RE: Does life experience change the way people use Steem?
My regular commenters seem to range from kids in upper secondary school to middle-aged people with families. For the younger ones, life seems to be full of possibilities. There is a great deal of optimism and energy as well as uncertainty. A general unawareness of limitations is observable. While it is true that as one ages one's potential is diminished, that is not what I mean. With experience, one's understanding of the future potential of things gains structure and form.
I know when I read some people's fiction stories I can pretty much tell how old they are. With my background, I can definitely tell if their mother tongue isn't English as the sentence structure is immature and the use or overuse of some forms is a telltale sign, as is the clunkiness of vocabulary. Some just try too hard and are too literal and it shines through. But, I have spent the last 15 years reading text from foreigners so, it really isn't overly difficult for me.
I had a very interesting experience reading the posts of someone both you and I know here. This guy lives in Finland and is a most likely a native of this country. But I never realized it because I had not paid any attention to his profile and because his English seemed to flow flawlessly and naturally like that of a native speaker. After a while, I picked up some things in his language that indicated otherwise. He also posted pictures of his neighbourhood a couple of months ago at which time I looked at his profile and saw that he was in Finland. The weather at the time seemed to indicate that he probably lived on the south coast of Finland. Then I realized that despite the small imperfections in his English, the lack of negative transference from Finnish was why it took me so long to realize he was a (probably) native of Finland and that this was most likely because his native tongue was probably Swedish and not Finnish. Much later, I heard him speak English in a DLive broadcast. Definitely not a native speaker of English. His accent sounded like one of someone whose first language was Swedish (the dialect spoken in Finland). Finally, some weeks later, he replied in Swedish to a long comment written in Swedish. While that is not definite proof of anything, the Bayesian likelihood of his native tongue being Swedish increased greatly.
Yes, I could pick it from the text non-native (remember my job the last 15 years) and after a bit of a chat, worked out a lot of other things. It is actually a bit harder for me though because in TRE there aren't a lot of SWE native speakers I have met (who aren't actually Swedish).
If you have enough experience and pay a little bit of attention, you can tell a great deal about someone from the way they approach their text. In chat, there is of course a lot more told as there is less time to think and correct so more leaks.
I've known a few Finland Swedes in Tampere. They have all been highly proficient in Finnish to the point of being functionally bilingual. Their accent gives them away as Swedish-speaking only when they pronounce Swedish words. One guy was trilingual. He had a Swedish-speaking mother, a Finnish-speaking father, and a lot of experience speaking English which he spoke really well with a southern English accent. He said his knowledge of each of the three fell somewhat short of a native speaker of only one language.