English Language Learners

A room to talk about English, linguistics, or anything you want! But remember this is a public room: do not give out personal contact information here.
3512d ago – Anonymous
244

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Starred posts

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Dec 22, 2013 12:59
Dec 22, 2013 12:52
@DamkerngT. yes
Dec 22, 2013 12:36
associate=put together
Anonymous
Dec 22, 2013 12:31
I guess I do. I like habanero fajitas a lot.
Anonymous
Dec 22, 2013 11:28
(A manhole cover!)
Anonymous
Dec 22, 2013 11:21
Honestly? People presumably say it because I can find search results for it, but I can't actually remember having heard it before
Anonymous
Dec 22, 2013 11:03
Whereas the original says that there is only one floor, zero upper floors
Dec 20, 2013 09:59
500 views in 2 days.
Anonymous
Dec 20, 2013 09:55
Oh! I'm #1!
Dec 20, 2013 09:50
Oh, a party!
Anonymous
Dec 20, 2013 09:49
Well, since I'm a moderator (on chat, not on ELL!), I can cheat and give myself a fake star.
Dec 20, 2013 09:46
"Winter is Coming" please.
Anonymous
Dec 20, 2013 09:46
Pithy enough for me.
Anonymous
Dec 20, 2013 09:41
I like giving bounties. They're the only thing you can buy with the fake internet money known as "reputation"
Anonymous
Dec 18, 2013 19:16
They are exceptions.
Anonymous
Dec 18, 2013 17:48
(Another bad habit of mine: I've never been able to train myself out of inserting too many commas into my sentences.)
Dec 15, 2013 21:45
try google-fu
Dec 13, 2013 12:12
the sentence also says "I make popovers, which are unseasoned rolls"
Dec 13, 2013 12:10
You don't know what a "popover is, right? So you highlite it and google search and get this
Anonymous
Dec 5, 2013 19:40
We have a fair amount of chat on Japanese Langage (Formerly & Usage), but I wonder if our struggling meta participation will dip further without a non-hidden link
Kaz
Dec 2, 2013 22:39
Ever notice how "decline" is made up of "dick" and "line"? "The dickheads at the bank took my loan application and put a line through it: it was dick-lined!"
Anonymous
Nov 19, 2013 19:05
> The potentially confusing similarity between the terms reflects the fact that both are derived from a Latin word meaning "complete". There are, however, two entirely different kinds of completeness involved. With the perfect the key concept is that of past time. In examples like She has written a novel, the novel-writing is a completed event in the past. With the perfective it is a matter of viewing the situation as a complete whole, but it need not be in the past.
Anonymous
Oct 5, 2013 19:08
waiwai933 on November 04, 2011

One of the prevalent questions on the English Language and Usage – Stack Exchange is about whether a or an is the correct indefinite article to use. It’s a straightforward question, but like all questions, there are subtleties that raise further questions.

General Rule The question of “a” vs “an” is always decided by the pronunciation of the word that follows the article, without exception. Words that begin with a vowel sound, such as apple, egg, or owl, use the indefinite article an. …

Anonymous
Sep 25, 2013 10:04
It might also be worth pointing out that we also talk about fictional people, and fictional characters have a surprisingly high rate of total recall
Sep 25, 2013 09:16
@snailboat Then you take the lead and downvote. Use your democratic power instead and comment wherever possible.
Anonymous
Sep 25, 2013 08:49
If we tried to make ELL into a site where every question had to be completely objective, we would have very few questions
Sep 2, 2013 05:59
language game greatlanguagegame.com
Aug 27, 2013 23:00
To me, ELL is not, and must not be a free-for-all party where any question is answered "just because". If we do not have a niche that we answer questions for, and more importantly, a scope that we do not answer outside, then we are not a Stack Exchange site at all, but merely a luxury Ask-Me-Anything Answers site. That is perhaps what Yahoo Answers is, but it is not (IMO) what ELL is, or should aspire to be.
Aug 27, 2013 22:26
@Matt Our product is not questions; questions are just the packaging. Our product is answers, and our answers are and must be vastly different from ELU's. We can't give the half-assed yes/no answers that pass muster on ELU, we can't appeal to our readers' vast experience of the language for analogies and examples, we have to explain every answer from the ground up and indicate how far the explanation will take the reader the next time the situation arises....
Aug 27, 2013 19:01
... and, at the same time, we become more knowledgeable about, more sensitive to, our own languages and dialects. I am an immeasurably better writer of English for having struggled through Doktor Faustus and The Court History of David.
Aug 27, 2013 18:53
@kiamlaluno There are many reasons for learning a language. Talking and writing to people is one of them; listening to people and reading what they have written is another. In graduate school I mastered Middle and Early Modern English, I have spent time on Middle Welsh and Biblical Hebrew, my wife is now working on Old French and Old English and Old High German; we study these things to read, not to write ...
Aug 27, 2013 16:19
@kiamlaluno Typography is typography. And language is language. Yes, of course your command of English would improve by reading any well-written book that interests you. You will learn more about how to write and speak English by reading J.K.Rowling or Neal Stephenson or Isaac Asimov than by reading pedestrian business communications and semi-literate software instruction manuals.
Anonymous
Aug 22, 2013 17:22
(Though I no longer concern myself with matters of closing or reopening questions on ELL. I leave that to other people.)
Anonymous
May 15, 2013 18:09
Feb 21, 2013 04:03
@ctype.h, By introducing a meta post, I suppose. Here is a venture in the movie site.
Anonymous
Feb 18, 2013 14:38
If you can't say "A depends on B", or "C depends on both A and B", then A and B should be separate.
Feb 13, 2013 18:35
@StoneyB ...why would anyone close that question? I fail to understand the desire to close questions that are "too advanced" and say they should belong on ELU. If someone is learning English and they have a question, that by definition makes it an ELL question. For one thing, how is someone to know if the question is advanced or not if they're learning? For another, who cares if there are advanced questions?
Feb 10, 2013 15:40
Naming some extra site?
Jan 30, 2013 21:39
I wish people would comment less, and answer more. I think Mitch's comment in ell.stackexchange.com/q/183/54 ought to have been an answer.
Jan 30, 2013 20:01
"How are we today" is the pluralis nutricis, or the nurse's plural!
Jan 28, 2013 02:24
@LiamW You can @-refer users who have been already in this chat room; otherwise, you should be a moderator, and use the super-ping (@@).
Jan 24, 2013 15:09
No, any problem that comes across while learning English
Jan 24, 2013 14:23
pineapplecide!
Jan 24, 2013 10:55
And on Skeptics.
Jan 24, 2013 07:36
Jan 24, 2013 05:20
Where are your uncertainties, Breezelnox?! Where are they?
Jan 23, 2013 21:58
Its bed time for me here in England :-( At least it is for a 15 year old.
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