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| Taylor Kingston wrote (to Goran Tomic):
quote:
> Goran Tomic wrote:
Goran Tomic's context was snipped by Taylor Kingston.
Here's part of what Taylor Kingston snipped:
"I have just returned home from the Church.
We were *praying* before Fast days. ..."
--Goran Tomic
It seems to me that Goran Tomic does understand what
'to pray' means in English and how to conjugate that verb.
quote:
>
> Goran, if you are going to play the role of pious hypocrite,
> at least learn to speak better English. "Prey" in its verb
> form is intransitive, and must be used with the preposition
> "on" or "upon."
It seems clear enough to me from the context that
Goran Tomic intended to write 'pray' instead of 'prey'.
Taylor Kingston has written of 'the role of pious hypocrite'.
In this case, Goran Tomic's error in English (a misspelling)
seems no worse than the errors in English that have been made
by many other writers, including many apparently proud native
speakers of American English, in the chess newsgroups.
When has Taylor Kingston criticised the errors in English
when committed by any of those many other writers?
In general, Goran Tomic's English prose seems no worse than
Wlodzimierz Holsztynski's English prose. Like Goran Tomic,
Wlodzimierz Holsztynski was not a native speaker of English.
Unlike Goran Tomic, however, Wlodzimierz Holsztynski evidently
has been living and working in an English-speaking society
(the United States) for decades, so Holsztynski should have
more compelling reasons than Tomic to write better English.
When has Taylor Kingston criticised any of the many errors
in English when committed by Wlodzimierz Holsztynski?
quote:
> With or without the preposition, there is no need
> for you to attack and eat God on my behalf.
I do *not* condone what Goran Tomic has written about some
other writers here. Indeed, on several occasions I have
strongly *criticised* what Goran Tomic has written here.
To his partial credit, however, Goran Tomic has responded
with apparent civility to my criticisms of him, though
unfortunately he also has ignored their substance and
continued to write as he has done before.
I also have noticed that some writers here have personally
attacked Goran Tomic on account of his Serbian nationality
or heritage. As I recall, Goran Tomic even has been denounced,
at least implicitly, as having been personally responsible
for Serb war crimes (or 'ethnic cleansing') even though no
evidence has been cited of his personal responsibility.
(Should all Americans be held personally responsible for
the many war crimes of the United States?) I believe that
it's fair to criticise Goran Tomic for what he has written,
but it's inappropriate to attack him just for being a Serb.
In fairness to Taylor Kingston, I do not recall that he
has written anything personally attacking Goran Tomic on
account of his Serbian nationality or heritage. I hope
that Taylor Kingston would not approve of those attacks
when made by some other critics of Goran Tomic.
--Nick
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