Proper spelling - is it that important?

While I think Dhsu's statement is a bit extreme, I do understand his sentiment. If someone ends up learning a language purly just for entertainment purposes only, especially if its "Japanese cartoons and video games", it kinda sounds silly and childish to some people. The world still percieves anime and video games as children toys. On the other hand, if someone becomes curious of Japanese culture and language through such mediums, and pursues learning the language and the real culture and history, then I think it's a good thing that it has broaden their horizons.

But back to the spelling topic. I think people should have a basic grasp of their own language. I think the trouble is most people don't, be it English or Chinese or whatever, despite the fact you have school, teachers, dictionaries, thesaurus and the web that can tell you how to spell words you don't know or teach you to fix your grammar. So we get people who blunder their way onto the web, not knowing how to post intelligently on any forums in any language. I think it comes down to laziness and probably bad parenting on the side.

My old British English tutor enjoyed teaching me most when I was a kid, because I actually sit down and converse with her, and of course doing the occasional written work. Her other students are rude and bratty, refuse to learn and rather play video games or something and ignore her. When she tells the parents, they don't do jackshit to discipline them. I bet right now they are going to some lame Hong Kong low level school because they now suck speaking and writing English.

Originally Posted by Bigblah

"Weeaboo" doesn't really bother me (I'm Asian, I live in Asia, I can damn well enjoy Asian entertainment without having to feel guilty about it), but still, considering that we can enjoy Disney movies, American cartoons and pop music without getting called names, you have to wonder why Westerners are derided for enjoying anime and J-pop/K-pop/whatever-pop.

Completely agree. While Western people go around thinking Miyazaki is the new hot stuff back when Spirited Away was showing in theaters, to us Asians he's been our version of Disney since I was born. But of course, people will just assume we're all being "weeaboo", whatever that stupid word is derived from...

Jam it back in, in the dark.