Language Overflow

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yubraj

00:17

Hello everyone! !!

Which English is better to learn British or American?

1 hour later…

Feeds

01:20

Q: My finger's skin is peeling off

He scratched his finger and his finger's skin was a little peeling off. "I scratched my finger. My finger's skin is peeling off." Is the word "peeling off" describe well as the image?

grammar

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Username similar to website in answer: Which is the plural of "forum": "fora" or "forums"? by abahadil on ell.SE

Jasper

02:25

@yubraj British English and American English are 99 per cent the same. Differences include spelling of some words (eg colour and color), pronunciation of some words (eg tomato), meaning of some words (eg pants). General American is rhotic (pronounces the r in colour) while Received Pronunciation is not. Choose the variety most useful for your own purposes!

2 hours later…

V.V.

04:18

I really liked that "old bean " applied to men. Lol.

Morning to the world.

8 hours later…

Jasper

12:16

@snailplane He probably did not know what he was typing.

CowperKettle

13:10

Should it be chain or chains?

2 hours later…

ColleenV

15:16

@snailplane subjunctive isn't consistent with some of our other tags because it's not plural. What would you (and the other folks in chat) think about changing it to subjunctive-constructions ? It would parallel other tags like conditional-constructions perfect-constructions et. al.

Anonymous

16:01

@ColleenV "Subjunctive constructions" is fine from a modern grammar point of view, although that terminology isn't very common at the moment. Traditionally it would have been called the "subjunctive mood", although Modern English has mostly lost its mood system, so that's arguably inaccurate.

Anonymous

You can always dodge the theoretical debate and call the tag subjunctives :-)

Anonymous

That would be my preferred solution.

Anonymous

I'm not against "subjunctive constructions", though.

ColleenV

16:34

@snailplane I think subjunctives is good. It was my first choice, but I wasn't sure if it made sense. Then I thought, "Gee, they went through all the trouble to allow us more characters for tags, it would only be polite to make use of them." :P

Omkar Reddy

Hi! Which verb should I use with "some news"? Is or are?

ColleenV

@OmkarReddy Without any context, "is". "news" is plural in form, but singular in construction according to the dictionary.

There is more detail about "plural in form, singular in construction" in this article from Daily Writing Tips

Omkar Reddy

@ColleenV Thank you!

CowperKettle

17:29

Good evening peeps

CowperKettle

17:53

> Acceptance criteria:
The absorbances of **specific** blanks of healthy donors’ serum and negative solutions should not differ from the mean absorbance of the blank solution by more than 20 %;

A question. Can we read the word specific here to mean "individual"?

I was explained by a technician that they use spetsifichny (specific) here to indicate that the blank solutions of serum were obtained from different donors.

Which means, as I understand, that they were individual blanks.

But I'm wary of changing the word too radically.

1 hour later…

CowperKettle

19:19

My poem of the day..

> Excuse me for not staying true to you,
For hugs that lasted but a summer's night,
And ended sooner than the sun's first light
The forest's heavy canopy cut through.

> Can you recall the river's merry roll,
And how it winded, changing in its course?
So twists and turns a man's inconstant soul -
A flighty rill, a stubborn restive horse.

To be continued

CowperKettle

19:43

> I would construct a dam to still the rill,
And hobble fast the horse's flighty leg,
But for the last I have but meager will,
And for the first I lack an intellect.
So take a pity on these horse and rill,
And hug them sometime gently, if you will.

1 hour later…

CowperKettle

20:52