Language Overflow

quetchalcoatle

20:04

Like, how can I phrase it, if the coach says " you would have to be here for the games and any practices that you schedule, if you had the time to participate." it sounds as if I have already declined.

Catija

... Stoney already advised you to stop requiring everything to fit into the neat boxes they give intro learners to use... That's really not how English works.

quetchalcoatle

That is very correct. The question is, would you use "would" or "will" in that sentence?

Well, you also detected strangeness in it as I did, I was reasoning like heck and couldn't find the answer.

Catija

Would. Because it says "had". If it said "if you have the time" I would use either will or would.

But the part I find strange isn't the will/would issue... it's the weirdness of why someone would schedule a practice when they're joining a team... they'd be attending the scheduled practices.

quetchalcoatle

Oh, I'm not joining a team. I'm their coach, and thought it easier to explain the situation to say I made the team.

But I guess it failed.

Catija

Then why are you saying "you"... you're talking to the player. You should be saying "you would have to be here for the games and any practices that I schedule".

That is what is odd about the sentence to me.

quetchalcoatle

20:16

No. It was from the man in charge of the coaches. Well, it is quite hard to explain every single detail of it when posting a question. The situation was, they said I am the coach now, and I asked them what do I have to do, and they said " you will have to come here for the practices you schdule. "

Catija

Ah, that makes more sense. In that case, the phrasing is fine. It was unclear that you were the one being spoken to. I thought that you were the one doing the speaking. - If you are the coach, then you will have to come to the practices. If you are considering being the coach, then one of the conditions of that is that you would have to come to the practices.

Does that help?

quetchalcoatle

Yes, quite so. I think I will have to explain the situation and the context clearer when posting a question.

One more thing though. I've seen people make such fuss about the matching modality of would with past tense and will with present tense. But you said above that if it is "if you have the time" (which uses present tense in conditional) you will use "will or would". Would you do it in every case that a present tense is used in conditional, I mean using would and will interchangeably?

Catija

I can't think of every case... but I would say that it depends on how nice I'm trying to be. "Would" when making a request of someone sounds less like a command.

I think...

I've been overthinking it now and my head is swimmy. Do you have times where you know a word is spelled correctly but you've been looking at it for so long that it just seems off somehow? That's where I am right now... sorry.

quetchalcoatle

Sorry. Wrote something else.

I know that feeling too. At some point everything becomes vague and it feels like it is not real.

Maybe I will post a question about the second question I asked you. Conditionals is such a hard field. I think it is more about the varying situations and kind of set uses rather than a delicately defined grammatical structure. Thank you!

Catija

20:33

Sure. :)

TIPS

20:45

Hullo @Quet! Welcome to LO!

@Catija When I pronounce "sure", I also approximately pronounce the word for salty in Persian. I wanna make a pun that no one understands but I'm not that evil.

Yet.

Perhaps.

@quetchalcoatle That's so right. Perfect!

Hullo @Snail

Anonymous

21:11

@TIPS Good morning! :-)

Damkerng T.

22:17

Something from Charlotte's Web:

> Wilbur: You called yourself 'The Rat'.
Templeton: I can call me that. You can't.

TIPS

Quote of the day-ish

I'm guessing you just woke up?

Damkerng T.

That's another mystery of the day. :)

TIPS

Waiwait. You didn't shut down for the night.

Well, neither did I.

Let's do something fun while the rest of the world is asleep.

Like, Damexit or whatever

Damkerng T.

LOL

Ah, be back in 5. (I'm making my tea.)

TIPS

When is five?

I think Thailand maybe GMT + 6.

That'd make it 4:25 there.

What is he even doing at this time of night? Unimaginable

Damkerng T.

22:26

It's almost half past five now.

One may say that it's in the morning now.

TIPS

So you were gonna go back in time?

Or was that 5, five minutes?

Damkerng T.

Yup. :D

TIPS

Nice. I want tea too!

Damkerng T.

Here, have some! [tea]

TIPS

During Ramadan, my tea consumption goes from 0 to a gallon a day.

Damkerng T.

22:27

What a wide range!

TIPS

That's why I'm abnormal

Maybe

If someone's abnormal, will they know it or not?

Damkerng T.

Probably, abnormally.

TIPS

How many people with psychological problems know they have psychological problems?

If I'd hazard a guess, that number is too low.

Damkerng T.

That's a question for psychologists.

TIPS

Y U VOTE TO CLOSE MY QUESTION

Goes to rant on meta

Damkerng T.

22:29

:D

Wait, which one?

TIPS

Either.

Both have been disappointingly without drama.

Damkerng T.

You can vote to reopen them first, and I'll see what I can do. :P

TIPS

The dramatickest meta.SE post of the week have been

-29

Q: Request for Meta

discussion question: Discuss first! I would like for this site (Meta.SE) to turn into a meta (StackExchange.Meta). It should be then called "Stack Exchange Meta", with the main site being stackexchange.com. That is not actually weird, because there is Area 51, the site for proposals for SE 2.0 ...

Such a shame.

Damkerng T.

Good morning, @snailplane!

TIPS

I mean, look at this:

-25

Q: Embedding .SWF into posts

On Stack Overflow and similar sites, it would be nice to be able to embed .SWF files like you can with single scripts and images. I know that .SWFs may be considered unsafe, but you could have a peer-review system and also automatically scan the .SWF for viruses. There would also be a "click-to...

feature-request

Anonymous

22:31

Morning! :-)

TIPS

-25 and no one's crying. Pathetic

@snailplane Morning!

And on meta.ELL, we have

-2

Q: Proposal: Encourage new users to accept the correct answer

Scrolling down the ell feed, one can see that the majority of questions do not have accepted answers. StackExchange as a website has a strong emphasis on accepting a useful and/or correct answer and I feel new users should be reminded (either by the system or other users) that they generally have...

discussion answers accepted-answer

Anonymous

What would be much more useful is a system for hosted audio clips on the natural language sites.

Damkerng T.

+1!

TIPS

which I still don't understand how the commenters assumed those things about the OP's intentions.

@snailplane Yet another useful request to be ignored

Damkerng T.

With some advanced features like spectrogram plots, pitch tracking, and so on!

TIPS

22:33

Meta.chem doesn't disappoint much.

-10

Q: Suggesting a chemistry homework site

I think there a should be separate site for homework, where students can show their efforts and post their questions. Many questions of that type are closed here for unnecessary reasons.

discussion scope homework

@DamkerngT. Yeah, I also become like this in 5 o'clock.

Damkerng T.

:D

SOME PIG

(Watching 'Charlotte's Web' here)

Anonymous

@TIPS We should just have one general site for homework questions, where anyone can ask for anyone to do anything for them on any topic. The unifying concept for the site will be that the OP doesn't want to do the work, and they can pay people to do it for them with fake internet points.

TIPS

Wondering how much it'd work though.

Anonymous

If you build it, they will come.

TIPS

Actually, considering what some SO people do for rep, I would think it could work.

@snailplane HW sites do not get a favorable reception on Area51 though.

I've seen a few of them emerge, and die just as fast.

Anonymous

22:42

@TIPS Do I need to put some kind of sarcasm tag on my messages?

Damkerng T.

@snailplane It could even sell!

TIPS

@snailplane Woot, I thought you were serious.

Anonymous

I apologize :-)

Damkerng T.

(Considering that Homework Help websites are quite popular.)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I don't think there's anything wrong with homework questions in general as long as they're otherwise good questions.

TIPS

22:44

The acts of the user in question gives me an odd feeling of shame, anger, hatred and smirk. — TIPS yesterday

Anonymous

On ELL, I think we should just hold them to the same standards we hold non-homework questions.

TIPS

Well, tell me what you see there, and I'd tell you that these people would've killed for rep if it weren't for ethics.

Anonymous

To.

TIPS

Three

Anonymous

I left out to and it sounds funny without it.

TIPS

22:45

But I do hold non-HW questions, right on my hand.

My littler brother asks so many questions.

Damkerng T.

@snailplane I guess it's because there possibly are more homework questions than proofreading ones.

TIPS

10 year-old, curious about the world around him, and typically a thinker.

He also likes ice cream a lot.

@snailplane For a good portion of high rep users, these standards are nonexistent.

Damkerng T.

@TIPS I wish I had ice cream shops over there!

TIPS

I wish I had ice cream shops too

Damkerng T.

:D

TIPS

22:47

but on Ramadan, every food shop thingy is closed.

Damkerng T.

It's actually a good business.

TIPS

Everyone is ~~pretending to be~~ fasting.

Damkerng T.

Aww

TIPS

You just wait till Ramadan ends though.

We'd attack ice cream.

Damkerng T.

:D

TIPS

22:48

Like zombies

Damkerng T.

I'll warn ice cream. :D

TIPS

Then ice cream would inject deadly things called sprinkles to itself, and we'd stop.

Damkerng T.

Which brand is popular over there? An international or a local one?

TIPS

Ever made a reference to a movie you forgot?

@DamkerngT. Clothes? Or anything?

Damkerng T.

@TIPS Huh?

@TIPS Ice cream

TIPS

22:49

Local.

Damkerng T.

Aww

TIPS

Etminan, Mihan etc. make really delicious ice creams.

2

I've eaten foreign ice cream. Never as good.

Is Thai ice cream good @Dam?

It must be since you don't get much snow.

Damkerng T.

Foremost is good, but I'm not sure if it's really local.

TIPS

How can you not be sure?

Damkerng T.

Because most popular brand names sound English-like!

But coconut ice-cream is da best!

TIPS

22:53

East Azerbaijan, our province, has some good diary. As a result, you can both get very nice and very healthy-ish ice cream.

@DamkerngT. (/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻ How many contain spelling errors?

Damkerng T.

@TIPS Oh, most are okay! (Because they're brand names!)

(Try image search for ไอติมกะทิ to see coconut ice-cream. Yummy!)

TIPS

Any westernish brand has a motto. Does Google translate provide moments of joy?

@DamkerngT. Sure.

@DamkerngT. Now I want to come to Thailand.

Damkerng T.

:D

TIPS

Should I bring umbrellas, hats, or money?

Damkerng T.

Just money. You can find others cheap here. :D

Wow, have they improved Google Translate?!

I tried two slogans, and both were translated perfectly!

TIPS

23:01

OH NO OH NO :'(

What else is going to entertain us in these long days?

Damkerng T.

Ah, found one that didn't quite work:

อร่อยชิ้นเดียวไม่เคยพอ ~ Delicious piece never enough

(It should've been: So delicious that one piece is never enough.)

TIPS

Let me guess, the real translation is "Calvin Klein"

Oh.

Anonymous

@TIPS But we should raise (or bring into existence) those standards for both homework and non-homework questions, in my opinion.

TIPS

@snailplane The only thing I got for trying is cold looks because I looked unsympathetic towards the poor poor learners.

Who apparently can't even get a Google search right.

Or write a good question title.

Damkerng T.

Ugh! Searching for the brand (CK), I found lots of threads about that controversial ad in May!

<-- never worn a CK.

TIPS

23:08

@DamkerngT. Which?

@DamkerngT. Worn once. It felt like clothes.

Damkerng T.

Well, it's probably not suitable for you.

But the model is Danish, I think.

TIPS

@DamkerngT. CK?

Damkerng T.

See, this is cooler!

today.com/style/…

@TIPS Calvin K.

Damkerng T.

23:21

0

Q: What does "Bankroll someone's rage" mean?

During an episode of The Practice, We are sympathetic, but we are certainly not gonna bankroll your rage. Bankroll means providing the money that someone needs for a plan, business. How can you make a figurative meaning out of this?

word-usage idioms

Our learners seem to unable to guess the meaning of a figurative expression either!

Either that, or they can guess but won't tell us.

TIPS

I can guess your nationality but I won't tell you.

Damkerng T.

^*be*

@TIPS Sometimes I'm not sure.

TIPS

Of what?

My guesses?

Damkerng T.

Where they're from.

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