PureBasic Forums - English

Seems that on the forum is starting a trend against "incorrect" english.

http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 37&t=53104
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 17&t=53439

My personal pet hates are people who post to forums with poor grammar and punctuation.

Many (most?) of this forum active members are NOT native english speakers.
Until the popularization of internet, many of us can live confortably without the need of speak english, and some of us started to learn english with the advent of internet.

Communication in a language different of the mother tongue is a hadicap and a pain, but we try our best, frequently with poor results. (Here is the proof.)

Shall we, non correct english writers, keep out of the forum

Era hermoso si cada uno se haría correctamente en la lengua vernácula de las otras respuestas,
pero esto no funcionará bien.

Er war schön, wenn jeder korrekt in der einheimischen Sprache anderer Antworten würde,
aber das wird gut nicht funktionieren

Il était beau si chacun serait correctement fait dans la langue vernaculaire des autres réponses,
mais cela ne fonctionnera pas bien

It was beautiful if each one would be done correctly in the vernacular language of other answers,
but this will not work well

Sorry for my bad spain, german, france and english

einander wrote:Shall we, non correct english writers, keep out of the forum

No, why should we? As long as the message is <correctly> understood on the receiving end, there's no problem. I think that the quoted affirmation was directed towards the deliberate abuse of the language, but that's just a guess.

As I've said before in another thread - I actually rather like the occasional English language mistakes made by our international friends!! The meaning is almost always clear and that is the important thing.

I really admire the language skills here on the forum. Like perhaps most people in the UK, my own abilities in other languages are rubbish (though I do try when traveling )

No apologies needed as far as I'm concerned - it is a great community.

I have the deepest respect for anybody who is learning/speaking writing in another language. I speak French reasonably well, but my written French is terrible . My German is not bad, but, I would not want to go posting on the German or French forums for fear of people laughing at how bad I really am . I struggle enough to write in English lol

so to answer your question einander, should you post on this forum... Of course you should! Your use of English isn't bad at all. We understand you perfectly well Just because there are a few people who have nothing better to do than complain about trivial misspelling of a word or misuse of a word

@ts-soft

Mes suce français
Mein Deutsch saugt
fy Cymraeg yn wych! gallwn gael fforwm cymraeg

@Infobyte I think your guess is correct .

LuCiFeR[SD] wrote:@ts-soft

Mes suce français
Mein Deutsch saugt
fy Cymraeg yn wych! gallwn gael fforwm cymraeg

Syniad da iawn, ond ers hynny mae gen i lawer i'w ddysgu

ts-soft wrote: Syniad da iawn, ond ers hynny mae gen i lawer i'w ddysgu

haha gan bob un ohonom lawer i'w ddysgu

If you used translation software for that Thomas, it did a pretty good job lol. Welsh is quite an amusing language though as there is no translation for some English words

I see this as a rhetorical question, the kind you make to solicit friendly replies since the answer here can realistically be only a negative one.

Anyway I think one should try to express himself at the best of his possibilities, and if writing on an english forum should at least try to be understandable. Not necessarily grammatically immaculate but understandable.
Shouldn't be a big hurdle because if you are a programmer at least the ability to READ english is invaluable, so you should be already trying to improve your english for your own benefit.
Certainly people born in countries where english/american is the official language have a much easier life from this point of view, and I find amusing when I see native english speakers mismatch "its" with "it's", "their" with "they're", etc. whilst expecting you to speak the almighty english or just shut up.
This is not what happens here fortunately but sadly you see this happening often (youtube is a glaring example when a lot of people is attacked/insulted for posting a video or making a comment not using the REAL language).

einander wrote:

My personal pet hates are people who post to forums with poor grammar and punctuation.

Many (most?) of this forum active members are NOT native english speakers.

I see you're referring to my post.

I should've expressed myself more clearly: I didn't mean these forums specifically, and I actually was referring to native English-speaking people who post poor grammar and punctuation. People whose first language is English but they use "alot" instead of "a lot" and so on. I was referring to their laziness or sloppiness in this day and age. Inf0Byt3 was right in what he guessed.

I certainly didn't mean it to apply here. I didn't even consider for a moment that I was referring here. It didn't even cross my mind. I was just speaking generally. Sorry if I offended anyone!

Have a read of Fred's latest blog -> http://www.purebasic.fr/blog/?p=410

It's awesome! I certainly wasn't referring to anyone who speaks like that. Fred's English is both funny and adorable at the same time. And I love KCC's posts, too. Two wonderful people who make listening to English a real treat.

@machinecode

And I see you toned down the "i***t" and "l****r" part... wise move

Yeah, it wasn't meant to be rude, but heck, I've already offended einander today by mistake, so I better choose my words carefully.

Yes, some people find English a challenge but we can understand them for all intensive purposes irregardless.

(actually you can regularly hear both of those gaffes from politicians)

netmaestro wrote:for all intensive purposes irregardless

Damn, for a moment there I thought you were serious!

@MachineCode
I was not offended but surprised for the word hate.

@Luis
Sure that was a rethoric question. And i feel that was a necessary one.

-----------
Sorry for the purists, but languages evolve a lot. And fast.
All of us are forging the Internet English dialect, that probably in 10 or 20 years will be more common than the standard english of today, and sure more understandable than many contemporary english dialects, as geechee or cockney, for the non natives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_di ... h_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English
And a funny one, see Reception on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen's_English_Society

einander wrote:Seems that on the forum is starting a trend against "incorrect" english.

http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 37&t=53104
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... 17&t=53439

My personal pet hates are people who post to forums with poor grammar and punctuation.

Many (most?) of this forum active members are NOT native english speakers.
Until the popularization of internet, many of us can live confortably without the need of speak english, and some of us started to learn english with the advent of internet.

Communication in a language different of the mother tongue is a hadicap and a pain, but we try our best, frequently with poor results. (Here is the proof.)

Shall we, non correct english writers, keep out of the forum

I disagree with your starting point, the forum is not starting a trend against "incorrect" use of English.

The two thread posts that were linked to do not support your thought. The first is referring to the English used in the English Help file that I presume should be as free of mistakes as possible. If it is difficult or annoying to read as a native English speaker then what does it become for a non-native speaker. The PureBasic language has it's own rules and when someone is learning it (or any programming language) for the first time they are leaning heavily on the spoken language they already know.

PureBasic is the language that is in common to most of us who use the forums. When beginners are asking questions that can be answered easily by reading the manual they are frequently directed to do so. Where would they be if the manual was hard to understand?

The second post you mentioned has already been amended to clarify its intended meaning, which was regarding incorrect use by a native speaker. The poster amended it because of your less agreeable reaction to what he had posted and he wanted to clear up any misunderstanding.


I think the English forums (and not particular individuals) are inclusive of anyone regardless of their use of English. I believe the English forum is also referred to as the International forum and so it would be expected that it would be visited and used by non-English speakers/writers. Some use English just when they interact in the forum while others are interested in learning it better and ask for correction when it is noticed that they need it. The language that should be used in the forum is the language of the forum, English. The same is true for the other language forums, French for the French forums and German for the German forums.



In answer to your closing question, "Shall we, non correct english writers, keep out of the forum ", the answer is no. There has never been any argument or suggestion or even a desire voiced in favor of doing so.