erinja:
Some of them enjoy the community so they continue for the friendship. If they attend Esperanto events locally, then everyone there probably speaks their language, so they can just talk in their native language.

So, the Esperanto events are not the reason, but merely an excuse to meet each other. Well, why not - if to think about... But not good for Esperanto itself, I'm afraid anyway.

erinja:
Others probably have some kind of mental illness or a condition that prevents them from having that kind of self awareness. I've met many Esperanto speakers who have some form of Asperger's syndrome.

Hmmm... Asperger's people may be very talented as well - I just read the "Embracing the wide sky" by Daniel Tammet (who has an IQ about 180 in spite of his Asperger's syndrome - or maybe just because of it, who knows). But, sure, lack of sufficient social skills and inability to obtain them may be a good explanation indeed.

I've noticed this too. In particular, the older generation don't seem to care about pronounciation as much, even if they speak Esperanto well in terms of grammar and vocabulary. Mind you, someone told me the other day that I speak Esperanto with an Italian accent, so perhaps I need to put some work in as well..

A so-called "Italian accent" would lead to nearly perfect Esperanto, as far as I can tell. There are only a very few things that Italians might be likely to do, that would lead to faulty pronunciation. Dropping h's, pronouncing gn like "ny", etc. I can't imagine you're doing any of those things.

Evildela:. We have a 40 year+ Esperantist here, who NEVER uses the accusative - except in the most basic of SVO sentences. Then the few young Esperantists I know all have exceptional command of the language, I would even go so far as to say our best speaker in Sydney is 18 years old. So is this a local occurrence, English thing, or global?

Simple solution: "Mi bedaŭras sed mi ne komprenas: Ĉu Johano mordis hundoN au hundo mordis JohanoN?" (I'm sorry, I don't understand: did John bite the dog or did the dog bite John). Taylor each passive aggressive correction to whatever mistake they're making.

I don't full understand that sensitivity regarding corrections made by others. As far nobody uses my errors to blame me aloud crying in front of a group I wouldn't see some offence against me. So, why worry about to correct other fellows some decent way? I see it much more unpolite to notice an error and don't give some kind of hint regarding that error.

Somewhat similar topic: 2011-12-03 21:22:29

RiotNrrd:
Just to be clear about what I mean about correcting posts...

I don't mean having official "post correctors"; volunteers who sit and wade through the forums dispensing advice.

What I mean is that we as a community should adopt the attitude that since we are participating in an educational effort - the whole point of Lernu, after all - then what we write here is by default subject to scrutiny and correction.

By anyone and by everyone.

Every (Esperanto) forum post should be thought of and treated as a small self-assigned essay, whose form is just as important as its content, and which by being posted is, in effect, being "handed in" to the community for comment and correction.

This doesn't require any kind of physical change to the forum. This just requires a change in approach to the forum by its participants and the establishment of a new generally accepted social norm.

We are all students. We are all teachers.

That should be some kind of "policy" of every Esperanto event.

@qwerts:
I fully share your and RiotNrrd's viewpoint! I would truly appriciate, not get insulted, if my posts were corrected - a good way to faster progress indeed. I often hesitate how exactly to express myself and I'm sure I make quite a lot of mistakes... At the same time, I do not want to be intrusive and ask someone to correct my mistakes all the time.
Would be really nice, if the community here would accept that it wouldn't be offending at all, if mistakes are corrected even when not asked - so that anyone would feel himself or herselt free to correct (but, naturally, not obliged to do so).

When someone's post has one or two errors, it's easy to correct it.

If someone wrote several paragraphs of text, all of which are riddled with errors, so that you aren't even sure of the meaning, then most people don't feel like it's worth their time to write a long correction, even though this person probably needs the corrections more than the person who only made one or two errors.

Some people love to be corrected. Others are so afraid of being wrong that if you correct them, they get discouraged and stop talking.

Some people know their grammar is faulty but don't care. You can't do much about people who just don't care, you can't force them to speak correctly.

erinja:
Some people love to be corrected. Others are so afraid of being wrong that if you correct them, they get discouraged and stop talking.

They only can get more self-assured if somebody motivates them. If they stop talking then motivating them to proceeds mostly helps.

erinja:
Some people know their grammar is faulty but don't care. You can't do much about people who just don't care, you can't force them to speak correctly.

Yes, of course. But I also see it like first priority to unblock oneselves. How often I later realized that I probably spoke very weired German truncted English in Australia? Probably I do same right now. Of course, not the best solution but I made it to self-confident and interact with help of an foreign language. If it comes to "repeat offenders/Wiederholungstätern" I assume they try to express their internal rapid running pictures. They could have some lack of putting their own talking voice into some kind of internal audio loop for doing self-critical questioning later. Yes, of course, its possible to retrieve voice information someones heard hours before. I definitivly know. I would distinct speakers rawly into visual and auditive communication folks. That gives me the belief that i.e. rapid fire speakers feel to communicate fast. Its not the way that they don't want give me a chance to talk. If I want to do so I have to interupt them. Its not that difficult. Someones only have to hear at the rythm of the rapid fire speaker to hitch in and do own statements.

Btw, most folks seems to have only preferences to visual or auditive communication "publishing". But I also admire that visual preferenced folks. They probably are more capable to remember song lyrics and sing it.