Ways of not being helpful

The English are extreme cowards, afraid to say clearly what they mean. That unfortunate trait of theirs sometimes makes language learning more difficult than it should be.

For example, I recently saw in a language learning/advice forum how a language learner posted a sentence and asked if it was correct. Someone replied: "It could use a comma."
He did not say if the sentence was grammatical or not. He said "It could use a comma."
Thus it remained unclear whether:
a) the comma was required by the grammar rules, but the answerer thought it impolite to say directly that the sentence was incorrect;
b) the comma was not required, but the answerer felt it would look better with a comma.

Another English-speaking writer, giving advice to a learner of French said that by the new rules, we are no longer REQUIRED to write "s'il vous plaît" with a circumflex.
Now, by the rules of logic, "not required" means obviously that we can write it either way. But knowing the writer is a native English speaker, I can't be sure. Maybe he meant what he said, maybe he meant we have to write it the new way but was embarrassed to say it directly and thought we'd get the hint. There's no way of knowing what he meant, and thus his advice was as good as useless. One has to check with another source.

You are not being helpful by speaking in vague hints. When a student asks if the spelling "demokracy" is right, it is very unhelpful to say "this is not the best spelling; I would suggest you spell it 'democracy'". The student needs to know "demokracy" is an incorrect spelling. You are not helping him by being unclear.

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On a language learning forum, it dawned to me one day that whenever someone asked a question, people were answering the question, but no one ever pointed out to the asker when there was a grammatical error IN THE QUESTION ITSELF.

This means the learner gets the impression that he has formulated the question correctly, and he writes it wrong again the next time, and again he gets the impression that it's correct, and so on.

And some of the answerers had the nerve to call themselves language instructors or even teachers!!

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I remember a grotesque situation from Germany that would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

It was a class at the university. The professor was absent and was replaced by an assistant, as is routine practice in such situations. This time, though, the assistant was not German. He made an occasional grammatical error, and there was an embarrassed deadly silence in the auditorium. Usually, when a German professor misspells a word, the students readily correct him, and he says thank you and means it, because he doesn't want a misspelling or an incorrect symbol on the blackboard. This time, however, I watched with a mixture of amusement and disbelief how no one dared correct a non-native speaker, probably out of fear of coming across as a Neo-Nazi.

And then came the bombshell – when the assistant misspelled an English word, a girl corrected him immediately!!!!

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When I lived in Germany, I noticed one irritating habit of the Germans – when you can't remember the right word, they just wait with infinite patience until you recall it, even though it's obvious from the context which word you are looking for and they could easily say it on your behalf. Evidently they have been taught that it's impolite to do it.

It's very awkward when you can't recall that one last word in the sentence you are saying. It's immensely irritating when the native speaker who could easily tell you that word just waits until you manage to say it yourself – maybe right, maybe wrong. It's even more embarrassing when this happens in front of a roomful or people. Had they ever been in such a situation, they would never do it to another person.

I can't imagine what brought communication teachers to the crazy idea that ending other people's sentences on their behalf is somehow impolite. The truth is, sentence-completing is an amazing rapport-builder, because it proves that the two of you are thinking along similar lines, as well as that you are carefully listening to the other person, in other words it matters to you what he is saying. That said, when we talk about sentence-completing in general, there is some room for discussion. However, when you are talking to a person who speaks your native language poorly, such "politeness" is disastrous.

When you see a foreigner desperately looking for the right word in your native language, then for heaven's sake help him find it. Don't be a disattached bastard. Be helpful.