I just got home from having a drink with a friend whose ability to communicate is greater than his English proficiency. He’s the type who isn’t afraid to have a conversation, even if most of it isn’t grammatically correct. Contrast that with others who have a tremendous grasp of English grammar, but who can’t carry a conversation beyond a few hesitant sentences. The latter is the type who is paralyzed by the rules of grammar.
Communication is what it’s all about, so those who are willing to butcher another language are always more interesting than those who are not. And in order to encourage this communication, you learn not to correct every mistake. It’s a bit of an art picking and choosing what’s important to subtly correct and what’s best left alone. This leads to some entertaining and inadvertently humorous conversations.
My friend and I were discussing blood types. In Japan, blood type is a popular determiner of personality, in much the same way zodiac signs are in other parts of the world. First, the subject came up as “bread” types. Then there was the constant use of the phrase which I heard as, “It’s all because of celery.” I was kind of curious as to what he meant by “celery”, but I was more interested in hearing what each blood type signified, so I let it pass.