This recipe can use any oil. Peanut oil would be great I bet. I love to cook with it, and I’m a fried okra fan.
I made my living for decades as an editor, primarily dealing with people who spoke ESL. Believe me, if you make your living by digesting words, it’s not that hard to have such “amazing skills.”
You might as well ask, “you only heard a few bars of music, how could you tell that was a rock song, and not country music?” or “you only ate three or four bites, how could you tell that was most likely Italian-influenced cuisine, as opposed to Chinese?”
If you don’t listen to music seriously, or you aren’t much of a foodie, well … it’s gonna be hard to explain. But I have no trouble at all believing that someone could recognize a non-native speaker from a few sentences.
First, I was mistaken about “two posts” – there were five very brief posts before this poster stated that English was their third language. Second, I don’t dispute that someone working a lot with ESL individuals would be more sensitive than most to some of the tells of ESL.
But I absolutely dispute whether these very brief posts provide that kind of evidence, and even if they did, I find particularly obnoxious the implication that Beck should have immediately recognized the poster as an ESL speaker. It’s pretty damn clear that she did not know this at the time, and it had nothing to do anyway with the way the post was messed up.
Even with your experience, I’m curious what you find in these five posts that identify the poster as ESL, keeping in mind that the majority of internet posters are marginally illiterate anyway. It looks to me like typical messy internet posting. It seems to me that you’re constructing a straw man argument without evidence.
Post #1 (the OP):
Why isn’t it clear ??
Post #2:
Thanksss…it’s looks like you saud too " Reply "..I even thought it’s "Share "
- THAT’S ME ..2st time here and immediately complaining…
Post #3:
Are you asking me ?
Post #4:
Hi, curious why your mind went to “translation”? I just “commented,” which here (my first time) looks like “Reply” or “Share.”
Post #5:
"Warning "?
Straw man? I was answering your question about the “amazing skills” it would take to discern non-native English from a couple of posts. How is that a straw man? You asked, I answered. It IS possible. Just as someone could tell whether a song was rock, classical, country, etc. after just a few bars. Or discern whether someone’s accent was Southern American or Russian after a few words.
Would I know from those particular posts right away that someone wasn’t a native speaker? Yes, there are indeed tells, but I’m not going to perform an analysis for you - the waters are so muddied now that I have no desire to wade into them. What are the chances you’ll say, “oh yes, now I see?” Nah, you’ll just argue. And I honestly don’t care, I just wanted to answer your question. Which I did. You can certainly choose to believe I’m being dishonest if you like, though why I’d bother to lie about something like that is beyond me.
But you didn’t answer my question. At all.
My interpretation of this response is “I just inferred that the poster was ESL in ways that I refuse to explain”. And the corollary, of course, is “Beck should have been able to, as well, in the same magical way”. Therefore, Beck is a poopyhead". Do I have that about right?
I guess I should have kept my mouth shut. I am not the “you” in your original question. How that person discerned an ESL writer, I can’t tell you. I’m not them and I can’t read their mind.
What I should have said was, “it doesn’t take ‘amazing skills’ to identify a non-native speaker from a few sentences. I can usually do it, no problem, so if someone else makes the claim that they can do it, I find that very believable.” Are you happier with that formulation? It is more accurate, and what I should have said in the first place. I apologize for not being clearer.
Now, as to the specifics of the posts in question: I COULD go back and painstakingly identify the tells I see, but why? You’ll just argue, and I’m not that interested.
I’ll give you one, which is the misuse of “even.” Words like that are very difficult to use correctly unless you grew up speaking English. (And if you are a native speaker, you’ll put that word in the right place.) It’s the same in other languages, too: technically, I know how to express the concept of “even” as a - whaddyacallit, an intensifier perhaps? - in Indonesian, which is the only non-English language I can effectively communicate in. But if I do it correctly, it’s pure luck combined with mimetic ability.
Feel free to argue with me about that particular tell, but I think it’s a little silly to bother.
Well, since this was already bumped up…
You’re a dumbass.
Fwiw, i also assumed the poster was not a native speaker of English. I thought their “foreign accent” was pretty clear from those posts. I guess i used to work in NYC with a lot of immigrants who spoke English as a second language. And i suppose i travel, and often speak with friends whose first language isn’t English.
I have no idea what the “tells” are. Maybe it’s less obvious to someone who has less experience talking with non-native speakers. But yes, reading the thread, i just assumed that poster didn’t grow up speaking English. 
Admit it, you found out Beck is a relative of Bill Maher.
Okra fritters - great stuff.
Saw a variation of this t-shirt the other day.
To those who overlap and interestwith Beck much more than I do:
It seems notable to me that the putatively rude hypocritical comment being discussed above is the only thing she was Pitted over for a good long while, that this thread is, until chela’s dumbfuckery, was … comatose without a feeding tube maybe?
I’ve offered two main possible reasons for that but have no idea which one it is.
Is she a better poster now? Less irritating to those who found her irritating? A bit more signal to noise?
Or have those who have been so irritated by her just learned to scroll past?
And how did you suss this out @idle_thoughts?
Oh, yeah. I know how. My fucking speech patterns! Seems simple don’t it?
We have no other way to judge someone online.
Except you dip in a pit thread after running away like a scared kitty for years, just to insult me.
Who the hell are you?
I told you long ago, Fuck off!
I’ll add…go back under your rock.
Oh, you replied.
Well, thank you. Because now I feel like I have the right to reply back.
You’re a dumbass.
I’ll chime in on the non-native speaker thing, since I’m the one who originally called it out. I brought it up because I think correcting grammar and spelling is a jerkish move and annoying to other readers. It’s even ruder to do with new posters, and triply rude when it’s not a native speaker. But I didn’t raise the issue because it was a non-native speaker; I raised it because it’s rude in all cases.
This is nothing personal about Beck. I’ve made the same callout about other posters in the past. I didn’t insult Beck or call her a poopy head; I just (snarkily) suggested it’s not a great thing to do. This isn’t a criticism-free zone and we are all subject to criticism if we do something that others don’t appreciate.
There are a few things that have annoyed me about Beck, but I’ve always felt in general that her signal outweighs the noise by a lot. I might not enjoy her folksy posts, but that doesn’t make them noise.
Of the things that bothered me before, I’ve seen a marked change in all cases I can think of. I haven’t seen the gross misogyny that she was originally pitted for; I haven’t seen her adding her folksy anecdotes to every FQ thread, and until now, I hadn’t seen her immediately claiming victimhood if anyone dared criticize her. Remember, this originally started in the thread for good posters who make a mistake.
In their zeal to protect her from any criticism, I think a few of her fans have unfortunately made things worse.
Dammit, that just made me mad.
I’m nobody’s victim. Especially not his.
That’s my mean thing for the month.
Look, I have speech issues. I know exactly how it feels to not be understood. In RL. And sometimes, here.
I never meant to be insulting to the noob (btw,who will never post again you know this, the world knows this.)
And I’m way way far from the first person to correct people on this here board about their sentence structure.
I doubt I ever did it before.
I’ve been corrected many times. I didn’t invent that.
I really thought this was a trock of our former language challenged teenager. Or some random troll.
Oh well…
I like and respect you, but the distinction in this particular episode – IMHO – really should be between “what she did in that thread was inherently bad/poor form/unwelcoming/marginally antisocial. The fact that she – even unwittingly – did it in response to a person for whom English was – IIRC – a third language just made it that much worse.”
But that doesn’t seem to be your position at all.
Totally unsurprisingly, yet disappointingly.
ETA: If I had read that last post from @TroutMan , I doubt I’d have bothered to offer mine. Well said.
Some of both, as far as I can tell.
This last revival seems to be more chela being a dumbfuck than anything else, though
Yeah, this too. Some wannabe yet inept white knights
Okay I’m a dumb fuck for calling out the ugly gremlins who run to the pit to tattle and natter how annoyed they are over a post made by Beck.
Immediate case in point!
I’ll push back on any undeserved lopsided pile on in the pit.