Yes , some dialect is hard to get.
An auntie in Cornwall told me on my arrival
" Us'll go down beach drackly"
(We will go down to the beach soon (Directly)
As Sue says, even for Brits it can be a puzzle.

Where I live we have people from all over the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Poland and other places. When I was working I used to have a dreadful time, particularly on the telephone, trying to understand the accents and dialects.

My children had the two of us parents with totally different accents to each other plus totally different ways of pronouncing the same words, such as grass, path, bath and so on. The have no accent, like me.

If following the rules of language is so important, and not following the rules means ignorance and digression, how come we to this place not speaking Greek?

Just as other parts of life experience change, so do rules. Thinking oneself better than others because you know the rules as they were twenty years ago does not make you better than others, just different.

Try and submit any type of report to a client or government agency that's full of chatspeak and see how far you get. Actually, it won't even get that far as I'm sure any technical reviewer would throw one out on the street before proofreading 30 pages of chatspeak.

mehaul, following the rules of language is so very important BECAUSE we need to communicate at a common level . The type of English we use to communicate with people all over the world must remain consistent . It is not that I think I am better than others because I know the rules as they were twenty years ago. We need to NOT change in order to understand each other.
A person whose first language is not English is easily confused by the breaking of the rules and is therefore at an unfair disadvantage. It is because we care about those people , here at FT , that we are so fussy about the rules.

Consistency? Look I came not to argue. I offered my opinion and it wasn't saying that following twenty years old rules was BAD. I said it was different. You can no more stop the tide of change by blowing a grammar foul whistle than you can stop the tide with a shovel. Just tonight, I discussed with a teammate from Australia what she called a "Hoon". Huh? It's what we call jackrabbit drivers in some parts of the states in others it's called having a lead foot. But we communicated by asking what the terms entailed in meaning. Period position and placement of apostrophe's added nothing to the exchange, in fact, having to proof read the submission because we don't have spell check functions, probably hindered the rapidity of the exchange and in hinderance, impeeded progress towards a common language. So, rules can be a drawback also. Shall we make rul;es to enforce drawbacks?

Post deleted by Schoonie101

Very well said, Triviapaul. Slick.

As a sidenote, I find it ironic that the triumph of the English language in the world was caused by simplifying it, in essence 'dumbing it down'.
Whenever new immigrants try to learn a new language, they start communicating at a very low level; English had to accomodate Anglosaxons, Danes, Normans and sundry other peoples. They communicated at the lowest common denominator, using the simplest of grammar and words (just think about which Spanish words you use when you go there on holidays).
At its root, English is a Germanic language, like German, but compare what it has lost in the last 1000 years.
All but one definite article: the (in German it could be der, die, das, des, dem, den)
All but one indefinite article: a (in German ein, eine, eines, einer, einen, einem)
The genetive case: mainly substituted by using "of"
The dative case: mainly substituted by using "to"
The polite form: English only has "you are" left (I emphatically endorse all initiatives leading to the return of "thou art" in day-to-day English), German has 3 ways to address someone, depending on politeness.
Consider too the simplicity of English verb construction: if you know the tenses of 'to be', you don't need to learn any other verbs.
I am going
I was going
I have been going
(in German, you would have to learn three words: gehe, ging, gegangen)
This contruction works for every English verb, you can instantly communicate.
All these simplifications make English such an easy language to learn. It is the prime reason why English is the world's lingua franca and one of the reasons why the premier immigrant nation, the USA, speaks English.
Who knows? Thousand years from now, the introduction of chatspeak may be considered the beginning of a unified world language, and it will be considered a blessing.

Sigh. And I've probably provided much assistance in bastardizing our language. Been credited way too many times with the phrase "S'all good". D'oh! I'm sorry. It spread like wildfire. Surf rats should never spread anything among Vals/inlanders. Oops. Sorry. What did I do?

I made a point that communication proceeded with an exchange of thoughts; and spelling errors, punctuation rules and tenses of verbs had nothing to do with the communication's success. Your reply is in the nature of an insult rather than the defense of your contention that everything has to be just so or it's worthless.

Past experiences have taught me that when insult is added to debate, neither side wins and the effort is futile. Fare thee well.

I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to insult you. It was just that your reply was a little bit odd.

Sure, if it's just intimate conversation between two people and the message gets across, who's going to intrude? However, in terms of communicating professionally, it is necessary to use proper spelling and grammar.

OK gentlemen keep it friendly please.

Thank you.

Seriously, no worries. My bad on that. We're good.

Trying to be funny and failing miserably. Sorry. Forgiveness, please?

I find that shaking of hands is a very effective method of communicating. It lets us know we're not alone in this brief experience called life.

You seem like a wise lady, Sarah!

I hate chatspeak, or textspeak. I am also irritated by the pressure of most people in our society not to use or learn unfamiliar or difficult words. If we tried to translate the Classics, or The Bible into textspeak I wonder what sort of a mess the result would be. I don't like bad spelling, but sometimes I can get caught out with a word, e.g. millennium. On a television quiz, the competitor had to spell "millennium" and I wasn't sure at that time whether there was one "n" or two, but now I know.

One thing I've noticed with alarming frequency is the number of people who spell badly and use "My spell checker wasn't on" as an excuse.

I see it everywhere. I mean, is it really that difficult to actually learn to spell?

I think that when I have children, I'll turn their spell-checkers off. Let them actually learn, instead of relying on technology that is often incorrect, and not needed.

That might just be me though, because I'm a crazy grammar nerd like that...

You've got a great idea, lioness. My mother insisted my brother and I learn to spell words correctly. There are times where a word just doesn't look right and I will ask someone to spell it...and it was spelled correctly.

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I mean, is it really that difficult to actually learn to spell?

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It seems for some that this must be the case...I don't understand it either.

This may be a silly question, but what is a "hood rat?"

The girl you don't want to be associated with unless you like visiting the free clinic.