English Language in the Bangkok Post and Other Publications

[danreiter2]

The Bangkok Post claims to be "The World's Window to Thailand." As such, one would assume that the Post's website would want to put its best face forward and limit any major errors in the English language. However, time and again one finds major errors in articles in the new (and old) online edition.

The solution is, of course, very simple: Hire a native speaker to vet all articles before they go online. I've had some communication with the webmaster concerning this topic and have cited several instances of major incorrect English usage. However, the situation has not changed.

For me at least, it is distracting when oftentimes otherwise great articles are marred by poor English. If it's question of money, then I would volunteer to do the job myself. However, as with a lot of issues in Thailand concerning things foreign, it probably is a question of false pride.

What do you think? Am I being too picky in this regard? Is it a question of false pride or somethings else?

[Sean Moran]

The solution is, of course, very simple: Hire a native speaker to vet all articles before they go online.

Did you say vet? (is that PC thesedays?)

The Eggcorn Database. v. 0.5

For all intensive purposes, the solution is definately not as simple as it might seem unless you can imagine it transparently (???), perhaps with the exception of native-speakers from Singapore, KL, or Manila. The standard of language in this country of so-called "native-speakers" is more of a reason to drop another prozac IMHO. That kind of ignorance is bliss, for a while. Not all of us need medication to attain it, so it appears in the local papers here and on the tv news on Saturdays.

[danreiter2]

Sean,
"Native speakers" by definition means those whose mother tongue is English. I am not sure who you are referring to as "native speakers."

[stilljustbrowsing]

If it's question of money

Has one missed a word/letter here during one's critisism of english writing?
"let he who is without sin cast the first stone"
On a more serious note, I do agree with you, I have seen some seriously bad texts written in "english" and could help. The problem is that if I just go round correcting everyones english I would probably lose my job.
On the other hand, if they come to me for advise, I help if I can. BTW, I failed English at school! LOL.

[Sean Moran]

Sean,
"Native speakers" by definition means those whose mother tongue is English. I am not sure who you are referring to as "native speakers."

I guess that excludes Scots and the Welsh then, eh?

---o0o---

Seriously, I reckon it goes back to the "dumbing-down" of tertiary education in this country over the last 20 years since the recommendations of the 1985 Beasley Report were adopted in 1986. Coincidentally, I graduated from senior high school in 1985 so was not affected by it.

The major change in 1986 was to give equal weight to "a$$essments" over the two years of senior high school as to the final matriculation exams. In this state, the TAE (Tertiary Admissions Examinations) changed to the TEE (Tertiary Entrance Examinations). You can see the onerous implications in the adjustment of that one word, if you look at what has become of the prestige that used to be held by a BSc. but is now just a waste of forestry for the paper it's printed on.

Not all rich people are intelligent, nor are all intelligent people rich, but tertiary institutions have to pay their salaries with something, and government funding is the primary source of this funding. Government funding is allocated on enrolment numbers and enrolment costs money too, but for the student, particularly if you consider the opportunity cost of sitting in a lecture theatre or the tavern for the next three years.

Hence, the best way to build up the numbers of rich students adding to the enrolment numbers and consequent monetary gain is to simplify the process for those who are likely to fail their final high school English exam by allowing for all their assignments over the year to add to their final scores. It's much cheaper to pay a "friend" to write your assignments than to have them turn up in your place to complete your exams for you.

Another difference between the final two weeks of examinations that used to count for 100% of your matriculation and the final two years of assignments that now count for 50% of it is that you can't sleep with the anonymous examiners who mark your final papers, but you can sleep with the teachers at your local school if you don't think you have the right stuff to succeed academically on your own merit.

I've noticed that many of those from the three countries I mentioned earlier seem to have far higher standards of English than what we have to listen to and read here in my hometown, but I don't know how their graduation systems from high school to uni operate. All I know is that it is possible to graduate from an Australian university without the levels of English that high school kids would once have known. All it takes is time and money. Learning too much can actually be a disadvantage in some places. This might be because the lecturers of today also graduated via the TEE system, and they don't like to be told of their mistakes, not even in private when nobody else is listening.

[danreiter2]

If it's question of money

Has one missed a word/letter here during one's critisism of english writing?
"let he who is without sin cast the first stone"
On a more serious note, I do agree with you, I have seen some seriously bad texts written in "english" and could help. The problem is that if I just go round correcting everyones english I would probably lose my job.
On the other hand, if they come to me for advise, I help if I can. BTW, I failed English at school! LOL.

To stilljustbrowsing: Yea. sorry about that "a." No excuses. I think we have to make a difference between simple grammatical errors (sometimes these are just typos) and the larger question of proper usage. When I have more time, I'll quote example in the Bangkok Post of what I am referring to. Simple grammatical errors can be annoying also, and a good editor should not let them in. However, we all make them, even native speakers. The errors I am talking about are quite different. They occur when a non-native speaker. who may communicate in English very well, makes errors which are incomprehensible and really ruin an article. The native speaker instinctively knows that the writer is a non-native speaker. And the native speaker usually knows how to correct the writer's incorrect usage.

[Sean Moran]

The native speaker instinctively knows that the writer is a non-native speaker. And the native speaker usually knows how to correct the writer's incorrect usage.

What had he done? Nothing. He had meant the best in the world and been treated like a dog - like a very dog. She would be sorry some day - maybe when it was too late. Ah, if he could only die temporarily!

But the elastic heart of youth cannot be kept compressed into one constrained shape long at a time. Tom presently began to drift insensibly back into the concerns of this life again.

Tom Sawyer, Chapter 8, p.53.

Mark Twain is allowed to start a sentence with AND or BUT. Mere mortals like us are not.

---o0o---

They occur when a non-native speaker. who may communicate in English very well, makes errors which are incomprehensible and really ruin an article.

There is also a difference between online media such as this and that which is printed on paper. On paper it's fine to underline, but on the worldwide web, it implies an hyperlink. If you use bold or italic typeface, it has the same effect, but using underline on web pages makes people instinctively mouseover the underlined text in expectation of something to click on.

Never use the underlined typeface unless you have a URL to go with it. It's a rare problem but so annoying when these underlines get posted in the middle of a paragraph and there's no link to click on. Use bold or italics if you can.

[stilljustbrowsing]

And so I use bold italics on occasion as I consider appropriate.
But sometimes I just get confused! Language as such "is so". Complicated by the perhaps, unecessary complexities of it!
Speek proper like wot eye doo, evry tink eesy moor to unnerstood!

[danreiter2]

Sean,
Picky...picky...You seem to find joy in seeking out picayune errors (right about the "a" but, an obvious typo....and wrong about beginning sentences with "And" and wrong again about underlining. According to your logic, non of us "mere mortals" could aspire to write like the greatest writers. I guess we should just continue to write like you..so many misspellings and so much convoluted logic that your posts are quite incomprehensible. Sorry, my friend, but your replies to my post lack any real substance. Please try to bump up the level of discourse just a bit!

[Sean Moran]

Sean,
Picky...picky...You seem to find joy in seeking out picayune errors (right about the "a" but, an obvious typo....and wrong about beginning sentences with "And" and wrong again about underlining. According to your logic, non of us "mere mortals" could aspire to write like the greatest writers. I guess we should just continue to write like you..so many misspellings and so much convoluted logic that your posts are quite incomprehensible. Sorry, my friend, but your replies to my post lack any real substance. Please try to bump up the level of discourse just a bit!

Picky?

Wasn't that the purpose of this thread? I think it's time I call the grammar police and tell on you now!

I'm just having a laugh, to be honest. Nobody can always write at their best in first-draft, and there are so many dialects of English that somebody will always find something wrong with anything we might write in a place like this. Granted that if you're talking about the printed newpaper copy, then it would be expected that articles written by one author are proof-read by another to check on the mistakes that so often get overlooked, but the worldwide web is also published media, so there should be reasonable standards on this stuff too, when what we write might be read by people from anywhere in the world, even though we need no printing press to make it so. Just because it's published at light-speed doesn't give any excuse for laziness, although it's to be expected that there will be typos and grammatical flaws if we're in a hurry.

I must admit that I appreciate anyone who is writing in their second language, and that native speakers of any language should have that childhood schooling to know the rights and wrongs of their mother tongue, but try writing the same stuff in pasa Thai and then maybe if that's flawless we can criticise the work of another who is writing in a foreign language.

Further, I do wonder about the worth of your simple solution, based on the terrible standards of English that are so popular right here in Australia today. That is why I mentioned the three nations that came to mind where grammar would appear to be taught in school still, unlike here. Perhaps the multilingual standards of The Philippines is what helps students from there to really take their language skills seriously. I reckon their Engliish is better if we took a random sample of 100 graduates from here and from there and asked them to write 500 words on grammar.

Regarding your habit of underlining words on the web, it's just a matter of geting used to that particular style of certain people over time, and remembering that your posts might include underlined text which is not actually an hyperlink. Have it your way, although I think it looks misleading and ugly.

Beginning a sentence with a conjunction is another one where some people will consider it foolish, while others don't even notice. In the exceprt from Tom Sawyer I added above, it probably worked very well in that context, although in your case, you should have used a comma and continued the sentence rather than create such an interruption of flow. Totally subjective opinion, I admit. That's the way to be picky. Here is something that might clear up this matter:


http://www.dailywritingtips.com/can-you ... %E2%80%9D/

Can You Start Sentences with “And” or “But”?

In the past, English teachers used to preach that one should never start a sentence with conjunctions like and or but. Does this rule still apply today?

Not entirely. It is already acceptable to start sentences with such conjunctions. Some authorities, in fact, even defend that for some cases conjunctions will do a better job than more formal constructions. Here is a quotation from Ernest Gowers addressing the usage of and on the beginning of sentences:

That it is a solecism to begin a sentence with and is a faintly lingering superstition. The OED gives examples ranging from the 10th to the 19th c.; the Bible is full of them.

While it is acceptable to use such conjunctions to start a sentence, you should still use them carefully and efficiently, else your text might become choppy.

Secondly, many people still regard such usage as informal. If you are writing a formal piece or if you are not sure how your audience might react to conjunctions at the beginning of a sentence, you could substitute them with more formal terms.
Below you will find some examples.

But I am still awaiting his reply.

Can be written as:

However, I am still awaiting his reply.
Although I am still awaiting his reply.
Nevertheless, I am still awaiting his reply.

And she was running very fast.

Can be written as:

Moreover, she was running very fast.
In addition, she was running very fast.
Furthermore, she was running very fast.

I used to find the occasional typo or grammatical error in some of the breaking news bulletins on the Bangkok Post website when I'd cut & paste abstracts onto other forums, and started out adding in little <sic> comments at first, rather than correct mistakes which seemed to detract from the authenticity. Rather a dumb idea, that. It just breaks up the flow of the sentence. "Choppy" is the word they used for it above. In the end, it's better to just let it go as long as they get the message across.

One example recently was just after the Wall Street fun last year, and in The West Australian newspaper online, somebody made a terrible miscalculation of the share price drop, with something like 1.1% being written as 110% or something like that. It was a while back so I don't recall the exact figures, but that sort of thing should be cleared up. That's just plain old ADHD.

Anyway, this has been a teriffically fun thread. Please let me know also of the spelling errors you find, because it might help me to improve my own syntax. I dunno how I got it mixed up, although head injuries can cause Broca's Area to suffer temporarily or sometimes permanently, and for a while last year, I was writing William Shakesphere! How's that for a sin!