Joseph Conrad is considered one the greats of English literature, yet his sentence structure and flow is strongly influenced by his native Polish.
Would have he been a better writer if he had worked to eliminate this obvious influence on form? I highly doubt it.
At a certain point, you have achieved native fluency. From there, what you do with grammar and flow is up to you- the rules are not cast in stone. Borrow what you think is best from any and all languages at your disposal, and knead it in to English. If it works, we all benefit.
French too. He spent a bit of time working for French ships prior to moving to British ones. English was actually his third language, amazingly enough, which just further solidifies your point.
On 13 October 1874 Bobrowski sent the sixteen-year-old to Marseilles, France, for a planned career at sea.[15]:44–46 Though Conrad had not completed secondary school, his accomplishments included fluency in French (with a correct accent), some knowledge of Latin, German and Greek...
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Joseph Conrad is considered one the greats of English literature, yet his sentence structure and flow is strongly influenced by his native Polish.
Would have he been a better writer if he had worked to eliminate this obvious influence on form? I highly doubt it.
At a certain point, you have achieved native fluency. From there, what you do with grammar and flow is up to you- the rules are not cast in stone. Borrow what you think is best from any and all languages at your disposal, and knead it in to English. If it works, we all benefit.
French too. He spent a bit of time working for French ships prior to moving to British ones. English was actually his third language, amazingly enough, which just further solidifies your point.
On 13 October 1874 Bobrowski sent the sixteen-year-old to Marseilles, France, for a planned career at sea.[15]:44–46 Though Conrad had not completed secondary school, his accomplishments included fluency in French (with a correct accent), some knowledge of Latin, German and Greek...
Really great reply, thanks for this!