Add me to the commenters who feel that’s a very well-stated and accurate post.
Hurling insults out of the blue just makes you look like an asshole. If you’re just relitigating old shit with no explanation or reason, why bother?
Yeah, to the point that this apparently unwarranted attack on Beck does more to put her in a sympathetic light than anything chela did here.
(I propose going forward that “pulling a chela” be the term for making a misguided attempt to defend someone in a way that’s fat more damaging than what you’re trying to defend them from.)
Maybe I wasn’t clear. I’ve already said that Beck’s comment was clumsily worded and inappropriate under the circumstances, and she apologized for it. But as I also said, I think the fact that this was not a native English speaker is irrelevant both because they didn’t disclose that fact until later, and because language proficiency had nothing to do with the problems with that post.
Look, you don’t write “Thanksss” because you’re not a native English speaker. You don’t write “2st time here” because you’re not a native English speaker, or write “saud” for “said”. These are not markers of ESL, they’re markers of someone who just doesn’t give a shit about the form and readability of their posts. So accusations that Beck’s criticism is “that much worse” because it was against a non-native English speaker are misplaced, and this whole thing was blown way out of proportion.
In my time on this board, I’ve learned that here (maybe not everywhere on the web but at least on the SDMB) that those are pretty much always signs that they’re not a native English speaker. The reason is because this is a place where people don’t write that way and it’s obvious even at a quick glance that it’s the case, so someone contributing usually tries to do their best to fit in. When they struggle, it’s usually because English isn’t their first language.
More rarely it’s some other reason, such as a disability of some kind, but I literally can’t think of a time when it was because they “don’t give a shit”. Other places, sure, that’s common, but here it’s almost unheard of.
In post # 6 in that original thread, ilansho also used the word “I.” IMHO, he/she used it correctly within the given context.
Now you cherry-pick again. It’s your turn, and – like chela – you’re proving my fundamental points about:
- fanboys
- cults of personality
- confirmation bias, and
- the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”
I read non-native speaker very quickly. Obviously, others did, too. FWIW, so did the two LLMs that I pointed toward the thread.
And I strongly believe that it made worse … something that was just inherently both gratuitous and bad (bad bad bad).
It’s wrong to tease a kid with a limp. It makes you an asshole when it turns out the kid has cerebral palsy.
And that’s in addition to agreeing with everything @Atamasama just wrote.
Can you explain how the three examples I cited could possibly arise from being a non-native English speaker? Is there some language that has words ending in “sss”? Or is just carelessness that could have been avoided by being slightly more attentive, or remedied with just a moment’s review?
We have a number of non-native English speakers here and they sometimes make grammatical mistakes. It would never even occur to me to try to “correct” them. That’s not what this is.
Like chela, you keep proving my point.
I’ll leave you to it, then.
I assumed they were non-native and sloppy. Sloppy alone didn’t seem to cover it.
The point I’ve been trying to make – with some apparently disagreeing – is that “sloppy” precisely covers it, though I used terms like “inattentive” and “careless”. ISTM that if someone isn’t a native English speaker, their usage may show grammatical quirks or solecisms, and as I said above, I’d never comment on or criticize those. But sloppiness is just willful disregard for the reader. But again, I think Beck’s comment was out of line, but it wasn’t about language proficiency.
Me making a joke about a kid’s limp isn’t “about” Cerebral Palsy either.
You’re repeatedly extrapolating from your three cherry-picked words out of a ‘corpus’ of some 170-ish words posted by ilansho.
What possible reason could there be for you to do that unless it was to validate a conclusion to which you’re clinging way too tightly?
You’re one of our resident hobbyist linguists, are you not? Due respect (and you know I mean that): you know better than this.
There are no melanomas on the soles of my feet, so I definitely do not have skin cancer???
Blind spot. PROFOUND blind spot – both you and chela.
Think about it.
ETA:
Also, in what universe, and by what explanation, is this possibly a binary choice? non-native English speakers can’t be careless? Can’t use slang? Can’t post on cell phones where convention tends to get ever looser? Can’t be young and less burdened by rigid grammatical and syntactical orthodoxy than you or me??
I am truly at a loss to understand.
Like “2st time here”?