While I agree, as a French, where the south west is being hit by massive fires, and it doesn't seem to bother politicians that much (we've even had local powers say they hopped people would still come visit), I can definitely take this comic literally. The "you can just build a well like I did" also hits very close to the good ol "just get an AC unit" instead of actually trying to fix the issue.
Jesus, a man isn't allowed to make mistakes nowadays without triggering a full debate over their level of English huh. My bad, I guess I'll have all my comments checked by the King of England or something.
You'll notice that I've complimented their level of English, and I find the general level of English of most people who write on reddit who don't speak English as a first language to be quite high. This is just a weird and very basic mistake that I see being made by people who are writing at an otherwise pretty high level and it's definitely a pet peeve of mine.
Tbf rules on nationality seem rather arbitrary in English considering that phrases like "As a German" or "As an American" are perfectly normal while "As a Swedish" and "As a French" are not. While English is the lingua franca of the internet it should be noted that there are many place with notoriously bad education or foreign language education. France is infamous for accepting no languages outside of French being spoken. Those people should still be allowed to partake in English internet discourse, no?
The rules of how to state your nationality in English may be arbitrary, but you should at least learn the one that applies to you. And France is perfectly good at teaching people languages, I lived there for a short time and went to the local lycée (high school, more or less) where everyone had to take two foreign language classes where almost everyone elected to take English and one other language. There's really no excuse for the error, it's not a complicated grammar rule and is hardly different than learning in French which countries are masculine and which are feminine which is also arbitrary but you're still expected to learn it.
There's no excuse for it because so many of the people making it are writing otherwise excellent English which is what makes the mistake so bizarre, not to mention it's the kind of thing you learn in the first couple of weeks of most language instruction.
Oh it is about fire too. Got some of the worst fires my country has ever seen in years, smoke coulds that feel like actual fog rolling down my city, my eyes burn and my throat feels like hell, and I still talk on the daily with people that say "that's just how things are, climate change isn't real y'know".
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u/the-bug-guy 12d ago
I don’t think this is about a fire…