Curse of being a non native English speaker

[Agentt]

Is that you know a lot of words but not their meanings, only where to use them in context.


I don't know what sublime means but I know to use it whenever I say sophisticated.

I don't know what geriatric means except to use it while insulting politicians.

I know a vested interest is a good thing but I don't know why does wearing a vest give my interest this authority.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

Yeah, me too.

It sucks not knowing the geo-cultural context of those words.

Especially when you can barely relate and connect to those words and sentences with your daily life as you're living somewhere that isnt USA or UK.

 

[Agentt]

USA or UK

ah, that too. A proper english prof would hate me for switching between US English and UK English every other sentence.

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

As a native english speaker I also wish there was some sort of dictionary or something.

 

[Woolen_Bat_Monkey]

As a native english speaker I also wish there was some sort of dictionary or something.

FOR REAL

 

[KidBuu699]

Native english speaker here. There are a good amount of words the every day speaker either doesn't know or have heard it before but doesn't know the meaning. Good rule of thumb is that as along as it makes sense and the sentence flows well it is ok. Example is the double negative rule that I did not follow.

Also to this day I still get there, their, and they're mixed up.

 

[lumiel]

Non-native English speaker here.

Well, yes, sometimes the world isn't working in our favor, and there's always a choice to write stories in our native language since I believe every stuff always has its own market share. However, the size of the market share may vary.

Good luck buddy.

 

[Agentt]

As a native english speaker I also wish there was some sort of dictionary or something.

FOR REAL

Sadly all we have is this book written by some guy named Oxward, so sad as authors we are legally prohibited from reading.

 

[Woolen_Bat_Monkey]

Native english speaker here. There are a good amount of words the every day speaker either doesn't know or have heard it before but doesn't know the meaning. Good rule of thumb is that as along as it makes sense and the sentence flows well it is ok. Example is the double negative rule that I did not follow.

Also to this day I still get there, their, and they're mixed up.

There means.... Omg

Sadly all we have is this book written by some guy named Oxward, so sad as authors we are legally prohibited from reading.

Must be a banned book oh how cruel the world is.

 

[Agentt]

Non-native English speaker here.

Well, yes, sometimes the world isn't working in our favor, and there's always a choice to write stories in our native language since I believe every stuff always has its own market share. However, the size of the market share may vary.

Good luck buddy.

Mmm, I do see many Vietnamese books here now,

 

[K5Rakitan]

Is that you know a lot of words but not their meanings, only where to use them in context.


I don't know what sublime means but I know to use it whenever I say sophisticated.

I don't know what geriatric means except to use it while insulting politicians.

I know a vested interest is a good thing but I don't know why does wearing a vest give my interest this authority.

Sublime - delicious, exquisite, fancy, sometimes used for something that you are not supposed to enjoy, like revenge.

Geriatric - old, but in medical terms. The opposite would be pediatric.

Vested interest - Think "invested," emotionally speaking rather than monetarily.

 

[CSDestroyer]

You can probably, unironically, ask ChatGPT to give you definitions and use cases for odd words or catchphrases that you might not fully understand. It's surprisingly good at that, as long as the term you're asking about isn't too new (2022 or sooner).

 

[ElijahRyne]

Is that you know a lot of words but not their meanings, only where to use them in context.


I don't know what sublime means but I know to use it whenever I say sophisticated.

I don't know what geriatric means except to use it while insulting politicians.

I know a vested interest is a good thing but I don't know why does wearing a vest give my interest this authority.

Well, nonetheless, good progress in English. I have tried learning a couple of languages and have never gotten to the point where I could write a story in them. The closest was Spanish where I was able to write small poems, but it has been about four years since I have used it. A good thing about is that, if you can spell a word, oftentimes you can search what it means online.

 

[Agentt]

good progress in English

This one hurts a little, I've been learning English for past 20 years.

 

[ElijahRyne]

This one hurts a little, I've been learning English for past 20 years.

Still good, I have been learning it for 20 years and can’t spell nearly anything.

 

[Story_Marc]

As a native English speaker, I'll give you props for being multi-lingual though. While I do possess a strong grasp of the language, I know I'd sound like an absolute fool in any other language.

 

[NineHeadHeavenDevouringSerpent]

Is that you know a lot of words but not their meanings, only where to use them in context.


I don't know what sublime means but I know to use it whenever I say sophisticated.

I don't know what geriatric means except to use it while insulting politicians.

I know a vested interest is a good thing but I don't know why does wearing a vest give my interest this authority.

Trust me, not a lot of native speakers know what they spouting too XD

 

[Story_Marc]

Trust me, not a lot of native speakers know what they spouting too XD

Sadly. I'm far more critical of native speakers who don't know the language than non-native speakers.

 

[RedHunter2296]

On my end, I've noticed something quite curious regarding a similar topic.

I'm not a native English speaker, so it's obvious that I'll never be perfect.

So when I started writing my novel, I first wrote it in English and then translated it myself. The result was understandably terrible, with bad reviews and comments everywhere complaining about the grammar and language despite the clear warning from the start.

It's okay, it's valid to want to understand a story.

So I set to work on improving those first chapters, retranslating them, rewriting them a bit differently. When the AI came along, I used it to translate the chapters better and even checked every word again to see if they made sense. I even ended up redoing the first 25 chapters altogether.

The funny thing is, people still complain about the grammar no matter what, according to some comments, it seems like I'm writing in Norse runes or something. Despite the fact that they might be reading the revised 4.0 version of the chapter.

And then I started to notice something, a pattern.

Since I never deleted the chapters as such, I simply edited them by deleting all the letters and rewriting everything, the comments were never deleted.

And I understood that new readers only saw the comments complaining about the grammar and they also started to complain about the grammar and how poorly written it is, without ever saying exactly what's wrong or how to fix it, they just "feel in the force" that something is wrong.

 

[PancakesWitch]

I am a non native english speaker and although I can feel my writing improving over time, I just dont really give a single shit anyways