"Am I speaking to Fred or Freda?"
There are far too many new members that are not filling out
their profile . Apart from the obvious confusion over gender ,
I do not want to be placed in the embarrassing position
of correcting a native speaker. So please please fill out your profile
fully , so that we may better offer you help .
I have just realised what a joyous occasion it would be if I
could ever correct a native Spanish speaker , well, we can all dream.
8 Answers
I have problems answering Ericks and Erickas Ray. You deal with the Freds and Fredas. OK?
You can correct a Spanish speaker when s/he gets the Strine wrong mate.
Does it really matter? When we ask a question, I think we all hope that the kind people who answer, answer to the best of their ability. I believe that we all want to be treated with respect; male, female, native English speaker or Spanish speaker, people who want to protect their privacy, people who don't care if their information is used for creepy purposes. Can we really offer better help by knowing someone's gender, birthday and where they were born?
If you know enough to spot an error in a native Spanish speaker's post, congratulations! I assume there are lazy Spanish speakers just as there are lazy English speakers and we could all use a lesson in grammar now and again. Go for it. Hopefully if you correct a native Spanish speaker and they disagree, they can let you (really us) know why and we can all learn something.
Mountainbelle,
Thanks mate you make some good points .
I have been here a few years and to my knowledge no member has
used my information for" creepy"purposes , I am competent
enough to do that myself , but seriously whenever we use the internet
all our information is out there , we can be careful of course , but
when on a site like this that has a membership in the tens of
thousands with most having their profiles on view I am happy
to show them the trust that they give to me.The gender is no
big deal , but the rest is necessary to help us understand how
best to reply . A well known and respected member wrote me recently
and said,"stop calling me, mate, I am a girl" well here in the land of
OZ "mate" is non gender specific , we are all mates.
Incidentally mate, I use humour in order to get a serious point across ,
but also to try to liven up the site if things are lagging , so there is
no need for us to get our knockers in a knit, I often Poke mullock ,
in order to stir the possum , in no way am I trying to come the raw prawn ,
but London to a brick most of what I say will go through to the keeper ,
so I dips me lid to you mate , but I gotta go now I have a pie and dead
horse waiting for me , with a Sheila on the side , and you cant keep the
Sheilas waiting , Hooroo blue.
The only question on a person profile that's important isn't being asked in first place:
What is your native language?
The only thing close to that is selecting "fluent" as your language level, but fluent and native are two very different things. You should also be able to specify if you are bilingual.
And to be honest, knowing someone's native language isn't going to help you answer the question either. The main reason I want to know if someone is a native speaker or not is to decide how much consideration I give to the accuracy of their answer.
Things like birthdays and gender might be interesting and nice to know, but have no impact on your ability to answer a persons question. Everything else is just being curious. Although I could see making a case for asking for the country of a persons origin, to help with the identification of Spanish/English dialects.
What we really need to focus on is making sure people are clear in what they are expecting for an answer (a translation, verification, etc.) and providing proper (or at least some) context in the question.
@MountainBelle:
While I agree that everyone should absolutely be treated with equal respect and kindness no matter their gender or native language, since this is a language-learning site, it's easier for people to write a reply in your native language if they know what that is. This is not always obvious from the information in the question. It's more helpful for the asker if the question can be written in their native (or at least more proficient) language.
Also, since this is Spanish we are talking about, it is useful to know someone's gender, especially if you are correcting a text they have written about themselves, which happens quite often, since beginners frequently make mistakes in the gender of adjectives. How can one correct a person's use of adjectives to describe him/herself if one does not know the gender of that person? I'm not saying you need to fill out sections like birth date, country, city, etc. The only two that really matter are gender and language proficiency, in my opinion. The rest is just optional.
All this to say that, while I agree on your point that everyone should be treated with kindness and respect no matter what their profile says, it makes it many times easier for helpers to lend them a hand knowing a few, non-personally identifiable things about the person being helped.
Who put this link into Ray's post
consumeropiniongroup.com/uk
So please please fill out your profile - [enter link description here][1]
profile.
[1]: http://consumeropiniongroup.com/uk/index2-p.php?engsec=7&t202kw=fill out
And who put this link into my reply?
http://local.amazon.co.uk/subscribe?
Well said mate!
