Why are so many native English speakers bad at writing their own language?

[SlickVic9000]

A lot of good points have been made so far, but allow me to add some thoughts of my own:

1) I believe many natives speakers view the Internet as a largely informal medium. No one is trying to write the Harvard Law Review. Folks will write the way they speak and if an error is made, it will just be assumed the reader knows what they mean. Native speakers generally aren't confused by incorrect homonyms, spellings, or grammar (to a point), so there's not much impetus to proofread comments, tweets, and posts. Outside of scholarly articles and journalistic endeavors, a high standard of English is neither demanded nor expected.

2) I'd also like to point out that all you (and I) have is anecdotal evidence. Just as you've observed native speakers with a devil may care approach to writing, I have met people who will correct their own grammar and spelling mistakes immediately after they post something. I've seen questions on the Internet answered with cogent and beautiful prose. I know for a fact that the Grammar Gestapo is well represented on the forums and comment sections (for some reason, no one likes them much). So, to say that native speakers on the whole don't know or care about their own language is no more true than saying every native English speaker is a card carrying member of the MLA or APA. Anecdotes have a grain of truth to them, but that's about as far as it goes.

 

[Sakosomo]

I would have thought that once you'd realised that your language was phonetic, and that English and French are not, you would be more likely, rather than less, to understand how such mistakes are made by natives. "My language is phonetic, so I don't understand why others whose language is not have so much trouble." It doesn't sound logical.

I meant to say that, since it was always so easy for me to write in my native language, I never thought about such problems and assumed that it's equally easy for people who speak other languages. When I started learning English, I was faced with different problems than the native speakers, so again I assumed that natives don't make mistakes in their own language.

You began asking for reasons, now you're looking for excuses ("having an illogical spelling system is not an excuse for those"). Have we been trying to give reasons when all along you want someone to come up with excuses for those who do it? You've probably come to the wrong place for that because most of us here try to write properly, and are often just as annoyed at bad English as you seem to be.

Another misunderstanding. I'm not looking for excuses. What I meant is this: OK, English spelling can be quite irregular and I understand occasional problems that people have with it, but that is not an excuse for all the bad grammar I see ("should of" instead of "should have" and terrible sentence structures).

 

[Sakosomo]

So, to say that native speakers on the whole don't know or care about their own language is no more true than saying every native English speaker is a card carrying member of the MLA or APA. Anecdotes have a grain of truth to them, but that's about as far as it goes.

I didn't say that all native English speakers don't care, but it seems that a lot of people don't. You said it yourself, nobody likes that "grammar police". I see it in forums too. Most people write badly and those few who try to correct them often get mocked.

 

[SlickVic9000]

On the contrary, I'd say it's usually the grammar police doing the mocking. Most of the "corrections" are mean-spirited, unconstructive, and largely meant to inflate their own sense of self-worth by putting others down. That's why those folks are openly derided on the Internet.

 

[lauren85]

Eh, the English language is highly complicated, and for people who have learned it and knew it their whole lives, they tend to just get lazy with it.


But honestly, I will say, the internet speak is internet speak. It's something people always do because they are talking with friends or having a quick chat. No need for formalities. As long as the person you are typing to gets the idea, then it's fine. I wouldn't base the grammar structure of the average English speaker on what they type on the internet.


I know that many foreigners tend to know more English than the common native, because they studied it. In the United States, to get citizenship, you need to know English. But not only that, but most people who are foreign learn English and expose themselves to English speakers to help them get jobs, mostly high-end jobs.


I doubt people on the internet are too stupid to know the your and you're thing and such, they are just too lazy. I kind of get annoyed by the mixup of your and you're's and such, but I think of it as laziness. I used to type very bad on the internet when I was a young teenager and I was first introduced to the internet, but since then, it's just bothered me to type like a retard, so now I use as proper of grammar as I can, and such.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

For the same reason that people have trouble learning English: It's a hard language to speak and even harder to write. As one of my Mexico-born students once said in a fit of frustation: "Why is it a cold but the flu but pneumonia?"

A reminder: Unlike most languages, English is a stew of many languages, each with its own rules, often contradictory. For instance, Romance languages use double negatives while Celtic and Germanic languages don't.

Few English speakers are drilled in good grammar and spelling. Many people feel it's not important.

You and I and the folks above do, but we're a minority.

So just feel good that you've mastered one of the hardest spoken and written languages in the world. Well done!

 

[Sakosomo]

For the same reason that people have trouble learning English: It's a hard language to speak and even harder to write. As one of my Mexico-born students once said in a fit of frustation: "Why is it a cold but the flu but pneumonia?"

A reminder: Unlike most languages, English is a stew of many languages, each with its own rules, often contradictory. For instance, Romance languages use double negatives while Celtic and Germanic languages don't.

Few English speakers are drilled in good grammar and spelling. Many people feel it's not important.

You and I and the folks above do, but we're a minority.

So just feel good that you've mastered one of the hardest spoken and written languages in the world. Well done!

Well, thank you, but I have to disagree with English being one of the hardest languages. I have looked into a few foreign languages (can't say that I mastered any of them), and it seems to me that English is one of the easiest. I know people who speak 2 or 3 foreign languages and they usually say that English is relatively easy. Of course, every language has its quirks, but English grammar is very straightforward, words don't change much, sentences are quite easy to form. In other languages, including my native language, every word changes its form in many different ways depending on the gender, number, case etc., verbs have many tenses and so on.

 

[Tdol]

That's relative- speakers of very different languages may disagree. Difficulty can be caused by many different things. I have attempted to study a language where words don't change at all, but that didn't make it easier to learn- it presented other problems.

 

[Glossaphile]

First of all, native speakers learn their language in a fundamentally different way than non-natives do. This is true of any language. For example, English verbs have infinitives, but the first time an American student ever hears the term "infinitive" (aside from the occasional warning against splitting one) is most likely to be when they begin studying a foreign language. This is why non-natives are often paradoxically better at grammar. They learn it in a much more structured way. I honestly wish English would be taught to natives in a way that borrowed more elements from second-language pedagogy.

One of the biggest problems, in my opinion, is that around the time of middle school, there's a dramatic shift in the focus of English curriculum in American public education. The grammar, usage, and spelling drills that were once central suddenly begin taking a backseat to the analysis of classic literature and composition stylistics. Rather than teaching deep linguistic structure, including concepts like case (which would clarify the who-vs-whom problem in one easy stroke), teachers are too busy making their students hunt for symbolism in Shakespeare or analyze just how a particular author's diction conveys a certain tone. Either that, or they're drilling them on the conventions of good composition style. In both cases, something important is sacrificed. I am not nearly the bookworm now that I was as a child, and while it would be hasty of me to blame that on my high-school English teachers, I can safely say that, at the very least, they didn't help. By insisting on reading between the lines so much, they sucked all the enjoyment out of what the lines themselves had to say. They were like the Dementors of reading, so to speak. They turned reading, which had previously been a leisure activity, into a chore. Inasmuch as frequent reading is a good way to reinforce good language skills, this is the exact opposite of what they should be doing for students.

Having said all that, as a graduate student in linguistics, I nevertheless feel compelled to not take these prescriptivist complaints too seriously. Distinguishing homophones, for example, is not as important as many seem to think. In fact, I would argue that it is merely the spelling that bestows the illusion of utmost importance on these distinctions. For instance, if we had two different spellings, "can" for the modal verb and "canne" for the cylindrical container, prescriptivists would probably complain about errors in their usage in the same way they complain about "two/too/to." Here in the real world, we spell them both "can," and it never causes communication to break down. If you want to build a case for the importance of written homophone differentiation, you have to address this double-standard and offer valid linguistic criteria for which ones should be distinguished and which ones need not be. Historical accidents just don't cut it.

Lastly, yes, the spelling system, in and of itself, may not be an excuse, but it certainly doesn't help. It is laden with pointless archaisms and etymological/pseudo-etymological baubles that are simply not worth the challenges they create, though few see it that way.

Having said all that, I must admit that I do pride myself in being among the better ones in terms of written grammar and usage. I uphold prescriptivist standards mostly because I could not communicate effectively without them, not because I would be misunderstood, but because I wouldn't be taken seriously.

 

[Sakosomo]

For example, English verbs have infinitives, but the first time an American student ever hears the term "infinitive" (aside from the occasional warning against splitting one) is most likely to be when they begin studying a foreign language. This is why non-natives are often paradoxically better at grammar.

Well, that's probably a part of the problem. When I was in school, we learned all the verb tenses in my native language (and trust me, there are MANY), as well as all the types of words, their functions in the sentence, how they change according to the case (we have seven cases), gender (masculine/feminine/neuter), number (singular/plural), person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) etc., types of sentences and all those things. It helped me a lot while learning English as well, because I could see links to my native language and its grammar, and I understood how it all works. We covered all that in primary and secondary school, so when I started studying in university (economics), there were no language classes at all, we were already assumed to know all that. Of course, we still had to study English.

I was educated in the old system in former Yugoslavia (late '80s - early '90s), and we didn't start learning a foreign language until fourth grade. Also, we couldn't choose which language we would learn; it was random. Some classes studied English, some French, some German and some even Russian. I was so lucky to learn English. Today we have a better education system, all children learn English from the first grade, like in most European countries, and start learning one more foreign language in higher grades.

 

[Tdol]

Out of curiosity, exactly how many tenses do you have?

 

[Sakosomo]

Out of curiosity, exactly how many tenses do you have?

Well, let's see if I can remember them all... haha )

We have infinitive, then we have present tense, four past tenses, two future tenses, imperative, then we have some kind of auxiliary tenses (two pairs of them). Wow, this is not easy to explain, I'm not sure about the right terms. Some Slavic languages (like Russian or Bulgarian) are not so grammatically complicated, but others (like Czech, Polish and our language) have much more complex grammar.

 

[Tdol]

Apparently, the British Foreign Office rates Hungarian as particularly difficult, based on their training people in the diplomatic corps.

 

[Sakosomo]

Apparently, the British Foreign Office rates Hungarian as particularly difficult, based on their training people in the diplomatic corps.

Could be. I don't know much about Hungarian; in fact, nothing at all. Since it doesn't belong to the family of Indo-European languages, I'm not familiar with it and don't understand anything. In most Slavic, Germanic and Romance languages I understand at least some words. I remember once I was in Greece and wanted to visit Athens and the Acropolis (I'm really interested in history and ancient sites), but my group didn't do that trip (it was pretty far away), so I ended up going with a group of Hungarians. I couldn't understand one word their guide said, I felt like I was deaf and mute... haha... To make things worse, their guide didn't speak English either, but she spoke German. That seems to be pretty common in Hungary (I have been there too); most of them speak German, but it was hard to find people who speak English. Must be a part of their Austro-Hungarian history Maybe younger generations give more importance to English though.

 

[drewyu]

This is true to anybody and any language . Not everybody knows their native grammar perfectly or got time and luck to study perefectly their native language.

You have to face it: this is not a perfect World!

 

[airry87]

According to an article I read recently, some people are just not able to learn how to spell certain words due to some kind of neurological problem. It seems these people are dyslexic, but they somehow managed to overcome the problem. This spelling disability is what remained. These people can be forgiven. But in many cases people just don't care. To, too, whatever. That is just unacceptable.


I don't know why there's such a grammar problem. Maybe it's just poor education or the fact that kids don't read. It's not just English. Other languages have the same problems.