This has been on my mind for a while, so I'm going to go ahead and speak up --
I don't think that RH/BS's perfect, idiomatic English is a sign that she is lying about her nationality or ethnicity. I think you guys are underestimating the ability of non-native English speakers, especially given that--as a writer--of course RH/BS would have a higher-than-average level of ability with language.
No. Since when is it inappropriate to examine any writer's language? And since when does examining a writer's language automatically imply that one is casting aspersions on their alleged ethnic group?
How do you come to be using one of RH's pet arguments? I haven't run into it elsewhere. I certainly wouldn't have expected to find it in a forum full of fiction writers, for whom the relevance of language and diction to identity is a matter of everyday practical knowledge.
I've been dealing with non-native English speakers all my life, and I have enormous respect for them. In fact, I think I may have more respect for them than you do, because I'm not pretending that what they do is easy.
No one thinks English is easy; and as I've already observed in this thread, written English is far more difficult than the spoken variety.
Every language community that has a significant number of English speakers has its own version of ESL English. Some have more than one. These variations are a staple subject of academic linguistics studies. If this is news to you, you might start by reading the Wikipedia entry on
Tinglish.
While you're at it, note that its distinctive use of Thai particles is for the speakers' own comfort and convenience. That's normal. Every group that uses English bends it to their own uses. I have yet to see an ESL variant that didn't import a few handy devices and maneuvers from the speakers' first language. (The practice we bring to other languages is our habit of freely adapting words from one part of speech to another.)
I have never said here that ESL variants are inferior. In fact, I've been at pains to make it clear that I don't think the difference means they're inferior. You're the one who's assuming that by saying their English is different, we're "underestimating the ability of non-native English speakers."
There's no real support for the idea that writers are so linguistically gifted that they can escape the influence of their mother tongue. Gifted they may be, but it's not enough to erase all markers. And I know everyone cites Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, and Joseph Conrad as examples of ESL speakers who published significant work in English, but Nabokov and Borges actually grew up trilingual, and Conrad's English was nothing you'd call standard.
One other objection. A piece of formal writing is a carefully constructed and much-refined artifact. However, what I observed about RH was that she writes literary English without grammatical errors even when she's in the thick of fast-moving online exchanges. The set of things we know, and the set of things we know how to do without thinking about them, are not the same.
Guys, most of the internet is in English.
But it's not all in literary English, and it's not all formally correct.
You know that. Why are you making this argument?
BS/RH is a younger person from what appears to be a privileged family, a woman
BS/RH/whoever has a long history of sockpuppetry and identity abuse. We know what she's said about herself, not what she is.
Personally, I doubt she's all that young, and it makes me feel downright cynical when I see her pleading youthful folly as an excuse for what she's done. The currently documented portions of her career trace back to the early oughts.
who has spent years and years and years talking and posting on the internet. A lot. Of course she uses internet slang and idioms.
That was never the point.
For reference,
here's a thread full of non-native English speakers. And
here is another. Some of these people are expats, doubtless, but the people in these threads are all people who reside in non-English-speaking countries. Do they have below-average skill with English? In my opinion, no.
That's irrelevant. The argument wasn't that RH's language was good or bad; it was that she consistently makes correct use of certain features of English that ESL or ESL-influenced speakers don't reliably get right.
There's some people with stilted language, some people with perfect syntax and punctuation, and some people who have no idea what commas are. Like any other internet users.
But not like RH. The point was that she writes literary English quickly and fluently, gets the finicky grammar right, and generally sounds like a lifelong educated standard English speaker who was taught to talk by lifelong educated standard English speakers.
RH/BS is the best of this. Which is exactly what she sounds like.
That's a fine large red herring you have there. Do please stop waving it around.
I think this is a case of confirmation bias. On the internet, the only people who sound like they're ESL are people who speak/write English poorly, so those are the only people who get identified as ESL.
There you go again with your offensive assumption that different English is inferior English. There are many fine writers who speak English as a second language. The point has never been that their English is inferior, but rather that it's different.
The point about RH is that her English isn't different.
Yes, RH/BS could be a white lady with some serious issues. Yeah, she has a couple friends who are similar to her. Yeah, she's friends with a person who also likes foxes.
If you're talking about Alex Dally MacFarlane, she's socially located at or near the center of the RH grouping, and has been active there for some time. The fox theme that's so visible when you google ["alex dally" fox fiction] goes back to the beginning of RH's documented online career. Her long-established partner and collaborator Tori Truslow has the whole Thai Asian thing going.
To repeat what I said earlier, it's suggestive. It's not proof.
In the meantime, I think your line about RH "having serious issues" is trivializing. Whoever she is, RH isn't just someone with issues. She's an abusive bully who's done real damage to some of the most promising writers in science fiction and fantasy. If writing and language and meaning matter, this matters.
I have a buddy here on AW. We're the same gender, near the same age, both bisexual, have almost identical taste in men and women, same opinions on social justice, both write m/m erotica--the same subgenres of m/m erotica, even! We play the same video games. She's my beta now because she saw a post about how much I loved a certain children's cartoon, and she loves it too and decided to start a conversation with me. We both have SO's who have been with us for seven-ish years, big bearded guys. She commented once that if her SO were a gay man, he'd be a bear. I have said that exact same thing about my husband many times.
I'm glad you have a friend who shares so many of your interests. Many of us could say the same. What this has to do with RH's online habits escapes me, I'm afraid.
People who travel in the same circles are likely to be similar to each other. People who are close friends for years? Even more so.
Malarkey. I have close friends of my own. Some of them have been my friends for decades. None of them have online profiles that could ever be mistaken for mine.
Established online identities don't grow similar; they differentiate.
Everyone thinks foxes are cool, guys. Alex Dally (or whatever) may think it's her spirit animal. RH/BS used it twice.
Assuming 2002/2003 is the real beginning of her career, RH used the fox thing early, she used it in multiple contexts, and she hung onto it for a long time. I'd guess that it was meaningful to her.
So while it's a possibility... don't get carried away. I have yet to see a non-native English speaker stand up and say, "She's not one of us, she [does such and such wrong]."
You've got that backward. Non-native English speakers would be likelier to care if RH/BS were one of their own, and analyzing her English is a job for language-sensitive English specialists.
And until someone does, I'm inclined to continue believing she is indeed a lesbian Thai woman.
Your beliefs are your own, and need not satisfy any external standards.
Now don't get me wrong, I think she's a lying liar who lies.
On that point, we are in happy agreement.
But it just seems weird to me that someone would choose to lie about their nationality and ethnicity, but choose the exact same oddly specific lie for two separate identities that were never ever supposed to be connected. What would be the purpose?
It's not weird at all. Habitual sockpuppeteers think they're terribly clever and won't be spotted by us groundlings, so they let themselves fall into patterns. I saw one once who thought he was undetectable even though his pseudonyms were all obvious references to
Firefly/Serenity.
The first serious sockpuppeteer I got to see in action always made her user names the maximum length Usenet allowed, used identical syntax in their construction, always hit the spacebar a bunch of times at the end of paragraphs, used a relatively small vocabulary of words and phrases over and over and over again in her posts, and had near-zero interest in anything other than promoting herself and her terrible writing. She was astonished at being outed.
I wouldn't find it strange if RH had needlessly told the same lie about five or six or eight identities.