…Master Gallacher has never been, and hopes never ever to be, a Grammar Nazi… I have been blessed with a good literary education (a luxury which is denied to most of the world’s population)… equally, my career has taken me to geographies far and beyond my homeland shores (again, an indulgence beyond the reach of many)… my skills in the English language are many multiples better than any of the smatterings I have picked up in another half a dozen tongues in my sojourns… I have worked and lived amongst countless people whose first language is not English … indeed, it could be argued in some quarters, that my upbringing in Docklands Govan in Glasgow equipped me with a strain of English unintelligible even to other British citizens… it is with great annoyance, therefore that I react when the Grammar Nazis offload their salvoes at others whose diction, linguistics and writing powers are not of Oxford/Cambridge/Eton standards…
…I worked in Hong Kong, where most of the inhabitants can handle basic English… my Cantonese took years to muster even a passing familiarity with it… in the Philippines, a superb level of English is found almost everywhere, but the level, mundane at best, of my Tagalong was gained after a decade in the learning… a slogful of academic tuition brought my French merely within a shoulder-shrug and whiff of garlicised Parisien patois… I detest the sneering put-downs of anyone who tries to speak or write in a language other than their mother tongue… the same with the scoffers when a word or phrase is used that is not perfect… my thoughts are simple… if I can understand the meaning or drift of whatever someone is trying to convey to me, that’s plenty good enuff,.. and I heartily applaud their effort… if I attempted to respond in the native language of the speaker, chances are high that I would have it totally garbled… and frankly, I believe the same thing would apply to the Grammar Nazis if they tried it, too… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!
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