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Originally Posted by J.K.Foster
I tend to respond to everyone with whom I interact on a message board as if English is their primary language. I certainly don’t try to discriminate against people for whom English isn’t a primary language, but it has been pointed out to me that maybe I poke fun at people for what I assume are usage errors, when the reality is that they might in fact be language errors.
Does this make me a bitch?
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J.K.,
I think the fact that you have the self-awareness to ask this question at all proves that you're not "a bitch." I think you just take the English language more seriously than a lot of folks do, something that I have been guilty of myself in the past. For me, it took moving to a country where English is not the primary language to open my eyes.
Before I moved to Japan, I was merciless when it came to critiquing the writings of others on the Internet. Some of this was due to the fact that I worked as a writer and editor for many years. But I also viewed it as a symptom of laziness that's fostered by the anonymity that we enjoy online. Very rarely did I stop to consider that English is not everyone's first language.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, I realize how hard it is to communicate effectively in a different language, even one that you've studied for a while. I find it admirable that those who aren't completely fluent in a language would even try to express themselves in a public forum. Accordingly, I've learned to ease up a bit and try to keep the overall message in mind.
On the topics of the universality of English and global Internet access, I think we should remember that although just 13 percent of the world's population has access, this 13 percent is distributed around the world. According to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), many countries including Belgium (10.34%), Denmark (11.11%), Iceland (11.22), Japan (8.6%), Korea (23.17%), Netherlands (9.2%), Sweden (9.16%) and Switzerland (9.3%) have higher penetration of broadband Internet access than the U.S. (8.25%). Note that none of these countries use English as a first language. Even without broadband access, Japanese and Koreans can access the Internet web pages from their mobile phones.
We visit CHUD because we love flim. These same films are also enjoyed worldwide. The fact that sites like CHUD, Ain't It Cool News, Dark Horizons, etc. often provide the first information on new films ensures that they will have at least a few international visitors each day. It takes guts to post in a second language (How many of us can even attempt it?). The last thing they need is to be scared off because they forget an occasional pronoun or misspell a word.
