Learning English

I know ... I went to school, too. You sit through countless hours of "English" class as if you don't speak the language and need to learn it. You muddle through years of verb tenses, spelling, and grammatical structures and wonder "Who cares?" You ask yourself, like kids ask in just about every class they take, "How will this help me in real life?"

Wisdom comes with experience. It's only later that the mom who is budgeting a limited income needs algebra in the grocery store to figure out what the best purchase would be. A wise person realizes that they can solve a problem today by using something they learned in history class in high school. The things you were taught in Civics suddenly looms as important when the government tries to take away Constitutional rights. Standing close to the classes, it's hard to see why we need them. But time and experience tells us we do.

So we come to those years of English classes and wonder what difference they made. They actually are relevant to everyday life. They are the common means by which we communicate with one another. They are the rules of conversation, communication, dialog, and discussion. Without them, the changing landscape of language would make interpersonal communication extremely difficult. One commercial for some cell phone service illustrates this. The mother, grandmother, and daughter are playing Scrabble. The daughter spells out "ROTFL." The mother objects. "That's not English!" But when she tries to communicate with her daughter to correct it, she can't because her daughter doesn't understand proper English and she can't communicate in her daughter's confused phone English. Sure, it's a commercial. Sure, it's an exaggeration. But it makes the point.

I see this problem arise in our conversations with people on the Internet. Spoken English is one thing. English on the Internet, however, is written. Suddenly, new factors are in play. Can you express yourself in a way that is understood by others? Is your spelling satisfactory to use words that readers can understand? Does your grammar say, "I'm a person worth listening to", or does it say, "I'm not very bright, but I'm expressing an opinion you should hear"?

There are a lot of common errors people make. "Two", "to", and "too" are all spoken the same way, but all mean something different. Yet, people use "to much" too much. It is possible to construct a sentence where "Their problem is that they're there." The differentiations in the three words are clear in that context, but many people don't seem to know them when used alone. The same is true for "your" and "you're". Other things aren't as clear. Many people have a hard time differentiating between "it's" and "its", largely because it runs counter to intuition. We tend to think that the apostrophe indicates possession (as in "Todd's car"), but in the case of these two, "its" is possessive (just like "hers") and "it's" is the contraction for "it is".

I suppose there are smarter people out there with long lists of pet peeves about grammar and spelling. I have my own pet peeves. My point, however, is not about my peeves. My point is about your expression. You want to make a point to someone on the Internet, so you put it in comment or write a blog on the issue. If you write it poorly enough, you might as well save yourself the time and embarrassment. Regardless ("irregardless" is not a word) of your valuable points, you will be likely scorned for such poor communication skills. The thinking is common: "If he cannot express himself in an intelligent way, why would I expect his opinion to be intelligent?" What I'm suggesting is this: If you value your own positions and opinions, perhaps you ought to take some time to learn better English and to proofread your writing. There are tools on the Internet to help. There are all sorts of ways to check spelling and grammar. If you think your ideas are important enough to express, maybe you should take the time and effort to learn to express them in a way that people will understand them. It's just the considerate thing to do.