> On Tue, 20 Dec 2005

His birthday, fwiw,

> 10:15:20 +1300, Russell McMahon wrote:

>> Interestingly, some highly intelligent people who speak only 
>> English,
>> and who use it competently, seem to be particularly incapable of
>> understanding people with English as their n'th language, whose
>> English is not up to their standard *BUT* which is still very
>> intelligible to many other English-only speakers.

> I think this is rather harsh.

I don't.

> I've always thought that one of the things about English that makes 
> it suitable
> for international use is that it is understandable even if you make 
> a dog's dinner of it -

I agree - My point exactly.

While many, on this list and elsewhere, can handle English which is 
somewhat "hacked about" there are some few who, despite their very 
high intelligence and great skills in other areas, repeatedly 
demonstrate their total inability to handle linguistic excursions 
which are well within the range of normal (2 std deviations say), and 
consequently take people to task over such rather than either ignoring 
or accomodating them. In this instance and forum one particular person 
comes to mind as I write :-) (and as I wrote).

> On the other hand, some people just don't have the skill of 
> explaining themselves clearly in even their own
> language, and I don't think this has any relation to what that 
> language is.  ('scuse the grammar!)

No scusing needed - that was inside 2 standard deviations ;-).


        RM

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