Grammar Equals Intelligence?

reply to post by djerwulfe

No, the people I was talking about come from all parts of the world, America included. I don't think you understood what I was talking about.

The two things on this forum that annoy me the most:

1. If people add (please forgive my spelling), etc to their posts. Just try your best and if you're concerned about your spelling send it through a spell checker or reread your post. The odd spelling mistake is totally acceptable, but see point 2

2. If people try to convince us they are smart/highly educated/high placed and their grammar / spelling sucks.

The worst-spoken and -written English in the world, in my experience, is that of international development professionals (international agency types, project managers, consultants and counterpart-country bureaucrats). These people will not use a simple Anglo-Saxon word where a sequipedelian Latinism will serve. They stuff their sentences with unnecessary and often contradictory qualifying clauses, turning the route from subject to verb into something resembling an SAS obstacle course. They are also consumnate experts in the art of changing a short, meaningful word into a long, meaningless one through the process of suffixicalizatorismicalizatoriousneccesarizisticability.

What's not to understand? I have noted the same circuitous communication style among pencil-pushers with English as a second language. I was expanding the observation with personal experience. Specifically, my laboratory experiences and my wife's hospital experience.
Collectively, we have noted these tendencies to be more prevalent among Middle Easterners, Inidan Sub-continent denizens and Asians as opposed to Europeans, Russians or Central/South Americans.

I was wrong, though. It seems you weren't being ironic. And that says alot.

[edit on 28-6-2008 by djerwulfe]

reply to post by djerwulfe


"sequipedelian"....that is the word of the day!!!!

EDIT....had to refine the spelling.....it is: "sesquipedalian"

[bowing, you are most welcome]

EDIT over....carry on....

I've considered myself to have a fairly good vocabulary. I'm certainly no expert on grammar, but I cringe at things I hear people say usually, sometimes. Stems from slang, too occasionally.

Of course, if we didn't have 'Bushisms' then we'd be crying mostly....it's good to have a nice laugh now and then. Too bad he's in the position he is, but if there's a Poster Boy for poor intellect and grammar coming together in one spectacularly bad way, it is he. "Go Dumbya!!!"

Cheers

ps...off Google "sequi....er.....sequinsadilly....er, supercallafragalisticexpiallidocious.... Denying Ignorance!!!

[edit on 6/28/0808 by weedwhacker]

[edit on 6/28/0808 by weedwhacker]

reply to post by djerwulfe

What's not to understand? I have noted the same circuitous communication style among pencil-pushers with English as a second language.

What's not to understand, evidently, is that those for whom English is a first language are the worst perpetrators of this kind of infelicity.

It has nothing to do with one's familiarity with the English language, as George Orwell or Sir Winston Churchill might have told you.

Or perhaps you should read a little in Conrad or Nabokov.

Please do not make out that I am so bigoted and brainless as to laugh at people who have succeeded, however modestly, at the immensely difficult task of learning a second language in adulthood.

I think grammar, spelling, etc. ought to be adequate enough that one's point is clearly made. When I was young I had horrible handwriting and got low marks on all my school papers. My parents bought me my first computer when I was 12 years old (an Apple ][+) and I started typing my papers, and my teachers actually understood that I had something valid to say. Being intelligent and not being able to communicate sufficiently is a disservice to both you and those whom you'd attempt to interact with. While I may not spell every word perfectly (though a lot better since built-in spellchecking in my browsers, etc) and I don't follow every punctuation rule to a T, I do feel it's vitally important to be as correct and conversant in the language at hand as possible, both to better communicate my ideas to my target audience as well as to show a self-confidence through my words and phrases which may subliminally help sway my audience to my position.