How to start a flame war about grammar and the World Cup
Warning, petty bitching ahead. I harbor a real pet peeve for people who go about criticizing the 'grammer' of others when they can't master the teensy little basics. Mind, I'm not usually at the receiving end of such silliness personally. I am, however, subject to it in a broader sense in that many flame wars over 'u' usually include a variation on the 'All Americans' theme.
It's then I feel a patriotic duty to point out that usually the originator of such comments isn't exactly a sparkly clean example of perfection for Writing 121 and you shouldn't target Americans for grammar disrepute when so many foreigners do the same! Holy crap, people who aren't American sometimes write isnt instead of isn't. Who knew?
In fact, many of the comments about Americans on the Internet by people who aren't even from the United States actually look like this:
RWB | June 9th, 2006 at 9:31 am
what a web site.
american ignorance at it’s best, besides the week grammer.
americans cant resonate with the rest of the world.
Note the incorrect punctuation, the contraction where no contraction was needed, the mispellings of 'weak' and er, grammar. The whole comment looks like a 5th grader scribbled it down in retaliation for someone saying they look retarded. In fact it was in response to a a post on the World Cup blog about an anti World Cup blog.*
I know, I'm at a loss as well.
So, I retaliate and hopefully point out how silly it is to pick on writing ability when one has virtually no grasp of English themselves:
HAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAA.
It’s weak not week.
Americans not americans.
Can’t not cant
Best of all, it’s GRAMMAR and not GRAMMER.
We not be able to resonate but at least we know our contractions from a hole in the ground.*
* This comment brought to you by people criticizing the grammatical skills of others when they can’t manage the basics themselves.
Anyway, go USA, I hope you make it out of Group E.
I thought that was the end of it. He (assuming) didn't say anything until today when I received this little gem mailed to me from the comments.
I can't stop laughing.
How can you bitch about someone grammar when this person's mother tongue isnt english. especially to say that its not "cant" but "can't". By the way, its "can not" when your writing, but even though, me too in this comment, i wrote "isnt" instead of "isn't", "your" instead of "you're", or "its" instead of "it's". We are not writing a novel but just some FAST comments.
The day u can write turkish without even one mistake, u'll be able to bitch. And believe me, im learning this language as we speack and its a pain in the ass asian language. So for them, english is a pain in the ass european language. And "grammar" is written "gramer" in turkish (they got some french influence) so you can forgive him his few small mistakes... And dont even start bitching about my english, except of course if u (oops, i meant "you") speack and write perfect french (my mother tongue).
I love the references to 'this person,' like it's not actually the same person. Am I being ganged up on by two people who don't know how to use question marks? Or what contractions are? But apparently speediness precludes appropriate use of apostrophes. I didn't know. I also like how they think I'm really passionate about English and how it's written, when in reality I'm only invested for the amusement.
* No, I'm not sure why it's necessary either. Most of my countrymen don't care anyway right? So, someone writing about how they don't like the World Cup on a very small blog shouldn't matter then. At least that's the way I think.
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