I accept, I am guilty of being Lazy
Now can we all just assume that, and get on with our work?
Rehan
>
> Rehan Allah Wala wrote:
>
> > I am now 35 years old, My english sucks, I was born and raised and went to school in
> > Pakistan btw, Can u speak a few words from any other languages that I speak btw including
> > Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi, Memoni btw ?
>
> I was not looking to make this an ad-hominem issue or an egotistical
> contest. There is certainly no question in mind that because you are
> frmo the south/southeast Asian region of the world, you are bound to
> know more languages, including ones which would be considered rather
> exotic in the European and North American world and therefore, indeed,
> ones that I would be unlikely to speak.
>
> Your response about being a poor English speaker is a nonsequitur,
> meaning a conclusion that has no evidentiary relationship to the
> premises used to support it. The character of this mailing list - and
> the open-source oriented VoIP community - is an international one. The
> fact that many members of this list are non-native English speakers and
> may encounter difficulties with proper grammar, spelling, vocabulary
> usage, etc. is widely understood and appreciated for its implications,
> and foreigners who encounter those liabilities are forgiven for
> precisely those reasons. Nobody - including myself - is here to be a
> language snob. We have business to conduct.
>
> The tendency for which you are being repeatedly called out is not one
> for which being a foreigner is a useful or plausible defense. It is
> that you are _lazy_ - lazy to a point that undermines the effectiveness,
> plausibility, authority, credibility, or marketing value of your
> business-related communication.
>
> This is a problem you have in common with many businesspeople and other
> speakers of English for whom it is a native language; being a foreigner
> has absolutely nothing to do with it, and you cannot hide behind that.
> There are many foreigners who post on this list and elsewhere who
> outperform you in the area of communication despite English skills
> vastly inferior to your own.
>
> You cannot reasonably claim, for example, that a message ridden with "u"
> in place of "you" is a consequence of the encumbrance you face as a
> non-native English speaker. All told, the general appearance of your
> messages -- including this latest one, in a rather extreme way -- is
> consistent with an amateur and unsophisticated narrative voice, and that
> is the perception that you are fostering among your audience.
>
> The difference between your missives and those written by other
> foreigners whose English is somewhat lacking is that many of the latter
> exhibit evidence of having actually _tried_. If they know they are
> going to make mistakes that impede comprehension, they will have their
> grammar and orthography proofread. They do not use juvenile conventions
> such as "u" ("text speak") that further undermine the already
> beleaguered communicative value of the message. Is typing "you" really
> that much harder than "u?"
>
> For example, I have a passable, basic conversational knowledge of
> Spanish that I accrued through taking courses for eight years. This
> knowledge has deteriorated considerably now, especially in my
> recollection of various grammatical rules, as I haven't had the
> opportunity to use it frequently or develop it beyond the last point at
> which I encountered it in my education. If I were to post to a
> Spanish-language mailing list, I would not expect to emulate the
> quality, articulation, or apparent literary erudition of an experienced
> speaker's sentence production, nor believe that I am somehow going to
> avoid some severe grammatical mistakes.
>
> That is not a problem, and I would expect the readership to understand
> and work with me. What I think they would find disrespectful and
> bewildering is not that I don't write Spanish very well, but if my
> message entailed the same implicit hubris that yours does--the
> presumption that it is not important to even try. So, on top of my
> already broken grammar, I would write "k" instead of "que" (as many
> Spanish users--and especially Latin American residents of the US--of
> instant messengers are given to do). That would be seen as off-putting,
> and they would probably dismiss me as a bumbling clown.
>
> I don't think this should engender any hard feelings on anyone's part,
> nor should you assume that it necessarily negatively impacts people's
> perception of you or blinds them to the potential of your rich
> individuality and nuances as a human being. However, this being the
> only forum in which this community's understanding of you develops, you
> should take care to look after yourself.
>
> -- Alex
>
> --
> Alex Balashov
> Evariste Systems
> Web : http://www.evaristesys.com/
> Tel : (+1) (678) 954-0670
> Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671
> Mobile : (+1) (706) 338-8599
>
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Rehan Ahmed AllahWala
Msn/Yahoo/GoogleTalk/Email: Rehan@Rehan.com
http://www.supertec.com/ - Internet Telephony Solutions
Http://www.DIDX.net - DID Number Market Place.
Don't Remember Me ? Visit http://www.Rehan.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
By Gandhi.
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." - Gandhi
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