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shruikan's Significant Otter

Man-Hungry Shapeshifter

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I try to not give a crap about people's grammar skills on here, for the very reasons OP brought up. When I see a post or that metaphorical message written in broken English, I give the benefit of the doubt that the poster speaks English as a second language and is still learning the ropes. I'd rather encourage a person who's learning instead of slapping them down like some grammar fascists.

Unfortunately, this is rarely the case, in what I've seen. My level of tolerance depends on my mood. Most days I couldn't give less of a s**t if a person is barking at me with text speak, but when they talk to me while capitalizing the first letter of every word, all the while being a native speaker? I will skip every post they make. Such a jarring writing style to read. emotion_donotwant
Forums are the place for incorrect and foul word play.

I have had a Russian model come to a photoshoot for me and she was rough with her English but it wasn't a struggle at all. I learned a bit about her and her mom and why they were living in Florida at the moment. I did not need to correct her but suggested another way to help her choose what was better to say in a certain context.

Lucky Hoarder

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The sad part is that some of these net speakers bring up their horrible spelling to the real world, guess they will learn to write properly with enough F grades.

fradrian's Significant Otter

Vicious Witch

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I'm usually in the other side, as you English isn't my mothertoungue, but I try my best to make me understandable.
When I joined here back in 2004 my english was really awfull but I tried to help me with translators(which usually made things worse)
I tried to avoid enter in discursions and my posts were very short, cause usually people started to being a d**k for my bad english(this usually happened to me in LOTR forum, cause I spent most of my gaia time there) only I few of them reply to me and take the time to see I wasn't american and they even help me correcting me my mistakes. unfortunely that other people make me go away from that forum, I still love LOTR but still avoid that forum unless is for abc character games or similar...
I must admit that on the other hand, I never have this problem in Harry Potter forum( I moved from LOTR to HP forums XDD) maybe is cause the average user in the hp forums were younger at that time and didn't really care about grammar and so XDDD

Polkadot Pocky's Partner In Crime

Anxious Shapeshifter

It's usually pretty clear if someone has English as a second language vs someone who just doesn't give a s**t about legibility.

Either way I'll try to be polite and ask for clarification on what they said. Sometimes they will, sometimes they'll get upset and start raging something terrible. The latter is usually the users that just aren't even trying to make sense.

"whn u tipe lik dis i los al patcins in wut ur sayin"
Nobody has time for that s**t.

If someone mentions that English is their second language and they make a mistake that makes it harder to read I'll sometimes PM them and point it out. Like, "Hey you used -blank- here, but it might make a bit more sense/ feel more natural if you used /blank/ instead."

I primarily post in the Q&A, so being understood is rather important as far as being useful goes.

If I can't understand the question, I can't help very well.
sweatdrop

Anxious Werewolf

You know, often times if I get a pm in broken english or txt tlk, they want something from me.
I've seen it in the forums too.

Guess it depends on the context...

Stone-cold Cat

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I have a few friends on Gaia who are not the best with english. But I understand what they are trying to say 99% of the time and I ignore the typos.

I do the same with other people too, unless i'm really confused and then i'll ask them what they mean.
It's pretty easy to read between the lines and get the general gist of what they are trying to say without humiliating them.

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