www.CostaRicaTicas.com

You're right. I am, among other things, a car dealer. I also juggle consulting and real estate businesses and write/review for technical publications and for legal applications.

Vodka is my blood pressure remedy of choice.

I was just thinking/wondering….. why do people get upset if you comment on their grammar and/or pronunciation in English? People on this board are correcting Spanish grammar, spelling, and syntax all the time, and no one takes offense or gets upset.

And if you are sitting across the table at the DR with your wingman who has broccoli stuck in his teeth, do you just let him carry on and look the fool all day? After all you get the same content from his discussion whether there is broccoli in his teeth or not.

We give advice to others all the time to help them improve themselves and their life experiences. Why is trying to improve the overall command of the English language such a bad thing?

Looking at the topic in another light, I was talking to a speech therapist this week and she told me that most K*ds have trouble pronouncing the “R” sound but that in the Boston area, where people, by dialect, don’t really need the “R” sound, many therapists don’t try to correct it. She went on to say that when they have African-American K*ds who use “F” rather than “TH” they don’t correct that either – again due to dialect.

Then there is the camp of people who say “If you are going to live in the USA, learn to speak English.” If we are to agree to that notion, then maybe we should spend a little more time making sure the English we speak and write is proper and correct. When is enough enough. Does learning English mean learning shitty English and making all sorts of mistakes? If we get lazy with our language, we’ll end up tolerating Spanglish, Gullah, and other melting pot local dialects as mainstream. We’ll start using made up words like “trucka” for “truck.”

This thread was not intended to bitch about grammar in general – rather I wanted to point out three very common mistakes due to lack of knowledge/command of the language. I was not commenting on bad spelling, failure to use spell check, etc. I was not nitpicking about misuse as a MISTAKE when the writer KNOWS BETTER so much as I was referring to making the MISTAKE when the writer DOES NOT know better.

I’m just suggesting that people learn proper use of apostrophes as well as their, there, they’re, your, and you’re. That’s it.

If anyone else is disappointed that they were forced to read a thread on grammar, please PM Florida. He is collecting data on this phenomenon. The title of the thread gives a pretty good clue about the content - no? If you don't want to read a thread on grammar, don't read the thread titled, "Do we need a grammar lesson?" That's like buying a cookbook and then bitching, "All this phucking book has in it is crap about how to cook!"

Maybe this thread should have been in Smack Talk? If Admin decides to move it - or delete it altogether - I don't have an issue with that.

Deleted duplicate post

Hey - I just was thinking, Santa's Bro obviously knows how to use apostrophes.

LMAO I'm not even gonna comment on the absurdity. This, along with all the sensitivity on the board. I'm predicting tea parties soon. Love Spanglish by the way. Miss those days in Miami.

Crookedcr Wrote:


It must be from the Ebonics lessons I received in Compton, California schools.

I'm sure that this was said tongue-in-cheek. I have been called many things in my life, and probably today by my ex, but never proficient at writing the English language.

Happy Stuperbowl everyone.

Steve-Santa's Bro

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I THINK WE SHOULD ALL USE CAPS FOR EVERY POST!

TEA PARTIES SOUND FUN!

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Crookedcr I do agree with your logic on all of this. We should take it as constructive & strive to improve ourselves but the nature of people is generally not a perfect world. I had some real nice people working for me that spoke with double negatives. When I would suggest they clean this up & polish themselves a little they blew a gasket !

They were the losers in the deal but such is life. From what I am seeing in the USA so many people have become so lazy they have little to no etiquette at all . They do not strive to improve themselves but spend much more effort excusing themselves & blaming others for their deficiencies. I like the world of striving to do better .

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Spunk glazed Chicas are the building blocks of the universe!

Yes. I agree. I have a client/business partner who is an attorney. He has a practice in an office with a few other attorneys. They have a little hottie receptionist/do-all-chick who routinely says "ain't" and uses double negatives like she gets paid to do so. He tolerates it because she is otherwise a very productive and competent chica and, of course, we like to look at her. She is damned good at what she does, but she talks like a person who just got evicted from her trailer because she didn't pay the lot rent. (no offense intended here. I like trailer parks...Sometimes I drive through in the summer just to see the little hotties tanning their little video-store-clerk bodies. These ladies tend to hang out in the front yard in their skimpy clothes as they have no backyard to do same.....but I digress due to hornyness...)

I, for one, strive to always improve myself. Grammar and pronunciation have been a big deal to me most of my life. I recall once reading an article about Prince Charles and how he advocates teaching proper English in order to preserve the language.

English is a unique language, with roots in many other languages. This allows for the language to evolve over time; this is why we have such a mix of root words from other languages. There are many cultures and ideologies that strive to preserve their language. The Welsh language, for example, is a mainstream form of communication for a select few in North Wales, and as the older folks die off, we are losing that language. To me, this is a loss. I think preservation of languages is important. Language is an identity. If we allow ourselves to get sloppy about it, we lose a little something.

Mr. Cujo might be able to comment on this. If I recall right, he is young compared to the rest of us; yet he offers wisdom of a person twice his age. He says Spanish is his native language but through speech lessons he has been successful at dropping his accent. This, to me, is phucking amazing. This young man obviously has a strong command of the English language (which is one of the most difficult second languages to learn) and has somehow managed to still leave an accent behind. This is unusual. If we in the USA were willing to commit to learning our own language with the diligence he has shown, we’ll have a language that will transcend the ages. If we get sloppy and lazy, we won’t.

Think about it….Spanish is nearly the same language whether you are in Spain, Costa Rica, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Uruguay, Chile, Peru…and on and on and has been for 900 years. English, on the other hand, stands a real risk of getting butchered in the next few generations. Why is it that if you take high school Spanish class you learn what subjunctive tense is, future imperfect, etc….? Yet we don’t see these same principals taught in English classes in school ??

So I guess with regard to posting on CRT, maybe I’m being a bit if a bitch. But it doesn’t hurt to try to improve yourself – right? If you are doing something wrong and you get corrected, are you going to let your ego get in the way? Are you going to be offended like a little girl who was just told “your dress looks stupid!” No.

Goddamnit. Be open to correction/growth/new ideas. We all learn every day.

I routinely stand up for what I believe is right, and sometimes I get smacked down. This represents a learning experience if I am shown to be wrong. If I am shown I am wrong about something, I don't get offended, I realize it is an opportunity to learn, and I embrace that opportunity.

We're all men, right?


ps I am trying really hard to compete with Projilo as the longest-winded poster on CRT.

I've never met him but Santa's Bro has become one of my favorites on CRT.

Eye four won our behind the metric system every inch of the way

By the way.....where has Crookedcr been?

I agree I've made this mistake in about every dam post I make. I was absent that day in english, I was at home banging my math teacher.

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"You can only keep a secret between two people if the other one is dead." Ben Franklin

Not really, just like a lawyer representing himself in court.

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"You can only keep a secret between two people if the other one is dead." Ben Franklin

High LK, what you're been up to?

I agree with Crooked that we should try to express ourselves clearly on thus forum, and using standard English (for the most part ) and normal punctuation etc helps. I feel this was because it is simply easier for me to read rather than from a perspective of feeling superior. A few typos and mistakes don't bother me at all if the text is clear and readable. And, gosh knows, I will be the first to agree that my own commentary has more typos than I'd like. But, I do try to make it easily readable.

I'd like to see El Ciego chime in here. What is it like for him to read threads with mechanical assistance? Does standard spelli ng and punctuation help him?

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