Russell,

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 17:07:42 +1300, Russell McMahon wrote:

> > On Tue, 20 Dec 2005
> 
> His birthday, fwiw,

Happy Birthday (late!)  :-)  It's not one of those awful ones with a "0" at the end, is it?
 
> > 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.

Well obviously - you wrote it!  :-)

> > 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),

I'm not sure you can ascribe statistical properties to something that is inherently non-numerical, but never 
mind...

> 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).

OK, I think I agree with you there - especially because it's so easy to ignore people and/or their questions.  
On a different but related topic, telling someone to do their homework before asking a question is acceptable, 
IMHO, but telling them to improve their English is pretty unlikely to have a positive effect.
 
> > 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 ;-).

Well it does fall foul of:

"If ever a word was wrong at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is"  :-)

But rearranging it to correct that produces a level of convolution "up with which I will not put" !  :-)

I do sometimes use grammer which I know to be "wrong" (as I was taught, anyway) but which is easier to 
understand and/or less awkward-sounding.  Such as using "they" to refer to a person of undetermined gender, 
because "he/she" is just too darned clumsy in writing, and sounds daft when spoken.

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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