The WTS, being American, prints its English material in American English. I know some people might trash me here but for a European I found it frustrating. Color is supposed to be colour, highway is motorway and a faucet is a bloody tap! When I was very young I used to wish they'd stop making abstract language translations and make a 'proper' English version!! Now I couldn't care less about the WT - its all crap no matter what language it is in but 'chat' text annoys me! I read some threads here on JWN and end up cringing at some comments because they use "they're" instead of "their" or make simple spelling mistakes like "definAtely" (it's an "I" people) or "feal" instead of "feel", "collage" instead of "college." I understand some people don't speak English as their first language, some are uneducated etc - its just something that irritates me personally sometimes. Thoughts, comments? Feel free to rip me apart.
WT language
by KingAgag 17 Replies latest jw friends
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KingAgag
And ironically I apologise if there are typos and errors in my posts, I am not an expert :-p
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dssynergy
I think that is the bias of reading material written by Americans. You don't expect American authors to "translate" their books into a proper English version, do you? I would hardly think they would. The rest of what you talk about is irritating. It could reflect being uneducated or laziness, (there seems to be a fair amount of confusion about things like when to use there, their or they're, then or than, etc) but sometimes people have genuine barriers to written communication, and they don't process language like you or I might. We gotta cut people some slack. :-)
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teel
I'm part of the non-English speaking "big crowd". Your examples are common mistakes us aliens do, and thanks, but I won't litter my browser with a spell-checker addon (ok, mostly because I'm confident with my english skill). The "u", "r", "thx", etc. is what annoys me instead, especially in a forum, where one has time to properly spell out full words. It makes me feel like I'm talking to a lazy teenager - not that I have anything against teenagers, it just often doesn't mesh with the ideas he's trying to convey to me.
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nicolaou
KingAgag: Yes! Bang on mate!
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nicolaou
Oh, but paragraphs are your friend buddy . . .
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cantleave
King Agag, I agree with you. It is the ENGLISH language not the American
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KingAgag
Teel - yes, I do, as I said, give slack to those who speak English as a second language. Nicolau - my lack of paragraphs comes from posting on my phone which doesn't keep my formatting on this forum (I don't know why).
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Aussie Oz
Language is a continuous evolving thing, i am sure that eventually Phone text writing will become the norm. Some spellings, punctuations and meanings that we may hold 'normal' today, no doubt were once seen as horrific to Queen Victoria's england, and some of hers to english of 200 years earlier again.
Here in Australia, i am often having to 'translate' into american terminolgy! Trunk = boot, Hood=bonnet, bog=bondo, mudguard=fender... you can guess i have a bit to do with american automobiles= cars.
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KingAgag
Dssynergy - I get your point, and as I said it was just a personal irritation. On the other hand, if I read a fiction book by an American author about a family living in the UK and the dialogue had them saying 'faucet' instead of 'tap', I would not consider it a good book because I wouldn't be able to really 'believe' the story. It wouldn't be right. Non fiction I try to be a little less frustrated.