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[UpInArms]

This message was self-deleted by its author (UpInArms) on Tue Mar 30, 2021, 01:38 PM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[MineralMan]

1. Verb conjugation issues are common when people speak.

That's especially true when the verb is spoken before the noun that should agree with it. When writing, you often detect an error in number agreement, but not necessarily when speaking.

I'd be willing to be that just about everyone makes number agreement errors fairly frequently when speaking.

It's a matter of which comes first, the verb or the noun, really.

It's not necessarily a matter of education, really, when speaking extemporaneously.

There are many reasons to attack Noem. This is not one of them.

[UpInArms]

2. I think it is just me, MM

As a former newspaper editor, grammar is ingrained.

The community I live in has terrible grammar. The high school principal cannot speak English correctly. The second grade teacher lives near me and, years ago, I asked her about the poor local grammar. Her husband has awful grammar and her reply was “I would be embarrassed to correct him.”

As the title did not contain Noem’s name, it was not really just an attack on her, it is the failure of our educational system, as a whole.

[MineralMan]

4. Well, as a professional journalist for over 50 years,

I am also troubled by poor knowledge of our shared language. However, I do not expect to hear perfect grammar come from people when they speak.

For the past few years, I've been working with a Ph.D. Neuroscientist on writing projects. He was born in China. He speaks and writes in English fairly well, although without a lot of nuance. However, elements unique to his first language, which he spoke primarily up to age 19, still cause him problems, even 45 years later. I work with him to correct those issues, but it is a constant struggle.

Chinese does not use articles, for example. It also does not have plural forms for nouns. He constantly misuses articles, or omits them. He has enormous difficulty with noun/verb number agreement. He learned English in China from a British teacher, originally, so collective nouns are always a dilemma, as well. He also has difficulties in pronouncing multisyllabic words, "unpredictability" for example, because they do not flow well off the tongue for a native Chinese speaker.

These days, he is doing a lot of public speaking, including keynote speeches at conferences and the like. His difficulties with such issues in English are holding him back in this new area for him. He is a brilliant man, but his spoken English is an issue.

So, I end up rewriting his talks to correct grammar issues of all kinds, along with many other problems. I put all areas where he's likely to slip in boldface format, to remind him as he rehearses. Even so, when he delivers those talks, he often falls back into his typical errors, out of nervousness or if he strays from the script. We are working on that together, and he is making progress, but it is still a problem. I italicize words that will be difficult for him to pronounce, and often suggest repetition exercises to help him learn to say such words clearly.

English is a very difficult language for people to learn as a second language. Being a hodge-podge accumulative language, every rule has endless exceptions for specific words. That makes it a very problematic language, even for native English-speakers.

I cut people a lot of slack in that regard.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Bringing the concept of English as a second language into your grammar obsession is kinda gross.

[Iggo]

5. What in the ever-loving fuck?

Wow, man.