Language Overflow

IͶΔ

06:22

@snailboat Thanks. It just felt nice to use "begone"

Damkerng T.

@snailboat This one: ell.stackexchange.com/q/84934/3281

Hi! @IͶΔ

IͶΔ

\o

Damkerng T.

I've just watched Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, the first episode, and it happened in Thailand, near Bangkok! (Yay!)

But!

IͶΔ

Hmm, the fact that meta's active page shows a suspended user as the 8th active participant means we have only 7 semi-active people on meta.

Tub!

Damkerng T.

Everyone who was supposed to be Thai wasn't Thai!

IͶΔ

06:26

Give them a break. Thais are statistically rare

Damkerng T.

Except for an old man who appeared in a short scene. He got quite a few lines, and even though he spoke Thai naturally, the dialogue wasn't natural!

IͶΔ

They make up for like, 1% of the world's population

Damkerng T.

It was as if it was written by someone who used a translation service, or someone who knows Thai but never spent time in Thailand.

IͶΔ

It should naturally be 1% of the world's actoresseseses' population.

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ Hehe!

Also, they got some aspects of Thai culture wrong.

IͶΔ

06:28

What I like about The Last Samurai is that they used native Japaneses.

Damkerng T.

The most obvious one was perhaps the looking down on women.

In the show, they said that men won't touch women because we look down on them. But it's the exact opposite, actually!

@IͶΔ nods -- I don't think it's really that difficult nowadays.

IͶΔ

But they gave a lot of value to dialog. They wanted it to be native.

It wasn't even native-like.

Purely native talk.

But @Snail would know.

Damkerng T.

Wait, in The Last Samurai?

IͶΔ

Ja

Damkerng T.

I thought that samurai master guy is Japanese.

IͶΔ

06:31

The only thing I know about Japanese is it shows up if your Unicode handler is crappy.

@DamkerngT. I think the Wikipedia page thingy said that all of the people that supposed to be Japanese were. At least all of them with some impact on the film.

Damkerng T.

nods

IͶΔ

> Mitosis occurs only in eukaryotic cells and the process varies in different organisms.

@Dam what's the process in robots?

Damkerng T.

I'm not sure. I have no detailed files on that.

Anonymous

07:05

I haven't seen that movie.

Damkerng T.

Aww... Tom Cruise was in it. :-)

That's what I've usually heard @DamkerngT. Also, You must be tired, aren't you? So, how to determine? — Student 6 mins ago

Hmm... I have no good answer to that.

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. But it's morning. How can you be tired?

Damkerng T.

It may look odd without the formatting!

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. The tag question is with mustn't.

The other ones are something else.

@Snail is about to enlighten us.

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ But what are they? I think we call them tags, too.

Anonymous

07:11

I think most people would just not form a tag question.

Anonymous

But sure, mustn't is possible.

Anonymous

The invariant tag right is much more common, I think. I'm not sure how frequent mustn't is in BrE off the top of my head.

Damkerng T.

A-ha! We've got a term for it now: invariant tag.

Anonymous

It doesn't vary, so it's invariant :-)

Anonymous

But my personal choice is not to form a tag at all.

Anonymous

07:16

I wouldn't use mustn't.

Damkerng T.

I think mustn't sounds a bit BrE.

Anonymous

Yeah, I think it's more frequent.

Damkerng T.

And it works better with It must be ... than You must be ..., I think.

Anonymous

Do people really say You must be tired, aren't you?

Damkerng T.

I wonder that, too, but I think it's natural enough.

Anonymous

07:19

The peril of discussing this stuff from my phone without reference books or corpora! All I've got to rely on is whatever little's in my brain :-)

Damkerng T.

And your sore hand!

How is your hand, BTW?

Anonymous

Oh, it's fine now :-)

Damkerng T.

Phew!

Anonymous

I'm going to use hot water next time instead of trying to use strength.

Anonymous

I have enough grip strength to play guitar, that's good enough for me :-)

Damkerng T.

07:23

You could buy that rubber thingy, too! It's very handy!

With just a couple bucks, your hand will be safe from getting hurt opening any cans and bottles!

Anonymous

Yay!

Damkerng T.

;-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Must is actually more frequent in general in BrE.

Anonymous

Particularly in conversation, but in other registers to some extent as well.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think so. That's why the question surprised me.

Anonymous

07:36

I haven't read the question yet.

Damkerng T.

The question is quite short. :-)

0

Q: Tag question of "must"; how to determine?

It must be her car, isn't it? It must be her car, right? Why it can't be expressed: It must be her car, mustn't it?

tag-questions

Hey, the whole question fits in one box!

Hmm... would a husband call his wife, Mom, or a wife call her husband, Dad, in English?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Even though I think mustn't sounds grammatical, the question tag just doesn't really seem that appropriate in your example. In the car example, it seems more appropriate, but my idiolect simply doesn't form question tags with mustn't.

Damkerng T.

(I find the subtitles translated from Japanese "Dad", funny.)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Um, maybe?

Anonymous

I wouldn't really expect it, but I think sometimes around children people label themselves Mommy and Daddy or the like.

Damkerng T.

07:46

Ahh... like in other cultures, then.

Anonymous

And then you might talk about yourself in the third person, using Mommy or Daddy instead of your usual first-person pronoun. I think some people do that.

IͶΔ

Mommy's studying mitosis right now

Damkerng T.

0

A: Tag question of "must"; how to determine?

According to [Swan, 1986]: If the main clause has an auxiliary verb (including a 'modal' auxiliary verb like can, must), the question tag has the same auxiliary. If the main clause has be, this is also used in the question tag. If the main clause does not have an auxiliary verb (or...

Huh? What book by Swan?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think that sometimes question tags with must seem inappropriate, even if you can come up with a grammatical form, because you're asking someone to confirm a proposition whose truth value you've just labeled an epistemic necessity.

2

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. [

Anonymous

07:50

Does Leech's book talk about this at all?

Damkerng T.

Not sure.

IͶΔ

Or maybe 1986]. Depends on their reference style

Damkerng T.

looking up...

IͶΔ

Though I think we only had 1984 by Orwell

Anonymous

Oh, you just starred a hypothesis! We need to think it through to figure out if it's right, though :-)

IͶΔ

07:52

Maybe the books name is ,

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. We should get a BrE speaker to make judgments about some mustn't tags.

Damkerng T.

> The contracted form mustn't sometimes occurs in tag questions following must in the logical 'neccesity' sense: There must have been hundreds of people waiting, mustn't there?

> Leech's 132c

Anonymous

I see!

Anonymous

That must be BrE.

Damkerng T.

It's almost as if it proves that the answer is incorrect!

Anonymous

07:57

I think one reason we might not form tag questions with mustn't in AmE is because we so rarely use mustn't in any capacity these days.

Anonymous

I don't think you can say that mustn't doesn't exist in AmE, but I think its status is fairly marginal.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

This is something that is unfortunately not covered well enough in CGEL.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

How could it be treated lightly?! :-)

Anonymous

And I couldn't find enough relevant information in Biber et al 1999, either.

Anonymous

08:04

Now I'm looking at PEU.

Anonymous

I really need to get Leech's book! :-)

Damkerng T.

:D

CowperKettle

Good afternoon, Snails, Dam!

Country pie -Bob Dylan

►

(0:

Damkerng T.

Good afternoon!

CowperKettle

Hope the Black Beauty snail feels fine today!

I'll go and try to jog a bit. (0:

Damkerng T.

08:10

Have fun!

IͶΔ

@CowperKettle jog a bit

Anonymous

It's true that normally, if we were to express that sort of modality with must: You must be tired! You've been running for two hours! We would express the negation of the proposition with can't rather than mustn't: You can't be tired! You've only been running for one minute!

Anonymous

In my speech, mustn't basically never occurs.

Anonymous

Must not maybe very occasionally in deontic senses: You MUST NOT pass three variables to this function. That would make the function very sad.

Anonymous

Probably occasionally in epistemic senses too. Let's see.

IͶΔ

08:13

Thou shalt not pasth three variablez to thy funcshen. <- Internet Shakespeare talk

Anonymous

Yeah, deontic uses of must not are less common in my chat logs, but I've got both! :-)

Damkerng T.

I guess that most of epistemic must not or mustn't are used with It.

Anonymous

I checked 20 million words of chat logs, but there wasn't a single mustn't.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

But most of the English speakers I know are from the U.S. or Canada.

Anonymous

08:20

@DamkerngT. "They must not enforce it heavily unless it really stresses their capacity." "You must not have been at 100%." "Must not get discouraged!" "I can hear a bird that sounds like an owl but must not be an owl."

Damkerng T.

The last example has a hidden it!

Anonymous

"He must not get cold at night." "I must not have been paying attention." "Must not allow world to explode!" "So it must not be a strict mode thing then." "It must not feel very good." "I don't know what it is, so I must not." "Must not be 'live' yet!" "sf::String must not even be used anymore."

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I parsed it as predicating on a bird.

IͶΔ

@snailboat What chat logs?

Anonymous

@IͶΔ My own personal chat logs. I have chat logs from most of my lifetime.

Damkerng T.

08:22

"I don't know what it is, so I must not." -- I think this one is deontic.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, let me grab some context for you.

IͶΔ

@snailboat O_o

+1

Anonymous

There's post-auxiliary ellipsis there.

IͶΔ

It's the most reliable corpora.

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

08:24

"Do you want Dangoon's Teaching?" "I don't know what it is, so I must not. :)"

Anonymous

= "It must be the case that I don't want it."

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Without context, it was ambiguous.

Anonymous

I was just picking some random examples. Some of them have it, but I don't think the majority do.

Damkerng T.

It looks like it can happen with first and second-person subjects as well as third-person.

Anonymous

08:27

I don't see a single tag question with must.

Damkerng T.

Interesting!

Anonymous

This might be why, if I'm forced to form a tag question following must, I can come up with what I think is the proper form of mustn't, but it doesn't seem like something I'd ever do in natural speech.

Anonymous

I left a comment asking if the OP is learning American English or British English.

Anonymous

I'm guessing they've been exposed to at least some British English if they "usually" hear tags with mustn't.

Damkerng T.

I surely have been. :-)

Not sure about the OP.

Anonymous

08:30

Maybe the textbook(?) they're quoting is supposed to teach American English, and the authors chose to leave out tags with mustn't because, although they're acceptable, they're so infrequent.

Anonymous

COCA has two matches for , must n't it ?

Damkerng T.

Wow, that's like a couple exceptions!

Anonymous

One is Cory Doctorow, who is now a British citizen (he was born in Canada) and lived in the UK at the time he wrote it.

Anonymous

The other is a Brazilian writer.

Anonymous

I think if you look hard enough, you can find speakers of American English today who occasionally use a mustn't like this, but I still think its status in AmE is pretty marginal. It exists, but barely.

Damkerng T.

08:36

nods

Anonymous

BNC only has four matches for that exact query, by the way. That's twice as much as in COCA, and proportionate to the size of the corpora it's ten times as much, but the numbers are too small to really conclude anything.

Anonymous

Someone could look through a more general search like , must n't and catalogue the results, but that would take more time than I want to put in this morning :-)

Anonymous

@JohnClifford Maybe when you come back you can enlighten us as to what sorts of tag questions with mustn't seem natural to you.

IͶΔ

Scottish sort of course

Damkerng T.

I can't find mustn't it in TV News either!

IͶΔ

08:41

0

Q: Is the minimum five character edit limit useful?

I sometimes see a clear, well-framed question with one tiny but glaring error, for example "have" instead of "had" or "loosen" instead of "looser". It's a good question, but a good answer is going to have to compete with a lot of nit picking. I can't just fix the error because of the minimum five...

discussion editing

Anonymous

I don't think the current grammars of English acknowledge the extent to which mustn't has become marginal in American English.

IͶΔ

Hmm, isn't it always like that?

Doesn't it become evident to everyone only after the term is close to vanishing?

Anonymous

Dunno!

Anonymous

But it's like when we talk about something being "archaic".

Anonymous

Some things are clearly archaic. Others clearly aren't.

Anonymous

08:48

But there's a huge range of things in between where it's not so clear.

Damkerng T.

Maybe mustn't it to American speakers is sort of like mayn't it to me.

Anonymous

One dictionary editor might mark something as archaic that another would consider current. It's hard to make that sort of judgment call sometimes.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. We don't have mayn't in AmE at all.

Damkerng T.

I wouldn't use it either.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I guess [Swan 1986] is Basic English Usage.

Damkerng T.

08:50

A-ha! Thanks!

Anonymous

It's not a terribly satisfactory citation, though. We could do with a page or section number.

IͶΔ

@snailboat Weird abbreviation

Damkerng T.

(Never heard of it, though.)

Anonymous

There are some speakers who have mayn't, though.

Anonymous

In my idiolect, it simply doesn't exist.

IͶΔ

08:51

@snailboat Do we need something like this on meta.ELL?

6

Q: What is the recommended style of citing on chemistry.se?

In principle citing is fine in any way that attributes the original author(s) unambiguously. The highest principle should always be: Give credit. However, recently we decided to have a community driven big-list, i.e. Resources for learning Chemistry (main), (meta). Since the thread is growing wi...

discussion faq

Anonymous

That's quite different from mustn't, which I think clearly exists, but I'd never use it.

Anonymous

@IͶΔ That would be nice. Almost all answers are unsourced on the natural language sites.

IͶΔ

Whoawhoa wait. Don't tell me there's nothing like that one up there on meta.ELU.

Anonymous

I was kind of lazy about typing out names early on on SE, but I got in the habit of typing them out at some point :-)

Anonymous

@IͶΔ I don't think so, but you can go check and see.

IͶΔ

08:53

That would be weird, since I think every site with half a dozen professionals has this concern.

Anonymous

Mayn't was more common a century ago.

Anonymous

There are still people who use it today somewhere, I believe, but it's ungrammatical to my ear.

IͶΔ

Mayn't. There I used it

I saved a word!

ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

Anonymous

Well, you said it, at the very least :-)

Damkerng T.

LOL

Anonymous

08:55

You mayn't have actually used it, though, depending on how we define use.

IͶΔ

uses mayn't

Anonymous

See, since I don't have mayn't, I don't even know if that's a valid use of it. I mean, at an intuitive level.

IͶΔ

I mayn't forget to use mayn't. Also petaloso

Anonymous

Well, my may and might are different from the may and might of the early twentieth century.

Anonymous

The authors of Modality in Contemporary English say that mayn't is "now hardly to be encountered", while Huddleston & Pullum write in CGEL that "though current in the earlier part of the twentieth century, it has now virtually disappeared from the language."

3

Anonymous

09:02

(pages 49 and 1611 respectively)

IͶΔ

Virtually disappeared means it still appears in gutters.

Damkerng T.

Modality in Contemporary English sounds like an interesting book.

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. That's what I say about half of the book titles I read these days.

Anonymous

COCA has 12 matches for may n't (remember that the suffix -n't is parsed as a separate word in this corpus, so you need a space when searching), all in fiction.

user62015

Hi!

IͶΔ

09:04

@snailboat Hmm, those dark-ish future-returns-to-the-past comics?

user62015

@DamkerngT.

IͶΔ

@user62015 Hullo

@DamkerngT.

user62015

Hi

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. It has a chapter by Geoffrey Leech! :-)

Damkerng T.

@user62015 Hi

IͶΔ

09:05

It feels nice to ping @Dam. No wonder you do it excessively.

user62015

I want to ask you something

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh, it must be a good book, mustn't it?! ;-)

user62015

Does "as if" takes plural forms in the past tense?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Yeah, it just has to be, doesn't it? :-)

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Hehe!

Anonymous

09:06

@user62015 Can you add a complete example to your question?

user62015

Sure.

Damkerng T.

@user62015 Plural forms?

IͶΔ

Ass if?

user62015

Here we go

IͶΔ

I can't come up with another plural.

user62015

09:07

The sea looks as if it has been agitated by a storm.

CowperKettle

Hmm. Where's the plural form?

IͶΔ

Hmm. Where's the plural form?

user62015

Answer says we must replace "has" with "have or had"

Anonymous

@IͶΔ My unfounded speculation of the day: I suspect usernumbers is confused by were and was. The sea looks as if it were agitated by a storm.

Damkerng T.

Hmm...

CowperKettle

09:08

@user62015 "it" + has (third-person pronoun)

IͶΔ

@user62015 What? Have is certainly ungrammatical

Anonymous

But were is a special exception.

IͶΔ

@snailboat HA, subjunctive

Anonymous

So you have to know that you can't do the same thing with have.

Anonymous

Did I guess right?

IͶΔ

09:08

We should all flip a table now. (/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻

user62015

It's a question, where we have to find the errors in the questions.

Yes.

Anonymous

Yippee!

IͶΔ

Find the errors in the examiner's face

Damkerng T.

@snailboat [Guess master award]

IͶΔ

Best Guess™ Oscar

Anonymous

09:10

@DamkerngT. It's more of a collection of papers than a coherent book. There are a lot of linguistics publications like that. Different authors, mostly experts on the topic, brought together to focus on different aspects of that topic, in this case modality in English today.

Anonymous

Geoffrey Leech wrote a chapter about how modality has changed recently.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

Although I haven't read most of the book, I bet you would find it interesting! :-)

Anonymous

His chapter is titled Modality on the move: The English modal auxiliaries 1961-1992.

2

Damkerng T.

Movable modality!

IͶΔ

09:12

I wish I could purchase such books.

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ You mayn't. :P

IͶΔ

My parents say I should focus on Konkur and maybe olympiad now.

@DamkerngT. NOT PETALOSO! (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Damkerng T.

Hahaha!

Anonymous

@IͶΔ It's usually better to borrow them, but I understand it might be hard to find a local library with good English linguistics resources. Is there a nearby college library you can check?

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ I think your parents are very wise. :D

IͶΔ

09:13

@snailboat Yes, but they won't have such books in a trillion years.

CowperKettle

@IͶΔ I concur with your parents on this count.

IͶΔ

I concur with them too.

But

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. There's a snippet here: books.google.com/books?id=F5tYZAEj56kC&pg=PA223

IͶΔ

BUT

But I'm lazy! (/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Thanks!

@IͶΔ Aww... what tranquil laziness!

IͶΔ

09:15

I only study less than 8 hours a day. It has been enough till now.

CowperKettle

8 hours a day is quite much. I managed to eke out 5-6 hours of maths, 5-6 hours of chem at most when studying on my own.

IͶΔ

@CowperKettle I have rivals that study up to 17 hours a day.

[ . . . ]

CowperKettle

nods

When you attend lessons with others, it might be easier.

IͶΔ

So, I dunno, maybe I'm good at reading or what.

Our results are usually the same.

Anonymous

Must is declining in BrE, it seems, but its fall has been both earlier and faster in AmE.

IͶΔ

09:18

@CowperKettle 90% of my studying is self-study.

Anonymous

Of course, it's still around in both dialect groups.

Anonymous

It's interesting to read in Nicholas Smith's chapter about the decline of must in BrE.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Eh? I thought it was the other way around!

Anonymous

See p.263.

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. What? Why?

Anonymous

09:23

@DamkerngT. We use must less in AmE in all registers.

Anonymous

It seems it's declined in both dialect groups, particularly the deontic use.

Anonymous

@IͶΔ Are you going to join me on meta.english.SE? :-)

IͶΔ

@snailboat Sure! What should I do?

Anonymous

I thought you were considering posting about citation form.

IͶΔ

I thought that too, dunno. Should I post?

Anonymous

09:27

Dunno!

Anonymous

Hey, was Fanatic always 100 days?

IͶΔ

Ja

Damkerng T.

Wasn't it 200 days?

IͶΔ

No.

Anonymous

I thought it was 90! :-)

IͶΔ

09:32

Even though if it was, I would've earned it on both chem and ELL.

Anonymous

I guess it was always 100, though.

Anonymous

I don't have it on ELL.

Anonymous

I've come close, but I've managed to avoid it.

Damkerng T.

I wish we had another one for 500 days. :P

Anonymous

Yeah, me too!

IͶΔ

09:33

Yay! You're not a lunatic!

Anonymous

I'd totally have that one on Japanese.SE :-)

IͶΔ

I'm a lunatic on three sites.

Damkerng T.

LOL

Anonymous

I had something like 800 days consecutive.

Anonymous

Now it says: visited 1295 days, 332 consecutive

Anonymous

09:35

snailboat ♦

28k 4 60 125

grammar kanji meaning etymology translation word-choice verbs

IͶΔ

Hey, just saw this on an early blog post

Anonymous

Bold? Bold? Not on my watch.

Damkerng T.

> visited 850 days, 850 consecutive

Wow, a thousand days isn't very far!

IͶΔ

Bows down to real lunatics, I mean fanatics

Damkerng T.

@IͶΔ Cute cat!

IͶΔ

09:37

The Great Edit Wars

Jeff Atwood on March 4, 2009

Alas, Stack Overflow has fallen prey to that dread disease that plagues all wiki systems: The Edit War.

Damkerng T.

I like the atmosphere at Tcler's Wiki better than at Wikipedia. Everyone seems to try their best not stepping on someone else's toe.

Anonymous

Wikipedia can be frustrating because of a number of bad editors. And, well, the amount of bad content.

Damkerng T.

A typical page at the Tcler's Wiki: wiki.tcl.tk/1228

I wish to see a similar page/discussion on our tags on ELL.

Anonymous

It's been a long time since I last used Tcl!

Damkerng T.

I still use it every week!

IͶΔ

09:44

Technetium iodide?

I don't use it.

It could be radioactive.

Anonymous

For a quick pop-up notification here and there? That sort of thing? :-)

Damkerng T.

For the I have to get it done quickly sort of thing. :-)

IͶΔ

Hack-ish.

Anonymous

Perl is still my go-to language for that sort of thing. Python sometimes.

Damkerng T.

To me, Node.js is basically Tcl that just happens to be written in JavaScript.

Anonymous

09:48

There are some things I like better in Python, so sometimes I choose it, but I'm more comfortable with Perl because I've used it more.

Anonymous

Hah.

Damkerng T.

I tried to start a translation project between Tcl-Python-JavaScript, but gave up because it didn't seem to be worth the effort.

But it gave me the feel of the challenges in human language translation!

CowperKettle

10:17

> At both the top and the bottom of society, farmers regularly engaged in marketing activities, so long as disorder in the society did not prevent them from doing so.

A tricky question:

1

Q: "Society" with no article before it?

I am confused with the following sentence in a English learning book, Society doesn't pay enough to old people. Why there is no article before the word "Society"? I found in a dictionary that this word can be used as a countable noun or an uncountable noun. So, my guess is that it should be...

articles

CowperKettle

10:34

1

A: "Society" with no article before it?

"A society" would mean "any society in a set of societies" "The society" would mean "a particular society in a set of societies". But neither of those meanings is what the author intends. The implication of the author's statement is that there is only one society. Sometimes we lose sight of ...

In @TRomano 's view, it's "our society".

A left-margin omission.

Anonymous

Well, he thinks they misspoke rather than ellipted something.

Anonymous

That is, he thinks they should have said something other than what they did.

Damkerng T.

Perhaps the generalization was overdone, and that makes it sound better with Our.

Anonymous

I think the original is fine, though.

Anonymous

Hmm.

Anonymous

10:36

Maybe we need context to determine if it's okay.

Anonymous

I suspect there's no context to be found, though.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

I'll upvote his answer, even though I don't entirely agree.

Anonymous

I don't really disagree either, I just think it's kind of ill-defined without more context, and I suspect there isn't enough context to make it clear in my mind.

CowperKettle

11:03

The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch)

►

Damkerng T.

13:38

2

Q: Do you have a suggestion ( as to ) which book I should buy?

I am confused sometimes if I should add " about/ as to" before wh words. Which one do you think correct is? Do you have a suggestion about/ as to which book I should buy ? Do you have a suggestion which book I should buy ?

sentence-structure

Interesting...

Google Books returns nothing for "suggestion about * I should buy" or "suggestion for * I should buy".

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. Hmm, I think suggestions can't be sentences.

Damkerng T.

But Do you have any suggestion? is fine (I think).

IͶΔ

suggestions you mean?

Or singular?

Damkerng T.

I guess either would work.

IͶΔ

Yes, but the plural might be much more common.

Damkerng T.

13:48

Hmm... let's see...

books.google.com/ngrams/…

Oh, I didn't expect a gap that wide!

IͶΔ

@DamkerngT. I rock ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

Damkerng T.

With idea, they reverse.

books.google.com/ngrams/…

V.V.

14:04

Hi, Damkerng, MAR!

IͶΔ

Hullo @V.V.

IͶΔ

14:56

@DamkerngT. Interesting

CowperKettle

15:38

> Although I have never lost a relative or a friend in a terrorist attack, I’ve had many friends who were present in terrorist activity areas.

"have had" or just "had"?

Vecher Dobry, @V.V.!

IͶΔ

15:52

I like "have had" better

CowperKettle

nods

Transcript for