Date: 6 Apr 2000 01:42:34 +0200 From: naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de (Christian Weisgerber) To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: BSDCon East Message-ID: <8cgj1a$313f$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> References: <20000404152346.01398@techunix.technion.ac.il> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0004042145500.88181-100000@freefall.freebsd.org>
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Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.ORG> wrote:
> I always think it's amusing when a foreigner outperforms a native speaker
> of a language - foreigners often have more incentive to learn the
> subtleties of a language than native speakers who "know it all anyway".
Most of those foreigners have learned the language in school,
primarily from written material. If the language in question has
a strong divergence between spelling and pronunciation (English is
pathological in this respect), it's not all that surprising that
many foreigners turn out to be excellent at spelling. Typically
it's their pronunciation that suffers.
Also, grammar errors may be graded more harshly in school than
spelling errors. They were for us. Writing "pronounciation" would
be a simple spelling error, but confusing "its" and "it's" is
considered an issue of grammar in second language teaching.
> On the other hand, one of my russian friends here in the US recently gave
> me a lambasting over my accent (I'm Australian)
Well, I guess many of your vowels are "wrong".
> This from a guy who hasn't yet mastered the word 'the' :-)
Even with the smiley there, I'd like to point out that proper use
of the articles in English is very difficult. It's bad enough for
speakers of closely related languages. It must be hell for people
whose native language doesn't use articles at all (e.g. most Slavic
languages).
PS: Somebody with native-level grasp of English grammar
ought to proofread all man pages contributed by Jörg Wunsch
and in particular check for tense/aspect of the verbs.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de
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