They judge you by your language, they do

As a mentioned a bit earlier, I attended a meeting this week. An international one, in which took part people from 10 different countries. While there were 27 of us, only two were native speakers, or the so called bearers of the language.

I overheard (not to be mistaken with eavesdropped 🙂 ) that during a break between the panels, some of our colleagues were judging the intelligence of the others by… their knowledge of English. And those judges were not the natives, mind you!

So, they do not judge not only by your appearance, clothes, height, weight, beauty, what-else-not, but also by your vocabulary and grammar. They put you in these categories of theirs and no matter how well you can express yourself in your own language, you shall be considered a half-professional till you learn every rule of the English language (European English might count if you would use your charm).

Strange or not?

What a longtime English teacher Patricia Ryan wants to tell us (them) is: