Bitcoin Forum

I saw a post from Jet Cash about this some time ago (I will not be able to find it now, sorry Jet Cash), and his post made me think about my English writing skills, as English is not my mother language.

I decided to post this as I see many users trying to post outside their local boards, and they struggle with English and I can barely understand what they are trying to say.

In my research, I discovered three free tools that help me while I am writing my posts. I am improving my English writing skills in this forum (at least I hope so, if they are not improving they are getting worse lol).

• Grammarly add-on for Firefox  (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grammarly-1/) (there is one version for the sneaking  Google Chrome  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3210982.msg33357374) browser too) – This add-on is pretty good. It is better than browser native dictionary, as it will make good suggestions that go beyond spelling mistakes. The main problem with this add-on is that the full version is not free.
  
• Pro Writing Aid  (https://prowritingaid.com/en/Analysis/WebEditor/Go?redirectToDocs=true) This is the one I use the most, as the free version of Grammarly is pretty basic, and this version is more complete. The inconvenient is that you have to paste your post in that website, make the corrections, and paste it again in the bitcointalk forum.
  
• Microsoft Word. Microsoft word is much better than the browser native dictionary, as it will make corrections beyond spelling too. I was impressed how English support is better than Portuguese support in Microsoft Word.
  
• Google Translator  (http://translate.google.com/) – I do not like to use it, but it is simple and sometime I just need to find one or two missing words.
  

I think it’s worth using at least one of these tools when you are making a big comment and you are not a native speaker. I hope that helps you.

Or alternatively, learn English.

Duolingo (https://www.duolingo.com/) has some stuff for a number of languages. If someone's language isn't on there, then they should do a simple Google search. It shouldn't be difficult to take ~2 weeks to learn some basic grammar and sentence structure components.

About Jet's (Sir Jet) Thread you were talking about. I think this is it
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3081595.msg31781653#msg31781653
titled "The English language improvement thread".
I always keep important threads like this one so that I cam be able to retrieve its informations.

Well, I like your thread as well. You're trying to help other people who can't speak or write English fluently. But, in my opinion. I think it is much better not to rely on these tools just to improve writing English. If a person really wants to improve his/her English vocabulary,  He/She will spend some time just to study English. But I'm not saying that your suggestion are not helpful.
All I'm trying to say is, to those people who really want to learn English language. They must conduct studies about English,  reading English books and researching about more English words are better and a good idea too. But to those people who can't even spend minutes of their time to study English language. These tools are highly recommended :)

It's true sometimes non-native speakers get stuck in using their English, I've seen that many times in this forum when they're making posts that they at least try their best. I also a non-native speaker, like the most of the others in this forum, and mostly I get opportunities to learn English from these forums--it's okay if I make silly mistakes, most of the times they are being ignored.   ;)

But I see the language plays a crucial part when it comes to promote your business/service among others. They somehow unable to build trust on users, or sometimes are being marked as scammers because of their poor usage of the language--I also have seen this in this forum.

Yes. Those tools are helpful zero to nothing. If you want to have better English skills, or to gain the fluency in the language, it's compulsory for you to interact with the native speakers all the time, else the time you spend using these tools will be for nothing--they are not actually be helpful for learning English.

I usually write my posts on a Word doc first and, if I have some doubt on a word on a sentence I look it up on wordreference.com. If it is a sentence, I look it up on wordreference forums.

https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=english%20grammar&src=sac&kw=english&p=1&price=price-free

Many free English courses....

He is talking about improving English, there are many forum members whose mother tongue is not English but they have a good level and they can use some tools to improve.

Not every non-native speaker is a shitposter.

What's with the sudden surge of all these spam bots in Meta? And with copying replies that are NOT from the Meta section?

Thanks for mentioning my thread, and I'm sorry I had to walk away from it. I hoped that it would help newer members by providing a venue for interaction between people wanting to improve their English, but it turned into a spam fest with merit hunters posting links to various tools, and those were completely against the spirit of the thread. I wish people would read thread titles, and try to consider the spirit of the thread and the intentions of the OP. This thread is about English writing tools, so obviously links and comments about tools are welcome and encouraged. My thread was about interaction, and you can't interact with Google or Grammarly. It was posters insistance on diminishing the usefulness of my thread by continually posting these links that turned me away from it.

I would like to help members with a genuine interest in Bitcoin and the emerging crypto economies, and English is almost a requirement if you want to discuss this on Bitcoin Talk. Recently I put together an off forum site for Bitcoin Talk members on a spare domain that I have. The domain is FitToTalk.com, and the pseudo-forum can be found here - https://fittotalk.com/english-talk/index.php (https://fittotalk.com/english-talk/index.php)

This is not an alternative to Bitcoin Talk, and Bitcoin discussions are not a requirement. If fact, as most of the members will be new to crypto, anyone looking for crypto information should post on the relevant boards in this forum. The aim of my site is to reduce board pollution and necro-bumping, as well as helping members to improve their English. You can't promote bounties or any other sites, and you can't promote English language tools, so it is pretty restricted, and only useful for members who want to practice their English without being abused for their sentence structure or word usage,

They are all over the forum. What I don’t see is the point of someone running those bots, now with the merit system, because they will never rank up. I suppose they are already created and some people are putting them to work just in case, otherwise those people are idiots.

Do they really care about increasing rank. I get the feeling that the only things that matter are signature views, and site links. Does Google differentiate between a link fom a Legendary, or a link from a Member? - I suspect not. 20 Members linking to your site is worth a lot more than one Legendary. What about references rather than links? I bet Google looks at a posted URL even if it doesn't have an active link. This means that a mention by a brand new member in a throw away account can have value as well.

We all have to suffer from the forum pollution created by these low grade spammers, especially as they often promote frauds and other scams.

The idea here is to improve your English writing skills, not learn English. Take would take years. I studied English for 7 years in a English school.

Those free courses online may help you a little, but if you don´t know anything they will not help you.

Try to post in a Japonese if you don't have past Japonese knowledge. That's impossible in the short term.

I am talking about someone who know a little bit of English, and is getting confused about "them" and "then", plurals, verb conjugation....

If you have zero English skills, if you make 2 hours of course in Udemy before posting, that wont help you. Unless you just want to post something like "Hello my name is John. The book is on the table. I am 20 years old". lol

I agree that English is a requirement if you want to discuss bitcoin on bitcointalk. And bitcointalk is the best place to talk about bitcoin.

All bitcoin documentation is in English also, whitepaper, BIP, good videos...

These things are only going to help you if you already have a reasonable command of English. If you don't then they're just going to garble up something which is already incoherent. If people can't speak English then they should stick to their local boards as that's what they're there for.


A lot of them won't be aware of the merit system or what it does, but merit is something that can be worried about later for them. You still have to have the activity by posting over time.

bitmover,amazing initiative. But I really don't think alot of users shitposters are even bothering to read it.
I would suggest you to change the topic to : "Earn merit for free,by doing this simple task",and just see what happens. Idiots would come begging to you ;).

You've given me an idea. I'll give away free Karma. You can't spend it, and it doesn't help you rank up, but it makes you feel better, and it probably improves your sex life. :)

Did almost what you said lol
I think the topic name is more appropriate now

Probably? Yeah, I'll take my chances, 3 cubic metres of that karma, please.


That's why I think that the way of learning english or any other language is school is not that good. You don't learn to speak or write reasonable things. Back in high school we've learning to recognize tenses and whatnot, but whoever develpoed some talking/writing skilss, he developed them from movies, music, online videogames,etc... You'll learn more from that imo, if you just pay a little attention to it.

This i true. I learned a lot in videogames. I wanted to play RPG games when I was a kid and I needed to understand a least something lol

Movies are also very good for listening skills...

I learned to construct a sentences in English from Watching subbed anime and now I'm really suffering from reading a lot and thought of a solution dubbed TV shows, Movies, or whatever oneself preferred would gradually increase or improve by exposing yourself from listening in a language you do not speak with the best combination of writing it daily.

I have a personal experience from grammarly and I would say the free version is changing the words for something you do not self-study in any case bad decision a writer would make.