Obviously telling.

Howard,

Yes, you is obv the subject. Dunno why I wrote object twice, prob was just focused on the key element of adverb placement after the object.

I would use active in both cases. I generally use passive only when there is good reason to do so.

I do hope Lapka uses this newfangled sorcery to start a rocket science thread.

Imo.

Yak, this is the same error (adverb preposition phrase order) I noted earlier in a different sentence. Both "for a while" and "to politics" are modifying "to go." As a non-native English speaker did you ever learn a rule that tells you which order is correct, or have you just learned through usage over the years that it sounds correct one way and not the other?

I would say “For some reason, I’m feeling very argumentative at the moment.” For some reason, “now” jangles my ear a little bit.

Lapka, first, kudos for the thread. It's a great idea for a thread and you will learn a lot.

As someone else mentioned, word placement is very important in English. As an example, consider the differences in meaning in the following three sentences:

Only Emily kissed me. (Translation: There were a number of people who could have kissed me, but Emily was the only person who did.)

Emily only kissed me. (Translation: Emily kissed me, but she didn't do anything more than kiss me.)

Emily kissed only me. (Translation: Emily could have kissed a number of people, but I was the only person she actually kissed.)

I think it came with experience, I've been active online since I was 12 (32 now) so I've had quite some time to take it all in and never actually did the darn booklearnin. I sometimes wish I had though because Im sure it has harmed my English.

I went through the last couple of posts in my blog, which are basically the only posts in which you come up.

I said that you would be a underdog to me in a physical fight, that you make me feel like a person with an untreated mental illness, and that any interaction with you leaves a bad aftertaste.

None of it is positive. Two of the comments are also not really about you, but rather about how interacting with you makes me feel. One comment is about you. I mean you are almost twice as fat as I am. In one sense, it is an advantage. You could just try to stomp me down. But on the other hand, you are so out of shape.

None of it is particularly insulting. These are just facts. And I would say exactly exactly the same thing to you in RL. My intent is intent not to upset you but to find the best way for me to deal with you. I am not sorry that the truth upsets and offends you. I will continue in the same spirit.

The weird thing about English word order is that there are very few actual rules about it, but many customs. Because English used to have case endings, it is a case-based language, but we gradually stopped using the cases because they were a pain and didn't really add meaning. In the course of that, we developed customs about word order, but they are mostly not actual rules.

The only real rules are that if we use a pronoun, it refers back to the last noun of the correct number, gender, and case. Lots of other issues exist where things just "sound wrong" in a non-customary order, as though Yoda were saying them.

I'd try to preserve the voice and syntactic structure of the original posts as much as possible. The first sentence works as:

'[W]hich' and 'in which' mark a shift to a style that lapka doesn't seem to be going for, imo (also the repetition of 'which' is harsh).

I think nitpicks can be counterproductive when there are lots of fundamental errors to address, so I'd try to leave specific word choices alone unless they are egregiously bad or have a non-native ring to them. Like . . . 'double as fat' should definitely be 'twice as fat', but 'optimal' is fine. Just my thoughts, which apply to some of the earlier corrections itt too.

Improving lapka's english is ruining my lapka experience.

Agreed. I'm not sure that I want Lapka to improve her English in her 2+2 posts. Her occasional malapropisms are endearing.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I was AFK only for few hours and what a response! Huge thank you guys!
Am going to work through your answers in the course of the day. Here is the beginning.



If people can give me at least a kick that something sounds strange, I can dig from this point on internet and try to understand why exactly it is wrong. I believe that for me a big step forward is just to start to care enough to put in some effort. The point was that my posts sounded wrong even for me. So basically just reading them one time before posting would eliminate part of mistakes.

Here I have to dig the issue more. Because right now it sounds to me like "In a sentence" is a place and "without regard to order" is a manner, so according to the rule I would put manner before the place. But I know that you are right. So I have to think more, read other responses and dig the internet on this one.


*blushing* That were the moments when I was zero thinking about the English.


You understand my problem. Since Russian is my first language, a lot comes from there.

I studied Russian in college and remember that the wording endings were very important but that word order was not. Wish I remembered more and they my Russian was half as good as your English.

lapka,

for only a few hours


from that point
on the internet

to start caring enough

even to me

part of the mistakes

Those were the moments
I was thinking zero about the English

Sooo. I think I understand now gregorio's correction.

"All my instincts want to put them in a sentence without worrying about order. "

" in a sentence " is a complement adverbial phrase and should immediately follow the head.
" without worrying about order " is an adjunct and comes after the complement.


Now remains to really apply that. I am so pissed-off at myself for confusing " life " and " live " once again. It is not so that I don't know it. And it was obvious to me that I posted it wrong immediately after I read it. ( please, tell me that " immediately after i read it" has here the right position). I should learn to slow down with posting. I should learn to get some control of that: " Yeah that is a cool thing! I need to share it with world like NOW!"

Like I can see my work log at this thread got significantly longer with Eld. Tx. I really appreciate that. That is pretty much exactly what I hoped for.

Share it with _the_ world. 😁

Lapka,

understand gregorio’s correction now

Now all that remains is to really apply that
Now it’s time to really apply that
Now I need to really apply that

It is not that I don’t know it.

Yes, but...
has the right position here
or even better
is in the right position here

with the world

Overall the writing was great in that long post. Very few errors, and all of the errors were minor ones that didn’t make the writing hard to understand.

That's a good counter-example that shows why "manner, place, time" is not the rule. It also shows why it causes problems to use the class "adverb" as a general dumping ground for anything that doesn't fit nicely into any other category.

I teach students the most natural sentence order is
1. Subject, 2 Verbs (with sub order of auxiliary verb, some adverbs, main verbs) 3 Object, 4 Other stuff, 5 Time

I also teach Slavic students and put the above on the walls of every classroom.

If you have multiple things in "other stuff" the sub-order is
a. Stuff without which the verb can't really stand alone.
b. Adverbs which modify the verb (I explain this as adverbs that answer the question "in what manner" - so "quickly", "carefully" go here, whereas "probably, often, usually" fit best in the middle of 2)
c. Prepositional phrases ordered by the extent of their relevance to the verb in the sense it's meant.


Consider the following:

I put it. (doesn't really work - the thing we need to add to make it work should go directly afterwards)
I put it in the sentence. (can stand alone)
I put it in the sentence without regard to order. (full sentence)

I watched football. I played football. (both can stand alone)
I played football with my brother in the park.
I watched football at Wembley with my brother.

(as a spectator the location is more relevant than the escort, whereas as a player the opposition is more relevant than the location)

By adverbs I primarily mean single words - in English they usually end in "ly" (but not adjectives derived from people like "friendly", "brotherly") or are alternatives to such words ("well" is an alternative to "badly", "often" is an alternative to "usually" or "occasionally", "hard" is an alternative to "softly" etc.)

They tend to take precedence over prepositional phrases, e.g.
"for anything that doesn't fit into any other category without problems." ("where" is most relevant to "fit")
but
"for anything that doesn't fit nicely into any other category. "

... sometimes to the extent of overtaking stuff in class a. ("put it in the oven carefully" and "put it carefully in the oven" are both possible).

You can do google searches in quotes and look at the number of his to work out what is and isn't natural.

E.g.
"lived with him at home" 2 hits vs "lived at home with him" 327000 hits because "where" is most relevant to "live"
"played with him at home" 3 hits vs "played at home with him" 0 hits because "with whom" is most relevant to play.

That one I understand.
The modifier "only" needs to be as close as possible to the word it modifies, in this case "few hours"

I understand. It is because "that point" is in some undefined future.

That ONE! Meeehhhhh ( I was thinking about using an article or not. It sounded better with an article. But..... Then I thought that there is only one internet. So we don't need to indicate that this is THE internet. Meeeehhhh ( I think that with articles I am pretty much hopeless.


I don't understand this one. According to this link
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/gra...ve-or-verb-ing
"start" is followed by to-infinitive

I understand this one. "to me" is used because it is completely my perspective here.

*cry* I hate articles.
I understand this one. "Those" and not "that" because plural. And sentence structure:
I - subject
was thinking - verb
zero -object, that should come after the verb.

Dear Universum, please don't let me repeat any of those mistakes at least today.

Lapka,

What learning method is most effective for you? We ITT can either simply rewrite in a way that feels natural and post the rewrites, or we can seek to articulate general grammar rules for you. I would tend to take the former approach, while Lektor would take the latter. Which is more effective as far as you’re concerned?

El D and Gregorio and I all seem to have fairly similar writing sensibilities. Lektor’s guidance above is solid too; it all depends on what you need and like.

That's why you need "the". If there were more than one you would use "a" unless there were additional descriptors that limited to just one.

I went to a bar last night.
I went to the bar on 5th Street last night.

I clearly hugely appreciate Lektor's post. It is a LOT more info than I dug out myself on the subject. And he also explains grammar in a really clear and simple way. But it is just too much work for him.

So I think it is better if you just rewrite stuff in a way that feels natural and I do myself search work. Hopefully it will also stick better this way. And only if I am completely confused like with "start to care" or "start caring" then may be someone can do "grammar for lapka".