Slitherine

(N.B. The following observations are not exclusively or even primarily relevant to these forums. They are based on several years of online gaming among a thoroughly international community)

I have to laugh.

My fellow americans tend to post thusly -
Then europeans will post these beautiful compositions, in complete sentences, with maybe one or two minor mistakes...and apologise for their "poor english".

Holy crapdoodle, guys, don't you realise that half the high school english teachers in this country would kill for a classful of students who could write as well as you do?

Anyone ever seen the warhammer borads? Same thing. Even thpugh Netspeak is banned, people still seem to forget niceties like ending sentances, separating paragraphs, or capitalizing. Poor spelling is npt an issue, especially as i am typing this with a pen in my hand, but the non-native english speakers hgave cleaner formats by far.

Its probably because we tend to assume that everyone can read our language, no matter how loosely formatted, but non native speakers tend to have less confidence, and make it as easy as possible to understand them. I do that with forign languages, though I am poor enough in them that it is really important.

I must say it's exactly the same with the spanish gaming community. Generally speaking, they are 14 years-old kids talking nonsense in a ininteligible manner (TB strategy community being the exception). I don't know if i was different when I was 14, but I (think I) improved a lot. I knew I had limitations and I learned one thing or two. The problem now is that most kids are arrogant enough to think they're great and they don't learn from their mistakes. They'll keep writing/acting this way foerever, it seems (they even get angry when you tell them their ortography/grammar/whatever is bad).

Don't know what the actual problem is. Surely it is educational, but not only at schools: like Dylan said "Come mothers and fathers Throughout the land", it's their responsibility too.

Take into account that most people in this (or other strategy) forum are over 20-25 in most case (whenever a 14-years-old kid appeared it was from the RTW circuit ). Don't think that everyone here in Spain speaks english as good as Miki does. General gaming forums in spanish are usually a pain in the neck too.

BTW, I went to San Francisco a couple of years ago and people speaks good spanish there!

P.S. Apologise for my bad english

Hi gents,

Duncan, I must agree with all your statements less one: my english is not good enough., so I must apologise for my bad english too

I'm 15!

I have to say that, while I might not be entirely formal, I think it comes in varying degrees. On this forum, I feel compelled to write nicely in entire sentences, but others make greater use of shortcuts. In many forums, if you write long topics, other people will just glance at it, and then move on. So it is helpful to shorten verbose descriptions and replace them with abbreviations (the most obvious being the likes of "lol" and "rofl").

If you note, I only ever discourse in the style of Shakespeare.

Or sometimes Chaucer.



Cheers

Pip

"Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss is probrably worth a read if your interested in a fun discussion about grammar and its appaulling use in western society

My english teacher loves that book...

And my old english book from 4th grade had the Dog-eating chicken in it. Or the Dog, eating chicken.