Problems with English? Questions? Vocabulary, grammar... Post here :)
 

Problems with English? Vocabulary, grammar... Post here :)

That may help some persons, who are having problems/troubles with English. We shouldn't offence the language of Shakespeare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare

Happy Tux !
-
Frenchn00b does it daily x10000 times :)

I do not know anything of the language of Shakespeare
When I was at school they try to teach me the Queen,s English

regards

ron lau

But did they teach you the Queen's punctuation?......;)

Well,I think that I have the highest number of edited posts because of grammar corrections then any other member since LQ started back in 2000 :D,and that's because this is international forum and we "must" use international language and I want that what I post here will make sense to whoever will read it and if I'm not careful with my english then that would not be so maybe,like sometimes when I just couldn't understand what the OP meant to say in his post.I use http://dictionary.reference.com/ for my corrections and learning even if I have learned a lot in school.

I write TRY to teach me

all the best

Common errors in English.

what a long sentence ! :) :)

A classic to read and to write better afterwards is Strunk & White's "Elements of Style".

It's very helpful, especially for non-native speakers. (Well, writers here.. :) )

Thank you Nylex - I just learned something by browsing through.
This phrase is often used - in my language too.
Until now I always understood it differently - mainly because it is always used ... to describe or mean something huge.
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/quantum.html

...therefore - it is not my fault - I learn(ed) by looking at how others use language ;)

Good excuse?

Thanks again!

[edit] and Thanks to Su-Shee too

Ain't no one never taught me queen's english.

I speak 'Murican.

(edited to make first sentence grammatically more deplorable)

So exactly what is meant with the subjected "English"? Is it the tooth decay suffering british, or the fast food devouring Tommies? Add parts of South Africa, the Aussies, most folks from Canada, etc.

Facts down, there is not one single accepted version of the English language (save some university-biased PC shade-wearing conspiracy mongers) around in this age.

Why don't we just talk and write using the grammar that has been set years and years ago (yes, it's actually the grammar that's still "correct" today) and still use hip, or whatever, words with it?

Flames for incorrect grammar, or the likes, are welcomed.

Kind regards,
Hubb

is it a book? Thou may give me further information. :)
I found this about it: http://www.bartleby.com/141/
(One can even find it on the net.)

This is a little book, yes - or to be precise: I've got it on paper. ;)

Ah, how nice - ok. :)

And btw - frenchie :) Do you have by any chance a link for an online version of the Robert or of "le bon usage"? :)

I have 2 Robert dictionary in my shelf. But electronic, nope. I have lot of books ab. french, as it is obvious. Encarta and universalis are 2 very good cdroms, encyclopedia. I would recommand. Otherwise le bon usage... I can have a look.

Question:
For or Since?
"Since recent years the food industry is facing lot of demands"
or
"For recent years the food industry is facing lot of demands"
What would be the solution?

Should be "Thou mayst" or "Thou mayest".

"In recent years the food industry has been facing a lot of demands." or "Recently the food industry is facing a lot of demands."

End of lesson. :)

Yes. "Le petit Robert" - very funny. 2 kilos and 9cm... ;)


I learned at school:

"For" marks a period of time, "since" is used for something like "from this point in time on".

"For three years I tried to install Linux."
"Since 2005 I tried to install Linux."

And I would write "Ever since <point in time or imporant event> the food industry faces ... " for precision.

"recent years" is a rather unspecified/open period of time.
For a couple of years now the food industry ....
For quite some time now the food industry ...
would be o.k.
But I can't give a grammatical explanation.

"For quite some time" is a bit vague, not very specific.

But you can say "For quite some time ..." while you shouldn't (but still can) say: "For recent years ..."
"In recent years the food industry ... " would still be better. I was trying an example with a correct use of "for".

"For several years..." - how's that suit you?

Fine! ;)
- the problem here seems to be that you are a native speaker and notice such fine differences which go "against the grain(?)" while I don't have that much experience and found it o.k.
Is that so?

[edit]
the thing that "inspired" me was this:
"We have had an eye on you for quite some time now, Mr.Anderson..."
(I hope this is nearly a quote)

Yeah, it's not so much a matter of knowing the correct grammar as knowing instinctively when something sounds or looks right.

One point I will make - my French and German are absolutely appalling and I wouldn't even attempt to post to a French or German language forum. LQ has members for whom English is a second, third or fourth language and I am constantly impressed how people who start a post with "please excuse my English...." actually write it better than many native English speakers. The little bits, like the for/since question above, come with usage and experience.

Largely, the technical forums are very forgiving. All we care about is that we can understand what you are asking and you can understand our answers. And that you don't use SMS speak. :)

I don't know any other languages, except for a few words and phrases.

Well, it's quite a dominate language after all, tought at school in most european countries as a mandatory subject over several years. In addition, smaller countries show TV series and movies untranslated in English with subtitles only - great way to learn.

And "Harry Potter" of course has recently brought thousands of children into written English - at least in Germany.

In many ways it's simply due to the fact that English is available through so many channels.

If I could get the same amount of movies, TV series or online dictionaries in French... :)

My French teacher always said that we could become fluent in French if we lived there for 6 months, rather than spend 5 years in school trying to pick up on it. At one time, the international language was French - diplomats had to understand it. Now, the dominant language is English. The predominant language on the internet is English, which means that if you want to have conversations internationally you have to at least understand some of it. This will hopefully mean that non-English speakers will massively improve their English comprehension, but does nothing for those of us with English as our main language :)

To go back to the examples in the OP, Shakespeare actually invented many phrases which are now common - http://shakespeare.about.com/library.../aa042400a.htm

Maybe we should have language exchange threads here in General where we can teach each other to read our languages?

A lot of people, I mean English people, can't be bothered to make the effort to understand Shakespeare - they really don't know what they're missing. Ages ago (can't be more specific), I read several books about him and his works, then read most of the plays and poems - and the more I read, the more I understood. I suppose that was akin to learning a foreign language, but one separated by time rather than geography.

I believe I've learned serious part of my english kowledge by playing console/computer games (old titles like Fallout 2, Landstalker, Beyound Oasis, etc), although initial knowledge was acquired from books (which taught to think in foregin language instead of translating every sentence all the time).

It is a shame that many of game/video (re)publisher's are now cutting out original language from localized versions of foreign films/games. Basically, in my area finding non-pirated (and even pirated) version of something with available original language is difficult. That's bad, since today's gamers at least could learn foreign language while playing another cr@p with "good gfx".

Well, the good thing about learning foreign languages is the same thing like learning a programming language: After you've picked up one or two, the third, fourth or fifth isn't that difficult anymore.

And things like the roman language family or translating German grammar knowledge into Icelandic or having learned all the chinese characters for Japanese once come in handy, too, because they can easily transferred from one language to another.

Just like knowing what hashes are in Perl transforms nicely into learning PHP.

So it's just hard once - the first time.

Hi,

Should we say:

or
?

"IT was a long day today", IMHO.

Because when you say "it was" it means that day is already over.

"Has been" is typically used when some kind of action was continuously (I.e. "day was being long" :) in the past) performed during long period before the moment when you talk, but this action is finished at the moment when you talk.

At least that's how I understand it.

P.S. You should read books about times of english verbs. Ideally books should be written in your native language.

and if you say it at 23pm, "it has been a long day today" talkign about work from 8-17pm. It is right?

Honestly, explaining forms of english verbs (which I use intuitively) using same forms of english verbs is a bit complicated.

Take a look at this:
http://www.whitesmoke.com/past-progressive-tense.html
http://www.lbt-languages.de/english/...lernhilfe.html

And try to find tutorials like this:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KtB87Z...eature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4jcJBi...eature=related

Looking at the google search results I can say that both "was long day" and "had been long day" are used.

It was a long day today.

This can be correct, depending on the time of day and what the speaker and listener agree to be the meaning of today. The use of the past simple (was) indicates that the "day" being referred to is over (BUT the "real" day ie the one ending at midnight) is not over because "today" would need to be referred to as "yesterday." The day being referred to could certainly be a working day or something like a day of travel. The speaker does not expect there to be more of the same activity that made the day long to follow.

It has been a hard day today.

The present perfect simple (auxiliary "have" + past participle) indicates that a period is not over. Here it means "so far" or "up until now." There is the potential for more difficulty to follow but we require more information.

It's been a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong day today.

It was a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong day yesterday.

There's your answers.

" Quote:Originally Posted by alan_ri
Well,I think that I have the highest number of edited posts because of grammar corrections then any other member since LQ started back in 2000 ,and that's because this is international forum and we "must" use international language and I want that what I post here will make sense to whoever will read it and if I'm not careful with my english then that would not be so maybe,like sometimes when I just couldn't understand what the OP meant to say in his post.

what a long sentence ! "

If alan_ri is a German, that would be considered a pretty short sentence. I've seen longer ones where they used the split infinitive with several conditional and other clauses in between the infinitive root and its' compound part. Of course this is a no-no in English but is correct in English. I won't try to compose an example in german as I would surely botch it, but here's the wy one might go in English, using the common infinitive 'pick up':

At seven every evening, I _pick_ my wife, who works long hours in a large factory for very little money and even less thanks, and then has to come home to make supper for myself and our seven screaming children, though she has no energy left and always scolds me for not helping out more, even though I am disabled and can't help it, from work _up_.

I won't belabor the example any more, though it could still stand a few dozen words of 'fleshing out' without exagerating at all. When first learning German, this type of construction can really drive you mad. Usually one can't bear the suspense and must skip ahead to the end of the sentence to _pick up_ the other part of the verb so that the intervening ramble makes more sense, or is at least bearable.

Hi guys,

can we say :
it sounds strange, no?
What in us you would say... ?

I would say "I have milk intolerance", but I'd be telling a lie.

Hello friends, my english is bad.

When typing in international forum like this, i only hope for tolerance ... hihihi

Its very hard to master english language if u don't face with it everyday.

maybe when someone post, member who knows english better should help to correct it.

so, mr BrianL from England , is there any mistake on this 5 lines :p ?

WorldIsNotFair
Just a few little slip ups, but not bad.
Use you instead of u.
hahaha not hihihi.
Don't use it every day is better.
Then these:
someone posts
members who know
are there any mistakes in these 5 lines

But as long as we can get a good idea of what you mean, it doesn't have to be 100% correct. So don't worry about it. I can't speak any other languages, so you're better than me. :)

Ill go with brianL on this one. If it sounds right, then its correct

You can always use AbiWord or maybe OpenOffice - red lines are mistakes (catt instead of cat) and green lines are syntax errors (Brian have a baseball).

Debian

Lol Brian can makes a great English teacher. This sort of reminds me of the spelling thread we had some time back where people wanted to become gooros and muderaturs:p

You mean goorrooz and moddurraturz don't you?
My spelchekks werkin perficktlie.

I think it's called lactose intolerance.

Well, I am not sure about that, but I usually do my best (sometimes it's not good enough) not to OFFEND the language of Shakespeare:)

It's shocking how the English language has changed over time. You can compare the inflectional endings of the verb 'to love' and its Old English equivalent (lufian).

... and lufian is just a representative of class one of Old English weak verbs. There are different inflectional endings for class two!

Reminds me of the time I tried to read Beowulf in the original OE. Then Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Got through them, but it was a struggle.

I really liked English historical grammar classes at my university. We would spend a week translating some parts of Beowulf into Modern English. Then our lecturer would prepare some basic sentences in Modern English and ask us to translate it into OE. It was quite difficult bearing in mind that English wasn't our first language, but I can't say I didn't enjoy it.

I think that krusader internet surfing has spelling corrections.
Iceape hasnt :(