Comment by nopinsight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nopinsight | Hacker News Reader

Interesting case study here: I got very different results in my two attempts at the quiz, based on how I use school grammar and generative grammar rules in answering the questions.

In my first attempt, the algorithm guessed that my English dialect was 1. Singaporean 2. US Black Vernacular 3. American (Standard), and it guessed that my native language was 1. Vietnamese 2. Chinese 3. English.

Then I turned off my school grammar, including some generative grammar rules (from linguistics) in my head, and just truly went with my guts. This particularly affected the answers I gave to later questions. The second time the algorithm guessed that my dialect was 1. American (Standard) 2. Canadian 3. US Black Vernacular and that my native language was 1. English 2. Norwegian 3. Dutch.

This second set of results was very much off the mark but conformed to what I intended my answers to be.

My background: a native Thai speaker, born and raised in Thailand, started learning a bit of 'real' English at about eleven, lived in the US for two years when doing my Masters. I'm currently in Thailand but I mostly read and write in English for about fourteen years. My everyday spoken language is still Thai, but most of the movies, music, multimedia I consume are in English.

Possible implications:

1. Over-application of school grammar could result in unnatural use of language.

2. With enough exposure to proper language materials, non-natives can get pretty close to the native speaker in grammatical knowledge, even fairly subtle ones, at least according to the short and incomplete quiz here.

If any American English native speaker has time on their hands, I'd be grateful if you can tell me the differences between my writings (you can click on my username for more samples) and those of an educated native American English speaker.

So in skimming your comment history, I'm no english teacher; your use of past tense seems almost forced.

While as far I'm aware correct grammatically, your last paragraph gives plenty of hints that you're non-native: "If any American English native SPEAKERS HAVE [picky] time on their hands, I'd be grateful if you COULD tell me ("let me know of" maybe) ANY differences between my WRITING [big one here] (you can click on my username for an archive of my comments) and THAT of an educated native American English speaker.

There may be subtleties in your sentence structure that you'd be better off asking a linguist about; but you definitely come off as both educated and non-native in skimming.

Thanks a lot for the comment. I kind of notice that I overuse past tense a bit too, I'll try to go more with my guts next time. My general lesson: Oftentimes when I try to apply school grammar or logic, I tend to be a bit more off than when I apply the patterns I absorb through experience.

'Writings' is an interesting case. I believe mental lexicon is a lot harder for non-natives to grasp, simply because there are a lot more of them and English does not always treat them consistently. For example, I thought that a collection of written work is plural, while apparently you consider it a collection or an abstract object, and therefore used without an article and cannot in general be in the plural form.

However, this is what I found using Google 'define writing':

  2. written work, especially with regard to its style or quality. 
  * books, stories, articles, or other written works.
  plural noun: writings
  "he was introduced to the writings of Gertrude Stein"

So, dear native speakers, which is more appropriate in my use in the GP comment? writings or writing? :-)

As a Brit:

"go with my gut" rather than "guts", and I'd probably phrase it as "...try to go with my gut more next time".

"Oftentimes" sounds unnatural, not wrong but archaic; "Often" sounds more natural there.

"mental lexicon" is singular, but you've said "a lot more of them"; should probably be "a lot more of it". The opening of that sentence sounds a bit clipped; I might say "I believe the mental lexicon..." though that doesn't sound perfect either.

"writings" definitely sounds wrong for a collection of posts here; when you're talking about "the writings of x" it implies something more formal. I probably would've said "posts" or the like, but "writing" fits.

> If any American English native speaker has time on their hands, I'd be grateful if you can tell me the differences between my writings (you can click on my username for more samples) and those of an educated native American English speaker.

> So, dear native speakers, which is more appropriate in my use in the GP comment? writings or writing? :-)

Definitely "writing". An author might refer to books that he wrote as "writings", but it would sound odd (or even pretentious) for anyone to refer to their posts on HN that way. Besides, you're not really asking about your previous posts, but about your ability to write English in general. So it's your "writing" (in general) rather than your "writings" (the particular posts you've made here).

There was another good post on here I saw recently on how we're using bad dictionaries, http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary

For example the better (while old) Websters Revised only has these two entries for "writings":

  3. A book; any written composition; a pamphlet; as the writings of Addison.
  ...
  5. Writings, plu. conveyances of lands; deeds; or any official papers.

It specifically mentions that writings are more formal and pretty spot on for how we use the word.

TLDR; use this http://machaut.uchicago.edu/websters 1913 websters dictionary rather than the newer, while correct, dictionaries that don't capture vernacual. It's a shame a state of our dictionaries.

With respect to the sister comment, I'd have gone with writing not writings. Also, the sentence "I'm currently in Thailand but I mostly read and write in English for about fourteen years." doesn't strike me as quite right. There a tense switch from present to past without modifying the verb. I'd have probably written 'I've' instead of 'I'.

That said, your written English is excellent and I probably would not have noticed anything if I hadn't been looking for it.

I guess this whole comment thread on the OP is a small additional evidence of how complex and subtle the grammar of a language is. It varies not only with the perspective and emphasis of the message, but also with the conventions of each dialect.

Perhaps "I'm currently in Thailand and I've been reading and writing mostly in English for about fourteen years." would be better? The unedited version which you found strange could be the case of erring on the side of oversimplifying the sentence grammar.

I upvoted your reply and all of the cousin replies too. Thanks for all of your responses.

Better, though to sound natural you'd want to drop the "in". (Also "be a case of" rather than "be the case of", and "some small additional evidence" or "a small additional piece of evidence" rather than "a small additional evidence").

(Hope none of this is too dispiriting; I'm being quite nitpicky)

Yeah, it told me my dialect is Singaporean and that I'm a native English speaker. Both off the mark, I started learning English when I was 8 and I've only lived a year in London when I was 26.

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