An Online Community Of ‘Seriously Supportive’ Language Learners
This is an update on the comments policy here at The Guild.
From now on I’ll be taking my comments policy seriously and hitting the trash button on any comment that is abusive toward either myself, fellow commenters or other bloggers.
After a couple of requests, a much appreciated apology and my own consideration I’ve removed about half a dozen recent comments on a previous post this morning that weren’t really conducive to a site aimed at encouraging and helping people learn languages.
I’m all for freedom of opinion and I despise all forms of censorship but be mindful that when you say nasty stuff on here it reflects badly on me and my blog as if I’m trying to feed trolls or attack people personally.
From time to time I will write some pretty opinionated, controversial and possibly offensive stuff that is bound to piss somebody off (I have too much of my mother’s fiery blood in me) and I will offer language learning advice that other people might not fully agree with but if you can’t respond to that with a bit of maturity then please don’t comment.
The tagline for this site is An Online Community Of Serious Language Learners. I chose that tagline because I envisaged a site that isn’t all about one person but rather places an emphasis on everybody learning from and supporting each other, being open with each other about our inadequacies, mistakes and failures, and admitting that none of us have all the answers.
You will get my opinion here obviously (it’s my blog after all) but I’m always open to sensible, polite and well-argued criticism. If you’re a good writer and have your own advice, tips or opinions that you’d like to share on specific languages or general language learning, feel free to drop me a line and request to guest post it. Your own discoveries and accomplishments in a particular language could really help the next person.
Thanks heaps for being a part of The Mezzofanti Guild and helping it grow. If you haven’t already, try making a short video for the current challenge and upload it to the forum. It’s hugely beneficial to your learning and not as easy as it looks. Step out of your comfort zone and don’t be afraid to embarrass yourself a little!
Salam (سلام). 
This was written by Donovan Nagel.
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Comments: If you’ve got something you’d like to add to this or some constructive criticism you can do that at the bottom of this page. Just please be respectful. Any abusive or nonsensical comments will be deleted.
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I have learned that a great way to improve your language skills is to accept criticism and to even solicit critique of your abilities. In my opinion this is true for other areas of life as well.
Obviously it hurts when anyone criticizes something about you. The key to success is to accept the criticism, understand that it is not a critique of you as a person and make an adjustment, if necessary, to improve upon the critique.
I spent three solid years, living in-country, spending over 95% of my time speaking the language, when one day I made a random statement, and a friend started laughing at me. In between her cackles and my annoyance I asked her to explain what was going on. Turns out I'd been pronouncing incorrectly the word "function" and for literally years no one had brought it to my attention.
I could have just gotten pissed off at her for making fun of me, but fortunately took a different path and took a step closer to speaking that language as a native.
Unfortunately, not everyone takes the time to differentiate between a personal attack and a constructive criticism. Those people constantly are missing out on opportunities to improve themselves.