Writing something in an environment with such high linguistic standards is additionally intimidating (I regularly come across words in LW posts that I have never seen before and have to look them up—to me a sign that my language skills are not appropriate to write here. Coming to speak of it: please excuse my bad language!)
Don’t worry, your competence in English, and SovietPyg’s, who expressed a similar sentiment, far exceed mine in any language but English.
And the English language is so vast that even native speakers keep discovering new words.
I suspect that I may have missed some point, though. As far as I know, the primary language on this website is English, and the secondary language would be the language of mathematics (if I may call it a language); and so I don’t quite grasp the relevance of being competent enough in any language but English to the matter in hand.
On a side note, I think that for many linguistic perfectionists the main source of intimidation would be the very process of writing a comment or article (as opposed to being aware of the likelihood of having committed a number of grammatical or semantic mistakes). It is true for me personally. In writing a text in any language but Russian—my native language—I don’t feel confident enough to proceed without consulting various corpora and dictionaries. Then I end up with a comment composed almost entirely of expressions which I saw in dictionary samples and liked better than my own expressions. This is a rather strange experience in its own. Besides, after spending a time on a simple comment, thoughts begin to race in my head that maybe, perhaps, it wouldn’t really be something that the other people couldn’t conclude or know on their own: “you know that I know that you know that I know et cetera ad infinitum”, this sort of thing; and so the amount of information would be exactly zero. Why increase the entropy? :-)
“I don’t quite grasp the relevance of being competent enough in any language but English to the matter in hand.”
I believe the point that RichardKennaway was making was this one, which I’ve heard before: Many English speakers do not know, or are not fluent in, any other languages. We therefore should not feel entitled to criticize the English skills of someone who took the effort to become fluent in English as a second language.
Also, your English skills are quite good. :-)
“Besides, after spending a time on a simple comment, thoughts begin to race in my head that maybe, perhaps, it wouldn’t really be something that the other people couldn’t conclude or know on their own”
I definitely have this problem too. I end up posting maybe half the comments I write.
Many English speakers do not know, or are not fluent in, any other languages. We therefore should not feel entitled to criticize the English skills of someone who took the effort to become fluent in English as a second language.
Agree completely. But still I’m typically impressed with how well they can communicate, and so have little reason to criticize to begin with.
On a slightly related note, I’ve had the opposite problem of people thinking I’m not a native English speaker (when yes, I am one). This only happens for in-person conversation: for some reason, they think I’m from Europe, usually Germany. (I speak German, but only from having learned it in school and having done a short exchange.)
It happened again recently: I went to a meeting of a group I hadn’t been to before, and, as is common, someone asked me where I was from, and was suprised to hear my answer of Austin, TX. He said he assumed I was from Germany from how I talk, which I would dismiss as a fluke except that he was the ~15th person to say that. I certainly admit that I don’t sound Texan at all—never picked up an accent for some reason.
(I would link my youtube page, but I’m not sure any of the videos give a characteristic example of what I sound like in conversation.)
Your English (as shown in your comment) is more than good enough, but I don’t know how much effort it took for you to write that comment.
It sounds as though those racing thoughts are at least partially habitual. The only way to find out whether they are in fact redundant is to try posting—and maybe even to ask whether a post you’re unsure of is contributing anything new.
Don’t worry, your competence in English, and SovietPyg’s, who expressed a similar sentiment, far exceed mine in any language but English.
And the English language is so vast that even native speakers keep discovering new words.
Thank you.
I suspect that I may have missed some point, though. As far as I know, the primary language on this website is English, and the secondary language would be the language of mathematics (if I may call it a language); and so I don’t quite grasp the relevance of being competent enough in any language but English to the matter in hand.
On a side note, I think that for many linguistic perfectionists the main source of intimidation would be the very process of writing a comment or article (as opposed to being aware of the likelihood of having committed a number of grammatical or semantic mistakes). It is true for me personally. In writing a text in any language but Russian—my native language—I don’t feel confident enough to proceed without consulting various corpora and dictionaries. Then I end up with a comment composed almost entirely of expressions which I saw in dictionary samples and liked better than my own expressions. This is a rather strange experience in its own. Besides, after spending a time on a simple comment, thoughts begin to race in my head that maybe, perhaps, it wouldn’t really be something that the other people couldn’t conclude or know on their own: “you know that I know that you know that I know et cetera ad infinitum”, this sort of thing; and so the amount of information would be exactly zero. Why increase the entropy? :-)
“I don’t quite grasp the relevance of being competent enough in any language but English to the matter in hand.”
I believe the point that RichardKennaway was making was this one, which I’ve heard before: Many English speakers do not know, or are not fluent in, any other languages. We therefore should not feel entitled to criticize the English skills of someone who took the effort to become fluent in English as a second language.
Also, your English skills are quite good. :-)
“Besides, after spending a time on a simple comment, thoughts begin to race in my head that maybe, perhaps, it wouldn’t really be something that the other people couldn’t conclude or know on their own”
I definitely have this problem too. I end up posting maybe half the comments I write.
Agree completely. But still I’m typically impressed with how well they can communicate, and so have little reason to criticize to begin with.
On a slightly related note, I’ve had the opposite problem of people thinking I’m not a native English speaker (when yes, I am one). This only happens for in-person conversation: for some reason, they think I’m from Europe, usually Germany. (I speak German, but only from having learned it in school and having done a short exchange.)
It happened again recently: I went to a meeting of a group I hadn’t been to before, and, as is common, someone asked me where I was from, and was suprised to hear my answer of Austin, TX. He said he assumed I was from Germany from how I talk, which I would dismiss as a fluke except that he was the ~15th person to say that. I certainly admit that I don’t sound Texan at all—never picked up an accent for some reason.
(I would link my youtube page, but I’m not sure any of the videos give a characteristic example of what I sound like in conversation.)
Your English (as shown in your comment) is more than good enough, but I don’t know how much effort it took for you to write that comment.
It sounds as though those racing thoughts are at least partially habitual. The only way to find out whether they are in fact redundant is to try posting—and maybe even to ask whether a post you’re unsure of is contributing anything new.