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Anonymous
00:05
Hmm, were sounds better to me.
Anonymous
Right behind Daniel can't be the subject, so if you have was, you're saying the subject Jane and a man who she assumed was her father can take singular agreement.
Anonymous
Sometimes a conjoined NP can take singular agreement, particularly when it's conceptualized as a single thing: peanut butter and jelly
Anonymous
But I don't think that works so well in this case.
Trey
Trey
02:37
can I write "Hope this helps" instead of "I hope this helps"?
 
7 hours later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
09:11
> A man turns on Channel 1 on his TV set. There is Brezhnev giving a speech.
The man turns on Channel 2. There is Brezhnev giving a speech.
The man turns on Channel 3. A man in uniform shakes his fist at him from the screen and says: "I will teach you not to switch to other channels!"
A Soviet joke of the 1970s
 
4 hours later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
12:48
0
Q: Magazine's readership base diagram: "Distribution by job title" - would this be a good diagram title?

CowperKettleBelow is a diagram (translated from Russian) that describes the distribution of a magazine in terms of who its subscribers are. I'm thinking of changing the title of the diagram to "distrubution by job title", because to my taste functional status is not very suitable for this context. Maybe I'm ...

phrase-requests translation
Anonymous
@Trey Sure. It's called conversational deletion.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
14:12
user image
I think that the definite article is in place here.
I forgot - what do we call it when we omit the definite article before such phrases as "famous writer", "noted writer" etc?
I recall reading a text mocking Dan Brown for his omission of articles
in constructions of this type
found it
itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001628.html
 
2 hours later…
Trey
Trey
16:27
which of these is correct "I don't know where north is " or "I don't know where THE north is"?
 
6 hours later…
Anonymous
22:30
@Trey I'd say it without the.
Anonymous
Just a minor point. In English we always say "what would you call ..." rather than "how would you call ...". — rjpond 4 hours ago
Anonymous
I think a lot of native speakers of English don't realize how much the boundary between what and how can vary between languages.
Anonymous
We think of them as distinct things, and they kind of are, but the distinction isn't made the same way in every language. Just one of those things you don't really think about until you run into it…
Anonymous
By the way, it's Thanksgiving here in the United States! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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