This channel is for questions and discussions about English as a language, at all levels of skill.
In particular, learners of English are welcome, though this isn’t a general “practice” channel.
Please configure your IRC client to use UTF-8 encoding, and please at least try to use standard spelling and grammar.
Policy
Like all channels on Libera.Chat, ##English is governed by Libera.Chat’s guidelines, which takes precedence over anything said here.
Please avoid:
- ad-hominem attacks;
- racism, sexism, homophobia, religious intolerance, or other -isms
and -phobias that exclude or demean people based on characteristics that they
cannot choose;
- take care to avoid using group-labels when intending to critize someone else – consider how you would feel if the label applied to you.
- intentionally inflammatory remarks.
There is a general rule that private messages should not be sent unless you have permission to do so. The primary reason is that private messages are demanding; answering costs time, but not answering snubs the sender. Sometimes both are unacceptable, so it’s rude to force the recipient to make the choice. See the longer explanation.
Questions and Discussions
These are some of the topics that are commonly discussed in the channel:
- Prepositions - the bane of most second-language learners.
- Improving the wording of specific phrases.
- Explaining subtle differences between similar terms & phrases.
- Comparison of modern English grammar and lexicon with other languages.
- Comparison between current dialects of modern English.
- Evolution of the language over time.
We are reasonably tolerant of off-topic discussions, as long as they don’t obscure on-topic questions. But if your discussion becomes highly specialized or wildly off-topic, please consider switching to ##English-offtopic, or a channel designated for the topic, or private messages.
Responding
Be an enabler, not an obstruction.
Try to answer at a level suitable for the questioner. If you find yourself becoming frustrated, consider leaving space for others to answer instead.
Be aware that people often cannot read incoming messages at the same time as they’re composing an outgoing message; allow for delays of up to a few minutes, and do not assume you’re being ignored because someone asks something that you’ve just answered: perhaps they were still typing their question and hadn’t seen your answer before they sent it.
Standards and Dialects
Prescriptivism per-se is discouraged, though it’s OK to note when grammar or word-choice is sufficiently unusual to be confusing. Feel free to nit-pick in detail when someone specifically asks for stronger constructive criticism.
English has many dialects;
- some have tens of millions of speakers, some have only thousands;
- some are written in rich countries, some are spoken in poor countries;
- some are proclaimed by elites, and some are whispered by the powerless.
No particular dialect is “the only proper way to speak or write English”. In particular, your dialect isn’t the only “right” one.
There are, however, some basic writing standards that people participating in discussions in ##English are expected to adhere to. Notably the use of “u” (you) “r” (are) “4” (for) and other such common internet short-hands are to be avoided. This channel caters to English speakers of various skill levels and learners should not be subjected to such errors. If you are corrected for using poor grammar or punctuation please do not be offended and make an effort to adhere to the advice. It may be considered rude if you continue to make the same mistake without any apparent effort to correct yourself and action may be taken.
IPA
The IPA or International Phonetic Alphabet is a way of writing how words sound. You may find this interactive IPA chart useful.
History
The channel was started in 2007 by James ‘Twey’ Kay; he provided the previous version of this channel policy.