+1.
Her fluency is fine. It’s an obnoxious affectation because she is an obnoxious person.
And I will have you know that my Pig Latin is uperbsay.
The Nazis on Juno Beach learned the hard way that the reputation is mostly hype.
It serves our purposes to maintain it, in any case.
It’s bad enough that Crazy Canuck thinks that post is a defense. But surely you know a “colorful personality” is just an asshole, and of course an asshole sticks out more.
Ramira is an ass who goes after everyone. I actually defended her and she decided to chase me down and go after me. She only posts here to attack people.
She is the most basic form of troll, and thus it makes sense people think she’s faking her English affectations. You don’t get the benefit of the doubt when you’re constantly attacking people.
I honestly can’t remember a post from her that wasn’t her attacking someone. Though, admittedly, I’ve had her on ignore for a while and only see what she says when people quote her.
+2.
Especially on a forum where most of the posters hold opinions radically different then yours, make stupid and ignorant comments on your culture, act like patronising fucks most of the time, gang up on you.
Catch me up on something. I’ve been gone.
Is Ramira Palestinian?
And is the title of the OP a reference to that?
The most fearsome battle cry ever heard - “I’m sorry!”
From her previous posts, my understanding is that she’s from the Magrheb and Muslim; has a pretty strong background in economics; and posts from France.
Hence my admittedly speculative comment about English being her third language: I assume her other two languages are Arabic and French.
Her sentence structure in English, such as the use of “the” and making adjectives accord with the singular/plural state of the nouns they define, is very consistent with French grammar; I would say she’s fluent in English, but is thinking in French.
No idea about the thread title.
I’ve studied French since Grade 7; and in uni; and took a law degree in French; and worked at a job where I had to do law in French; and have pleaded cases in our trial courts and appellate court in French.
And my written French is not good. That’s one of the hardest things to get right, in my opinion. My reading comprehension, my ability to speak and my ability to understand someone speaking in French are all good; writing is something else.
I’ve had my errors pointed out to me regularly in my written French; I still make them.
I assume that others who speak French and then learn English may have similar problems. Fluency isn’t an “on/off” situation, but a spectrum, and writing is difficult.
From Due South:
Inspector Moffat: Do you even know what we do here?
Constable Fraser: As chief liaison officer, you work closely with the local police and the various arms of the criminal-justice systems and the intelligence community on matters of mutual interest.
Inspector Moffat Basically, yes. However, the FBI and CIA types are very picky who they cozy up to. You’ve got to earn their respect. You’ve got to gain their trust. And at the same time, show them you’re nobody’s lap dog.
Constable Fraser: Lap dog, Sir?
Inspector Moffat: These are Americans, Fraser. If they think they can walk all over you, they will. It’s a delicate balance. You’ve got to be just as shrewd and cunning and ruthless as they are. And then, being Canadians, we have to be polite.
Constable Fraser: Polite, Sir?
Inspector Moffat: What’s the one thing you hear Americans say about Canadians, over and over again? They’re such nice, polite people. So we use that against them.
“Hey Jerry, you should get oota the hole, eh?”
<KABOOOMMMM!>
“Oh hey, sorry, right? But I gotta clear this beach. The Americans need a place to park, eh?”
How long would it take you to remember that in British English you say “he was in hospital” instead of “he was in the hospital?” That is the level of fluency it requires to correct most instances of the Ramira’s affectation. It is a little more complicated, but not much. Certainly not as difficult as many of the nuances of learning any language.
The devil is in the details, and minor errors like just that is, in fact, some of the more difficult ones to totally prune from one’s use of a foreign language.
But I guess that can be hard to understand if one has only one language or, if one does have one, isn’t particularly proficient in it.
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The above should have been “…if one does have a second one…”
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+3
I’ve actually butted heads with her on multiple occasions but always enjoyed our discussions and found her commentary and perspective interesting and memorable. And let’s face it, most of us are on here when bored at work or bored at home and looking for some mental stimulation.
And yeah, she can be arrogant but she clearly knows what she’s talking about and I find that far more tolerable than people who are completely arrogant when discussing things they clearly know little about or have only the most superficial understandings of.
As for people complaining about her affectations and being “inarticulate”, come on, English obviously isn’t her primary language which sometimes makes what she says a bit confusing.
Awwww… your White Knighting didn’t work out for you. If you were being genuine you wouldn’t expect her to somehow treat you differently or feel that she owes you something.
So what, if she attacked you it was probably because you said something she thought was dumb. She and I have smashed heads on multiple occasions and probably will so long as we’re both here and topics we’re both vested in come up.
Oh please! And most of your posts are either you White Knighting being a walking talking parody of how right-wingers think SJWs behave or variations of.
If you think she’s a troll you’re even more sheltered than I thought.
I enjoy her informed posts and also think she could stand, like so many of us, including myself, to remember the “H” in “IMHO”. She reminds me somewhat of a more polite Colounsbury.
Most of all though, I hope she changes her name to “theRamira”.
I cannot support this Pitting. Ramira is generally well-informed, more knowledgeable about economics than most Dopers who post on the topic, and has a better grasp of American or Israeli misbehavior than most Americans or Israelis. She offers a good counter-point to apologists for Israel, which SDMB is beset with from both the left and the right.
She often takes a one-sided view, exaggerating her side, while diminishing the valid points of her “opposition.” But don’t almost all of us do that? Anyway, that’s an appropriate stance in a forum like this, to make a strong case and let the reader use her arguments to fine-tune his own opinions.
The main charge in this Pitting is that she called Gaza “occupied” when in fact the Israeli Army, after bulldozing Gaza buildings and punishing it in other ways, retreat across their border wall rather than staying to “occupy” Gaza. To quibble at her only-slightly mistaken usage of “occupy” is to play the sophomoric game that degrades debate.
As for the charge that Ramira is “a belligerent or condescending asshole,” I’ll say only that if that is an offense, there are several Dopers more worthy of Pitting, especially myself! :eek:
If I were to condemn Ms. Ramira, it would only be for her English grammar. For example, I’m unwilling to invest the time to deduce what the following even means:
… But my prose would be much worse than this if I were posting in my 3rd- or 4th-best language.
Ramira brings more value to discussions than any random grouping of 100 average Dopers combined. She does not suffer fools gladly, granted: that trait virtually guarantees a pitting sooner or later. But this Pit thread is weak sauce. This thread is stillborn. The sins it attributes to Ramira are not even evident in the linked posts. That’s what TV tropes calls an “informed attribute,” when you tell the audience what to think about someone without in any way showing it to be so.
When there are gangs of Islamophobes and Arab-haters posting their hate propaganda all over Great Debates, Ramira is often the only one to stand up and defend the truth. Dope would be an intellectually and morally poorer place without her. This is one of the most unjustified Pit threads I’ve ever seen. Busting on her for English when it’s her third language is one of the last refuges of a scoundrel. I myself don’t suffer fools gladly when they’re native English speakers mangling their own first language, but **Ramira **handles English a damn sight better than any of you could employ French or Arabic. The example quoted by **septimus **in post 59 above bears witness to how French sentence structure usually does not transfer directly to English very well. I’ve been a professional French to English translator for decades, and I can vouch for how hard sometimes it can be to wrest a French sentence into something that reads like clear English without doing violence to its structure. I don’t enjoy having to read that any more than anyone, but to attack her over that is unjustified.
To call Ramira a troll is the basest calumny. She has never, ever trolled here once that I have seen. Her criticisms, even when harsh, are sincere; even though sometimes they would benefit from more moderation of tone, she does not employ harshness for effect, but out of honest frustration at the belligerent ignorance posted here against her people.