Hacker News Reader

Comment by calmoo | Hacker News Reader

If you're referring to speaking in English - in general I think there is a huge amount of flexibility for making mistakes in English. I'm a native speaker, I am so used to hearing various levels of English from different nationalities that i'm almost blind to it. I much prefer to hear someones true voice even if there are a few inaccuracies, so much of a person's personality is conveyed through their quirks and mistakes.

View on HN

Huh. I have the opposite opinion. I'm monolingual English for all intents and purposes but I gathered that opinion from quite a few sources, including:

- We had to take spelling tests in school

- English speakers make (generally light) fun of other's spelling or grammar mistakes in a casual setting

- In a professional setting, a lot of time is taken to proofread our own emails

- There's de jure spellings for every word

- Some online communities are really weird about pointing out grammar and spelling mistakes (namely Reddit)

Language is meant to be a fluid, evolving thing but I always felt like English was treated the opposite way. Maybe that's also why it's the de facto Lingua Franca.

I do think, and hope, that this rigidity will change thanks to AI. I've started to embrace my mistakes. I care a lot less about capitalization and punctuation in my Slack messages, for example.

I agree with this, and I’d even say that all the grammatical and spelling mistakes, awkward constructions, and labored phrasing is what makes a person’s posts sound like themselves. If people commonly use LLMs to rewrite themselves, then everyone starts sounding the same. And the posts, the users, and the entire site all become a lot less interesting.

I'm absolutely with both of you, but I'd like to point out that non-native speakers often tread a very fine line. They need to fear sounding either too convoluted or a bit of a simpleton. Proficiency levels vary wildly, and not everybody in the audience is as receptive and welcoming to slight mistakes as you are, even tough I have to admit HN in particular is pretty tolerant.

I for one don't think I'll ever AI-wash my texts or use AI translations verbatim. If everybody else did, it would certainly be a sad loss of diversity, but IMO it's only going to make the people who put in their own effort stand out more. Hopefully in a positive way. Time will tell if we're a dying breed.

I'm afraid the need for anybody to learn foreign languages will be subject to much change and discussion for upcoming generations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com