Anyone that knows Korean ? -PLEASE HELP-

[Violence]

I regularly visit two forums.

Here is an example of the language used on the other forum.

"Dem jawnz, nah mean brah?"

Lemme just say that we should count ourselves lucky with the grammar.

[judicata]

I would feel terrible about this thread being completely derailed, but it appears as though the OP's questions were answered.

I agree that abbreviations, slang, grammatical errors, and the like are all pretty much acceptable on internet forums. That said, I can't resist stating my objection to the BBC page's failure to distinguish restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. Its example "Where are the Radiohead CDs which / that your brother borrowed last week?" is telling because the sentence could have two meanings; is the speaker looking for the Radiohead CDs, all of which were borrowed by the brother? Or is the speaker asking only for the particular Radiohead CDs that the brother borrowed?

This can be important-- for example, I recently read a passage similar to "The corporation's responses which must be verified are to be submitted to the district office." The phrase "which must be verified" could mean that all of the corporation's responses much be verified, or that only the responses that need to be verified must be sent to the office.

Admittedly, sometimes substituting "that" for "which" does not create ambiguity.

Again, I'll never criticize someone's grammar on the forums (unless invited), and I won't even think less of those who (that?) make mistakes . At worst, I'll ask for clarification if something is incomprehensible. I commit much egregious errors all the time.

[SpongeBob]

I downloaded the iPod client a few weeks ago. Most of it has been translated to English in the meantime.

[hyperpape]

That said, I can't resist stating my objection to the BBC page's failure to distinguish restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. Its example "Where are the Radiohead CDs which / that your brother borrowed last week?" is telling because the sentence could have two meanings; is the speaker looking for the Radiohead CDs, all of which were borrowed by the brother? Or is the speaker asking only for the particular Radiohead CDs that the brother borrowed?

This distinction has been fabricated. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/language ... 00918.html, http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1689 (there are many other discussions scattered around that website).

This can be important-- for example, I recently read a passage similar to "The corporation's responses which must be verified are to be submitted to the district office." The phrase "which must be verified" could mean that all of the corporation's responses much be verified, or that only the responses that need to be verified must be sent to the office.

The example is poor. No amount of fiddling with that and which will make the sentence clear, because it will only help for people who have been explicitly instructed about an invented grammatical distinction. Better to write clearly: "The corporation's responses must be verified, and then submitted to the district office" would be one possible disambiguation. Every English speaker can understand that, not just those with a lot of knowledge of prescriptive grammar.

[Li Kao]

I'm pretty lenient with most grammatical errors. I'm not even a native speaker of English, so who am I to criticize other people's English. Especially if they aren't native speakers either.

But there are some mistakes that simply go to far. And they are mainly made by native speakers. "Their", "there", and "they're" don't mean the same, and neither do "your" and "you're". This kind of mistake really breaks my reading flow. I first notice that the sentence doesn't parse correctly. Then I need to locate the error and mentally fix it. And finally I can re-read the fixed sentence.

And incoherent or extremely sloppy writing annoys me too(this does not apply to chat). If somebody can't be bothered to to write "you" or "are", which should I bother reading what he wrote?