thekernel

I don't mind it if it makes sense. If it doesn't make much sense (some friends use "probs" instead of "probably") then I'm pretty averse to it. I see someone doesn't like "stats" used in place of "statistics". As someone who is heavily into fantasy sports it seems very strange. Nobody has time to type out the full word!

My phone has a pretty useful setting that finishes what you're typing with common or recent words. Normally I have great spelling and grammar (though my instant messages aren't capitalized or punctuated perfectly). But having a phone that does it for me makes it a lot easier. My friend has a touch phone without any additional settings, and as a result he sends me sloppy messages all the time.

I prefer not to get uppity about other people's grammar. Where I come from English is not everyone's first language. Correcting someone's grammar to "win arguments" is a classic logical fallacy.

From what I've heard, some animals have dialects to their communication. Like how a crow in UK sounds different from a crow in Canada, and they are able to tell. In that vein, I believe the closest man has come to using a universal language would be the grunts and calls from our great ancestors, but even then they'd sound different around the world.

Wow, living on the west coast of North America I haven't heard any of these (even the English form of it). It's interesting how it's an idiom that is different in every language but is such a universally common expression. The chart is very cool.

Some of these examples aren't that bad. Try saying this one 5 times fast: Blue black bug's blood

I can tell general language families from each other, but when it comes to differing between Japanese and Cantonese, or Russian and Ukrainian, I get pretty lost. I'm decent at identifying romance languages although Portuguese can frequently be confused for Spanish.

In Vancouver it is more definitive of race than anything. People with no accents are assumed to have been born here, while people with accents are most certainly learning it as a second language. I've never heard of it being a determining factor for class.

In all honesty I've never heard of anyone who didn't consider English important. I mean, sure, where I live there are a lot of niche immigrant communities wherein people interact in their native language instead of learning the languages of Canada. But how can somebody studying business or law be so shortsighted in thinking English isn't worth knowing?

I prefer to be as clear as possible. I don't always type with perfect grammar; I usually eschew capitalization and proper punctuation in favor of speed. I still use the best spelling I can though. A friend of mine types horribly and it's just awful trying to unscramble the meaning of his messages.

TV and cinema is a great way to get used to conversational elements. It's almost like a form of immersion. No, the dialogue itself isn't always realistic, but the structure of the writing and the way it is spoken is great for learning.

My friends have told me stories about their travels to Quebec. The consensus was that they'd rather they speak English to you than you speak French to them. They really value their language, they seem indignant when it's spoken to them by a non-Quebecer.

Yep. I've had people correct me when I use this username, but what they don't realize is that it's on purpose. Most of my usernames are "kernelcolonel" because of the interesting homophone. But usually most people don't know about "colonel".

"It's" is probably the biggest misused English word in existence. You would think the difference between "it's" and "its" would be common knowledge, since the apostrophe indicates the word always means "it is". Yet when people try to describe gender-less possession of something, the apostrophe always sneaks in there, for example, "The mailman took the letter to it's proper destination" The apostrophe means the word is ALWAYS "it is". Therefore, the sentence above makes no sense. It's ridiculous how many professional writers out there can't seem to separate the two words, or they just don't realize "its" exists at all.

"Virtue is uniform, it is sin that makes us unique" People can strive to be good but we are always imperfect according to our ideals.

I don't find the two mutually exclusive. They can be very different, since poetry doesn't always follow a rhythm, while writing lyrics you need to be able to fit it in the musical phrasing. However I try to let the lyrics I write be capable of standing alone. I want the lines between poetry and lyrics to be very blurred, because I love poetry so much and would hate for my lyrics to be vapid and useless.

Studying languages is a very practical use of one's time. If you are studying one as a hobby then it might be harder to find the willpower and discipline to continue, but the results for your time invested are very tangible and useful. If you are studying one for school, the grades ought to be enough of an incentive.

Since the fundamentals are the same I don't see how one would be more difficult than the other. Distinguishing between the two may prove troublesome though. The difference between British English and North American English is also very minute, your basic understanding is only affected by your ability to understand the way the words are spoken, and for the most part, not the words themselves.

As much as I can advocate the preservation of culture in an increasingly globalized world, language extinction is a natural progression. Preserving it may prove futile in a practical sense, though I see the validity of doing it for historic purposes.

I'm beginning to lean towards "with". I don't mind the reading at all, though for comedies it kind of messes with the timing. But sometimes in a social situation, people talk over top of the movie when I'm really interested in a particular scene, and that's when I wish subtitles were on.

I think I'm a fast reader. I can get through a book very, very quickly. Though I'm never sure just how fast I am until I show a friend something like an online comic, and I wait for them to read it. That's when I'm reaffirmed in just how fast my reading is.

Spanish, no doubt. It's like learning French, but with no ridiculous phonetics and no diversity in the written accents. It feels like a simplified language, in that the rules aren't often broken.

Living in Vancouver there is quite the gamut of multi-lingual people. Almost all people who come from Asian families speak their mother language on top of English. There are also a lot of bilingual European people around here (some of my Russian friends know Ukrainian as well, making them tri-lingual). On top of that, many friends of mine were enrolled in French Immersion courses in high school. These days it would seem I'm the only one around who doesn't speak multiple languages fluently.

Spanish is the same way -- no silent letters, hidden pronunciations. Everything is exactly as it reads with little to no exception. It's what makes the language fun. You can read it out loud without understanding what it means, as long as you know how each letter sounds. I do wish English were easier to learn, as phonetics can be a huge hurdle to overcome.

I wouldn't go that far. Though French is very intricate compared to Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, there are tons of word roots that overlap. For example, "Pessimistic" is "Pesimista" in Spanish and "Pessimiste" in French. Or "Iron", which is "Fierro" in Spanish and "Fer" in French. Many other similarities between the romance languages exist because of their shared roots.