Help with English: Configurable cruelty levels.
If you want to try writing (about maths maybe? other things presumably ok by matematicamente moderators) in English feel free to try it here. This has been possible for years of course. No one seems to actually want to. This is fine but I thought I'd have a go at encouraging it.
It would seem best to have a separate thread for each actual topic. Correcting grammar will not off topic in such threads, as it mostly would be elsewhere. It is part of the point of having them. But they probably also need to be ABOUT something. I can see that this could be tricky. We shall see. I haven't thought about this enough. With one thread per user the topics could effectively be "FragrantWombat's English", "DeliquescentOptimist's English" and so on. In FragrantWombat's thread it can be about whatever he or she want it to be about. But this IS a maths site, so it seems as though having some maths in there somehow might be preferable. I don't ultimately really care but trying to talk about nothing in particular 15 times in parallel may be challenging.
Use _this_ thread to talk about the "service" itself if you need to.
Who the hell am I to say anything about your English? How dare I! Fair question.
English is my native language and I have a degree in maths. I won't be the only native English speaker here but the others probably have other things to do with their lives. I am not a qualified English teacher. I do not have detailed knowledge of what is in levels B1, B2, C1 and C2, specific exams, etc. If your "level" is below B2 we may even have a problem. If it is A1 I am probably the wrong person to talk to but will make an attempt and we can see what happens. You probably don't understand this message.
My grandparents are from Ireland, Scotland, Yorkshire and Australia, as far as I know. This might matter to someone. My mother was born in Scotland and grew up in Yorkshire. Two rich sources of stereotypes right there. I think my father is "from" Yorkshire.
I am not an academic and have never written a paper. I have attended some conferences about Combinatorial Game Theory in part because they were immediatly before or after conferences on Recreational Mathematics, so I have _some_ exposure to conferences but almost any academic would know more than I do about how things work at them.
My English is not perfect. I will not necessarily know that the English for "prodotto contorto alla ghirlanda" is "twisted wreath product". I will try to admit when I feel out of my depth. In a very specialist maths field you will know better than I do what people actually say. People who do sedenionic analysis will know more about its terminology than I do. The topics I know best are probability, dynamical systems and combinatorial game theory, but by the standards of actual professional mathemacians I am no-one.
My grammar and vocabulary are about what one would expect in the SE of the UK. I am 58. I am the kind of person who routinely wears a bow tie. I do, in fact, routinely wear a bow tie. I started doing it way before Matt Smith became the 11th Doctor in case that matters to you. If you think it would be useful for me to list some of my "choices" let me know. Two examples: I use the present subjunctive as necessary, but would typically avoid saying things which forced me to. I still say "a die" and yes, this IS the hill I choose to die on. I don't correct native English speakers who say "a dice" but I am very, very disappointed in them if I know they could do better. I know people who say "a die" in private but "a dice" in books and in public. They are clearly choosing to be down with the kids, yo! That is their choice, just as saying "a die" like a _civilised_ person is mine. We don't argue about this because, like, you know, whatever. At least two such people have asked me to proofread their books because they know I am a nitpicky bastard when I set my mind to it, and they tell me to go mad. My later emails to them start with disclaimers like "We both know that many of the things I am about to mention are deliberate and that careful thought went into them. I have no choice but to mention "a dice" at least once. You know that. The universe would end if I did not. I at least strongly suspect that 'polyhedrons' is deliberate but you _know_ I can't just ignore it. In at least some cases your deliberate choices will have been less obvious to me." and so on.
In cases like this, you may disagree with my preferences and prefer to stick with the way you do things. Up to you. You are probably adults in almost all cases. With "a die" you might want to at least consider using "a die" with maths and science people and "a dice" with children and the general public if you feel you must. You won't be able to see my tears from where you are. I'll... I'll ... be ok really. Don't you worry about me!
I am too familiar with common mistakes typically made by Italians to necessarily notice them all now. This is unfortunate. Look for someone who knows no Italian if you want to be extra careful. But I am here now. I hope to be better than nothing. One has to have aspirations! That ghira, he's better than nothing!
Please tell me how mean you want me to be specifically to you. I could invent a list of options but you can describe it yourselves any way you like!
Examples:
A:
"I am a fragile flower. Only say something if what I say is, in your opinion, totally incomphrehensible to a native English speaker who does not know any Italian."
I'm not sure I can really promise this. I could try to go along with it. But if you say something which is comprehensible but not remotely what you can have meant to say, I will keep quiet.
If you say "I enjoy intercourse with my customers" I will say nothing. A native English speaker hearing that will hear a sentence that makes perfect sense. However much I might suspect it is not what you mean, I will say nothing. Be careful what you wish for! Imagine I am a malicious leprechaun!
B:
"I'm oh-so-sensitive. Be very gentle with me. Unless a native English speaker who etc. would walk away from me rather than wait for the sentence to end, don't say anything."
If you say "My mother his house were why are beans?" I will say that no one on Earth would make any attempt to understand anything you said for the rest of your life. I would try not to mention incorrect use of articles, merely bizarre vocabulary choices, and so on unless they made you really really hard to understand. That example is made up and I have no idea what the invented author might have meant.
(...possible other options...)
Aleph_1:
"Cambridge Proficiency is just too easy! I bestride the world like a Colossus! Bow down before me! Woe upon thee! Flee, foolish mortals!"
Why are you even asking my opinion about anything? Your English is probably better than mine. I would not dare imagine that I had any right to say anything! But if this is actually a degree of self-mockery (and I would love to see entertaining cruelty configuration setting requests I suppose)....
I would go out of my way to find anything at all that seemed remotely odd in any way at all. I might miss things. You probably need to find someone better qualified than I am to do this stuff who knows no Italian at all, nor indeed any other Romance language.
I would absolutely say something was grammatically correct and perfectly comprehensible and that in conversation neither I nor anyone else would even notice, but that on reflection I didn't think a native speaker would actually say it, and it took me 2 days to realise that. I would try to notice and mention relatively much simpler things like inconsistent register because at Proficiency level and beyond you probably care, but would say from the outset that things like that could be deliberate choices and your English is so good that I and anyone would imagine any apparent error was probably a choice, and/or done with a particular audience in mind. It might be best to warn me about choices you have made. I risk talking nonsense, because I am not familiar enough with (say) American usage to realise that something is fine in parts of the US. I think "Imma hit you" and "That wants eaten" are just plain wrong, but I can't really say that in public. There are, apparently, native English speakers who say them. However, you MAY want to avoid expressions which only people in the Appalachians use or understand so if I knew something was very very regional I would say so. I might not know. If you don't have a copy of Swan, get one. Or get something similar aimed at native English speakers. Swan is much better than I am but even he doesn't know everything, and you probably find a lot of his stuff very obvious. I have a copy and replace it every time a new edition comes out. At some point the last edition to appear will be too old to be useful but I imagine I will be dead by then.
We CAN talk on Signal or Telegram but only when I am able to. Sorry.
Private messages.. if you must. Please don't insist. It seems less useful to other users. I understand I am asking people to be very brave. I'm not daft.
Something I have said above may make some people think "He's not like that in other channels because he's writing in his second language! He's like that all the time!" They could well be right.
Feel free to criticize/judge my Italian elsewhere in "C2 and beyond" sorts of terms. I hope to be pleased when people do. How else am I to improve? "Ghira, I am disappointed in you. You should know better than this!" But for the most part it would be off topic in the threads themselves and that's NOT my reason for being in them. Say it in a thread here, or send me a private message. I did not join matematicamente with a view to saying "Hello. I demand that you spend time looking for grammar and vocab mistakes in my messages! Your time is worthless!" Please don't now trawl through everything I have ever said looking for things. You can, but I am not hoping you will do this so I can pretend it was your choice but really I was trying to manipulate you etc. etc. I'm not that malicious, really.
I will even try to let you know when something would be perfect on occasions when you inadvertently time travel to, say, the period between 1590 and 1614. Or the 1930s. Or something. I have even given a maths talk specifically aimed at anyone worried about doing maths in front of witnesses when time-travelling to the period from 1590 to 1614. I like applying maths to real-world problems!
I have used at least some contractions above. In my experience, forum postings are often treated as a setting where it's pretty normal to use spoken forms in writing. NOT using them in speech can sound odd. If there are issues like this you want to mention in your cruelty config request, that could be really useful. "Pretend this thread is writing in a very formal context" or "Imagine this is a speech at a major international conference" or similar? I am probably not even the right person to be asking in cases like that but I can _have a go_, eh? If I'm not good enough we can both realise this and you can find someone more suitable. I would do the same in your position.
I might be able to listen to recordings of you speaking about something spontaneously, delivering a prepared talk, or reading something aloud. I could send comments. Again, there are people who are better at this than I am. I have done it in the past so have some experience. I was sent reports on recordings I had to make at university. It was very useful and it is hard for all involved. I may respond too slowly to be useful.
It would seem best to have a separate thread for each actual topic. Correcting grammar will not off topic in such threads, as it mostly would be elsewhere. It is part of the point of having them. But they probably also need to be ABOUT something. I can see that this could be tricky. We shall see. I haven't thought about this enough. With one thread per user the topics could effectively be "FragrantWombat's English", "DeliquescentOptimist's English" and so on. In FragrantWombat's thread it can be about whatever he or she want it to be about. But this IS a maths site, so it seems as though having some maths in there somehow might be preferable. I don't ultimately really care but trying to talk about nothing in particular 15 times in parallel may be challenging.
Use _this_ thread to talk about the "service" itself if you need to.
Who the hell am I to say anything about your English? How dare I! Fair question.
English is my native language and I have a degree in maths. I won't be the only native English speaker here but the others probably have other things to do with their lives. I am not a qualified English teacher. I do not have detailed knowledge of what is in levels B1, B2, C1 and C2, specific exams, etc. If your "level" is below B2 we may even have a problem. If it is A1 I am probably the wrong person to talk to but will make an attempt and we can see what happens. You probably don't understand this message.
My grandparents are from Ireland, Scotland, Yorkshire and Australia, as far as I know. This might matter to someone. My mother was born in Scotland and grew up in Yorkshire. Two rich sources of stereotypes right there. I think my father is "from" Yorkshire.
I am not an academic and have never written a paper. I have attended some conferences about Combinatorial Game Theory in part because they were immediatly before or after conferences on Recreational Mathematics, so I have _some_ exposure to conferences but almost any academic would know more than I do about how things work at them.
My English is not perfect. I will not necessarily know that the English for "prodotto contorto alla ghirlanda" is "twisted wreath product". I will try to admit when I feel out of my depth. In a very specialist maths field you will know better than I do what people actually say. People who do sedenionic analysis will know more about its terminology than I do. The topics I know best are probability, dynamical systems and combinatorial game theory, but by the standards of actual professional mathemacians I am no-one.
My grammar and vocabulary are about what one would expect in the SE of the UK. I am 58. I am the kind of person who routinely wears a bow tie. I do, in fact, routinely wear a bow tie. I started doing it way before Matt Smith became the 11th Doctor in case that matters to you. If you think it would be useful for me to list some of my "choices" let me know. Two examples: I use the present subjunctive as necessary, but would typically avoid saying things which forced me to. I still say "a die" and yes, this IS the hill I choose to die on. I don't correct native English speakers who say "a dice" but I am very, very disappointed in them if I know they could do better. I know people who say "a die" in private but "a dice" in books and in public. They are clearly choosing to be down with the kids, yo! That is their choice, just as saying "a die" like a _civilised_ person is mine. We don't argue about this because, like, you know, whatever. At least two such people have asked me to proofread their books because they know I am a nitpicky bastard when I set my mind to it, and they tell me to go mad. My later emails to them start with disclaimers like "We both know that many of the things I am about to mention are deliberate and that careful thought went into them. I have no choice but to mention "a dice" at least once. You know that. The universe would end if I did not. I at least strongly suspect that 'polyhedrons' is deliberate but you _know_ I can't just ignore it. In at least some cases your deliberate choices will have been less obvious to me." and so on.
In cases like this, you may disagree with my preferences and prefer to stick with the way you do things. Up to you. You are probably adults in almost all cases. With "a die" you might want to at least consider using "a die" with maths and science people and "a dice" with children and the general public if you feel you must. You won't be able to see my tears from where you are. I'll... I'll ... be ok really. Don't you worry about me!
I am too familiar with common mistakes typically made by Italians to necessarily notice them all now. This is unfortunate. Look for someone who knows no Italian if you want to be extra careful. But I am here now. I hope to be better than nothing. One has to have aspirations! That ghira, he's better than nothing!
Please tell me how mean you want me to be specifically to you. I could invent a list of options but you can describe it yourselves any way you like!
Examples:
A:
"I am a fragile flower. Only say something if what I say is, in your opinion, totally incomphrehensible to a native English speaker who does not know any Italian."
I'm not sure I can really promise this. I could try to go along with it. But if you say something which is comprehensible but not remotely what you can have meant to say, I will keep quiet.
If you say "I enjoy intercourse with my customers" I will say nothing. A native English speaker hearing that will hear a sentence that makes perfect sense. However much I might suspect it is not what you mean, I will say nothing. Be careful what you wish for! Imagine I am a malicious leprechaun!
B:
"I'm oh-so-sensitive. Be very gentle with me. Unless a native English speaker who etc. would walk away from me rather than wait for the sentence to end, don't say anything."
If you say "My mother his house were why are beans?" I will say that no one on Earth would make any attempt to understand anything you said for the rest of your life. I would try not to mention incorrect use of articles, merely bizarre vocabulary choices, and so on unless they made you really really hard to understand. That example is made up and I have no idea what the invented author might have meant.
(...possible other options...)
Aleph_1:
"Cambridge Proficiency is just too easy! I bestride the world like a Colossus! Bow down before me! Woe upon thee! Flee, foolish mortals!"
Why are you even asking my opinion about anything? Your English is probably better than mine. I would not dare imagine that I had any right to say anything! But if this is actually a degree of self-mockery (and I would love to see entertaining cruelty configuration setting requests I suppose)....
I would go out of my way to find anything at all that seemed remotely odd in any way at all. I might miss things. You probably need to find someone better qualified than I am to do this stuff who knows no Italian at all, nor indeed any other Romance language.
I would absolutely say something was grammatically correct and perfectly comprehensible and that in conversation neither I nor anyone else would even notice, but that on reflection I didn't think a native speaker would actually say it, and it took me 2 days to realise that. I would try to notice and mention relatively much simpler things like inconsistent register because at Proficiency level and beyond you probably care, but would say from the outset that things like that could be deliberate choices and your English is so good that I and anyone would imagine any apparent error was probably a choice, and/or done with a particular audience in mind. It might be best to warn me about choices you have made. I risk talking nonsense, because I am not familiar enough with (say) American usage to realise that something is fine in parts of the US. I think "Imma hit you" and "That wants eaten" are just plain wrong, but I can't really say that in public. There are, apparently, native English speakers who say them. However, you MAY want to avoid expressions which only people in the Appalachians use or understand so if I knew something was very very regional I would say so. I might not know. If you don't have a copy of Swan, get one. Or get something similar aimed at native English speakers. Swan is much better than I am but even he doesn't know everything, and you probably find a lot of his stuff very obvious. I have a copy and replace it every time a new edition comes out. At some point the last edition to appear will be too old to be useful but I imagine I will be dead by then.
We CAN talk on Signal or Telegram but only when I am able to. Sorry.
Private messages.. if you must. Please don't insist. It seems less useful to other users. I understand I am asking people to be very brave. I'm not daft.
Something I have said above may make some people think "He's not like that in other channels because he's writing in his second language! He's like that all the time!" They could well be right.
Feel free to criticize/judge my Italian elsewhere in "C2 and beyond" sorts of terms. I hope to be pleased when people do. How else am I to improve? "Ghira, I am disappointed in you. You should know better than this!" But for the most part it would be off topic in the threads themselves and that's NOT my reason for being in them. Say it in a thread here, or send me a private message. I did not join matematicamente with a view to saying "Hello. I demand that you spend time looking for grammar and vocab mistakes in my messages! Your time is worthless!" Please don't now trawl through everything I have ever said looking for things. You can, but I am not hoping you will do this so I can pretend it was your choice but really I was trying to manipulate you etc. etc. I'm not that malicious, really.
I will even try to let you know when something would be perfect on occasions when you inadvertently time travel to, say, the period between 1590 and 1614. Or the 1930s. Or something. I have even given a maths talk specifically aimed at anyone worried about doing maths in front of witnesses when time-travelling to the period from 1590 to 1614. I like applying maths to real-world problems!
I have used at least some contractions above. In my experience, forum postings are often treated as a setting where it's pretty normal to use spoken forms in writing. NOT using them in speech can sound odd. If there are issues like this you want to mention in your cruelty config request, that could be really useful. "Pretend this thread is writing in a very formal context" or "Imagine this is a speech at a major international conference" or similar? I am probably not even the right person to be asking in cases like that but I can _have a go_, eh? If I'm not good enough we can both realise this and you can find someone more suitable. I would do the same in your position.
I might be able to listen to recordings of you speaking about something spontaneously, delivering a prepared talk, or reading something aloud. I could send comments. Again, there are people who are better at this than I am. I have done it in the past so have some experience. I was sent reports on recordings I had to make at university. It was very useful and it is hard for all involved. I may respond too slowly to be useful.
Risposte
I have appreciated the offer and I have used it for a while
It has been great help
It has been great help
Just as well no-one was interested as I must now withdraw the offer.
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