[liquidk]

Unfortunately this is a fairly shortsighted and superficial article which results in severely reducing the pool of people you can work with to a native speaker heavy demographic. The core of the problem is that it assumed care for detail in a domain the writer of the article is comfortable with, translates to care for detail in every other domain. I find this to be a particular self centric view of the world. It is self evidently false, particularly when you are talking about non native speakers who require significantly more time and effort to achieve parity in English expressiveness. This is unfortunate and is a reflection of parts of corporate America that confuse form for substance. It’s where long performative meetings, low signal to noise PowerPoint presentations, and dress to impress culture originated in the corporate world. Fortunately not all companies think this way, and say what you will about the tech sector, it has significantly moved away from performative corporate America behavior. It has brought other problems to the world, but performative corporate antics was not one of them.

[Tangurena2]

Language is a tool. If you are careless with one tool, it is extremely likely that you will be careless with others. This is why the military gets very picky with trivial issues like making your bed (or "rack") - if you're careless with the little (and easily checked) things, you're likely to be careless with the important things.

> The brown M&M’s principle is the idea that small details can sometimes serve as useful indicators of big issues.

> This principle is named after a rock band (Van Halen), who had a “brown M&M’s clause” in their contracts with event organizers, stipulating that the organizers must provide M&M’s in the backstage area, but that there must be no brown M&M’s available. This small clause gave the band an easy way to check whether organizers actually paid attention to all the details in the contract, which was important given how complicated and potentially dangerous the band’s production was.

0 - https://effectiviology.com/brown-mms/

1 - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-out/

That said, I've worked with many immigrants and had many as girlfriends. I'm very tolerant of the sorts of mistakes that second-language learners make (I've learned and forgotten many languages). I'm far less tolerant of native English speakers who can't be bothered with their native tongue.

[ryandrake]

This is the way I see it, too. It speaks to someone's attention to detail. If you are going to use "there," "their," and "they're" carelessly or interchangeably, or "your" and "you're," or "than" and "then," what else are you going to do carelessly on the job?

[mc32]

Non-native speakers often have better spelling than native speakers, though grammar mistakes do become apparent in non-native speakers.

It grates me when I have to read business communication with poor spelling or poor grammar, especially when done by native speakers --just as much as it grates native speakers of non-English languages when I attempt to speak their language non-natively and they admonish me for my non-native mistakes.

[hgsgm]

There is no such thing as a grammar mistake, only a grammar inconsistency. Intelligent people use grammar consistently up to the moment where that consistency impedes clear communication. A grammar "mistake" is a foreign dialect.

Unintelligent people babble wisps of ideas and leave it to the listener to make sense of them.

[mc32]

I disagree. When I took foreign language classes I wanted to apply the prescribed/common grammar rules, but I mistakenly used them incorrectly. I wanted to do apply the rules as a native would, but I got it wrong despite my desire to get it right. Therefore I classify that as a mis-take.

[liquidk]

It depends. English is a lot more tolerant of inconsistencies than latin based languages, and the grammar rules are more disperse. Typically in latin based languages the rules are stricter, and it is less socially acceptable to violate them. English is surprisingly tolerant both in the rules and the social acceptance of not following them.

[mc32]

It's a good observation. In my experience, often speakers of non-English will suggest that we switch to English because they feel uncomfortable with my mistakes in their language, rather then put up with my attempt at speaking their language. English speakers don't typically do this even when they are versed in a second language.

[randomcarbloke]

agreed, non-native speakers see the rules where native speakers do not.

[liquidk]

I suspect this is a bit of a generalization. While learning and seeing the rules is an essential part of bootstrapping the learning os a new language, at some point for both efficiency and style, it'll become second nature and awareness of the rules fades away almost as necessity.

[red-iron-pine]

Or put another way, the native speakers have learned to stop following the formal rules and fall into slang, regional dialects, etc.

The non-native speakers only have experience with the more formal approaches. Over time you can see them pick up the local idioms.