Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> It also helps tremendously if you have someone who *is* a native speaker 
>> actively helping you out, pointing out your mispronunciations and odd 
>> word choices and such, methinks. At least, that's my experience.
> 
>   That's one HUGE problem, though. People are way too "polite" to comment
> on your mistakes, even if it would benefit you a lot if the did.

Yes. That's why I said they have to be actively helping out. For 
example, I spent about a week teaching my chinese now-wife the 
difference between "L" and "R" when we were first going out. We still 
joke about it, and she still occasionally calls me from work to find out 
what the right preposition to use in some sentence is. (Prepositions in 
English are completely random, as far as I can tell.)

A random stranger isn't going to take the time. If you wind up in a 
country with people who speak English well (not necessarily England or 
the USA, mind), and you wind up staying with someone at their house 
instead of in a hotel, say, asking the person to correct your english 
mistakes would definitely improve your skills much faster than waiting 
for strangers to volunteer it.

>   I have had more than one experience related to this just in writing.
> I have written something consistently in the wrong way for *years* before
> someone *finally* commented that it's wrong, after which I started writing
> it correctly. In each case it exasperated me why nobody had said it to me
> before. I can't know if I write something in the wrong way if nobody tells me.

Last night: "Why does my outlook always put the red squiggles under the 
word yestoday?"    "Because it's misspelled."   "I've been spelling it 
wrong for 20 years?"   "Seems that way."

Yeah, it happens. Your writing is virtually flawless to my eye. I don't 
even stumble over it as much as I have to re-read a lot of native 
english text I see.  I wish I could learn even a simple foreign language 
half as well as you've mastered english.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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