I’m just curious to see if anyone else has noticed how much professional English speakers are letting their spelling and grammar go what with quick e-mails and forum posts.
I personally can’t stand it when I see a misspelling or misuse of a word due to laziness. My mother forced me to take four years of English grammar and literature despite living in Spain.
It’s gotten so bad that many e-mails I receive at work are not at all understandable, and they come from Brits and Americans!
What is the deal? Does no one care to be understood anymore?
I tend to cringe when I see mistakes due perhaps to a lack of reasonable education. On a different expat forum I think almost half the posts contain mistakes ,for example “the jest of it” instead of gist. It makes me think people are using these expressions in speech without knowing how to spell,or bothering to check. I think it also shows the type of people most attracted to that country which I will not name as there have been very heated arguments on their boards already about “types of Brits”.
I think I read this past week that a government minister or leading expert suggested we ignore the most common mistakes as they happened too often to keep correcting !!!
Not sure if it’s related, but having spent more time in the US recently I’ve noticed their diction is TERRIBLE (yes, I’m shouting). They confuse words all the time. I think they hate me because I can’t help but correct them.
It strikes me that many of the English speakers who post here in the most awful English are hoping to learn enough Spanish to live in Spain. Good luck guys, if you can’t get your heads round your first language you’re going to have your work cut out learning a second. (I don’t mean Jurdy or anyone else who has a defined dyslexic problem, by the way. They’re making an admirable effort to overcome a setback. The rest are just lazy and/or badly educated.)
And another thing, there’s a little “check spelling” button on the posting window…..
Martin, I’d like to comment along the lines of what you said. Spanish is such an easily spelled language. I can’t believe the horrible spelling mistakes some “educated” people make. For example: estube, ella a estado aqu?, desision, etc. I tried playing Spanish Scrabble with my mother-in-law once, but got too frustrated.
Then there are the English translations put into catalogues or on signs that you would THINK they would have an English speaker check first:
1. Seen on entrance door to Boulanger: Wellcome
2. On Burger King coupon in QDQ: Whooper Jr. Menu
3. In Corte Ingl?s furniture catalogue: Desing furniture.
Speaking of pet peeves and the Brits, why do so few Brits use the zeta “th” as a part of their accent in castellano? Europeans and Aussies/Canucks seem to adopt it readily - the Americans have an excuse not to use it - what about the Brits?
I think its down to the fact that in english ‘z’ is pronounced in a very distinctive way. Zero for example ‘zeee’ instead of the spanish ‘thee’. Maybe thats why?
Speaking of pet peeves and the Brits, why do so few Brits use the zeta “th” as a part of their accent in castellano? Europeans and Aussies/Canucks seem to adopt it readily - the Americans have an excuse not to use it - what about the Brits?
To be fair, down our way in Andalusia they mostly do the “seseo” like in Latin America. I learned to do “th” properly and am now unlearning it because the peasants think it’s odd.
Brits - especially the English - are really hung up about accents; it’s like they feel too shy to throw themselves into it properly so end up sounding like a Spaniard doing an impression of an English person speaking Spanish, if you know what I mean. They have a real problem with not pronouncing the “h” as well, have you noticed? Neither of these apply to me as a) I was used to French before I learned Spanish and b) I have no shame.
And while we’re on the subject I’ve heard some appalling Spanish coming out of the mouths of US Americans - in Spain, Mexico and at home in the US. Given the importance of Spanish in the US now, they should all be bilingual by the time they leave school. Whereas we Brits and Canucks have to learn French first and then (often) German second, if we get that far.
As someone who makes a living correcting others’ mistakes, I’m going to keep my mouth shut on this one. However…
The Expatriator - 13 August 2008 05:47 AM
Not sure if it’s related, but having spent more time in the US recently I’ve noticed their diction is TERRIBLE (yes, I’m shouting). They confuse words all the time. I think they hate me because I can’t help but correct them.
Expatriator, I couldn’t help but laugh imagining you running around San Francisco correcting people’s diction. I’m sure they do hate you. 😊
Personally, my pet peeve is running into people having conversations in English on the metro, at the supermarket, or in other confined places when they’re talking really loudly about the Spaniards or Spain in a negative way. It’s not like English is an obscure tribal language that no one understands, and if they’re going to be negative, can’t they at least whisper? The last time this happened on the metro I smiled warmly and wished the group of three Americans a pleasant stay in Madrid when we all got off at the same stop. They were mortified as apparently they hadn’t realized that everyone on that metro car - Spaniard or not - had been listening to their every word.
As someone who makes a living correcting others’ mistakes, I’m going to keep my mouth shut on this one. However…
The Expatriator - 13 August 2008 05:47 AM
Not sure if it’s related, but having spent more time in the US recently I’ve noticed their diction is TERRIBLE (yes, I’m shouting). They confuse words all the time. I think they hate me because I can’t help but correct them.
Expatriator, I couldn’t help but laugh imagining you running around San Francisco correcting people’s diction. I’m sure they do hate you. 😊
Personally, my pet peeve is running into people having conversations in English on the metro, at the supermarket, or in other confined places when they’re talking really loudly about the Spaniards or Spain in a negative way. It’s not like English is an obscure tribal language that no one understands, and if they’re going to be negative, can’t they at least whisper? The last time this happened on the metro I smiled warmly and wished the group of three Americans a pleasant stay in Madrid when we all got off at the same stop. They were mortified as apparently they hadn’t realized that everyone on that metro car - Spaniard or not - had been listening to their every word.
Sorry to be so self-indulgent but you brought back a great memory. When I was 17 and back-packing, first time I visited Madrid, my English friend and I were sitting in Retiro park talking audibly, in English, about how much we fancied the beautiful girl with olive skin and long dark hair a few metres away from us. Such a stereotypical Spanish beauty (she looked like Penelope Cruz). She walked over to me and said angrily something like “I’m from Canada, eh”. Turned out she had Native American blood, hence the colouring. Fortunately she calmed down, took it as a compliment and we enjoyed some reconciliation in Madrid, and then Seville, Portugal and Morocco. Wonder where she is now?????
For me I put mistakes etc etc down too the “Time and a place”.
If i was to prepare a document for work or of some importance i`d make it word perfect, I would expect the same from other`s.
On an Expat Forum or MSN etc I don`t feel its that necesary.
Also history is a great teacher, people should be aware, that like the planet, it is an ever changing medium with no one true base, so research synchronic variation.What to one person is lazyiness, is just logical progression.
If forum members were to prevent this change, you`d upset the Sociolinguistics and Historical Linguistics out there.
We may well be getting “lazy” in the last decade, but if one was to study the subject, one would notice language rules and structure is ever changing.The English language has never been based on one rule in time.
So there is no real point in complaining in people`s spelling, semantic`s, syntactic`s mistakes.There contributing more to the progression of language than people who use external aids to correct there mistakes.
If you notice, Santi, my original complaint was about English-speaking colleagues who can’t be bothered to write correctly at work. I know it doesn’t matter on a forum.
The problem is, in a world where people use e-mails so much to defend themselves professionally (i.e. overbooking in hotels, percentages promised agents, etc.) we need to be able to understand what people are saying.
I’ve noticed that some people just write freely whatever comes into their head, leaving sentences half finished or running into other sentences. The final effect is that we waste time at work trying to figure what they’re trying to say.
