TDPL a bad idea?

[Mike Parker]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>> As I said before, you must be a much more tolerant person than I am :)
> 
> I have long experience with online flame wars. The only way to "win" at 
> them is to not play.
> 
> 
>> What bothered me the most about his language was not the fact the it 
>> was insulting but rather that it reduces the readability which is even 
>> more so for non native speakers (which I am).
>> I mean, it isn't that hard to using the correct spelling (even in 
>> curse words) so that others can understand you. using bad spelling 
>> intentionally like that is plain inconsiderate.
> 
> I agree that using obscure idioms or creative spelling can make life 
> hell for non-native speakers. Most posters' english is so darn good it's 
> easy to forget english may be their second language.
> 
> 
>  > This especially irks me every time I see a post that boils down to
>  > demeaning a non-native English speaker about using "your" instead of
>  > "you're" or nit-picking on tiny differences of a meaning of a word.
> 
> Since "your" and "you are" are quite distinct, it is fair to criticize 
> misuse of it, if you're going to be a grammar nazi anyway. It's less 
> fair to criticize misuse of "who" and "whom".
> 
> I've lived in foreign countries, and spent enough time overseas to be 
> very tolerant of non-native english, especially because I need plenty of 
> forgiveness for my mangling of their tongues.

I've been teaching English in Korea for 16 years. I frequently make 
mistakes on my blogs, but the majority of them are typos (I'm a horrid 
typist). Even so, I do admit to a large amount of frustration reading 
some of the more common English mistakes on the internet (/loose/ 
instead of /lose/, /amount/ instead of /number/ for countable nouns, and 
such). If I know for sure it is written by a native speaker, it takes a 
lot of self-control not to email the author the corrected text.

The ironic thing is that I couldn't graduate high school with my friends 
because I failed a term of English my senior year. I had to go back for 
one more term the following school year. If only Ms. Wendelken could see 
me now!