What's the deal with you americans????

Question

(yeah, I only have one american friend) so I'm generalizing over him..

The issue is that his ORTHOGRAPHIC MISSPELLINGS are painful, it makes me want to take my eyeballs out,..
I know other countries have higher levels of ignorance of lack of education,
so my question is:
Is my friend a good representation of all americans?
Is he dyslexic?
Or he is just an isolated case of tragedy?


note: Can I ask you about some specific misspellings on the messenger if you feel altruistic and have some free time???

Answer 1

since spelling is a part of orthography, don't you think the phrase, "orthographic misspellings", is redundant?

plus, misspellings hardly suggest generalized ignorance, but merely isolated ignorance of certain spellings. you friend may be dyslexic, he may have had poor schooling, or he may just not care.

i have no idea which country you're from, but in the u.s.a., we're taught to hold to different standards of writing and speaking depending on the situation. instant messengers, message boards, text messages, and casual emails all fall under the lowest standard. it is socially acceptable to be lazy in terms of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling (to a degree). i'm sure your friend would not write a formal paper the same way he would write a message to you.

also, the way one communicates via these methods, requires more creativity than formal methods. abbreviations, lack of and/or misuse of orthography, and emoticons are all used to express tone and personality. instead of writing a whole paragraph to tell you how happy he is to be talking to you, it's much more sensible to type: ":-)". i, personally, leave out capitalization to express a tone that is both more casual and a bit flat.

if you want to learn more about how weird americans abuse orthography to express themselves, i'm sure you can find several papers on the subject.

Answer 2

People always misspell and mispronounce words. If it wasn't for that, the English language wouldn't be what it is today. At onetime, the following sentence was written correctly: "The droghte of March hath perced to the roote."

What bugs me are misspellings that people make on Yahoo answers when trying to help kids with foreign language homework.

Answer 3

Are you kidding? Please be realistic.
Does everyone from you country have the same type of attitude, that you do, about something so simple?
No, you can not generalize all Americans from only knowing one. Duh, I think everyone around the universe should be able to realize that. Because if not, then you should all let us know where you are from. So that we can just stereotype the whole population of your country by your personality, and then stay as far away from it as possible.
Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. And for a greater amount of people, spelling is one of them.
(I can't even believe I spent time answering this question)

Answer 4

Well some can't spell and some can,just like in every country.See i'm dyslexic so I can't spell very well,same for some other people here but you shouldn't make that kind of generalization over one friend.

Answer 5

As you can see, many of our young don't have a very high view of education, or proper use of the language.

Please do not take this to be representative of our people!

He is an example of a large portion of our population, but by no means, our whole population.

Our country is typical in the sense that our poorer, less educated demographics tend to marginalize knowledge and the pursuit of learning out of insecurity and fear, as their poor, illiterate fathers did. Some of us were taught that education can release you from poverty and being the ignorant tools of the establishment.

Answer 6

Ignorance is found everywhere. I think the difference between Americans and certain other countries in regard to ignorance is that Americans tend to not care that they are ignorant. Laziness is rampant, as is arrogance. A failure to understand the value of proper communication (and other important qualities and skills) seems to be growing increasingly common.

The recent explosion in people's seeming lack of ability to spell and use proper grammar seems to be not only a symptom of an apathetic and ignorant society, but a fad that people are proud to be a part of, as it has somehow received a connotation of being socially acceptable and attractive.

Answer 7

Proper grammar and spelling are not required when one converses via IM.

In fact, anything goes. This style of writing has been adapted to speed up the writing process and to propagate pop slang which is difficult for other generations to decipher.

Answer 8

I don't think everybody is the same in any country. That is a small issue if that is your big issue.

Answer 9

Sorry to say he pretty much sums up the Americans for ya. The only ones who come up any shorter are the ones from....,
Where did you say you were from?

Answer 10

What country are you from? I'm guessing England. I am an American and I think Americans are ignorant and obnoxious. I want to move to England. You must also consider, however, that our neighbors across the pond have their issues as well, such as paparazzi and no rating system for your restaurants.