I’ve recently put up several items on Kijiji and in doing so received a number of interested replies. Unfortunately, many of those replies are practically unintelligible.
Why is this? At first I thought that many of them are some kind of bot or automated software that intentionally uses exceptionally poor grammar but I couldn’t think a reason anyone would benefit from this since the people on the other end are already willing to provide you details and meet you. So these replies must be from actual human beings.
Is our Education system really that bad? Could it be that they are all non-native English speakers? I’ve been in enough countries and met enough non-native English speakers to know that it’s not that. ESL writers can come across as having poor English certainly, but it’s… different. You can spot the mix up of language structures or at the very least identify that some modicum of effort was put into the writing.
As a public service, I’d like to present two such replies I received from two different people and rewrite the sentences in a way that makes some better degree of sense. Names and phone numbers are changed.
“evething is gor 100 , am poor woma but my son is crasy got one of thid box i cant buy it . but is it 100 i like to buy it gor him ,let mr know pleas thank you .5551234567 bob”
“Everything is for $100.00. I am a poor woman but my son is crazy. He wants one of those Xboxes but I cannot afford it. But is it really $100? I’d like to buy it for him. Let me know please. Thank you. 555-123-4567 – Bob”
“I'm interested of Xbox, can you send me, cll no. Then I ca pay the xbox”
“I am interested in your Xbox. Can you send me your cell phone number? Then I can pay you for the Xbox.”
1 comments
I think the language choice is a deliberate attempt to weed out smart sellers. Only the gullible one would respond back.