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Re: Who is an ESL writer?

Subject: Re: Who is an ESL writer?
From: "Monique Semp" <monique -dot- semp -at- earthlink -dot- net>
To: Milan DavidoviÄ <milan -dot- lists -at- gmail -dot- com>, "Reshma" <reshma_pendse -at- yahoo -dot- co -dot- in>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:00:37 -0700

Perhaps a bit tangential to your question, this might be of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Englishes

Note in particular Kachru's Three Circles of English.

Fascinating! I've worked (in the US) with tech writers from India, and so pondered this whole ESL thing a good bit. The Indian-American writers with whom I've worked have all had excellent English and clearly have more formally-schooled grammar knowledge than I do. And at the same time, in almost everything they write they don't sound quite like a "native English" speaker -- in this context, meaning native to the US.

And so long ago I realized/decided that indeed, there is simply an Indian "dialect" of English, just as everyone recognizes and acknowledges that English speakers from the UK, Canada, etc., have a dialect distinct from US English.

One company I worked with actually had the localization goal of producing en_US *and* en_GB (English - Great Britain) docs. I don't think they actually went through with it and generally just put the US versions in the GB portal. But I thought it a noble goal.

So I think this all much more closely related than "tangential" to the thread's question.

Thanks for the reference!
-Monique
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References:
Purpose of Tech Comms today: From: Janoff, Steven
RE: Purpose of Tech Comms today: From: McLauchlan, Kevin
Who is an ESL writer?: From: Reshma
Re: Who is an ESL writer?: From: Milan Davidović

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