Hunchbacked is French, so I'm willing to cut him some slack. But he tends to persist with his rather idiosyncratic language even when he's informed of the correct terminology. "Incoherence" (as a noun) is one of his favorite words, so I like to use it in quotes.
Okay, but here's my thing. If he's going to argue in English, he needs to improve his English. Gods know I speak no language other than English well enough to argue in it. (I can order meals and a few other things in Spanish, I can talk about the weather in Gaelic, and I know scattered words in about a dozen other languages, and that's it.) I admire the heck out of people who do. I've never made fun of Jackie Chan's accent, because I know how awful I would sound if I tried to learn Chinese. However, two of the people whose spelling/grammatical errors I jump on most are both non-native speakers, and I do it
because they asked me to. They're trying to improve their English, which they know isn't perfect.
I know we end up dealing with non-native speakers sometimes, and it always makes me wonder--why? Are there no sites in their native language that they can bother, where they aren't fighting an uphill battle against science
and English? Sometimes, it's obvious that they're trying to improve their English, and that's fine. I actually kind of admire that. But when we get "English isn't my first language, so don't waste your time correcting me," I keep thinking that it's got to be easier to get your point across when you're actually fluent in the language. Or even just working on improving it. When you're struggling to make yourself understood, why are you wasting your time?
