I don't understand engrish, sorry

[Leasfy]

• Someone sends you a PM in horrible written english. What's your reaction?

Try to understand it. Either I ignore or will reply to the PM after assuming the content of the message

• Someone made a thread, but you barely understand anything. What do you reply?

I will try to grasp the idea of the content of the thread and either reply appropriately or move on to other thread

• People having issues with writing: How do you deal with them and what do you suggest them?

Depending who are these people. If it is my close friends or relatives, I will be frank to them and give my support. If not, well, it will depend on how I like the person

• Do you correct people all the time when you see typos?

If they are my family members or close friends hell yea emotion_awesome

• What did you learn from other Gaians regarding languages and cultures?

English is the most used language emotion_0A0

[Luminous Sparks]

I had three different experience regarding written english

1.) this gaian's language is spanish and she had a limited english vocabulary. what my old friend and I did was to keep our english terminology as simplest as possible. that was 2 years ago and Im sure by now that she had better english comprehension with my old friend's regular chats with her.

2.) this second gaian was a high school drop out and had problems in english writing (probably dyslexic). He is very good at certain things but he cant explain in very well in forum posts. Verbal is his best strengths to explain things. I was a-kind-of understudy of learning the gameplay and what I did was I asked him verbal kind of written questions on certain things that I find difficult in the game. Through that process, I learned how to answer questions in simplest format. He did understood my opinions as well without the worry of appearing my opinions twisted up.

3.) this gaian has social comprehension issues. She could explain things easily from her head but the thing is that she didnt use punctuation and basic grammar right. That thread that she made turned into a trolling-fest because the lack of understanding the whole picture (both responders and her). I didnt do much in this field but I just wrote back her issue's solutions and ask more questions. Im sure she had someone to assist her more in that issue field and in the long term she'll masterfully learn it.

[VVhip]

I cannot stand grammar nazis. They're worse than having bad grammar.

All I can think when I see them correcting is "It's levi-oh-sah, not levio-sahhh". Hermione know it all grainger.

I do not correct, even if a person says they are open to learning. If they were open to learning, they'd take their own personal time to do it and not rely on others correcting them on forums.

NB I'm not so poor at reading that I can't comprehend a sentence through a bit of bad grammar or spelling. I really do not care and do not judge. I just cannot stand insufferable know-it-alls.

[AstraSage]

As someone whose mother language isn't English I kinda lack the right to complain 'bout people being bad at it as I would with Spanish, so the tendency usually goes towards cutting them a break if they slip up...

Of course, I have been told that because most tend to be self-conscious about it, many non-natural anglophones end up with a better grasp of spelling than natives ones after some practice.

[Myrielle]

Brouette

So, GCD, I have a few spoons to discuss

- Someone sends you a PM in horrible written english. What's your reaction?
- Someone made a thread, but you barely understand anything. What do you reply?
- People having issues with writing: How do you deal with them and what do you suggest them?
- Do you correct people all the time when you see typos?
- What did you learn from other Gaians regarding languages and cultures?

1. Ironically, I respond with "wut?" to the PM.
2. Back out of the thread. Let others decipher it for me should I return.
3. Tell them to use smaller words.
4. Yes. I should stop, but my entire family does that.
5. Too many. Everyone should submit to one Master Language. ninja

[Discomfiture]

I think the worst scenario is when someone writes well considering English isn't their first language, but due to some slight syntactic error everyone who reads the thread misunderstands. Then they write some replies that confuse the OP more and more. That's the worst, because that person was actually making a very strong effort to be understood but may end up feeling very discouraged.

[Sakura Parfait]

Because English is not my first language either, I'm also forgiving towards those whose first language is not English and they are still learning. However, if they are native English speakers and still cannot use homophone words like your and you're correctly, I'd have to wonder if they even paid attention in their English classes. I also don't care if people make typos unless almost every word in their posts contains it. A typo or two is okay in my book, but when your whole post is littered with it, I'd have to wonder if you're even looking at what you're typing.

[Chibi Halo]

People who's first language isn't English I will normally forgive for not having all the proper punctuation in their sentences. If they try and write what they're saying with very easy to understand sentence structure they don't need to be having one hundred percent perfect grammar. I mean, heck, Lanzer's native language isn't English and we forgive him when he sometimes gets which words go where and what words to use messed up. Nobody who isn't a native English speaker should be held to the standards of having one hundred percent perfect grammar but they should try and make what they do know easy for those who they're conversing with to understand. You'd be surprised at how many people are on Gaia who grew up in a country where English isn't the first language of the country yet have fantastic English skills to the point where you'd never knew English wasn't their first language.

Case in point, a very good friend of mine on Gaia who lives in Canada was born and raised in Estonia. Her English is so good that if you asked her where she was from and she replied Canada and left it at that you wouldn't even know she wasn't born in Canada. Granted it's not English major level perfection but she has enough of a grasp on the basic rules of English grammar that she could fool anyone into thinking she was native Canadian. I chat with her on Gaia and off and it's just like chatting with anyone who was born here in the US, in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, or any other place where the first language spoken is English.

Now what I don't excuse, is a person from a country whose first language spoken is English totally ignoring and throwing out basic sentence structure for any reason. I can forgive a missing comma or two but if I see chat talk and leet speak mixed in with regular wording and have to struggle to understand what they're saying I won't be inclined to form a conversation with them. I've had far too many teens on Gaia tell me that they don't want to bother with grammar outside of school. It's that attitude where if they don't have to use it they don't want to use it. It pains me when I see far too many teens who don't feel proper writing, at least to the point of making it easy to understand what they're trying to get across, is important in this day and age.

[Sakura Parfait]

Existential Existence

I don't really care.

not everyone is going to have perfect english

even people who know how to write well don't always get everything right when it comes to command of english grammar. like, when i'm watching a movie or reading a book and a character says something with dialogue like "she's the one that liked apples" instead of "she's the one who liked apples" i just chuckle to myself. even professionals get it wrong sometimes

or it's intentional. After all, it's not very realistic if every single character in a book speaks with perfect grammar, since people in real life don't all speak perfect English, either.

[Oeuf]

i make the best i can out of anything :3
if it doesnt make any sense whatsoever and it looks kinda important or deserving of respect, then i will reply and ask them to explain

[gozaimasu]

Those lovely individuals who'll go out of their way and quote someone's post just to correct the spelling of a word or two remind me of myself, back when I first discovered message boards at age 11.
Kinda weird that they get to 13 without realizing how obnoxious it is. lol.
I always thought I was helping people, too.

[Bambi_Panda]

- Someone sends you a PM in horrible written english. What's your reaction?
People don't really PM me for anything (guess I don't post enough), but I'd try and reply to the general gist of their message- as long as they aren't just begging for gold.

- Someone made a thread, but you barely understand anything. What do you reply?
If someone makes a thread I don't understand I generally just leave it alone. If it seems like an interesting topic I may read through some of the replies to see if I can understand from the context of people's answers.

- People having issues with writing: How do you deal with them and what do you suggest them?
- Do you correct people all the time when you see typos?
I never bother to correct people's writing, basically for two reasons:
1. It's a small mistake that may come from a quick reply or having another mothertongue- I wouldn't want to be overly critical or discouraging.
2. It's a horrible mess of grammar and spelling, in which case it's obvious the poster doesn't care to write correctly. If they don't care, why should I?

I'm kind of antisocial on and offline, so I don't talk to many people on here long enough to learn that they are from another place, let alone learn about their language/culture. I'd be open to learn though!

[Sianserais]

Amy Storm

There's a really clear difference between people who are being lazy and people who've learned English as a second language.

I respect those whose native language isn't English. Since I speak to a lot of native Spanish speakers, I know the common mistakes. If they're clearly having trouble, I try and help them out. Certainly I'd never make fun of them. I am far too bad at any other languages to do that.

Text speak doesn't come from foreign people, and they usually have the most trouble understanding it. I hate text speak. It's pathetic, and it's not faster. That said, I usually just ignore it. They're not going to listen to me anyway.

Little accidents happen in posts. It's easy to leave out a word/letter/punctuation/etc. It's no big deal, and ignoring someone's point because they confuse their/there/they're or something similar is quite immature.

This. I'm not bothered by people who learned English as a second language not getting everything correct, or people who learned it as their first language making the occasional typo. If you're clearly trying, you get full credit from me.

But using text-speak just tells me that whatever you're saying isn't important enough for you to make an effort, so why should I bother to care?

[rirakkusu]

I'll try my hardest to understand what they're saying, but if I can't, then I'll ask for a clarification or I'll ignore it.
I mean, what else can you do?

[Chibi Halo]

Bambi_Panda

- Someone sends you a PM in horrible written english. What's your reaction?
People don't really PM me for anything (guess I don't post enough), but I'd try and reply to the general gist of their message- as long as they aren't just begging for gold.

- Someone made a thread, but you barely understand anything. What do you reply?
If someone makes a thread I don't understand I generally just leave it alone. If it seems like an interesting topic I may read through some of the replies to see if I can understand from the context of people's answers.

- People having issues with writing: How do you deal with them and what do you suggest them?
- Do you correct people all the time when you see typos?
I never bother to correct people's writing, basically for two reasons:
1. It's a small mistake that may come from a quick reply or having another mothertongue- I wouldn't want to be overly critical or discouraging.
2. It's a horrible mess of grammar and spelling, in which case it's obvious the poster doesn't care to write correctly. If they don't care, why should I?

I'm kind of antisocial on and offline, so I don't talk to many people on here long enough to learn that they are from another place, let alone learn about their language/culture. I'd be open to learn though!

I do the same thing as what I put in bold. Because a lot of times someone within the thread will say they don't understand but they want to understand and another person will take the time to try and translate what's being said. In the end, if I can figure out by page two what the overall gist of the topic is I'll cut the OP some slack if I can effectively reply to the topic if it's something interesting. If I'm not really digging the topic but I still find the overall thread as a whole interesting based on the replies to said topic then I'll just follow it like a bad train wreck you just can't help but look at.