Language Overflow

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Featured Questions

03:16

I am given two questions and I have to identify whether the gerund is used as subject, object, complement, or used after a preposition. Asking questions is easier than answering them. He preferred playing football to studying his lessons. Answer is In the first sentence the gerund ...

gerunds

CowperKettle

Man_From_India

04:06

Haha

Jim Reynolds

@ColleenV Absolutely. I just wanted to share my own reaction with him, but not on the question, and certainly not as a downvote. Feedback is just that, right? For its receiver to decide if it's useful to them or not.

@Man_From_India is my friend independent of ELL, so I assumed I knew how he would take it. But your answer reminds me that such assumptions are often wrong, and ... beyond that, it reminds me that I'll offer him my assistance in saying what he said in a way that might be more accessible to more people. 👍

@Man_From_India O.O I'll send you a PM! I didn't mean to give you a sad face! 😂

2 hours later…

Man_From_India

06:12

@JimReynolds there is no way to take @ColleenV reply in other way. He just plainly shared his views about having multiple answers. And it is a concern that it is not the case for most of the questions presently, let alone the correct answer.

I am not saying whatever answer I write is right. But whatever I write, I try to give based on my knowledge. It might be wrong. And in those cases I really need feedback from people, just like you did this time. And that is why I shared the link to my answer so that people can view it and leave comments/review.

I am very open to review. And @JimReynolds please continue cheering the room the way you do with you tricky and humorous remarks :P

Jim Reynolds

07:01

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ Answer: Les Miserables. Question: How would the French accurately describe @M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ 's family since the day he was born?

1 hour later…

New Meta Question

08:24

Q: What does the word "group into" mean here?

Here is a sentence from a schedule planner app: In the app, you can easily group to-dos into projects and drag tasks within and between them. I am not sure if the word "group into" simply means "add" here.

discussion

1 hour later…

CowperKettle

09:34

"If the Milky Way had been in the center of the Boötes void, we wouldn't have known there were other galaxies until the 1960s."

Featured Questions

10:32

Q: The best way to do it is (to make / by making) him friend

Which of the following sentence choices is correct? I guess both are. But is there a difference between them? The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him friend. The best way to destroy your enemy is by making him friend.

sentence-construction difference gerunds to-infinitive

CowperKettle

11:15

The last of the yesterday's hailstones

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

12:15

@CowperKettle Some people still can't make their mind about Earth's shape in 2010s, so I'm not particularly surprised.

@JimReynolds You're so cute when you smile

In a creepy alien way.

3 hours later…

Man_From_India

15:24

A: "He / his being..." In this context

John being a good teacher, his son never failed. This sentence is missing something. The placement of the subject means there is currently no significance to the fact that John is a good teacher. It seems obvious that it is meant to be the reason for his son never failing, but nothing links ...

> I don't think John being a good teacher, his son never failed. is a wrong sentence. And there is nothing missing there. In addition to that you haven't mentioned in your answer anything about pronoun that the OP is mainly asking about. As another aside I think The day being rainy, their school remained closed is a grammatical sentence, though it might not be preferred as much as your suggested alternative.

About he/his/him being ... I think all are correct, though I think both he and his is more common, but interestingly in COCA I saw this construction only with him. It is more strange because I thought grammaticallyhim is least likely in that sentence.

6 hours later…

userr2684291

21:41

@Man_From_India You think His being a good teacher, his son never failed is a grammatical utterance?

The way I see it, the choice between he and him is orthogonal to grammar.

userr2684291

22:00

Furthermore, I think the whole "grammatical" angle is the wrong approach: the answerer doesn't say the sentence is ungrammatical – their answer suggests it doesn't sound good to them. I'm not sure what benefit the asker might have from knowing that sentence is grammatical (but not used) if they're not programmable.

userr2684291

22:12

In the end none of this will matter. No one expects a non-native speaker of English to speak correctly.

As long as you can make yourself understood you're good. I learned that lesson when I had to understand and speak German last year.

And if you're writing some academic BS (the only situation where you need correct English to satisfy some arbitrary standard – and even there broken English abounds), you're gonna have your exchange student friends from Ireland check it for you, lol, or you'll pay 20 US dollars for a "pro" to handle it.

Yesterday I spoke to some tourists from North America and they kept saying "US dollars", and not just "dollars", so I said it that way above, haha. I'm not sure if they said it that way because they were from Canada or something (I didn't ask them where exactly they were from), but why else? I'd imagine only Canadians (and Aussies) would need to specify that each time (when speaking with foreigners) because no one uses their dollars but them.

But I overheard them speaking to each other and mentioning "US dollars"; maybe only one of them is Canadian? Ah... we'll never know.

They may be international travellers who have to deal with these different currencies all the time so they've stopped using the shorthand way...

...or they knew this would bother me sooner or later and they said it that way on purpose, holy cow.

Er, I meant to say *frequent international travelers, globetrotters, lol.

I'll end this blog post here, I guess.

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