May 7, 2022 at 18:04 history edited Joseph CC BY-SA 4.0
Currency stuff
Jan 22, 2021 at 14:55 comment added Security Hound I highly recommend Grammarly. You don't necessary have to use the browser add-on (or make a habit of turning it off on other websites). I mention this fact, some might say, their Terms of Service is overly broad in data collection. However, it's a great tool, and their are others that exist.
Aug 26, 2019 at 8:47 comment added halfer My last remark in this thread is that I would discourage you from making frivolous comparisons to fascism. People wanting good grammar and spelling have nothing to do with the (historical) far right, and it is not healthy to normalise that insult.
Aug 26, 2019 at 8:46 comment added halfer @Danilo: I think non-native English speakers can ask and expect some tolerance from native speakers. However, there is nothing wrong with people wanting to correct grammar - if grammar is already poor in a question then a non-native reader will struggle with it all the more.
Aug 25, 2019 at 21:31 comment added Danilo These comments were not meant as argument against or for your (plural in this case) question or anything similar. It says that I can't add more answers, and I should edit existing ones. But existing ones are perfectly ok, I just wanted to point out some causes in order for some mod that reads this knows that sometimes mistakes aren't intentional and to try and avoid grammar natzi rises which could alienate people who were thought "broken" English from the start.
Aug 25, 2019 at 21:27 comment added halfer @Danilo: your other points are most interesting, but the point I was making was that folks who do not have English as a first language can install an English spell-checker. The one I have in Firefox seems to recognise some case issues (JavaScript) but not the personal pronoun (I). However, if obvious misspellings are caught because the question author made an effort, that's great - it saves editing work, and helps readers wanting to assist the author.
Aug 25, 2019 at 21:24 comment added halfer We agree on variations of English, @Danilo - we get British English, American English and Indian English a lot here. We probably get others, but I haven't yet discerned another major group on Stack Overflow yet.
Aug 25, 2019 at 21:18 comment added Danilo Also English isn't always American-English or British-English. There are also African-English, Slavic-English, Shino-Tibetan English and etc. If you think that English has become global language without any standard deviation, you are wrong. African languages as Twi or Ashanti ( among others) have injected their specific elements to English making it unique. Anyone who has spoken with a person over internet that isn't tied to Indo European language group can verify this.
Aug 25, 2019 at 21:01 comment added Danilo Another thing to add, is it is easy to switch languages in your head, but it is very difficult to switch languages in your sentence and in your mind. For example Slavis use capital letters to show words or objects of importance. So language names are written with lowercase letters, but language groups are capitalised ( showing their uniqueness ). Also some languages are SVO (subject verb object) , SOV,VSO ... and this becomes even more difficult if person is bilingual or trilingual. I often unwillingly switch between German and English in how i construct sentence.
Aug 25, 2019 at 20:54 comment added Danilo So I am not an native English speaker. And I use browsers spell check, but the point on topic you might be interested in autocorrect and spell check that doesn't cross languages. Most of my "I"s are lowercase (not intentionally) since in Slavic language group vowels also have meaning. ( 'a' as ow that / but,'i' as and,'o' as about,'u' as in) and Serbian for example has 2 written styles ( cyrillic and latinic ) and some use latinic as their primary style. Which confuses autocorrect a lot. So autocorrect and spell check often switch between English and Slavic several times in sentence.
Oct 21, 2016 at 7:29 history edited halfer CC BY-SA 3.0
Additional info based on comment
Sep 4, 2016 at 20:23 history edited halfer CC BY-SA 3.0
Add meta-note on tense
Sep 4, 2016 at 20:17 history edited halfer CC BY-SA 3.0
Add culture specific wording
Sep 4, 2016 at 8:50 history edited halfer CC BY-SA 3.0
Fix repetition
Sep 4, 2016 at 8:41 history edited halfer CC BY-SA 3.0
Add gonna/wanna
S Sep 3, 2016 at 22:41 history answered halfer CC BY-SA 3.0
S Sep 3, 2016 at 22:41 history made wiki Post Made Community Wiki by halfer