To wish people would stop asking OP if English is their second language?

[PanicAndRun]

Every time there is a OP that goes against general consensus or considered fairly ridiculous, someone will always pipe up and ask if OP is from another country or English is their second language,especially if those threads are about words(fairly common) that were used . Also asked if OP has lots of spelling mistakes.

As someone who has English as their second language,it really bugs me. If feels othering. It feels like you couldn't possibly understand British language,culture etc unless you were born and bred here. Or that a British person couldn't possibly be so unreasonable,so they must be foreign. Not jus that, but so "foreign" they don't even grasp the meaning of some basic,common words,customs or SPaG rules.

If they don't ask that then it's 'Are you American?' MN loves to slag off Americans and foreigners.

Does it really happen a lot?

YANBU. Also asking people if they are of a different culture.

Yes, it does, Next. The 'swimpool' thread, fucking hell. That was beyond nasty.

I don't know if this a regular thing or not but it can be a relevant fact. Laws are different in different countries, misunderstandings can happen if someone isn't a native English speaker, words can have very different connotations.

As long as it's done politely I don't see a problem

Enough for me to notice and start a thread about it I guess.

There used to be a visually impaired poster on here who used speech to text. The horrible pisstaking you'd see about the misspellings was really shit.

I don't want this to become a TAAT so I won't use the latest example, but a lot of the times the question is used as if people are struggling for an explanation as to why OP is so unreasonable, so the " Is English your seconds language " pops out.

I used to just roll my eyes,but it's becoming quite annoying especially since I have yet to be on a thread where the situation or words were so obscure that I never heard of them.

YANBU. That 'swimpool' thread and the Santa/Father Xmas ones were really unpleasant.

My theory is that a lot of MNers are unfulfilled, bored and bitter. They take whatever victories they can and for some reason, superior grammar skills seem to be the weapon of choice.

Don't feed the beast.

Sometimes it's nastiness. But sometimes posters are genuinely checking for context, especially if it's a cultural reference question. I don't think it's overdone, not compared to some other aspects of MN.

And although this is getting v TAAT-ish now, in the swimming pool thread the OP was going on about the cultural differences as an excuse while irritating refusing to confirm where she was from / her background. So not directed by the posters at all.

I actually haven't seen that thread.

I an definitely glad I'm not the only one that noticed though.

Sometimes there's a valid reason and the question doesn't stand out (eg thread reads awkwardly and there seems to be an obvious cultural difference / misunderstanding).

Other times it just seems a bit twattish or an excuse to laugh at someone's typos/spelling/grammar.

Now you've said it OP there's been quite a few this week.

Meh. More often than not it turns out that the person IS actually living in a different country or speaks English as a second language though, so a thread goes on for pages until the OP decides to declare that "oh, I'm in Australia btw..." or "sorry, English isn't my first language" 🙄😬

Say it in the OP to avoid any confusion - this site is a predominantly UK site. I'm pretty sure most users know that?

People who pick on spelling and grammar of other users are just quite sad tbh, it's unnecessary and screams superiority. I often wonder what these people are like in real life.

What exactly is "othering" though? Genuine question, I have no idea.

How to put this without getting deleted

Isn’t it more that people are asking in order to establish whether the OP has what they consider to be a genuine reason for poor S&G or lack of understanding of the basics of life, as opposed to being a bit cerebrally challenged?

If people are asking that is one thing but if they are saying it's a spade not a digging implement FFS then that's not a pleasant of responding.

so "foreign" they don't even grasp the meaning of some basic,common words,customs or SPaG rules.

In the UK we put a space in front of commas, OP :-)

The 'swimpool' thread, fucking hell. That was beyond nasty.

Really? Unless I missed something then your definition of nasty is 'pointing out a phrase is unusual'.

Say it in the OP to avoid any confusion - this site is a predominantly UK site.

There was one recently which was on about 'the holidays' causing confusion until someone twigged they were American.

Sometimes it's rude, sometimes it's pointless, sometimes it's relevant.

They do in other countries too, I just can't be arsed with it.

They do in other countries too, I just can't be arsed with it.

I think when MNers moan about it (and this goes for any other petty grievances about idiosyncratic linguistics) you should tell them it's the way posh people do it. There are enough Hyacinths on here that it might catch on.

I think you'll find spaces come after commas.

@EarringsandLipstick

in the swimming pool thread the OP was going on about the cultural differences as an excuse while irritating refusing to confirm where she was from / her background. So not directed by the posters at all.

That's not true. People speculated endlessly and OP finally snapped amd sais 'I AM CROATIAN'.

It's definitely not the same frequency but at times it feels like the new "does he/she have autism" question .

YANBU - it's passive aggressive and a bit chauvinistic.

I think you'll find spaces come after commas.

I think you'll find mine is the upper class way to do it :-)

at times it feels like the new "does he/she have autism" question .

Now that one really is awful on so many levels. The people who think: additional needs = badly behaved, irritate the fuck out of me.

I agree with @coconuttelegraph and @EarringsandLipstick.

It is quite often relevant.

People don't want to seem patronising, explaining something that seems obvious to people who grew up in the UK, but, lets be honest, we have some pretty confusing traditions and even more confusing language foibles before you get on to things that people on a parenting site are quite likely to be asking about (the extremely confusing school system for example), so, if it can be established that people don't have experience of it, then the reply is different from that you would give to someone who has had experience.

I mean, difficult to give an example as I don't know what threads you are referring to, and haven't seen one about a swimming pool.