jen_shwa: @WGyenny I know y u girls can’t speak English. Most of ur non-Korean fans r from 3rd world countries & can’t speak proper English either.
WGyenny: @jen_shwa well, yeah i’m not that good at english, and u may think we (my fans & I) don’t really understand each other. but we do even if our english isn’t perfect. bcuz we love each other. that’s what matters. thanks anyway!
jen_shwa: @WGyenny Yeah sounding unintelligent is nothing to be ashamed about in the 3rd world (Thailand, Vietnam, philippines, ecterera)
WGyenny: @jen_shwa there is ABSOLUTELY nothing to be shamed about, there are some things we should learn about. if u feel ashamed about ur lack of second language, you won’t be able to learn. and sounding intelligent is not only depending on how well u speak, but also what u speak.
jen_shwa: @WGyenny Yeah, my first language is Korean and I’m too proud of a person to make myself look stupid speaking improper 3rd world English
WGyenny: @jen_shwa what u’ve said to people DOES NOT really look intelligent even though it’s ur first language. sorry.
Before anything else, if you happen to be an avid fan or just a fan of Ye Eun of the Wonder Girls or an individual who fights for equality between languages (praise me, I just coined a term), please do not stalk, add, call and flame jen_shwa because one, those are noncivilized acts and being a civilized person, you would let karma put down his gavel himself; and two, her hater and Ye Eun for that matter hacked her Twitter account. I doubt I needed to tell that to the former, because as a person who would willingly give up his current citizenship for a Korean one, you have probably read this post on allkpop or have seen with your two eyes these updates while refreshing your Twitter home page and yes, I know what you do since I am speaking from experience.
Getting down to business, I firmly believe that there is nothing wrong about making grammatical mistakes, although the embarrassment you derive from it is an entirely different matter altogether. As far as I recall from my Filipino class, a superior language does not exist, but I guess that statement is slowly becoming elusive as English is being branded by some as the key language to success and as the universal language, being used even by characters from the His Dark Materials series, in which I would like to take note that they hail from different worlds and of course, by me as I write this post. It is indeed a nifty idea to have an ecumenical language you can turn to everytime there occurs a communication error, but I don’t think that English is the leader of the pack nor is the White Man’s Burden a burden really.
Being a language that is on the same pedestal as everything else, why then is a little subject-verb agreement slip an effective grounds for inferiority? Sure, it is funny but that trivial fault doesn’t make English less of a language or that sentence less of a communication tool, does it? No matter how botched up the English you have come across is, I am quite certain you, more or less, grasped the main thought it is sustaining. Language, if I am not mistaken, exists solely for the conveyance of gossips, news, LOL stuff, among other things.
Let’s see what a native speaker and a writer no less has to say:
Joseph Devon, first of all, is the author of the book Probability Angels. Instead of being freak-crab hybrids, why don’t we retract our sharp appendages and try to conjure a warm fuzzy feeling within ourselves? Meaning, rather than being a miserly Grammar Nazi or a lady clad in black, one should take the time to elate those who need a bunch of attention on their spelling, sentence construction and most importantly, subject-verb agreement. Then again, for those whose heads are still wrapped around the idea that a person’s worth varies directly as his English proficiency, let me ask you then why countries like China and South Korea are making giant leaps, economically, when their Engrish/Konglish is kilometers (or maybe meters) away from passable?
I can’t think of a better way to seal this post than iterating what Ye Eun remarked: Sounding intelligent does not only depend on how well you speak, but also on what you speak.
