Dolphin's Armor medieval helmet - photos

[mklotz]

Richard Porson, an English scholar, wrote "Life is too short to learn German". I think he missed the boat. Compared to English, German is easy to learn; it's a far more organized language (although sometimes at the expense of the precision of expression English offers).

That said, I have sincere and deep respect for any non-native speaker who attempts to write in English. An impossibly large vocabulary and a mess of irregular spelling and grammar coupled with the moving target of frequent inventions of new words and constructs make it a Sisyphean task to learn.

The only advice I can offer to native as well as non-native writers is:

Proofread what you write - this is by far the most useful way to improve your writing

Keep and use your spell checker but disable its autocorrect function..

The checker will highlight typos that produce non-words (e.g. teh) but cannot detect homophone errors (e.g. there/their/they're misuses). Autocorrectors will never work until they can understand the text the way a literate human does and that isn't going to happen in our lifetime.

[Philip Davies]

Richard Porson, an English scholar, wrote "Life is too short to learn German". I think he missed the boat. Compared to English, German is easy to learn; it's a far more organized language (although sometimes at the expense of the precision of expression English offers).

That said, I have sincere and deep respect for any non-native speaker who attempts to write in English. An impossibly large vocabulary and a mess of irregular spelling and grammar coupled with the moving target of frequent inventions of new words and constructs make it a Sisyphean task to learn.

The only advice I can offer to native as well as non-native writers is:

Proofread what you write - this is by far the most useful way to improve your writing

Keep and use your spell checker but disable its autocorrect function..

The checker will highlight typos that produce non-words (e.g. teh) but cannot detect homophone errors (e.g. there/their/they're misuses). Autocorrectors will never work until they can understand the text the way a literate human does and that isn't going to happen in our lifetime.

Das stimmt!