chop,

Bring it.

I love this thread and certainly not because I think Lapka needs improving. I find her posts the most interesting and poignant to read. I love it because everyone here's interested in poker, yet it appears almost as much so in grammar and helping someone out.

+1

Josie, this thread is very much like a strat thread, but for grammar instead of poker.

As long as posters don’t brutally foul up corrections, I’m not going to correct their corrections. We’re trying to help lapka, not prove how smart we are!

I like lapka's English as it is, because it's got a charming 'accent' in writing. (And her actual voice on speakpipe is exactly as I imagined it, which is nice.) But, for professional and other reasons, she wants to get it right.

Trouble is, to get it right, you've got to adopt a specific form of English that a native speaker would speak (and write). If she wants to do American English, that's a whole world of grammar and phraseology and sense of humour to conquer. There are simple little wrinkles like saying 'a couple seconds' instead of 'a couple of seconds' the way a British person -- or an American being formal -- would put it, but there's a huge number of little tricks and references that you'll need to get hold of.

Speak for yourself.

57,

I also prefer lapka English. As you say, it fits even more perfectly now that we have lapka voice too.

As for learning the subtleties you mention, that’s what TV/movies are for.

this sentence. It's a very good one. It could have been formulated as 'My vocabulary got significantly bigger after reading lots of stories and novels by Asimov', but you used a punchy and fitting verb, and some crafty elision, all compressed as much as is reasonable. Intended or not, well done.

Okay, Rei is now just showing off with “elision,” a word which few know and even fewer use!

Fair enough.


ED - carry on. Please keep in mind this thread is for English, not Texan or hipster.

It tastes really good now.
Time (almost?) always follows manner.

I understand both of those. In first case I just left out the preposition and in the second just used wrong idiom. Idioms are important like I learned the hard way in another situation. I used something like " allow you to save the face" instead of "allow you to save face". You have no idea how much action and which kind resulted from that.


I appreciate big time that no one ever trolled me bad or was mean to me for my English here. But language is important. It is ..... I know my reaction to Russians, who live for many years in Germany and barely speak German. I know my reaction if I hear poor Russian from Russians. I don't want to cause such reaction in people around me. My English will never be perfect. But I can do better than now with just a little of effort.

That is something that I think so often. OOT is great. I love this life help threads. It is like having many brains for your disposition.

Duuude. You definitely didn't show your smarts here.

I am mulling over this one right now. Also in connection with Rei's post yesterday.

I completely understand Rei's post. And my instincts totally agree with him. But...... How about this rule with time at the end of a sentence?

Greg, your correction is fine, but I’m not certain about the rule: wouldn’t “It now tastes really good” also work?

Those aren't rules, nor is applying any of that strictly necessary. Most of the differences are in rhythm and feel (say the sentences aloud and you'll hear this), which is part of the beauty of language to me.

You're now opening up a whole new can of worms. (Usually?) adverbs of time are fine between a subject and its verb, but not after a verb and before an adverb of manner. It's also (usually?) fine for adverbs of time to come at the beginning of a sentence rather than at the end, as in, now you're opening up a whole new can of worms. You're opening up now a whole new can of worms, is obviously not correct.

I’m with Rei. When I write creatively, I obsess over seemingly minor differences like these to create mood and tone. There are minor technical ambiguities in meaning in two of Rei’s options, but the meaning is clear. At the level of difference between those, it is much more art than it is science.

This. Also, I like how she calls everyone dude. (or butt)

It's not really a rule, it's guide to what's going to sound most natural.

You can bring things from the "other stuff" or "time" categories to the front. Notice in the 3rd example he separates "Last week" from the main flow of the sentence with a comma (or a pause in speaking).

Another example would be "Quickly, he closed the door, locked it and ran away from the noise of Howard banging on it."

MS Word considers a comma to be required after a fronted prepositional phrase because its out of the standard sentence order (though it isn't really a rule and whether you write the comma depends whether you would pause if speaking).

"to avoid Howard" isn't a prepositional phrase, it's an infinitive clause and "to" has a function similar to "чтобы" seems to have meaning "in order to".
https://en.bab.la/dictionary/russian...BE%D0%B1%D1%8B

Where "to" really is a preposition it's followed by an "ing" form - as in "I'm looking forward to seeing you again".

I've never got into teaching my students sentence order with an infinitive clause but fwiw Rei's example 1 sounds less natural than number 2. You'd most often hear number 1 if the speaker realised mid sentence he needed to add it the extra information and it also works nicely as a denial of "You haven't been doing enough to avoid Howard".

Yes, the cardinal sin of sentence order is putting stuff between the verb and the direct object.

I stopped using the terminology "adverb of time" and started teaching students that the ones that most naturally belong between the subject (usually the auxiliary verb if there is one) and the verb are the adverbs of frequency because otherwise the students just put too much stuff there.
e.g. they said "I yesterday went fishing." rather than "I went fishing yesterday."

Compare to "I usually have cornflakes for breakfast." and "I have cornflakes for breakfast usually". (the second just sounds like usually was added as an afterthought)

Basically as we go along and pick up other words like "probably" and "first" I just say "oh yes, this belongs in position 2b before the main verb too"

"now" or yesterday answers the question of "when" so it goes at the end of the sentence (I also don't consider them to be adverbs in the narrower sense I mentioned earlier, i consider them to be single-word time phrases equivalent to "two days ago"). Some other words like "often" are borderline.

Sometimes "time words" or adverbs of manner can go before the main verb for dramatic effect, for example. "You are now entering a world of pain".

Lektor - I'm very much enjoying your write-ups. Thank you for taking the time to contribute them.

lapka,

"Somehow I am pretty sure that he is not 20 sth any more."

I'm pretty sure I get your meaning here, but what exactly were you going for with "20 sth"?

I suspect they will, but slightly less than you hope they will.

I wanted to indicate that rep himself is with high probability in a group "middle aged" .

Huge tx for your time. I am trying to let it all really sink-in.

Didace was asking what did you mean by "20 sth" because he's old and doesn't naturally read that to say "20-something". Most of us do understand "sth" to mean "something", especially in this context. Smth is more commonly used but that's visually similar to smh and neither is used that often.

Originally Posted by lapka; Captains correction:

"Hmm..... Now I am "wondering" instead of "thinking" if it's possible and how exactly, to teach comprehension on an online forum."

It is. Start a thread in which people vie to correct your English.

-> new word learned: vie: to strive in competition or rivalry with another; contend for superiority.
-> with "wonder" and "think" . Apparently there are subtle differences in the meaning. "Think" is used more like, when I know but am not sure. "Wonder" is more asking myself a question.