Indians, fix your English please
There's nothing racist about the post title. Native Americans, you guys can chill. It was the fault of a Spaniard from the sixteenth century who did not know what he was doing who thought you guys were Indians. History's biggest misnomer, I think.
This post is directed to my countrymen: the real Indians! Guys this is going to be rough but my intentions are not bad.
A strong opinion and a suggestion
I am a fucking nobody here on Steemit, but that doesn't stop me from having an opinion, does it?
So this is my opinion and my suggestion to my fellow countrymen Steemians: Do a better job of writing in English while you are at it.
Curation Conundrum that prompted me to write this post
Guys, we have this great group called @indiaunited and a curation process but it's so difficult to find good posts well-written in proper English to recommend.
I had a discussion with @bala41288 and I told him that I was thinking about a no holds barred post on what we Indians are posting on Steemit. He suggested me to write a mellow post and guide people how to write better.
Why do I care?
I can perhaps do that but I can't teach people how to write good English. I am not an English teacher, you see. Besides, that will not drive home the point and people will say things like good post, nice job bro and move on.
That's not my intent. I want the world to read good English writing coming from the Indian community. The bitter pill is, I think, the best way to drive home my point. This way at least a few will take notice, or so I hope.
I will not even speak about the shit posts with no content whatsoever, my current tirade is only about the basic grammar that makes English, English.
The problem and why it needs to be addressed
Yes, we are not native speakers of English but that can't be an excuse for the kind of English I see on most posts by Indians.
Are you not here to write for an English speaking audience? If you are writing in English, it's obvious that you are not targeting people from your locality. If it's not for the international community, then why write in English and expect the whole of Steemit to come and vote for you?
Our jugaadu mentality is what makes us mediocre, always the third world. Sab kuchh chalta hai doesn't work everywhere.
We can't always say "We are like that only". The world doesn't care. If we want an international English speaking audience to read whatever shit we are posting, we need to write it in proper English. That's the least we need to do.
Face it, don't run away from it by getting pissed off
I know I am pissing off people who must be thinking who the hell is this guy with his holier than thou superiority complex. Perhaps a Shashi Tharoor is reading this now and making fun of what a big idiot I am giving lectures on good English when my English is itself pathetic.
I know that my English is not of the best quality. It's not even free of mistakes. It can't be. All Indian writers can't be a Naipaul or a Rushdie. The least I can do is write in the correct grammar, at least try to be as correct as possible. That's the bare minimum I can do, we all can do.
The disease is easy to diagnose
One can improve his writing style over time, but there is no excuse for bad grammar. That turns off even a second language English reader like me. A mistake or two is okay, everyone does that but a post can't be full of mistakes. Mistakes and idiosyncrasies of how you use language can be cleverly used to stylize your writing or characters.
But spelling mistakes? No clue of what tense to use? The most common thing I see is of people having no idea of how to associate person and number while forming sentences. Guys do a search on first, second, third person and singular and plural number, please.
You may have been screwed by a bad English teacher or perhaps you yourself did not pay attention during the grammar classes in school. Perhaps you did not even have English classes at all. I know how it is here. But what's stopping anyone from learning now? It's pretty easy to learn English if you use the internet properly.
Great tool to help you out: Grammarly
Just do yourself this favor: use the Grammarly app for everything you write. The free features of the app do a great job of correcting spelling and grammar mistakes. It’s the least you can do. Trust me, you will find many mistakes as soon as you start to use Grammarly to fix your articles.
I do that with almost all my posts. Start using it, you will see the difference. Trust me.
Even if one of you start using the app, I will think I have contributed to someone's life and to Steemit in a positive way.
I hope my post doesn't have many mistakes, lolz. One of you will probably kill me.
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Excellent post -- one of the best I've read in a while. And @svkrulze, your English is fine! It's hard for a native-English speaker to fuss at people who make mistakes in our language. It comes across as arrogant and entitled because, Lord knows, I couldn't do nearly as well in any other language as some of the posts I read from foreign speakers. So I feel more than a little hypocritical, too, when I complain to someone about his (or her) English.
But it's true. It's clear you have some wonderful people with terrific minds from your country. They have things to say and there are those of us who really want to hear it (and read it!!)
But, as a reader, when you stumble over sentences that don't make sense ... or you have to stop and try to figure out what someone is saying ... it interrupts the whole experience ... sometimes permanently. You get fed up and move on.
One of the wonderful things the internet chats and Steemit can do is show people how "English speakers" write. (Not always the best examples, I know ... because some native-English speakers are terrible writers. They make more mistakes than you guys!! And there is simply no excuse for that.)
But if you can connect with people who know how to write well in English, you can see how it is "in real life" -- how people express themselves, how the rhythm of the language works, how the idiomatic expressions are formed.
If possible, get a native speaker to read your post ... and correct your text ... and show you what the mistakes are and how it should be done instead. It can be an invaluable learning experience if you can do this and if you pay attention and learn.
I also see excellent writers from India and other countries in the far East -- so I know it's possible. It's not expecting "too much" for anyone to improve. I know English is a tough and confusing language, but you're using it -- learning to write in it -- for good reasons. Make your effort worthwhile!
this is such a well-written and thoughtful reply. I really appreciate that you took out time to share your thoughts. I don't know where you are from but if you have followed the Man Booker prize winners across the years, you will see Indian writings are regulars in the long list an short list and Indians have won the award many times. It means that it's possible to write good English even if you are not a native speaker, all you need to do is put in some real effort :)
Writing in English as a second or third language must be difficult for sure, so I commend you folks for making the effort to do it properly. I also commend you, @svkrulze , for challenging your fellow Indians to do better, it would surely benefit them in the long run on here and in life in general. From the amount of up votes you have received it looks like quite a few other people agree with what you are preaching here, well done.
Thanks for visiting. I don't want to preach, just that I can't figure out how people think they will get any meaningful audience if they don't ensure quality
A nice post and it will help, not only for Indians and english second language people, it is a good reminder to english first language users also.
Great post, I see where you are coming from and I've seen the posts you talk about but thankfully if they actually want to be successful they'll follow your advice... Duolingo is also a great tool to improve your written English.
I'm not an English native either but i like to believe that I at least try and when I fail i fix it asap.
Exactly Luna... Learning English should not really be so hard... almost the whole internet being in English
I admire the post and the images you have created !
You have raised good points. Personally I don't proof read and end up with spelling mistakes and gramatical errors. I am not sure how good or bad my grammer is but I am very particular about spelling and even then I end up making mistakes. Cross checking is something and trying to use proper language is very important ...
try the grammarly app or chrome extension.. pretty easy and fast :)
FF user here ... Though I will check.
Now do they use the data collected to predict what kind of bread I eat in the morning ? :)
I don't think so
Hmm... Or let's make an Indian steemit ;P. I assume there are posts that are purely in Hindi as well? Or bilingual?
I haven't yet seen hindi posts... hindi posts are fine if and when they appear here... but man we definitely need to fix our english :) but well... today I am looking at everything through the ban lens... so it may well be that learning english may be for naught...lolz. I had this post written from a couple of days back, I don't think I would have been able to write anything today :D
Here are few of my posts in Hindi for your reading pleasure:
If you want to see some Hindi posts from other Steemers, here you go:
You need to encourage expressing oneself in his / her own native language. If your content is powerful, people will try to learn your language instead. You would never find dearth of readers for a worthy content.
So, do you have anything like Grammarly to edit out the mistakes in Hindi? Do tell me more on improving one's Hindi writing and composition.
Thanks for your efforts in this direction!
And if I did have a prejudice against Indians and English before, I do not anymore. :) Your text does not look like an Indian wrote it lol.
We all make mistakes, I know I do, and even people who have English as their first language make them. That is normal, but there is a difference between losing a letter or forgetting a coma with a text that is just unreadable. I know that a lot of people do not read a text if it is badly written, they just give up. I give up sometimes. Grammar is important not because it makes our posts look nice but because it makes them readable :)
Grammarly? The best thing EVER! 💚
Hmm... interesting. So you had prejudice against Indians before? ;) I would like to know what that might be...
I agree that a small mistake is ok but there's a limit of incorrectness which can be accepted... bottomline is it has to be readable
Im not sure what to think but your post is actually funny .. would have been funnier if you provided some examples of "bad english" since you seem to be really mad at them.
I hope the Indian community grow in size and quality here.
I want to use Grammarly, however i'm not sure if it's fully safe to use when they send everything you write somewhere else to process it.
Good post @svkrulze
what we write here is in any case publicly available for anyone to use... what will Grammarly possibly do if their app is used? If they want the data, they can easily access the same from the blockchain....
I don't want to share examples, as that would make the post seem like personal attacks
Not at all it's not a personal attack. I don't think anyone should take offence from your post or comment you don't have to tell people that they are going to! The anticipation can become true if you tell them that. (basic psychology)
In terms of my concern with Grammarly or any other chrome extension, they can take any information you type including your password, your steem keys and everything else as it is transmitted to their servers. Of course they can be trusted but just a security concern to keep in mind
Es muy dificil escribir en otra idioma. ;) It is very difficult to write in another language. Great post! Encouraging people to try a little harder is a good thing. Take time to write a quality post with good spelling and grammar. It does make it really difficult to read a post that is poorly written... :)
I agree it is difficult for someone who doesn't know English, but the result of the hard work is more rewarding for them.... in the process they learn the language as well
Aaah, I have to say the same to Venezuelans. Fortunately we have a decently-sized Hispanic community around here, so if they don't speak English, they can write in Spanish and have viewers and votes. However, the standards are much lower in the Hispanic community. I know of literally no Venezuelan whales, even though we make up around 90% of the Hispanic community on Steemit.
But the problem is even stronger than that around here. I read above that you haven't found posts in Hindi, but here there are tons of posts in Spanish, and most of them are written HORRIBLY! I don't understand how someone can mess up their native language so much.
I hope that in the future, when/if Steem surfaces as the new Facebook/Reddit, there will be a super big mass of English posts that will be good quality and will overshadow the bad quality stuff. That way we will not struggle so much trying to read.
Whatever language you write in, it should be correct as far as that language is concerned. If someone is screwing up their own language it simple means they are not arlerious about their writing and just want to make a quick buck