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CowperKettle
CowperKettle
05:32
Idiom of the hour: to sail before the wind (to achieve something easily)
 
2 hours later…
Featured Questions
Featured Questions
08:00
4
Q: 'I wish I met her now .' Is this correct?

DasikSometimes 'wish' subjuctive makes me(non-native speaker) confused. So, which is correct? I live here, she lives abroad. Somthing happend now, so I want to talk to her. In this situation: a. I wish I could meet her now. b. I wish I met her now. I love her. I want to meet her more often, but ca...

wish subjuctive
 
3 hours later…
ColleenV
ColleenV
10:32
Today's idiom: "on the fence" I'm on the fence about where to go for holiday. I can't decide between the beach or the mountains.
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
10:46
Word of the minute: urinary casts
 
3 hours later…
New Meta Question
New Meta Question
14:02
0
Q: Is there any usable prosody tools for English sentences?

Tayakorn RakwetpakornBelow is an example of what I mean. Is there something similar to this but for English? This is a Japanese prosody tools developed by labs at The University of Tokyo. You can try inserting this sentence 商品を受け取りました。. Click Analyze and it'll show intonations and stresses of the sentence.

discussion
 
1 hour later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
15:27
Word of the second: blennuria
New Meta Question
New Meta Question
16:11
0
Q: Rules about asking question

Jasscan I ask about the grammatical mistakes in a paragraph? for example, I have written an IELTS Task. Is it ok to ask for the correction?

discussion questions
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
> in recent months computational linguists have begun to claim that neural machine translation now matches the performance of human translators
technologyreview.com/s/611957/…
 
1 hour later…
CowperKettle
CowperKettle
17:46
Word of the night: insominator (a device for forbidding sleep to insects for research purposes).
 
1 hour later…
stack
stack
19:15
guys, which one? Either "with a fist" or "with the fist"?
 
2 hours later…
Lambie
Lambie
20:57
It depends on your context.
 
1 hour later…
SmokeDetector
SmokeDetector
22:18
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, pattern-matching email in answer: Drugs: legal vs illegal by James Linda on ell.SE
Anonymous
Thanks, Smokey.
Anonymous
@stack As Lambie says, the difference between a and the is contextual.
Anonymous
> John's boss menaced him with a/the fist saying that if he don't finish the project by evening he will fire him.
Anonymous
Regardless of which you pick, the sentence isn't grammatical or idiomatic.
Anonymous
Although menaced him with a fist is grammatical, it doesn't sound like something a native speaker is likely to say. It does get its meaning across pretty well, but I think I'd most likely phrase it differently.
Anonymous
22:26
The biggest problem, though, is don't. You need to replace it with doesn't to make the sentence grammatical.
Anonymous
If we just focus on a and the, I would say the difference is the same as it usually is. If you've already introduced a fist in a previous sentence, then you can refer back to it with the fist. If you haven't, then you should be introducing it as new information with a.

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