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Comment by miroljub | Hacker News Reader

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miroljub

As a non-native English speaker, why would I care?

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Because are hard languages to understand grammars without.

Native English speaker, and I had no problem reading this sentence.

I had to read it twice to realize the word order was wrong.

that order of words makes perfect sense when literally translated into my native language.

Which is grand if your audience is entirely composed of folks who speak your native language, at which point you should probably just write your native language.

It's understandable enough. People will literally try to make sense of Russian Numbers Stations.

You're being a grammar nazi.

Look, write however you like. Just don't be surprised when people aren't willing or able to crack your personal cipher. I'm not a perscriptivist, and I'm not calling for capital punishment. Heck, I didn't even point out the grammatical mistake in the first place, nor would I have. I'm just agreeing that it's not clear.

Maybe you are built differently from myself, but as is the case with multiple people here, it causes mental whiplash to punctuate a statement like "How it works" with a question mark. I have to go back and parse it again and wonder what the question is and what I got wrong before realizing that it's just a grammatical error. When that happens, it wears on the limited attention I have to look at the thing you want me to look at.

Fix it, don't fix it, it's no skin off my nose. Lord knows every blog post or HN comment I've ever written is bedazzled with errors and typos. I haven't taken the trouble to fix it. I don't, however, pretend that so long as it's as or more intelligible than a Russian Numbers Station that it's "understandable enough".

Also, I invite you to call me a "pedant" or even a "general dumbass" before calling me a Nazi of any sort. Nothing I've (ever) written has warranted me being labelled as such, and I deeply resent it.

https://www.kveller.com/why-we-need-to-stop-using-the-term-g...

https://theotherpress.ca/dont-be-a-grammar-nazi-but-dont-use...

Just don't tell me you didn't understand "How it works?"

I think it’s less about whether it’s possible to understand and more about the increased cognitive load that comes with achieving that understanding.

When you’re used to seeing things a certain way, and you come across something that feels wrong, it derails your line of thought, takes you out of the experience and requires additional willpower and processing to maintain focus.

Just because I was able to ultimately understand what it meant doesn't mean that it required more effort to parse.

Just listen to some Hawaiian English and you'll get used to anything

Dem lang be supreme fr

Non-native speakers care about grammar.

But not about grammar Nazis ;)

We should all care about communicating our ideas in a correct and concise way. This rise of anti-intellectualism must end or we're all dead.

If it is equally understandable to most people and uses fewer words that would make it technically the most concise way to express the idea.

Defeating Anti-Intellectualism doesn't mean being antagonistic to non-native speakers. Intellectual != Asshole

Edit: Communicating in proper english is great till you're choking and you put your hands around your neck and pray the people around you understand your "sign language" so you don't die

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