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Comment by eru | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean by proper grammar? Stuff like using "you and me" correctly and not falling into the "you and I" prestige English trap?

People acquire proper grammar naturally with their native language.

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Proper grammar, for practical purposes, should be defined as "is capable of talking in a way that will not put them at a disadvantage in job interviews". Use of the the word "ain't" probably isn't worth worrying about; stunted vocabulary and inability to match tenses probably is.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant. I'm not pedantic enough about the "you and me" stuff, or even fully correct in my own punctuation and I'm a native English speaker. But knowing the difference between "there, their and they're" is very important for example.

It seems like you might be more concerned with people knowing how to communicate well. Knowing how to format their thoughts so that they will be understandable through conversation or text. The ability to adapt this formatting process to fit the audience they are trying to reach.

Yes, that also. As a programmer, half the battle in trying to understand an issue exactly what you have just stated. In my job the second part is also very true, tech speak for other developers, business/marketing for everyone else. But I've found this applies to all walks of life.

To me, programming comes down to breaking a problem down into smaller pieces, which is basically like algebra. My first internship (way back) required us to carry out a written test: here are some simple algebra equations, you have a basic calculator with one (or two, can't remember) memory bank, write out the exact exact key presses to solve the equations. To me it was simple, but apparently not to everyone.

It's stuff like this which the education system should already be teaching, work on improving that rather than trying to get _everyone_ to code. Coding is not for everyone, your doctors, lawyers, actors, artists and many others are not going to need it

That's mostly an issue with English spelling---which is an attrocious system.

Possibly, I presume you mean because it is not phonetic? But that is not going to be so easy to change... My biggest gripe of the modern school leavers is when dey ryt n txt spch & i hv 2 decifa evry wrd. That's ok in an actual text message, but I've heard of stories where it has been carried over to exams, CV's and the workplace.

Anyway, that's what grinds my gears :)

Oh, that's mostly a failure to communicate in the prestige dialect of English.

You seem to have a big gripe about the English language. There is nothing prestige about it, some of the upper class may like to pretend there is but it's just a means of communication like every other language and I would make the same observations about those too.

There are different version of English. Please refer this most interesting paper "Grammatically Deviant Prestige Constructions" (http://fine.me.uk/Emonds/).

Do you really think the parent is talking about "nit-picky" stuff such as that ... Are you aware of no grammar problem anywhere in the US??? Really? You would have to be pretty sheltered for that to be the case.

I'm glad to be sheltered from the US, by having only visited once.

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