In the Cider House Rules, Jane Eyre and several works by Charles Dickens (such as David Copperfield and The Great Expectations) are repeatedly mentioned and cited.
One of the roles of David Copperfield is the citation “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that stat...
@BESW oh hey, funny that you're discussing *punk genres, I literally just read up on the etymology of cyberpunk and various derivative genres yesterday. (although probably not quite as much of a coincidence because I may have been indirectly prompted to do so after reading your mention of silkpunk on meta a couple of days ago)
Seriously though, I wouldn't have guessed that. Your written English is pretty flawless; I don't remember ever seeing you make a clearly non-native mistake.
@Randal'Thor Thanks! One thing I'm aware of is the use of articles. It's not a problem on the Internet, where no one cares, but I'm not as good with them in my essays. I just can't judge when to use 'the' and when not to
@Gallifreyan I don't know how much it will help, but google searches about when to use particular types of grammar or punctuation often leads to some very helpful articles -- for example, this one on when to use the English articles.
As a native speaker & writer I've often found them very helpful myself.
There's notions even native speakers have trouble with or have debates around, such as: when should I use a comma? when should I use the various types of dashes? when do i use a semicolon?
@doppelgreener in my experience, the mistakes made by native and non-native speakers tend to be very different. I think the missing articles Gallifreyan talks about are cases that would just sound clearly wrong to a native speaker, whereas native speakers tend to make weird spelling and punctuation errors that a non-native speaker would never come up with, because they learn mostly from the written word to begin with.
@MartinEnder I agree with that; lots of ESL errors seem to simply come from implementing patterns from the person's native language. Thankfully for something very specific like "when do I use a/an/the?" there tends to be fairly thorough articles on the matter which I hope are also relevant to an ESL individual.
@doppelgreener I'm pretty confident on a vs. the, or count/non-count. The problem is very occasionally locations, or when nouns have other adjectives in front of them - can't provide examples now, but I clearly remember my last essay having some problems on that. Not very serious ones, or not frequent, but some of those nuances that aren't usually described in internet articles.
One thing I see somewhat regularly on the Stack is a tendency to, say, write "Hagrid is allowed to take classes in Hogwarts?" instead of "Is Hagrid allowed to take classes in Hogwarts?" -- the only issue is an "is" placement, but it results in a difference between stating a fact with a question mark on the end, versus actually stating a question. The former formulation seems to be common to some languages.
@doppelgreener a real wrench in this is when you're learning English and another unrelated language, so the patterns from 3 languages start mixing. After some point I'm not even sure which language a pattern comes from, including even Russian
@doppelgreener I think mistakes along those lines might be common among people from India? (I know there are many different languages spoken in India, but don't know enough to guess at which particular one has this way of formulating questions.)
There's also things like "didn't got", when people try to use both the simple past tense and the auxiliary verb.
I've seen some confusion from Russian speakers over "do" vs "make," which is interesting to me because our local dialect often switches up "make" and "let."
@Gallifreyan not a native speaker either, but I think they're both valid with slightly different nuances (which would both get your point across)
without the article you're saying something like "so we have a situation in which the patterns from (any) 3 languages start mixing". with the article you're saying "so the patterns from these 3 languages start mixing".
@Gallifreyan not necessarily, since you're just making a general statement about learning multiple languages at once, and the three specific languages you've chosen aren't that relevant.
I will admit that I'm copy-pasting from Google Translate, but only because I don't know where else to get Cyrillic characters from. I do remember these words, just don't have the right keyboard to type them easily.
when I had Russian in school, I activated the Russian layout on my keyboard, but it took forever to vaguely remember which letters go where (I had a printout lying next to the keyboard)
you can always enable multiple layouts and switch between them
I tend to use an English layout for almost everything (because the German one is a massive pain for programming) but switch to the German one when I need any umlauts.
@Randal'Thor Meh, I'm not really that much of a pro in answering them, just because it's one of the few things I have read. Besides that, they're not really all worth answering anyway. (And some of them are about the games, of which I haven't even played the 3rd one yet.)
@doppelgreener Indeed, that's one of the most common edits I do, especially in titles. The next one would be missing articles.
@MartinEnder Right, but IMO it depends on the language. I used to have a good time looking at English language signs in Jerusalem, and figuring out where the mistakes came from :)
According to Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey, Tolkien believed that people had an innate ability to "hear" subtle differences in names and dialects, even if they didn't full understand why things sounded different.
Accordingly, in the area of the Shire, he gave things names dervied from English and ...
@Hamlet This is in the star bar without context. I'd just like to point out that there are many cases where users are agreeing, that policy should still be posted on Meta. First, in case non-chat users of the site disagree; second, so that it's on record as site policy.
@MartinEnder Well, 3rd game is much closer to books than previous two, and can in fact be considered direct continuation. But you will lose a lot of backstory if don't play the previous games, and I think they are essential before playing the third. There's also the issue of choices - some of them reflect on minor events further in series, but it's not vital, I believe
Well I haven't read any of the books and am probably not going to do so any time soon.
(I wasn't even aware until this point that the games were based on books and not the other way round. That's quite surprising for the quality of the games.)
@MartinEnder there are multiple easter eggs and other references to books, but the games explain all the relevant plot details in one way or another - you just may need to read the journal entries slightly more often.
@NapoleonWilson No, it just seems more likely that on average English translations will be better because there are probably more people capable of doing the translation in the first place. Of course, for any given work in particular it might always be the other way round, but it's rarely possible to determine which translation is better up front.
But not all, on any but the media-related ones I bear my own name. (And I would in chat if it wasn't for the messed up parent site system.)
@MartinEnder Well, but then again, you also have to consider the factor if translations are even in demand. Take The Witcher for example, the English translations are lacking behind, which points to a lower priority/demand to translate a work very well-received in Poland (or maybe other Eastern-bloc countries by extension). Which in turn might point to less experienced Polish-English translators as compared to Polish-German translators.
On the other hand, the fact that they are being translated now could indicated that the translations were done in the wake of the hype for the games which could mean that they were able to get particularly good translators once it was clear that the demand exists. ;)
This is something very noticable in films at least. English-speaking people can't understand the tremendously high-quality work that the German dubbing industry produces, primarily because their own dubbing industry isn't too well-developed since it's rarely ever needed, maybe only for the occasional French arthouse flick or Japanese anime.
I mean the only way really to find out is to find someone who is very proficient in both languages (or ideally all three) and has read both translations (or ideally the original as well).
@Randal'Thor I feel unable to answer this. To my particular enviroment, hardly any (largely because my generation largely grew up in a Western capitalist society.) But that's a really broad question.
@Randal'Thor Hmm, that's...interesting. But I think that might just come down to popularity due to neighbouring countries. Or maybe more of an openness towards literature of different languages, but I'm unable to judge that.
@Gallifreyan I recently bought the American editions of the original Mistborn trilogy. shortly afterwards I discovered the British editions... I'll definitely be selling mine and buying the British ones, even though I already read the books. there's something really really unappealing about the American covers of fantasy novels for some reason (I'm sure there are exceptions)
@Gallifreyan Especially considering that I don't even remember him fighting in any kind of more than 5 people battle at all in that specific book (but this might as well be my memory).
@NapoleonWilson Heh, I just realised your town (or at least the town mentioned on your SE profile) was called Karl-Marx-Stadt until less than 30 years ago :-)
@Randal'Thor I...don't really know. I doubt there was one, the whole thing seemed more like a stupid propaganda move without much sense. But well, I'm not too well-versed in those iussues.
I could have understood if it was named after some "bad guy" before, but it's named after a friggin' river. Meh, Scoialists. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
War and Peace is regularly interspersed with essays -- something that I have not seen anywhere else in literature. How significant are these essays? They obviously help in exploring the themes and messages of the novel, but how do they fit in the definition of fiction?
Large sections of the nove...
In Art Spiegelman's Maus, he represents different people from different countries as different animals. For instance, he represents the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Polish as pigs, the Americans as dogs, and the French people as frogs. How did he decide which animal to represent each on...
One of the most contentious close reasons we have on the site is the one that designates real-world science questions as off-topic. The close reason is worded as follows:
"Questions seeking scientific solutions or explanations are off-topic unless they relate directly to a cited work of ficti...
@Randal'Thor I was thinking about how many people were against you. And you prevailed, and triumphantly carried the blue diamond, and now have lots of work to do ;)
What questions on other Stack Exchange sites are relevant to Mi Yodeya? I'm thinking of ones that might be on-topic or almost on-topic on MY (or entire tags of such questions).
(But I'm not interested in a question that's relevant only to a specific MY question, and linked therefrom, and not oth...
I recently answered this question: Did Twain mean the coin should be enlarged or not? But after answering it, I began to wonder what it actually has to do with literature. It's about a speech given by a man who happens to be most famous for writing books, but the speech itself wasn't about litera...
In Art Spiegelman's Maus, he represents different people from different countries as different animals. For instance, he represents the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Polish as pigs, the Americans as dogs, and the French people as frogs. How did he decide which animal to represent each on...
@Mithrandir I didn't downvote, but I have a suggestion: why not rephrase your question to be more along the lines of (e.g.) "why were these animals appropriate choices to represent the different countries" and not focus so much on the author?
@Randal'Thor I said "our activity is going to get a lot worse before it gets better"
@Mithrandir I agree with Rand completely
There are things we can do to increase activity. Our topic challenge will be helpful. And I have a feeling questions will pick up once this weekend is over.
@Hamlet My only issue with the phrasing I suggested is that it assumes they were appropriate choices. Which, at least in the case of pigs ~ Poles, I don't think they were.
Perhaps "why were these animals chosen", but then we're basically back to Mith's phrasing with passive voice instead of active.
Like it or not, it was the author who did the choosing.
@Hamlet I'm trying to keep up a slow and steady rate, posting exactly one question per day.
I did post more than one per day in the first few days of private beta, and there've been several days I failed to post anything, but that's the overall aim.
@Randal'Thor OK, not everyone has time to do that, and that's OK. The truth is, if our stats go below 1 question per day, nothing bad will happen to the site. I would prefer a site with a lot of activity to a site that doesn't have activity. I suspect that we will eventually get a lot of activity, based on how broad our scope is. But there's no need to worry. And it's quite normal for a private beta site to decline in activity at the beginning, before picking up in activity again.
For example, getting our questions indexed in Google will have much more of an effect on our stats than people posting questions ever will.
Activity is important and it's good that we're thinking about it. But telling people to post more, on a weekend, when people are hopefully taking time away from the computer isn't the best plan.
Private betas follow a pattern. At the beginning, they get a lot of activity because they're new and everyone on Stack Exchange wants to check them out. Then the newness wears off, and people post less. That's where the hard work begins, and that work consists of finding new members and reaching new audiences, instead of telling the audience we have to post more questions.
I hope you realise I'm not being entirely serious when I say things like "hey everyone, post more questions, stat". I am a bit disappointed by the low number of questions in the last few days, but I'm definitely not advocating quantity over quality.
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@Hamlet Ah yes, outreach. Any ideas for how we can go about finding those new members and audiences?
@Randal'Thor I'm saying don't even worry about questions per day. That number isn't very important.
Questions per day tells us how much activity the site gets. But saying "we have a low number of questions per day" doesn't tell you how to improve things.
I recently remembered there's a Fantasy Stories chatroom over at Arqade, and dropped a plug for Lit in there. One of their regulars (Ash) was already here, and another has signed up since.
According to Wikipedia:
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and numbering about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer.
Was Edwar...
@Randal'Thor most Stacks get their traffic through Google. The Stack Exchange sites are designed to do well in Google. So if we post questions that people are googling, then we'll get traffic that way. That happens naturally.
@Randal'Thor I strongly recommend that you take a look at the site feverbee.com. It will tell you everything you need to know about promoting online communities.
I'm not sure if promoting the site on other Stack Exchange communities is the best course of action. People who use Stack Exchange know that there are other sites, they'll find our site eventually.
@Hamlet Well, like I said before, the desire to post more questions, provided that it's tempered by the prioritisation of quality, can bring about healthy growth and expansion of the site.
If I say "we have a low QPD" and then "OK, let's try to come up with some really good questions to post" and then post really good questions ... mission accomplished, surely?
Take a look at the site. But essentially, we need to change people's behavior so that if they're reading a book, their first thought when they come across something interesting is "I want to talk about that on the literature stack exchange site."
People aren't motivated by increasing the number of questions per day. They'll force themselves to ask some questions, but then they'll see that asking a few questions doesn't magically increase the number, so they'll stop
@Randal'Thor you need to find something that motivates people. I'm not sure what that is yet. Take a look at feverbee.com, think about it for a few days, and then let's talk.
@Hamlet Which "people" though? Initially, us (the active users of Lit); then later on as the site becomes better known, all sorts of people across SE and maybe even beyond. But it's us who're currently bearing the burden of getting enough content on the site that it can become better known.
I'm going AFK for a bit now, but will check out Feverbee and let you know. Thanks for the chat.