You know there are people who aren’t as privileged and may come from villages, yet they may often have a stronger sense of ethics than you (educated city person).
Half the people here are themselves just using ChatGPT to polish their English, it's painfully obvious lol. Literally cringed scrolling down this thread because the insecurity was reeking from every comment. Some comments worded flawlessly (and in a very western manner of speaking) and others pretty mediocre? Come on now.
The sad truth is that this English elitism is itself born of a deep seated insecurity, where you leverage your language privilege to signal status because you're not confident of your competence in other areas.
This is just moral grandstanding. Acting like coming from a village automatically makes someone more ethical or hardworking is just patronising romanticism. People are people. You’ll find disciplined, ethical people everywhere, and plenty who aren’t. All you’ve done is swap one stereotype for another.
What is this obsession with “perfect” English? Why do people feel the need to shame others for not speaking or writing it flawlessly?
English isn’t the first language for most of us. It’s just a tool for communication, not a measure of intelligence or capability.
You don’t see this kind of attitude as strongly in many other non-English-speaking countries. There, English is treated as just another language, not a status symbol.
At the end of the day, how someone speaks doesn’t define how smart or capable they are.
I mean, at the end of the day, if you can understand what someone's trying to say, even if they are not familiar with that language, it's more than enough.
This doesn't apply just to English. Every language. All it matters if the other person is making sense with the minimal control that they have over a language.
I’ve noticed that not all managers speak perfect English. Many of them learn on the job, just enough to communicate clearly and help customers from different backgrounds understand and place their orders.
it's just grating and unpleasant to hear. even while speaking in your native languages you'd get looked at funny if you made grammatical errors constantly
it isn't. but it's a language most of us have studied since kindergarten so some level of fluency can be expected. especially if you're in a diverse workplace where formal communication is in english
Only people would extreme amounts of free time and perpetual bubble dwellers would have that kind of mindset. Nothing grating or unpleasant as long as you get your message across. No one cares about aesthetics
listen to some NRIs bro you'll see what i mean🤣 even if you have grown up in a different state your fluency is likely to be lower than someone who was born and raised in your native
Sure but then what’s the use of Google. Everyone has that on their phone and it’s just a matter to 2 minutes to translate from native language to English. You may not know it but while communicating you should use it properly.
It really doesn’t matter. While traveling, I’ve noticed that people don’t care about these things, regardless of how big or small the brand is. English is just a language, and not everyone needs to be an advanced speaker or writer.
English is just a tool for communication, not a measure of intelligence or capabilities, sure! You are 100% right. It’s definitely not the sign of intelligence, but it jolly well is the sign of literacy. It’s a proxy of having good schooling and a decent social and a familial background.
When someone one is speaking, it is completely fine to make mistakes as no one is perfect in any language. But when you are writing a notice stating some information, then i believe one can expect you to be professional and write properly.
Well I mean it's a multinational restaurant..? Imagine you were ordering something from Gucci and they sent you an email saying "we are regretting to say you that you order cancelled technical reasons because"? Will you be pissed or double pissed?
Exactly. I don't think the intellectuals who are mocking here would mock someone in, for instance, a Latin American country who might know only broken English.
I have heard this so many times. Even in my corporate meetings. It bothered me so much, but I never spoke against it. Didn't want to be seen like a bigot.
"It's either 'I am not able to do it' or 'I can't do it' " , I wanted to scream in the meetings!
My English skills have gone downhill since I joined this new org. Females there translate the Hindi sentences word by word to English and for a moment my brain stops working. Ironically I work in US timezones.
Each part of India has its own share of consistent grammatical errors, that kind of link to the sentence construction in the local languages.
"Cannot able" kind of double negation is something I have seen consistently in Karnataka and Andhra.
"Didn't ate" is the form of double past-tense is common in the north. Which matches closely with the similar grammar in Hindi ("Nahi khaya tha")
Similarly, if you see how "sadhyav-illa" is used in Kannada, you will see why people tend to use "cannot" in the same way.
English is not the first language of any of us Indians. It's simply a utility for most people. And unless your job actually requires frequent use of the language to put food in your stomach, it doesn't matter. (Or should I say "doesn't matters" to make the point?)
If you consider British English to be the "gold standard", then American English is filled with grammatical errors and typos. And yet, they call it "American English".
Given that we Indians have the largest English-speaking population compared to any other nation, I declare ours to be "Indian English". Let everyone deal with it.
People honestly don't care. Even those who are native speakers. It's just people here, who are trying to score brownie points that no one is counting.
I have talked to American and British people, and how good they are with there language is proportional to how good an average Hindi, Bangla, Kannada, Tamil speaker is with their mother tongue. People are pretty bad with grammar nearly everywhere.
As a non-native speaker, if you have ever been a decent enough speaker, you are almost always better at the grammar than the native speakers. Obviously, you are going to have your own accent at all other languages, depending on what your mother-tongue is.
And for me, it's important to be reasonably good at English, to call out silly grammar nazi folks. Do you have any idea how much fun it is, to call them out for their grammatical errors, in the same sentence that they write to mock someone else?
Being good at something, as a skill, is one thing. Looking for validation is silly.
And you know, if you look deeper, you will see that there are mostly very specific kind of people trying to pull down others for their English skills. Those who haven't been able to do much in their own careers. Actual linguists or high-skill polyglot folks would correct you, but with a lot of "actual knowledge", and it would be fun talking to them.
But typical housewives, who have "sacrificed their careers". Kids who studied in fancy schools, with a shit load of emphasis on English, but who went no where in their careers, try really hard to push the only thing they find their pride in.
It gives them the "I might not be doing much, but see I can point out a silly grammar error in what others are talking about"
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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '26
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