Maybe we live in alternative universes because I hadn't ever seen so many functional illiterates before I came to Spain. Just visit any Spanish chatroom to see what I mean.

As you can see I have highlighted a previous post of mine.(3 mistakes in one short paragraph, but who cares, I dont) , showing that I dont use the apostropy either, so what is your explanation for this Jackytoo????
I know it is laziness, I have just about got into the habit of putting a capital I in my sentences. And that is mainly to please my wife.
Of course, if I had to write a letter in Spanish, I would do it with all the accents in , and the apostrophies in English- but on this forum I am not that anal, and I just let them slip by.

Not using an apostrophe merely means that you’re a sloppy writer. It’s not a big deal, this is only an internet forum for people in Spain, if you’re looking for grammatical correctness, you’re in the wrong place.

Why the enmity, why the pettiness, if John Bull from the UK comes to Spain for the sun, with a bagful of money, it would make sense for the Spanish people to fall on their knees to welcome him, because their economy is based on tourism.

Without it, the donkeys would be back to replace the BMWs.

I will probably regret posting this tomorrow. Perhaps better to keep out of the discussion? But I'm posting.... Put it down to the fact that a friend of mine died in a car crash on Sunday and it has been a bad week. Do tildes and apostrophes really matter on a forum? I don't think so. Does it matter if someone is Spanish, English or whatever? I don't think so. Surely if someone wants to contribute, to communicate, to share experiences or thoughts or jokes, that is what is important. What do you think?

sorry to hear about your friend


but well said - who cares about little written errors - they mean nothing in the scheme of things

What very sad news, I am very sorry about your friend.

No it doesn´t matter what nationality people are. It does when they use it to back up a point with the tone you are wrong about Spain because I am Spanish! stuff.

Perhaps grammar and apostrophes do not matter but I was refering to a PM I had in Spanish that did not have one accent or use the ñ. Now as everyone knows Ñ is part of the Spanish alphabet so when I kept reading espanol, espana it is a spelling mistake. Spanish words without the correct accent can change the whole meaning of a sentence much more important than an English apostrophe.

how did you get the ñ?


if I'm just writing a message here using the reply box I can't get one without going through all sorts of hoops

this time I just copied & pasted yours

I must admit that I am sloppy when it comes to dotting the Is and crossing the Ts. No apostrophies when I post in English, either.
Hell, I dont even put the accents on my OWN NAME.

I had no idea that my nationality would one day be called into question and I would be called a fraud because of it.

This (lack of) started in the UK. Even if you filled in a form and put the accents on, when the document in question,( be it driving licence or whatever), the accents were not copied so as a result they were dropped by the majority of Spanish people I knew IN THE uk.

Most also dropped their second surname, as there was no place to put them on the form, and if you wrote both, you ended up with your “second surname” becoming your “only surname” .
So instead of being wrongly called by our mothers surname, most of us “dropped our second one, for an easy life.

My dad was the last one to do this, he said that he would always use the name he was given at birth, that was until letters started arriving in the name of MR GUMMETH,

He soon gave in after that, and called himself just plain MR FER-NAN-DEZZZ, none of the” Z= th” malarkey.

And for those who would suggest becoming double-barreled, forget it.
It does not work, because most English people could not distinguish a Spanish surname from a Christian name, so you would end up with the first surname becoming an initial and getting “lost in translation, so to speak.

And anyway most never had enough little boxes on any form to put a nine letter first surname and a five letter second one.

With a space in the middle that makes 15 little boxes which was not seen very often, so as you can see if you lose half of your name, a few accents become irrelevant. (I must admit that, I dont know how to include them anyway on an English keyboard, nor a Spanish one for that matter.)
Some forms or papers did have enough space every now ant then, but once you started using one way of addressing yourself, you could not chop and change according to the space available.

I am sure that you have all had your middle name used as your surname in Spain,

William Francis Jones, becomes William Francis. (Francis is classed as your surname, not Jones) Anyone who has been to a hospital, will know this often happens.

Apart from a couple of years in primary school in Spain, I was educated in the UK , so I adapted like most do.

Although my lack of Spanish tildes and accents has been rather smarmily pointed out, I have no intention of changing my game-play for this forum. It takes too long for one thing, and as I have said I am not a typist.
This is a one finger operator…..but I am quite fast at the straightforward stuff.

Just because I dont fit into the stereotype of an English speaking Spaniard should I be slated for it?, should I still be speaking pigeon English after all these years? How very short sighted of you.

You seem obsessed with “outing “ people.

I did notice that you seemed to be giving CRICKETMAN the 3rd degree in the Children in Spain thread, asking, quite smugly, him how come he had an “ expert opinion “ on the UK
By the way, I liked Cricketmans answer to your interregation.

We all disagree from time to time, or a lot of times, but you seem hell bent on trying to catch people out, whats that all about?

I know this is a very long post, and I sorry about that. Just one last thing……….

The lack of apostrophies and accents will continue in my posts, so it will always be – feliz cumpleanos from me- and. happy as*h**es from him. (yes I do like the 2 Ronnies)

you'd be getting karma from me for that, if you hadn't already had some today

Fank you very much, nena......I felt I just had to defent us "fake" esopanyoles, or espanoles. And for those who dont understand the word espanol or espanyol it means Spanish.

It`s on a Spanish keyboard ñ then bolded ñ

I know opinion is very much divided regarding the use of punctuation and grammar and spelling in forums, particularly where people of more than one nationality are all communicating in a common tongue (in this case English). I have to admit to being somewhat of a boring nerdy nitpicking anally retentive apostrophe/spelling/etc geek; however I would only rarely pick someone up on such things within BE, and only if it was with a poster I'd got friendly history with & could therefore do it in a lighthearted way.

Having said all that, is everyone now feeling better/worse/couldn't give a monkey's and, all in all, prepared to get on - mainly fluently in English - with the show?

Reading through this interesting thread, I got to thinking about nationality, moving between countries, learning more than one language, knowing more than one culture, and finally, does it make you a better-rounded, happier person?

I went to a school reunion a couple of years ago and met up with a childhood pal. He stayed in the same small town and one steady job and one house all of his life. When I tried to tell him about some of the places I had seen, the people I’d met, my exciting life, he suddenly had tears in his eyes.

He said, “I’m so sorry you had to endure all that shit and I wish you had stayed here like I did, and you’d have been just as happy as me.”

It did make me think.

duh - never thought of that

actually I do have a spanish keyboard but some publishing software the OH has resets it to American