why does this happen in the Egypt forum?

Question

I get really frustrated and devastated seeing questions on the Egyptian forum that tend to make you feel ther questioner is abnormal, a retard, or an alien coming from a different planet. I usually see this coming only from Egyptians. Why?How? are they eating too much "foool" or what? not to forget about the very bad English used. I'm not trying to rude here, I'm a very proud Egyptian (and I eat beans too) but it just gets on my nerves how some are so dumb. I dont think they're playing dumb, I think that's how they really are,but how come? is it resulting from too much naiveity and ignorance? examples are previous questions asked like:
1. where is salah? (while same person answered a very unrelated question with "salah is dead"
2. how old are emad? (while u have no idea who emad is)
3.how I can find lovely and free girls?
4. how can i reach my girlfriend? (the asker posted her 1st name n expected us to know)
5. where is vivian alpha? (who is vivian alpha???)

6.a question abt how to make an internation call to Egypt (the questioner posted the other party's phone number on the public forum)

im sure uve all came across some if not all of those questions.how do u feel about them?any comments?
P.S. to be fair, there has been very good questions on Egypt forum that have a point... :) good day

dear gremlins,
I say foool with Triple (not treble) instead of double as fool is supposed to be an arabic word meaning beans which a very high precentage of Egyptians have for breakfast daily and it isn't the same word as one being a fool. I added another A trying to be sarcastic.similar to when people want to textend their gratitude by saying thank u sooooooooooooo much. About where is salah, that is how the asker posted the question.. Salah here is also supposed to be a person's name and does not refer to Alsalah (prayers) As for Quraan, the correct spelling in English is Koran :) so yes indeed we r all far from being perfect,n we are all vulnerable to making dumb mistakes
Ismaily Rules, I totally agree with u, and ur soo funny
Maro's mom, u were abt to make me lay on the floor and laugh out soo hard :))
you all have such great answers. we have a lot of educated people here. keep up the good work

Answer 1

1st thing comes to my mind now is,lol,as I do remember some of these dumb yet funny questions,like "is egpt beuty" "how many pepoles in egypt" "just i want to make a deal" "i am english tour guide,we have aniont egyptian pharonic civilization" ,its hilarious sometimes however other times it is frustrating,but I think YA represents life,in life there are smart people and there are many dumb and idiot people,so we can use these kind of questions to laugh and to feel good to know that there are people whom really are worse than us,lol
Have a nice day Ruby,good question ;)

Answer 2

I am an Australian who has "adopted" Egypt,and hope in return Egypt has adopted me.In general, I am continually amazed how good the average Egyptians command of English is.
Believe me when I say even after all this time I would not dare embarrass myself by attempting to write an answer or question in Arabic.
Thankfully,it is against the Yahoo rules.
I recall all the questions you mentioned and many others that have given me a laugh.
The "Where is Salah?"thing scared me, as I thought my man was missing! LOL
I realise that a many Egyptians, are educated in schools that teach English, but many aren't.
So I presume a lot of the errors are made are genuine mistakes.
I totally agree with both Maro's Mum and Ismaily's answers.
Combine the two, and you have an answer that addresses your question very well.
I would only add that I don't understand why people don't make use of spell check more often.
Personally, I try and approach this problem without being critical of the English or spelling used.
If I can make sense of the question and think I can offer a reasonable answer or opinion, then I do so.
All the Yahoo Q&A site sections have their "Fools", of who you cannot help but question the intelligence and intellect.
Or is it just a perverse sense of humor?.
There are some significant repeat offenders that I do think have definite problems.They are frustrating to say the least.
But as has been indicated already. Yahoo Q&A,is very much like a walk down the city street.
You come across the good, the bad, the strange, the mad and the downright sleazy.
Sometimes the biggest problem, is in working out which is really which.
But its a really interesting social exercise trying to do so!

Answer 3

Unfortunately this is not an occurrence that is isolated to the Egypt forum. It's a site wide problem throughout all of Yahoo! Answers. I think many of them are first time users who may not quite understand what you do with Yahoo! Answers and if they have limited English and the site is not available in their own language it may not be immediately obvious what they are supposed to be doing. When I first signed up I thought at first that I had to ask a question! I didn't know what to ask so I started to type in something meaningless until I figured out it was not a requirement to ask. If I nearly got sucked into it and have always been an "A" student in English what can I expect from people who may know very limited English. Seriously the stupid and useless questions permeate every board on Yahoo! Answers. For example... "Do you dance?" a question that is far too vague to be of any actual importance. People type questions that may have some strange title or may just say help and then they turn into this long story about how someone lost their arms and legs and blah, blah, blah, just yesterday or a week ago or sometime very recent. Yet here they are "TYPING" a question. Not only are they typing which must be a miraculous feat in and of it self for someone so recently and completely disabled but they actually type out a huge story about it as well. Oh, and of course theres usually no point to the whole thing either and no real question asked. People often feel anonymous on the internet and so they don't feel as embarrassed about typing ridiculous questions because who's going to know it's them? Also I think some of the Questioners are not expecting a real answer. Sometimes people post on a completely unrelated forum as well. I didn't read it but perhaps the Vivian Alpha question would have been better received on a different forum, perhaps one from her hometown or last known place of residence, etc... Another problem is that a lot of people who post end up being 13 year olds, 8 year olds, etc... who have neither the linguistic aptitude for many of these forums nor do that have the mental maturity. They often ask what many consider "stupid" questions filled with grammatical and spelling errors (even in the age of spell-checkers). I suspect the same is true of Egyptian kids who get a hold of the internet connection. However, I usually don't pick apart the legitimate questions in the Egypt forum when poor grammar and spelling occur simply because I know that many people posting are not native English speakers. I also know that transliteration between Arabic and English is not the best either. Personally I hate the transliterations where people substitute in numbers for letters! So does my husband (he's Egyptian). The misuse of transliterated sounds often reminds me of my husbands broken English and accent when he first moved to the US so I understand where some of these people are coming from in the way they "say" something but ocassionally I find it a little annoying. It's no worse than hearing someone actually talk to you with an accent thats difficult to understand. I do wish more people would be aware of the dangers of sharing personal info offer the net though. It always shocks me how much people will willingly put out there without second thought. I can understand not knowing how to make a long distance call to Egypt I was once in that boat myself but I think most people know that when you ask a question like that use a generic phone company number if you need to actually write out an example (i.e. 555-555-5555). When I see the personal info listed I always pray that they don't have any really bad effects from it.

Answer 4

I understand what you are talking about. However, one needs to be tolerant and understanding.
Most of those askers are just trying " this Answers thing". So they just type the first question that pops into their head and wait to see what's going to happen.
It really amuses me that some people think Yahoo Answers has answers to all the questions in the world. So they ask " Where is Maha ?" , assuming that since the Internet is " The information high way" and that " the whole world is now connected like a small village". Then sure he is going to get detailed information on the whereabouts of Maha.
The bad English thing is quite understandable taking into consideration the fact that English is not our first language here in Egypt. Not everybody was born and raised and America.
I suggest you don't think much of it. Take it as an invitation for a brief laugh. You can type whatever pleases you in response for these kinds of questions. I always do. The added bonus here is that usually those people ask one question, then disappear. So chances are you are not going to get reported.....Unless fun spoilers have other opinions.

Answer 5

why u expect egyptians to be very fluent in english? its not their native language, So whats wrong about having a wrong writing its not a crime or something. When a non arab person speak a broken arabic, his fellows encourages him to be better not tell him/her that their language is frustrating!!

besides in each forum there r stupid questions, so why u r relating this by being egyptian???!

and in ur question u said "their questioner is abnormal, retard or an alien coming from a different planet" & in other part u said "how some r so dumb". Well this is NOT a polite way at all to talk about ur country people (this is in case u r egyptian).. and these questions u mentioned must be coming from a 10 yrs old boy or something (its very noticeble)
besides what is the point of ur question 1st place??


PS: u have wrong english too, it should be "retarded" not "retard" as u mentioned.
u aslo said "ther questionar" it should be "their", and its "questionar" not "questioner"..
See u also have wrong spelling

Answer 6

Ithe bigest problem is the translation because most of the language used on the net is English, you have a problem in translation , and not all Egyptians are as well versed in the English language as yourself, be patient we all have to be when it comes to the Arabic mind, and fool is spelt with a double o not treble, in case you get one asking what is a foool,
and maybe if you spelt Sal ah with a capital letter as it should be because it refers to the Quran, Curran(English), not where is but what is, you would of had your answer, so you see a little bit of dumbness has creeped into a well educated Egyptian girl like you, we are not all prefect, Inshaala

Answer 7

If you visit other sites of neighbours, you'll find many fool questions while they don't have the heavy Egyptian (fool). Have a look in some other categories you'll find sometimes young people are asking. Although some fool questions is a wast of time, but few are funny sometimes. By the way most of us knew who was Emad, but I wished if the story was written with the question.

Answer 8

You should go to R&S or P&S more often, so that you find out that people like you described or questions as you mentioned here are worldwide spread.
You may discover too that Egyptian youth (regardless of how negative image you may have in mind) is ok..in comparison.
Besides..we need some questions like that so that we can let out some sarcasm, humour from time to time.

Answer 9

It is the very low economic standard that made this happen. Look at the education quality before the 'blessed revolution'. Did you hear any one pronouncing za instead of The like now?

In addition, they have plenty of time and no real interesting thing to do like sports or reading (as you know, reading is a daily habit in Europe).

Answer 10

Well said Ruby. There might be a job opening for you at The Ministry of Common Sense.