Need help with English?

[Midnight_Carnival]

Hello

There are good posting guidelines and probably tutorials already, and you should read those.
I just thought a rough guide to some of the things that people struggle with in English might also be helpful.

This is an English forum, but many of its members are still learning English and English is probably the most difficult language to master as a second-language speaker apart from perhaps Mandarin. I think there are many campaigns which I have never played because the people who wrote them did not speak English and could not find a translator. This makes me sad, but not as sad as thinking of the campaigns which could have been made but weren't because their maker did not have enough confidence in their ability to write in English. This is why I have posted some tips specifically for second-language speakers here.

First and foremost, don't give up. Even if people laugh at the way you say things in your campaign, they will recognise a good idea and probably want to help you. Second, don't be afraid to share. It's not like you are going to get your campaign copyrighted and make money out of it, so share your ideas while you are working on things; communicating with first-language English speakers is a very good way to learn the language, and it is a lot more fun than using some book or trying to learn English at school. Share your ideas for the campaign and speak to people about them, not only could you get help with your campaign, but you will probably learn far better English by doing so. Thirdly, if you do not speak English well but live somewhere in Europe, the chances are there are many people on the forums who speak your language so don't be afraid to ask for help.

I now have some tips for the various places where you could need help translating into English.
There are programs written which will translate whole passages from one language to another, the problem is in Wesnoth, you are not going to write pages and pages of text, you are going to write very short passages, and you are going to use funny names like Saurians or Woses which the programs may not recognise, that is why it may be better to try it for yourself. Generally it is a good idea to apply the KISS (Keep it Short and Simple) principle.

Unit Names:
Many "English" names for fantasy creatures are not originally English at all, some are from other languages which have been converted into English and others have been combined with English words. "Mermaid" is one example of this, the "mer" part, indicating the sea (?) is not English, but "Mermaid" is an English word. If your unit name does not have funny characters in it, why not leave it as is? You will also find many military terms in English came from other languages such as "Lieutenant".
If you do translate into English, try to keep your names short and simple. Avoid too many adjectives! Adjectives are words which describe things, words which give the unit's race are also Adjectives. In the unit name Drake Conqueror, "Drake" is the adjective describing the type of Conqueror. Adding another adjective will still work: "Ancient Drake Conqueror" is perfectly acceptable. the more your add the more difficult it becomes and the worse it looks. You might be able to get away with "Ancient Giant Drake Conqueror" if have made your own faction called "Giant Drakes" but otherwise it just sounds silly! Also be careful of saying the same thing in different ways, things like "Huge Giant (unit)" or "Elder Ancient (unit)" don't work too well in English. Be especially careful of adding the phrase "...of the..." to your unit names! Few Wesnoth units have this and it make for long Warcraft looking names.


Unit Descriptions:
My advice is to make your Unit Descriptions as short and to-the-point as possible!
Later, when you improve your English language skills you can rewrite them. What you want is to tell people what the unit is, how it is different from other units of its type (eg: the lower level unit which turns into it) and what it does, that is how it fights, it's rank in the army or what is special about it.

Campaign Dialogue:
This is the most difficult thing to write if your English is not so good. Listen to people speaking English and see how the sentences are constructed and how the grammar works. If you can't find English speakers or English movies, communicating with others on the Off-Topic forum.
In English sentences almost always follow the SVO (Subject, Verb, Object) model. Who or What (Subject) is Doing (Verb) what to Who or what (Object). "The castle we overwhelmed" does not work so well in English because you have the Object first, the Subject second and the Verb last! if you change this to "We overwhelmed the castle" it works. Again, be careful of adding too many Adjectives and Adverbs (words that describe the action); when you do, it is best to add the Adjective before the Subject or Object and the Adverb before the Verb or at the end of the sentence. "We quickly overwhelmed the strong castle" works as does "We overwhelmed the strong castle quickly".
When people are speaking to others in English, they will address the other person either at the beginning or at the end of the sentence: "My Lord, the men are very hungry" is ok as is "The men are very hungry my Lord". "My Lord" here is not the Subject of the sentence nor is it the Object.
Also, bear in mind that in English, the plural of "you" is still "you", the plural of "me" is "us" or "we", the plural of "him/her" is "them". I know that sounds unnecessary, but you would be surprised how easy it is to make that simple mistake.
When you phrase something in the negative using "no" before a verb is almost always wrong! "We no found water in the wilderness" does not work, but "We found no water in the wilderness" does, as does "we could not find water in the wilderness" or "water could not be found in the wilderness".

I am not a qualified English teacher, but I have helped many of my friends improve their English, please expand this post if there is anything I have omitted or if there are any mistakes I have made, but bear in mind that the people I posted this thread for are looking to improve their second language proficiency so apply the KISS principle and err on the side of generalisation rather than nitpick.
-thanks.

[Simons Mith]

For non-native speakers who are poor at English, the simplest piece of advice to follow, and probably the most important is: KEEP SENTENCES SHORT. You can't make many mistakes in a short sentence. If you're really bad at English, stay under ten words at all times, and under seven words whenever possible: I don't like that. The defenses have been smashed. I did not know elves were so cowardly. And so on. Then your meaning will always be clear. Then get help from an editor, and the editor can join up your sentence fragments into flowing speech. You can concentrate on getting the verbs and adjectives just right, and the more error-prone part - word order, can be polished by someone else. Short sentences make the editor's job easier too. He can tell what you meant, because the sentences are short and any errors will be simple ones, and he can tell the desired tone from the words used.

I'll say it again: KEEP SENTENCES SHORT!

[vcap]

"The men are very hungry my Lord".

Should it not be: "The men are very hungry, my Lord." ?

[Sapient]

"The men are very hungry my Lord".

Should it not be: "The men are very hungry, my Lord." ?

Why are you capitalizing it anyway? It's not a proper noun unless this is a Jesus campaign.

"The men are very hungry, milord."

Also, I disagree with most of the advice here. Go ahead and write long sentences that are barely comprehensible! It's the only way to get proper feedback and improve your writing... or find someone who wants to translate it correctly for you. If you stick in the shallow waters you won't look as foolish but then it will always be mediocre.

[thespaceinvader]

If you're talking to someone who has a title, the title is capitalised. Lord, Lady, Sir, Dame, Mr, Mrs, Dr, Your Grace, Your Highness, Your Majesty, all of these are capitalised in normal written language. It's not just religious figures.

[sur.nhm]

I second M_C's advice! If you're not too good with English, get someone to help you.
Also, from my own experience concerning correcting Inferno8's grammar and stuff, you don't have to write in short sentences - as long as it's in English, no mater what grammar mistakes/misspellings you have, it's readable (and correctable).

[Midnight_Carnival]

A wise man once said "don't bloody nitpick ye villiens!"


the "my lord", comma and capitalised:

Even if it weren't correct, I would have added the capital to empahsise "My Lord", I was trying to explain that this vocative or whatever the correct term is should not be seen as either the Subject (note the capitalisation) or the Object of the sentence. In my opinion the comma is unnecesarry, and I for one would not correct something so small; adding or removing it does not change the meaning of the sentence.

Seriously, the purpose of this post was to clarify things which second language speakers find difficult when trying to write in English, not to provide a canned lion hunt for grammar nazis... Please do correct any serious mistakes people post, but this was never intended as a "see how many exceptions you can find to rules" thread, if that were my intention I'd have posted

In English sentences almost always follow the SVO (Subject, Verb, Object) model. Who or What (Subject) is Doing (Verb) what to Who or what (Object). "The castle we overwhelmed" does not work so well in English because you have the Object first, the Subject second and the Verb last! if you change this to "We overwhelmed the castle" it works. Again, be careful of adding too many Adjectives and Adverbs (words that describe the action); when you do, it is best to add the Adjective before the Subject or Object and the Adverb before the Verb or at the end of the sentence. "We quickly overwhelmed the strong castle" works as does "We overwhelmed the strong castle quickly". But remember children, when you are phrasing your sentences in the passive you need not follow the SVO norm, the passive construction normally has the Subject and the Object exchange places. An example of this would be
"My thread was flamed by the grammar-nazis" here the Object is "my thread" the Verb "flamed" and the Subject "people who had too much time on their hands"... Reasons for using the passive construction are....

I did not go into stuff like that because I don't think it should be necesarry. I emphasised keeping things short and simple so that they would be easier to understand or failing that easier to guess at based on the context

[Dunno]

Nerds from my English class always envy my skills. I don't go to any private and expensive schools nor do I pay native speakers to chat with them. I watch TV series in English (with subtitles for hearing impaired), play games in English, listen to English music, chat with people on servers and stuff like that. And when teacher is examining me, I always get a 6 (A+). And then some nerd always goes "WHAT?! He got 6?! I paid 100 zloty (30 bucks) for my private school, and I bought 3 extra exercise books, and did all the homework twice! And I know how to spell Seychelles!!! (I didn't)". If you learn English that way, you'll never be able to just chill and talk, and that's what I get my 6s for. Allright, enough bragging, cheers!

[Simons Mith]

Don't forget we're mostly discussing dialogue here. Sentences in dialogue tend to be shorter anyway. A good model for Wesnoth dialogue is things like comics, graphics novels, some JRPGs; yes, you'll find long sentences in all of those, but on the whole brevity is a good thing. Disciplining yourself to stick to an artificial limit makes you cut the waffle and just say what needs to be said.

[Sapient]

If you're talking to someone who has a title, the title is capitalised. Lord, Lady, Sir, Dame, Mr, Mrs, Dr, Your Grace, Your Highness, Your Majesty, all of these are capitalised in normal written language. It's not just religious figures.

"Representative Smith is my representative in Congress."

The title is not always capitalized. It depends on context. Likewise for a "lord" or "lady".

However, I guess if you are referred to and known as "My Lord" by your vassals then that is a proper noun. So I'll concede that point.

[vcap]

In my opinion the comma is unnecesarry, and I for one would not correct something so small; adding or removing it does not change the meaning of the sentence.

Maybe you are correct that the comma is not needed in english but, to this french native speaker at least, it really begged for it. It is much easier too parse that way, and this is actually quite relevant to your point.

[Midnight_Carnival]

In my opinion the comma is unnecesarry, and I for one would not correct something so small; adding or removing it does not change the meaning of the sentence.

Maybe you are correct that the comma is not needed in english but, to this french native speaker at least, it really begged for it. It is much easier too parse that way, and this is actually quite relevant to your point.

I grew up in a bilingual home.
I would claim English as my frist language since it is the one I use most and express myself best in. I often have my English corrected by second-language speakers of English when they try to apply rules from other languages, the ones who have studies linguistics tell me that they are right since their language embodies more of the features of Chomski's universal grammar than the English language does
The comma is correct but not necesarry. Sorry about my last post, I hadn't had much sleep and was in a funny mood.

Agreeing fully with SM about keeping sentences short.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Just two more which I think are fairly important.

1) this puncutuation mark '...
I don't know how to spell it, but it is called an apostraphe or something. Anyway, second-language speakers often don't understand how to use it. In English, the apostraphe (however you spell it) is is used in the following ways: it is used to indicate posession in conjucntion with the letter "S" for example, "the sword of Konrad" = "Konrad's sword" - in a case where the name ends in the letter "S" it is acceptable to just use the punctuation mark without adding another "S", eg: "the campaign of Gloss" = "Gloss' campaign".
The other place you will see it is when two words have been shortened to make one and a letter or two has been omitted: eg: "do not" = "don't". This puncuation mark is never used to indicate the plural!

The second thing I'd like to suggest is that people who are still trying to improve their English avoid the following in their campaigns:
1) Characters with funny accents
2) Talking animal characters who can't pronounce their words properly (eg: because they have a beak instead of a mouth)
3) Characters who speak only in rhymmes...

Not only will it reveal how much you still need to learn, but it will annoy people who play your campaign possibly to the point of physical violence.

-ok, thanks.

[thespaceinvader]

Dude, if you're going to try to teach people English, learn to freaking spell! Apostrophe. It's not difficult, spelling checkers are available for all good browsers, and there are free dictionaries on the internet.

[johndh]

The second thing I'd like to suggest is that people who are still trying to improve their English avoid the following in their campaigns:
1) Characters with funny accents
2) Talking animal characters who can't pronounce their words properly (eg: because they have a beak instead of a mouth)
3) Characters who speak only in rhymmes...

How about we avoid all three even if you speak and write perfect English?