ELL's Cabin

Catija

18:14

That's so odd for them to make it "The Stack Exchange" ... ugh.

Where is the chat FAQ anyway...?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Catija chat.stackexchange.com/faq

Catija

Do they still use this terminology at all even?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What terminology?

FAQ?

Catija

"The Stack Exchange Network".

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh they use it a lot.

Catija

18:30

But I think it's old.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. H&P call a noun phrase without a determiner a "nominal"

Anonymous

And using their terminology

Anonymous

Usually you have nominals as attributive modifiers in noun phrases:

Anonymous

> your [Stack Exchange Network] reputation

Anonymous

Not full noun phrases:

Anonymous

18:41

> your [The Stack Exchange Network] reputation

Anonymous

Sometimes people might treat names like "The Stack Exchange Network" as single units, not made of grammatical words like articles and such.

Anonymous

But there's a pretty strong tendency most of the time to treat The as the, I think.

Anonymous

> your [The Stack Exchange Network] reputation

Anonymous

This certainly sounds strange due to having two determiners in a row . . .

Anonymous

@HarryCBurn Everyone with an Android phone does :-)

Damkerng T.

18:43

I think we have a question about when we need to capitalize the the before a proper noun. Essentially, it was about when we count the as part of a name.

Anonymous

@Catija Oh! James Nicoll! :-)

Damkerng T.

"The Stack Exchange Network" makes it sound like The is part of the name.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think that even when The is counted as part of the name, it is often treated as part of a grammatical string.

Anonymous

That is to say, just because something is a proper name doesn't mean it necessarily ignores the rules of grammar.

Anonymous

We could call these transparent names (those which we break down into grammatical units) and opaque names (those which we do not), if we wanted. (I just made these terms up.)

Anonymous

18:45

> According to the A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language analysis,  . . .

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I'll call them translucent names.

Anonymous

I think most people would avoid saying this.

Damkerng T.

I agree. Though apparently, some do it.

Anonymous

Yes.

Anonymous

So with my proposed terminology

Anonymous

18:47

We would say that they're treating the name as opaque when they do so

Anonymous

(They can't see that it's made up of grammatical units because it's opaque.)

Anonymous

5

Q: Using “Had Born” in English sentences

Can I Use “Had Born” in English sentence to express past perfect i.e. past of past? 1) He had born when I reached to the Hospital. 2) This is where I had born. 3) Your father came to hospital but before that you had born. 4) He had born in India. Why Born is adjective and died is Verb? A...

Anonymous

Nope!

Anonymous

Good ol' one word answers.

Anonymous

0

A: Using “Had Born” in English sentences

Born is an adjective. So you must use a form of to be with it as you would any other adjective, if you are saying X is that quality/state described by the adjective. To bear is a verb which means to give birth, and the past participle form of to bear is borne. However, the object of to bear wi...

Anonymous

18:49

Nope!

Anonymous

Good ol' one word comments.

Anonymous

> *She was very born.
> *She was borner than the others.
> *She was more born than the others.
> *She was a born, sleepy human being.

Catija

@DamkerngT. But the use isn't consistent.

Anonymous

@Catija I think of it as the [SE network]. I mean, there's only one, so I use the, but I don't think of it as the [The SE Network].

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Isn't it amazing that native speakers can make up the rules on the own in their mind and the utterances they make still sound natural? :-)

Anonymous

18:52

That'd be silly.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, native speakers don't need explicit rules in their heads to make sentences. (Theoretically, no one does.)

Damkerng T.

@Catija nods -- I think it's very near the limits of the grammar. (So some people will use it differently.)

Anonymous

It's no surprise that native speakers often invent false rules when they aren't familiar with the grammar they're trying to describe.

Catija

I don't even think of it as the SE "Network"... Just as "SE".

Damkerng T.

@snailboat nods -- Though if someone thinks that born is an adjective, most of their borns are still grammatical, I think.

Anonymous

18:55

Born is very unusual as a passive verb form. Usually, we can indicate the agent with a by-phrase in passive clauses, but that doesn't work with born. — snailboat 2 mins ago

Anonymous

I don't generally capitalize the network part either. I just happen to add that if I need to refer to SE as a whole

Anonymous

the [SE] network :-)

Anonymous

Agh!

Anonymous

It expanded my bracketed phrase :-)

Anonymous

No matter what you call born, though, it's a little bit exceptional.

Anonymous

18:57

It's exceptional in Japanese, too.

Anonymous

Well, technically umareru and born aren't the same word. But you know what I mean :-)

Damkerng T.

Some sort of a cooperative verb? -- Oh!

Anonymous

What is a cooperative verb?

Damkerng T.

Something I just made up while thinking about 'born' (เกิด) in Thai.

Catija

0

Q: Should we continue to use "The Stack Exchange Network" on the Chat FAQ text?

I saw today that the site still refers to itself as "The Stack Exchange Network" in some places but I'm not sure if that's correct, current terminology. Here is an example from the Chat FAQ page. The entire page pretty much exclusively reads "The Stack Exchange Network", which seems a bit much....

discussion site-faq

Damkerng T.

19:00

Both the mother and the baby เกิด.

I think there are some other similar verbs too, but right now I can come up with only ถ่ายรูป (take a photo).

@Catija Neat arrows!

Anonymous

Parents aren't born, children are born. (Well, you know, parents are born too, but it's a separate event that happens a lot earlier :-)

Catija

@DamkerngT. Preview... believe it or not. :)

Anonymous

We do say children are born to the parents, not by the mother.

Anonymous

Sometimes to the mother and not both parents.

Anonymous

I'm not sure which is more frequent.

Anonymous

19:04

-

Damkerng T.

@snailboat nods -- That's how English works. I'm not sure how bear/born/borne work in Japanese.

Anonymous

> 女が子供を生んだ　 onna=ga kodomo=o unda 　　'The woman bore a child.'

Anonymous

> 女に子供が生まれた onna=ni kodomo=ga umareta 'A child was born to the woman.'

Anonymous

Here, we can treat um-are-ru as the passive form of um-u

Anonymous

But:

Anonymous

19:07

> 男が子供を生んだ　 otoko=ga kodomo=o unda　　　'The man bore a child.'

Anonymous

> 男に子供が生まれた otoko=ni kodomo=ga umareta　'A child was born to the man = He became the father of a child.'

Anonymous

You can't actually say the third sentence, because men don't (in general) give birth.

Damkerng T.

-

Anonymous

You can say the fourth sentence―it doesn't actually mean that the father gave birth, just that he became a father.

Anonymous

Likewise,

Anonymous

19:09

> 子供に弟が生まれた　kodomo=ni otooto=ga umareta

Anonymous

This means a child had a little brother born in his family, so he became an older brother.

Catija

I wonder if there's a "born/borne" difference at all.

Anonymous

@Catija Well, borne is quite rare now.

Anonymous

People generally do not write "I was borne on August 20" or the like

Anonymous

However

Anonymous

19:10

People do not generally write "It should be born in mind that . . . "

Anonymous

They write "borne in mind"

Catija

@snailboat No, Grammarist says that "born" is used when talking about childbirth, anyway.

grammarist.com/spelling/borne-born

Anonymous

Right, I'm trying to describe the born/borne difference :-)

Catija

I just remember "She hath borne him a child."... which is, obviously, a bit old.

Anonymous

Well, that's not Present-Day English

Anonymous

19:11

As you point out

Anonymous

But!

Anonymous

We can probably still find similar examples.

Damkerng T.

Is it born or borne into a family?

Anonymous

google.com/…

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Born

Damkerng T.

19:12

Thanks!

Catija

@DamkerngT. I would say "born".

Damkerng T.

Thanks, too! :D

Anonymous

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Damkerng T.

Oh, the trend is steady!

Anonymous

Sometimes I like to avoid showing trends by ① setting the window to the last 50 years, and ② setting smoothing to 50 so the years are all averaged out.

Anonymous

19:15

It does make a much less pretty graph, though :-)

Anonymous

So the Japanese verb 生まれる umareru is usually analyzed as an intransitive verb derived from a passive form

Damkerng T.

Hehe! Setting the smoothing to 0 still gives us the same trend.

Anonymous

But not considered to be the passive form of 生む umu

Anonymous

It gets its own dictionary entry.

Anonymous

It's interesting to me that passive born is exceptional in some way in both Japanese and English.

Anonymous

19:17

I'm not sure about other languages.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Can you explain what you meant about Thai?

Catija

0

A: party finished / was finished

You are correct, both forms are perfectly acceptable. However - In American English, at least, we don't generally say that a party "finished". We are much more likely to use "ended" or "was over". I had a party last night but the party ended too early for me to drink enough to call it a n...

The comma here is unnecessary, right?

Well... in the sample sentence in the question.

Anonymous

It's up to your personal sense of style.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat In Thai, there are a few related words: เกิด (bear/born), คลอด (deliver), ให้กำเนิด (give birth).

Anonymous

That comma can be optionally included.

Anonymous

19:19

I'd include it, but I'm an inveterate overpunctuator.

Anonymous

I have to go back and remove commas from my drafts . . .

Damkerng T.

In that sentence, I think I might not use a comma.

Anonymous

I have what is sometimes called a heavy punctuation style, in any case.

Catija

I like to use a lot of commas, which is why I asked... but I've always been under the impression that generally commas are not required before "but".

Anonymous

When coordinating two independent clauses, the prescriptive rule is to include a comma between them.

Anonymous

19:22

These are two independent clauses.

Anonymous

In actual usage, authors tend to use commas when the clauses are longer, but not use commas when the clauses are shorter.

Anonymous

(Commas are always used with asyndetic coordination, as in "I came, I saw, I conquered", even if the clauses are very short.)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat And 6 is short enough.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, you can take the length of both clauses into account. Is the text long enough that visual separation is helpful for the reader?

Anonymous

That's a decision the writer gets to make. That's why I called it optional.

Anonymous

19:26

The general tendency is to have more commas the longer a sentence is. That is, many commas are optional, but the longer a sentence is, the more likely the commas are to be used.

Anonymous

People don't like to squish a bunch of commas into a short space.

Anonymous

And short sentences sometimes flow better with no commas at all.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: the joke about marie antoinette

Robespierre walks into his new office, once the Queen's parlour: "So this is where she powdered her cheeks?" he remarks. A fellow revolutionary replies: "All four of them!" and they all collapse in raucous laughter. Kenneth Williams would have been proud. Can you please explain to me the point o...

meaning

I wish our learners would tell us more about what they know (or don't know).

> Is there some sexual connotation contained?

Obviously, they have a very good idea what cheek could mean.

BTW, I don't know if interpretation of a joke is on-topic. We seem to disallow songs and poems interpretation requests.

HarryCBurn

Hey!

Damkerng T.

o/

HarryCBurn

19:41

What does that o/ face(?) mean? :o

o/

Oh, a wave?

Damkerng T.

Yup!

HarryCBurn

\o/
 |
/ \

Damkerng T.

LOL

HarryCBurn

There you go :)

Damkerng T.

o|-<

HarryCBurn

19:42

<(._.)>

Damkerng T.

^That means "exhausted". :P

HarryCBurn

:)

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn Cute!

HarryCBurn

I'm starting to have "fun" with my issue.

I enjoy problem solving, but this is ridiculous.

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn The problem is, iirc, they had to write a completely new set of drivers for Raspi.

HarryCBurn

19:44

Oh yeah?

Hm.

It may be because I'm using the cheapest WiFi card I could find ;)

Damkerng T.

Yes. The machine code is incompatible with x86.

HarryCBurn

I guess that makes sense.

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn I remember that I got one that works at about $3-$4.

HarryCBurn

Damn.

Mine was more than that!

;)

Damkerng T.

Um... maybe it was because I bought it from China. :P

HarryCBurn

19:46

Damn, and mine was from the UK!

:)

Although it had fast shipping.

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes. I guess buying things from the UK in the UK would be much faster. :D

HarryCBurn

Yup!

Anonymous

Lyric interpretation can be highly subjective, each listener finding different meaning

Anonymous

I think that cheek joke is relatively unambiguous

HarryCBurn

Oh, I may have got it.

Isn't it suggesting either A) she shows herself off/the sexual connotation or B) that she's two faced?

Two meanings I see.

Anonymous

19:51

Oh, well done

HarryCBurn

;)

Damkerng T.

BTW, @HarryCBurn, this list should be helpful: elinux.org/RPi_USB_Wi-Fi_Adapters.

HarryCBurn

I'll add my answer.

Thanks!

Anonymous

I guess you can find ambiguity anywhere if you try hard enough :-)

Damkerng T.

(I picked one that looked promising from the list. Can't remember which one at the moment.)

Welcome!

Quite likely, a Belkin RTL one.

HarryCBurn

19:55

@snailboat ;)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I guess so! :D

4

A: must will be willing

That is almost certainly a typing mistake. My guess is the author started to type something, and then changed it, and forgot to delete the word "will". They may have originally typed "[...] true revolutionary will be willing", without the "must", or they mistyped "will" instead of "be willing" an...

I ran into two nice answers from this user today already!

Ice Girl

Hi all :)

HarryCBurn

Hm, my mind is playing ticks on me. It keeps on blacking out errors in text :(

Hey @Ice! What's up?

Ice Girl

@HarryCBurn Not much

HarryCBurn

:)

Ice Girl

20:01

:)

HarryCBurn

0

A: the joke about marie antoinette

I see two meanings here, a higher brow and a lower brow variant on the joke. The first is the sexual connotations discussed in the comments to your post: of two extra cheeks and showing her self off. At first I thought this was the only meaning, until I though of the phrase "two faced". Twice as...

Posted my answer.

Almost at 1k rep!

@Dam Well, it mentions my Adapter's company 50 times. Time to search!

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn Happy hunting! :D

Hi @IceGirl

HarryCBurn

> RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter
Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter (USB ID 0bda:8176)
Works out of the box with Raspbian (tested on firmware #600 up to #718)
Slow when plugged into Pi (6/0.5 Mbit down/up) (good for cheap ($3) ssh access)
Fast when plugged into powered USB hub

"Works out of the boc with Raspian"

I wish it did on UbuntuMATE :(

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think mine is Realtek too.

HarryCBurn

I take it you don't have a link for drivers bookmarked or anything? The ones I downloaded from their site doesn't seem to work after running install.sh.

Damkerng T.

20:06

Wait, is yours a Raspberry Pi or a Raspberry Pi 2?

HarryCBurn

@Ice Have we seen you around before?

@DamkerngT. RPi 2.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Mine is just a RPi.

Ice Girl

@HarryCBurn yes

:)

HarryCBurn

@DamkerngT. I got mine recently, so i decided to go for the better model. I was using mine for games emulation so the power helped.

@IceGirl Huh, I don't remember c:

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn I suppose so!

@HarryCBurn I guess it could be so cutting edge that it's bleeding. :P

HarryCBurn

20:09

Hah!

I hope so, at least I'd know it's good.

Ice Girl

:D

HarryCBurn

Is it just me or does Raspbian look really bad?

Damkerng T.

Um... It looks pretty much like that on mine. :D

HarryCBurn

I'm not sure of the aesthetic :(

Damkerng T.

For a small single-board PC, it looks great, imho. :-)

But if you're like me, I think you will need to use a lot of command lines.

HarryCBurn

20:20

But the RPi 2 i capable of a lot more.

Even in the default aesthetic.

Damkerng T.

Oh, that looks much cuter! :D

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. You see a sideways person, I see a snail crawling through a hole in a piece of lettuce :-)

Anonymous

It's a rorschachicon!

HarryCBurn

That's my setup. ^ Much nicer ;)

Anonymous

There was a while when I made my desktop pretty.

Damkerng T.

20:24

@snailboat Hehe! That's interesting!

Anonymous

Although pretty by definition includes "there are no icons anywhere"

Anonymous

Icons are the devil.

HarryCBurn

Woo! I'm in the 1k rep club! :)

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn Cool!

HarryCBurn

@snailboat Icons are the devil of looks, the angel of efficiency.

Anonymous

20:25

Icons are very poor UI.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat That makes me feel a little guilty! :P

Anonymous

They have one big advantage, which is that they work across languages when done well.

Anonymous

They're rarely done well, but still.

Damkerng T.

I've got over 1990 tabs, I guess you can guess how many icons I have on my desktop. :-)

HarryCBurn

@snailboat They're rarely done badly. usually done okay.

Better than hamburger menus.

Anonymous

20:26

Go to Stack Exchange. Look at the links at the top that say "Questions Tags Users Badges Unanswered Ask Question"

HarryCBurn

Yup?

Anonymous

Now replace them all with icons. Instant suck.

Damkerng T.

No icon!

Anonymous

Congratulations, iconifying the UI ruined it :-)

Anonymous

You can do the same thing with active featured hot week month

Anonymous

20:27

And with votes answers views

Anonymous

Simply not a good idea.

Anonymous

If you were used to the icons, then you'd be able to use it just as well, and it could work in multiple languages without any changes.

Damkerng T.

I've never figured out how to find the question from ELL stack on this page: stackexchange.com.

Anonymous

But there's a huge learning curve for no reason.

Anonymous

Icons are extremely counterintuitive most of the time.

Anonymous

20:28

When icons are acceptable, it's in a situation where you assume everyone has already paid that learning cost and is capable of remembering the icons you're using.

Damkerng T.

Eye-balling is sometimes painful.

Anonymous

There are so many icons in use, most users can't remember all of them, so they may never master your icon UI.

Anonymous

But in cases where you can make that assumption, icons can be useful.

Anonymous

Still, it's going to be a lot slower than someone on the command line.

Anonymous

And you have a steep learning curve either way . . .

Damkerng T.

20:30

I guess people who find icons easier are just more familiar with the icons.

Anonymous

What's funny is that most of the site "icons" are actually just images of text :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yes! And I find the command line very easy most of the time, and I'm much faster at it than most people are. That's because I've put a lot of time into it, not because it's perfectly designed.

Anonymous

The UNIX command line has a lot of flaws.

Anonymous

But since I've got so much learning invested into it, I don't have much motivation to use anything else.

Damkerng T.

Still, its extensibility is awesome.

Anonymous

20:31

Yes, it's quite good in many ways :-)

Anonymous

I have friends who tell me how nice Powershell is on Windows.

Damkerng T.

Oh? I haven't really used Powershell.

Anonymous

Which is nice, given that CMD is more or less useless.

Anonymous

(I've used bash on Windows for what feels like forever now, although that has its own issues)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Me either!

Anonymous

20:32

I don't want to put the time into learning it right now.

Anonymous

I have many other things I need to spend time learning each day :-)

Anonymous

And we all have to prioritize.

Damkerng T.

People who know me often tell me that it would a breeze for me to learn it, 'cause it was mainly influenced by Tcl.

Anonymous

Oh really?

Anonymous

I haven't used Tcl/Tk in years.

Damkerng T.

20:33

Wikipedia also says so:

Windows PowerShell

Windows PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and associated scripting language built on the .NET Framework. PowerShell provides full access to COM and WMI, enabling administrators to perform administrative tasks on both local and remote Windows systems as well as WS-Management and CIM enabling management of remote Linux systems and network devices. In PowerShell, administrative tasks are generally performed by cmdlets (pronounced command-lets), which are specialized .NET classes implementing a particular operation...

Anonymous

I am familiar with it, though.

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Anonymous

I remember at the time struggling with version incompatibility issues . . . but I've read those aren't such a big deal anymore?

Damkerng T.

nods -- That was around perhaps 7.0 - 7.3.

Once it got to 7.3, all the good things emerged.

Anonymous

My desktop is an anime picture.

Damkerng T.

20:36

Oh, not just in the screensaver mode?

Anonymous

My screen saver turns the monitor off.

Anonymous

Well, into power saving mode :-)

Damkerng T.

I used to use aquarium as my screensaver. Now I just have it go black, and soon turn the monitor off. :D

Anonymous

Anime!

Anonymous

20:37

I thought that cherry blossom tree was really pretty.

Damkerng T.

That girl looks familiar!

Anonymous

She's Madoka.

Damkerng T.

The witch?

Anonymous

Well . . . mahō shōjo :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, a different Madoka. :D

Anonymous

20:38

Ah, I'm sure there's more than one, but I only know that one!

Anonymous

It was a cartoon a few years ago.

Damkerng T.

The other Madoka I mentioned was from a much darker world.

Basically, she chose to die so our world survived.

Madoka Magica, I think.

Anonymous

That's the same one!

Damkerng T.

Eh?

Hah!

The images I got when I searched for  mahō shōjo look much brighter!

Anonymous

Well, it was supposed to be a deconstruction/inversion of the mahō shōjo trope.

Damkerng T.

20:41

nods

Anonymous

See, that was a popular genre of shows for girls some years back.

Anonymous

Like Sailor Moon.

Damkerng T.

That one's become a landmark already. :-)

Anonymous

But in this one, they took the genre idea and made it super depressing where everyone is doomed to fall into despair and die a horrible death.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

20:42

Some people thought that was brilliant, other people were not impressed.

Damkerng T.

I just watched only a few episodes, probably only two.

Anonymous

But it was a very popular cartoon.

Anonymous

I've been trying to watch more Japanese TV over the last few years because it's one of the easiest forms of listening practice. And it's really easy to get Japanese cartoons here in the US. Dramas are a little bit harder, but you can still watch some :-)

Anonymous

I think watching dramas is a little bit better for listening practice.

Anonymous

In anime, everything tends to be pronounced a bit more perfectly, and of course it's all recorded in a sound booth. And importantly, you can't actually see anyone's lips move as they speak.

Damkerng T.

20:44

nods -- The more realistic and the more words it is, the better, imho.

Anonymous

I also like radio dramas, but I think because there are no visuals, they often go for even slower, more careful speech.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat I think it has one advantage. It forces you not to watch the lips. :D

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Well, that's both good and bad. I think both kinds of practice can be useful.

Anonymous

Audio-only and integrated.

Damkerng T.

nods

So sakura is called cherry blossom in English?

Anonymous

20:46

Sighted people naturally integrate their visual perception into their listening when learning their first language.

Anonymous

It's interesting, actually.

Anonymous

さくらんぼ is 'cherry'

Damkerng T.

Some people, hmm, I think most people, can read lips too, though not very efficiently.

Anonymous

さくら is the plant that cherries grow on :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Some people can read lips naturally, but I think many people have to practice it.

Damkerng T.

20:47

Oh, so it's not a sakura tree.

@snailboat Eh? Hmm...

Interesting.

Anonymous

It's not a skill that everyone is equally good at.

Anonymous

But most people do integrate visual perception into audio perception.

Anonymous

My housemate is legally blind (she can see, but not very well), and tests for integrated perception like the McGurk effect don't work for her

Anonymous

On the other hand, she's a very good listener.

Damkerng T.

nods -- That's perfectly reasonable.

Anonymous

20:49

It's not like she needs integrated perception.

Damkerng T.

I think most people don't really need multi-modal input in listening tasks.

Oh, that's probably why they give us only the audio in the tests.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. But!

Anonymous

Most of us have an easier time mirroring people than reproducing the sounds they make by ear alone.

Damkerng T.

Oh, definitely yes!

Anonymous

We naturally make the same mouth shapes, in particular, when we can see them.

Anonymous

20:52

So I think learning pronunciation can be easier when you can see your conversation partner.

Damkerng T.

I think we really need all possible inputs in our developmental stage.

(Do we need to smell the words too? :P)

Anonymous

Another thing is that certain gestures, stances, and so forth are culturally associated with speech acts.

Anonymous

If you can see the speaker, you can naturally pick up those associations, too.

Anonymous

0

A: Is へ and に interchangeable in these cases?

In this case, 「に」 targets the destination and 「へ」 refers to the direction of the destination. In the examples you wrote, changing one for the other would cause differences in nuance, but the whole meaning would be pretty much preserved. Examples: 「スーパーに行{い}くんですか？」 - Are you going to the supe...

Anonymous

I wonder how much ELL has this sort of problem.

Anonymous

20:55

In this post, a learner has, in an attempt to be helpful, reproduced a common grammar explanation that can be found on the internet and in some grammar books.

Anonymous

Unfortunately, it's false.

Damkerng T.

I think ELL has some similar questions. Probably quite a lot.

Anonymous

But since the grammar explanations shape the perception the learners have, it can be difficult for them to realize that they're false.

Damkerng T.

11

Q: Difference between "even if" and "even though"

When I was at university, my English teacher used to insist a lot on the difference between these two expressions, telling us that even if was to be used when introducing a hypothetical situation (Even if I knew where John is, I wouldn't tell you), whereas even though was to be used as a concessi...

difference conditional-constructions conjunctions

Anonymous

Hey, one of StoneyB's first answers! :-)

Damkerng T.

20:57

@snailboat nods -- It's the origin of a symptom I call Unenglish. :P

@snailboat Hah!

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Maybe a similar problem causes Unjapanese!

Damkerng T.

Hehe! It seems so!

Anonymous

It should be noted that "even if" and "whether or not" can be used quite differently. Examples of the difference: "Even if I knew where John is, I wouldn't tell you." and "Whether of not I know where John is doesn't change the fact that I wouldn't tell you." — GorrillaMcD Jan 24 '13 at 0:26

Anonymous

That's a good example! (With a minor typo :-)

Anonymous

My feeling is that even if and whether or not are actually fairly different . . .

Damkerng T.

21:00

nods -- I think it's only a good substitution as in "it sounds acceptable".

So it's more like a good test than a real substitute.

Anonymous

> I won't tell you, even if you torture me!
> I won't tell you, whether you torture me or not!

Anonymous

The former is showing the extent to which the speaker is willing to go in order to keep the secret. They'll endure even torture!

Anonymous

The latter . . . well, doesn't it sound a little weird?

Damkerng T.

It does indeed!

Anonymous

I don't feel like I'm really explaining even if very well.

Anonymous

21:03

Luckily, other people have probably already done a better job.

Anonymous

Even more luckily, I think you already have a good grasp of even if :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, it looks like I've got a lot of interesting stuff to copy over to the other room. :-)

Anonymous

Yay!

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