There are people who say that it shouldn't matter whether something is written properly as long as the audience understands it.
I've heard this said about things that aren't "correct" English per the prescriptivist definition (like "ain't"), and about spelling and grammar errors, as well as things like slang and txtspeak, which aren't the focus of today's post.
I have also found myself in situations where these things make it difficult for me to understand the text. For example, if the "incorrect" English or spelling or grammar error shifts meaning, I interpret the text literally, not realizing that the person meant something else.
And sometimes in these situations where I'm having trouble understanding because I interpreted an erroneous text literally, I'm accused of being pedantic, as though I'm not understanding on purpose as a judgement of their poor writing skills, with tone and delivery hinting that I should stop being difficult and just get along and understand it like a regular person.
This makes me wonder: do people whose English skills lead to spelling/grammar/usage errors that shift meaning find it easier to understand other people with similar English skills? Do they not see the shift in meaning, or somehow instantly see what was intended?
(In this post so far, I'm talking about people whose first language is English, although it could certainly also happen with people whose first language is not English.)
One thing I've learned in my translation career is that Anglophones and Francophones make different kinds of mistakes in French. An Anglophone who learned French in school wouldn't confuse
manger (to eat) and
mangé (eaten), or
ses (his/her where the noun is plural) and
ces (these) on the grounds that they're completely different parts of speech
, but these are among the most common mistakes Francophones make on the grounds that they're homophones. (I was so proud of myself the day I almost sent out an email in French with an infinitive where a past participle should have been! Finally thinking in French!)
Meanwhile, a Francophone would never say
il faut que je vais (indicative , where the subjunctive
il faut que j'aille is correct), but this is one of the most common mistakes Anglophones make because subjunctive isn't as intuitive for us.
A French text written by an Anglophone with poor French skills is very easy for me to understand. A French text written by a Francophone with poor French skills is perilously close to impenetrable for me.
I wonder if the same phenomenon occurs with texts written by people with similar skill levels in English, even if English is their first language. Do people who are prone to make errors in English understand error-prone English better than people who have a better handle on spelling and grammar? If so, I wonder if they can understand error-prone English better than error-free English?
(Aside: I'm quite sure the gods of irony will have inserted a few errors of the sort that I don't usually make into this blog post.)