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On Tuesday 03 April 2012 22:09:15 Dotan Cohen wrote: > On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 16:21, Lisi <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Tuesday 03 April 2012 20:36:07 consultores wrote: > >> The other point, is that native speaker, does not mean "excellence"; it > >> only mean that this person just speaks one dialect/language from the > >> begining of his life! > > > > But in many, if not most, cases, has also been educated in it. > > I respectfully disagree. The native speakers of Hebrew and English > that I know are the least educated in the usage of those languages. It > is the immigrants who really study the language. That said, the > Russians do seems to be very well learned of their language. Any > question I have on Russian language the average Russian can explain. >
Just because an immigrant has "really studied the language" (for how long?) doesn't mean that he is more knowledgeable than an even moderately educated native speaker who has grown up in that environment. I work with many highly educated scientists from other countries, some of whom have been in the USA for decades. Most of them have excellent English language skills, but almost all still make grammatical and/or usage errors.
> > And native > > > > speakers are much more likely to be au fait with current usage. > > With this part I agree. If you want the fine manual to read like the > current slang or hip hop song, then a native speaker is far preferable > to a learned immigrant.
Or, if you want your scholarly work to read like proper and current usage, have an educated native speaker check it over.
FWIW, the usage that started this thread was "posterior" used in the sense of "later in time". While this may be in some dictionaries, I have never heard it used that way in conversation, or seen it in any printed format. It is truly an archaic usage.
-Chris
------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Christopher Judd, Ph. D. | | Research Scientist III | | NYS Dept. of Health judd@wadsworth.org | | Wadsworth Center - ESP | | P. O. Box 509 518 486-7829 | | Albany, NY 12201-0509 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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