I don’t speak English natively, and haven’t ever lived somewhere where English is the dominant language, and I’ve been wondering about the same thing. It seems to be easy to notice and get annoyed if someone’s Finnish sounds stilted or off, and I’m pretty sure I have much less of a sense of textual voices in English. I think it comes down to having basically zero exposure to real-life face-to-face socialization and status play using spoken English, so the various subtle cues aren’t internalized and need to be inferred.
I also can’t tell non-native speakers apart from native ones based on writing style on a message board like LW. Can native English speakers do that?
I don’t speak English natively, and haven’t ever lived somewhere where English is the dominant language, and I’ve been wondering about the same thing. It seems to be easy to notice and get annoyed if someone’s Finnish sounds stilted or off, and I’m pretty sure I have much less of a sense of textual voices in English. I think it comes down to having basically zero exposure to real-life face-to-face socialization and status play using spoken English, so the various subtle cues aren’t internalized and need to be inferred.
I also can’t tell non-native speakers apart from native ones based on writing style on a message board like LW. Can native English speakers do that?