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heather
heather
8:00 PM
@Blue that book is not going to help you, because pretty much every example out of it you've given is wrong.
Most books are not going to help you. People learn language by being immersed in it - by actively speaking it and listening to it and reading it. I bet you reading 10 english novels will help you more than 10 dictionaries.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@heather that might be Indian English
I have an Indian professor -- his English is terrible
might be a link there
 
heather
heather
@0celóñe7 true, I guess I assumed @Blue wanted to learn American/British English.
 
Anonymous
@0celóñe7 I already mentioned that the book is not by an Indian writer.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@Blue it says Indian Edition
 
Sid
Sid
@heather That is exactly what I do.
Reading Books is far more helpful than reading "rules"
 
Anonymous
8:02 PM
@0celóñe7 "Edition".
 
Anonymous
The writer isn't different.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@Blue So it's the Edition with Indian English
 
Sid
Sid
@0celóñe7 Is he a new guy or an older prof?
 
Anonymous
@0celóñe7 No. It is same as the International version except the paper quality and typesetting perhaps.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@Sid old, about to retire
Dr. Rajput
 
Anonymous
8:04 PM
@heather Wait. Which example is wrong?
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@Blue the one with Nature
 
Anonymous
And why should I believe you ?
 
Anonymous
Rather than the Oxford book?
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
Because we're native fucking speakers.
 
heather
heather
@Blue er...all of them
 
Anonymous
8:05 PM
@0celóñe7 You're American.
 
heather
heather
the nature one, the Neil Armstrong one
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@Blue Are you being racist?
 
Sid
Sid
That's weird. I assumed Older professors will have better command over English or at least have the accent.
 
heather
heather
@Blue believe me, American english is much more correct than most Indian english I've heard.
 
Anonymous
It's British English that I'm learning.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
8:05 PM
lol rekt
 
Anonymous
@heather Define "correct".
 
heather
heather
lol, that book is not teaching you british english
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@heather ignore him
 
Anonymous
Ok fine. I'm out of this.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
he's getting too defensive now
 
heather
heather
8:06 PM
@Blue closer to british english, which is closer to the original family of germanic languages, etc, etc.
I don't mean to be offensive, and i'm not saying that learning a language is easy.
 
Anonymous
Everyone here claims to be a grammar expert which is ridiculous.
 
heather
heather
i'm just saying a different book might be better.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
No one here is an expert, but we all know what you're reading is wrong.
 
heather
heather
@Blue as someone who speaks english every day, I'm just trying to help you - I know it's really hard.
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
Try it.
 
Anonymous
8:07 PM
@heather I too speak English everyday.
 
heather
heather
@Blue sure, and you were confused as to why
> Wth is the grammar mistake in the sentence: "Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon." ?
because there is no grammar mistake in that sentence.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@Blue And you think "The Nature Abhors vacuum" is correct?
 
heather
heather
Your book is wrong. That's all I'm saying.
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
At least look at it @Blue :-)
 
Anonymous
@heather That particular example might be wrong. I agree.
 
heather
heather
8:09 PM
Look, @blue one moment please. take a deep breath. The Nature abhors a vacuum is wrong because Nature is personified. I wouldn't say "The 0celo", and neither would you say "The Nature". You say "0celo" or "Nature".
 
Anonymous
I felt it had no grammar mistake and that is why I asked the question here.
 
heather
heather
sure.
 
CooperCape
CooperCape
@JohnRennie The book you recommended (The Shape of Inner Space) has finally arrived and after flicking through I was pleased to see that there's a sort of meme in it...
 
heather
heather
@Blue I guess I'm just saying - if this book has grammar errors like that, it might not be the best book to learn from. it's like learning from a physics textbook that says F = ma^2.
 
Anonymous
@heather There is nothing wrong with Nature being personified.
 
Anonymous
8:10 PM
Let us ask this on English SE and see who's right.
 
heather
heather
@Blue exactly, that's why "The Nature" is wrong.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@Blue EXACTLY
 
heather
heather
@Blue sure, be my guest.
 
rob
rob
@Blue Not in principle. But the quote in English is "Nature abhors a vacuum."
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@rob Nature personified --> dropping the
 
heather
heather
8:11 PM
to be clear: I am saying that both "The Nature abhors a vacuum" and "The Nature abhors vacuum" are wrong.
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
Ok, let's move on please.
 
heather
heather
@skullpatrol - this is a nonoffensive productive conversation.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
The rob abhors math students
vs.
 
Anonymous
@rob Wait, I agree.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
rob abhors math students
Oh fuck this I've been saying that for hours
@Blue what the hell
 
Sid
Sid
8:12 PM
@skullpatrol I think this is important. @Blue seems to be mistaken here
 
heather
heather
@Blue exactly, i'm saying your book is wrong, first by including the "The" and second by removing the "a".
I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with me on anymore =P
 
rob
rob
Articles are weird, and different languages have different rules for them.
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
^
Latin doesn't even have them
 
rob
rob
For example, French uses definite articles in lots of places where English doesn't, and many native French speakers include too many definite articles in English.
 
Sid
Sid
@skullpatrol Does Latin even exist anymore?
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
8:14 PM
Yes.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
what
 
heather
heather
@Sid it's a dead language, yeah, so it's only in old manuscripts and names of species.
 
rob
rob
Imagine a cartoon Frenchman saying "Ze nature, she abhors ze vacuum, n'est-ce pas?"
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
lol
 
Anonymous
The book didn't have any solutions to that particular exercise. A previous example misled me I guess.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
8:15 PM
@BernardoMeurer going to a Brazilian place for dinner
 
Anonymous
"Nature abhors a vacuum" is correct.
 
Bernardo Meurer
Bernardo Meurer
@0celóñe7 :(
 
heather
heather
@Blue I really think you're better off reading some novels. That's a whole technique of language learning shown to be most optimal - immersion. Best would be going to Britain and living there, next best speaking it 100% of the time, and next best reading and writing it.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@Blue Please apologize.
 
Sid
Sid
@Blue That's exactly why you shouldn't read books on grammar. You can make false assumptions based on some "similar" example you have seen
 
Anonymous
8:16 PM
"Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the(?) moon"
 
Anonymous
That "the" part seems optional
 
heather
heather
^that is right. keep the "the"
no, no, don't get rid of the "the"!
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@Blue The the is nonoptional.
 
rob
rob
@Blue No, it sounds wrong without the definite article.
 
Sid
Sid
"The moon" because we have a particular moon, I think
 
heather
heather
8:16 PM
I don't say "I like book" or "I walk on sidewalk".
 
Sid
Sid
particular as in only one moon.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
I've literally been saying this for hours.
Is anyone listening to me?
 
heather
heather
@Sid right, yeah.
@0celóñe7 I have been =)
 
rob
rob
It's also the case that Neil Armstrong was the first person to walk on a moon, but that means something slightly different.
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
I am @0celóñe7
 
Sid
Sid
8:17 PM
@0celóñe7 I am.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@heather you're not the one who needs to be listening...
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
Pal :-)
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
thanks, so everyone except for the one my messages are directed at
good job
 
Anonymous
@0celóñe7 If only you gave reasons instead of shouting "Indian English" time and again.
 
Sid
Sid
@rob That can be slightly misleading, I think. Because other planets have "moons" too.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
8:18 PM
@Blue there are no reasons, it is English
 
rob
rob
@Sid And eventually people will walk on them.
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
@Blue ask on ELL
 
Anonymous
@0celóñe7 Nope. @heather gave the reason correctly.
 
rob
rob
The first person to walk on Deimos will be the first person to walk on a moon orbiting another planet
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@rob not if I have anything to say about it
 
rob
rob
8:19 PM
@0celóñe7 Party pooper.
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
They are a lot friendlier
 
Sid
Sid
@rob That would make sense, yes.
 
heather
heather
@Blue any other confusing sentences? I remember there was one a while back in the transcript...
 
Anonymous
@heather This: "My objections are, first, the injustice of decision; and second, that it is unconstitutional". I need to correct this sentence
 
Sid
Sid
of the decision, I think
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
8:21 PM
@rob I've seen enough movies to know how that ends
 
heather
heather
well...actually, that's grammatically correct, though a bit crazy @Blue
a better phrasing would be
 
Sid
Sid
@heather Shouldn't it have a "the" since it is talking about a specific decision?, I think
 
Anonymous
The semicolon is unnecessary I guess.
 
heather
heather
@Sid, oh, yeah, I missed that'
"the injustice of the decision", right.
"I object to the injustice of the decision and it being unconstitutional" might be a better overall phrasing, but.
 
Sid
Sid
^ Exactly.
 
rob
rob
8:23 PM
@Blue In addition to the article question, the parallelism is awkward. I'd rephrase thus: "My objections are: first, that the decision is unjust, and second, that it is unconstitutional."
 
Sid
Sid
That is easier to read and grasp.
 
Ravi Prakash
Ravi Prakash
@Blue I got fever,..
 
heather
heather
> Which one is correct "The teacher spoke to my father and me" or "The teacher spoke to me and my father" ? Or are both correct?
^ again, neither.
"The teacher spoke to my father and I" is the correct form.
 
rob
rob
@heather BZZZT
 
Anonymous
@heather I need to frame it using parallelism
 
rob
rob
8:24 PM
Would you say "My teacher spoke to I?"
 
Anonymous
So "first" and "second" is important
 
Anonymous
Can't omit those
 
heather
heather
no, but when listing others with yourself @rob you switch I to me.
sorry, me to I.
 
Sid
Sid
@heather I would choose the second one, I think...
 
heather
heather
so: "My teacher spoke to me" and "My teacher spoke to my father and I" - that's how I learned it, anyway.
 
Sid
Sid
8:25 PM
@Blue Just add a "the" before decision and you are done.
 
rob
rob
@heather That's an error which is common enough that it's becoming standard practice.
 
Anonymous
@heather That is for sure wrong. Given as an example of wrong sentences in my book.
 
heather
heather
@Blue sorry, but I trust rob more than your book =P
 
Anonymous
I'll ask that on ELL.
 
Anonymous
Let's see
 
Ravi Prakash
Ravi Prakash
8:26 PM
@Blue why I got fever, is it related to that experiment
 
Anonymous
Grammar is not about trust @heather It is black and white.
 
heather
heather
@Blue I'd be interested to see the result of the ELL question.
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
This is worse than @BernardoMeurer's C escapades
 
heather
heather
@Blue and your book has been black and white wrong several times.
 
rob
rob
English's system of noun cases is slowly vanishing. For example, "who" and "whom" follow the same rules as "he" and "him"; but even most native English speakers can't keep "who" and "whom" straight.
 
Anonymous
8:27 PM
@Sid And no. "the" changes the meaning of the sentence. See this: ell.stackexchange.com/a/139477/46415
 
Anonymous
We can't use "the" there
 
heather
heather
@rob I can't remember the last time I used "whom", yeah.
 
Sid
Sid
@heather Are you dead sure about that? I have always learnt that "I" is used as a subject and "me" is used as object.
 
Anonymous
@heather My book hasn't been wrong yet. I have been misled by the examples.
 
heather
heather
@Blue, oh, okay then.
@Sid not now, with everyone disagreeing with me, but I was very sure a couple minutes ago =)
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
8:28 PM
@heather I remember
 
heather
heather
> Correct the sentence so that the initial phrase refers to the subject of the sentence: "Young and inexperienced, the trip sounded easy to me." I was thinking along the lines of: "Young and inexperienced, I thought that the trip would be easy."
 
Anonymous
Also, I'm sure that is not "I" in that sentence. Asking it right away.
 
rob
rob
@Blue If the speaker is referring to a particular decision, the definite article "the" is needed.
 
heather
heather
@Blue "And no. "the" changes the meaning of the sentence" - er...you need the "the".
 
0celóñe7
0celóñe7
@rob I keep who and whom straight by translating into German, then into English. It's much easier in German
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
8:29 PM
Can we get back to physics of cooking? :P
 
rob
rob
If the speaker is referring to the injustice of decisions in general, you would omit "the" ... but that would be strange.
 
Sid
Sid
@rob But if you think contextually, the speaker is referring to a particular decision. He claims it to be unconstitutional
 
Anonymous
@rob Here it is not referring to a particular decision. Check the original sentence and the answer on the ELL site
 
heather
heather
@Blue with the sentence I just posted "Young and inexperienced" if you wanted the initial phrase to refer to "I", you want "I was young and inexperienced, so the trip sounded easy to me."
 
rob
rob
@Blue I saw that. Is there more context?
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
8:30 PM
^
 
rob
rob
Like a preceding or following sentence?
 
Anonymous
@rob No
 
Anonymous
@heather Okay. Alternative "Young and inexperienced, I thought that the trip sounded easy."
 
heather
heather
@Blue no, because you said you wanted the initial phrase to have the subject of the sentence, right?
so you'd want "I" before the comma.
you might also phrase it as "I thought the trip sounded easy, due to my youth and inexperience."
 
Anonymous
No. "so that the initial phrase refers to the subject of the sentence"
 
rob
rob
8:36 PM
@Blue Add a verb to the initial dependent clause. "Being young and inexperienced, I thought ..."
 
heather
heather
@Blue oh, I see. apologies.
 
Anonymous
@rob That sounds better
 
Bernardo Meurer
Bernardo Meurer
@0celóñe7 I found a funny C bug yesterday
-1
Q: free() crashing on char array, but only if the array holds exactly 7 elements

adre76I have a simple C program that is supposed to read a message sent from another program, from an UNIX named pipe and show it to the user. The way the program does this is the following : Reads the incomming message size from the pipe Allocates enough memory for the incoming message, plus anoth...

c memory pipe free
The title is hysterical
 
rob
rob
@Blue That's because I'm an infallible genius who is never wrogn
I thought I was wrogn once, but it turns out I was mistaken
 
heather
heather
so you have been wrong then.
 
rob
rob
8:42 PM
Nope!
 
heather
heather
you just said that you were mistaken about being wrong. so you were wrong because you thought you were wrong.
 
Anonymous
This is legendary : "One of us is wrong, aren't we?" :)
 
rob
rob
@heather Nope! I'm also an excellent speller.
@Blue That one is pretty pathological. Do you see it?
 
Anonymous
@oerkelens yes, "Then one of us is wrong, aren't we?" is exactly how it would be written. Same for the balls. — Matt E. Эллен ♦ Jun 18 '14 at 10:04
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
This sentence is false.
 
Anonymous
8:47 PM
@rob It's fine in British English it seems (an exception)
 
Anonymous
28
A: One of us is wrong, aren't we?

FrankI've bundled up my comments into an answer of sorts. (ha, it looks worse than the comments - who chose these colours and fonts?) In British English (or rather in Britain) I've certainly heard aren't we etc used in that way. Whether it is right/proper/by the rules/grammatical/whatever I have no i...

 
Anonymous
That's a good read
 
rob
rob
3
A: Choice of pronoun to refer to 'one of us' when 'us' is male + female: they, he, she?

Martin McCallionI'd rephrase it entirely, as something like, "One of us has to start talking, don't you think?"

 
Sid
Sid
@rob That completely sidesteps the question.
 
Anonymous
@rob What?
 
rob
rob
8:50 PM
It's a case where, if you're being careful about having all your plurals agree, you sort of run out of options.
Your example is fine. I've probably said it myself. If I were writing, I'd rephrase as in the answer I linked.
 
Anonymous
"The plane crashed as it flew over Atlantic Ocean"
 
Anonymous
I guess we need "the" here
 
Sid
Sid
The Atlantic Ocean
 
Anonymous
Yep
 
Anonymous
@Sid Okay, last three questions. And then I'm off to sleep
 
Anonymous
8:53 PM
Convert to Passive Voice: "Icarus wished to soar high"
 
Anonymous
Verb=wished to soar high
 
Anonymous
Subject=Icarus
 
Anonymous
When using the passive voice, the subject is acted upon by another agent or an unknown something.
 
Anonymous
Sorry, verb here is "wished"
 
rob
rob
@Blue I love that this definition uses the passive voice.
 
Anonymous
8:59 PM
Hehe
 
Anonymous
It was Icarus' wish to soar high.
 
rob
rob
@Blue Just so.
 
Anonymous
I had forgotten the definition of "active/passive voice". Seems easy after going through a few examples. :)
 
Anonymous
Next one: "The plane was last seen flying towards the cliff." Convert to active voice
 
Anonymous
Anyhow,..
 
Anonymous
9:05 PM
They last saw the plane flying towards the cliff.
 
Anonymous
"They" is unknown here, though.
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
Sounds good.
 
Anonymous
Last one: "I accept only typewritten manuscripts." Convert to passive voice.
 
Anonymous
@skullpatrol Thanks for the confirmation.
 
Anonymous
verb="accept", subject="typewritten manuscripts"
 
Anonymous
9:09 PM
When using active voice, the subject performs the action noted by the main verb.
 
Anonymous
No
 
Anonymous
I am wrong
 
Anonymous
subject="I"
 
Anonymous
Because "I" is the subject performing the action which is noted by the main verb "accept".
 
Anonymous
"Only typewritten manuscripts are accepted by me."
 
Anonymous
9:15 PM
Okay, I guess that's it if I am not wrong.
 
rob
rob
@Blue More passive: "Only typewritten manuscripts will be accepted."
 
Anonymous
@rob Doesn't that completely black-box the "me/I" part?
 
rob
rob
@Blue That's the entire point.
That's why people get upset about the passive voice.
It makes things sound like facts of nature rather than active decisions by actors with any agency.
 
Anonymous
Also, you are bringing in "will". That is future tense. "I accept only typewritten manuscripts." implies that it is a habit that was existent in the past as well.
 
rob
rob
"Only typewritten manuscripts are accepted."
 
Anonymous
9:19 PM
Yes.
 
Anonymous
That's better :)
 
Anonymous
I was going to type that.
 
rob
rob
> The author submits a manuscript and it receives a tracking number.
One verb active, one passive.
 
Anonymous
So @heather's point has not yet been clarified. I claim that: "The teacher spoke to my father and I" is wrong. Asking a question on ELL now!
 
rob
rob
> An editor is assigned to the manuscript.
 
Anonymous
9:21 PM
@rob Nice example!
 
rob
rob
> The editor assigns potential reviewers to the manuscript and the author is notified.
One active, one passive, again.
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
@Blue It's "to me". If you delete the "my father and", the sentence becomes "The teacher spoke to I", which is obviously wrong.
 
Anonymous
@ACuriousMind Right. Even I was thinking the same.
 
Anonymous
But still...
 
rob
rob
@Blue I believe you mean "Even me was thinking the same."
 
Anonymous
9:26 PM
0
Q: Which is correct: "The teacher spoke to my father and I" or "The teacher spoke to my father and me"?

BlueI don't have any solid reason but I feel "The teacher spoke to my father and me." is the correct one out of the two. But some claim that the latter is the correct version, i.e. "The teacher spoke to my father and I". Could someone please give reasons as to which one is correct and why? Thank you!

grammar
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
I do believe that there might be certain dialects of English where "and I" has become the de facto correct usage.
 
Anonymous
@rob "Me was thinking" doesn't seem to be correct English, isn't it ?
 
rob
rob
@Blue I was joking. Sorry for the confusion.
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
They have a chat room also @Blue but it's been really quite lately.
 
rob
rob
On the children's TV show Sesame Street, one character is the Cookie Monster, who uses "me" as the subject of sentences.
 
Anonymous
9:29 PM
@rob Jokes without emoticons, eh? :P
 
rob
rob
When I was a kid I thought this was hilarious and imitated it.
My dad worried that the television was teaching me poor grammar and tried to get me not to watch any more.
 
Anonymous
@ACuriousMind Perhaps that is what heather is confused about
 
Anonymous
Better to clear things up
 
rob
rob
@Blue It's another example of English's slowly-vanishing case system.
 
Anonymous
@rob We also have a similar word in Hindi - apun (Hindi version of me):D Many cartoon characters use that word instead of the Hindi equivalent of I. Kids are attracted to such fancy language.
 
Anonymous
9:33 PM
@rob case system?
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
@heather Actually, Latin is not completely dead: The Catholic Church publishes papal encyclicae in Latin.
 
rob
rob
@Blue In formal grammars, you talk about "noun cases." One "declines" nouns the way that one "conjugates" verbs.
 
Anonymous
I think "me says X" is quite common in comics :)
 
rob
rob
Subjects of sentences are in "nominative" case; objects are in "dative" case; possesives are the "genitive" case.
 
Anonymous
@rob Oh, I see.
 
rob
rob
9:35 PM
Latin and Greek have an "accusative" case that's for indirect objects, if I remember correctly.
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
@rob The accusative is for direct objects.
 
rob
rob
@ACuriousMind And dative is indirect? It's been a long time since I did this formally.
 
Anonymous
0
A: Which is correct: "The teacher spoke to my father and I" or "The teacher spoke to my father and me"?

Weather VaneStarting from The teacher spoke to my father and me. If you break it into three variants The teacher spoke to my father. The teacher spoke to me. The teacher spoke to I. The last one is wrong, so this should show your sentence was correct.

 
Anonymous
@heather @rob
 
Anonymous
Same argument as the one ACM gave
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
9:37 PM
@rob Yes, although the words "direct" and "indirect" don't really mean anything other than "object in the accusative" and "object in the dative"
 
rob
rob
Anyway, in English all the genitives are made by appending a sibilant (usually written with an apostrophe), and only a small number of words are different as subjects or objects.
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
German retains four cases - nominative, genitive, dative, accusative - and Latin additionally had the ablative, Latin and Greek both had the vocative.
 
rob
rob
I don't think there's any example in English of a distinction between accusative and dative, which is why I forgot how it went.
 
Mr. Xcoder
Mr. Xcoder
Romanian has five cases nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative
 
skullpatrol
skullpatrol
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
9:40 PM
It's difficult to talk about cases in English because there is almost no trace of the most important feature of cases, concord, where adjectives and other words must agree in case with the nouns they belong to, because there are almost no case markings left
 
rob
rob
@ACuriousMind Yes, that's true.
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
Which is why many are confused about the few case markings that are left, mainly on pronouns like who/whom.
 
rob
rob
1 hour ago, by rob
English's system of noun cases is slowly vanishing. For example, "who" and "whom" follow the same rules as "he" and "him"; but even most native English speakers can't keep "who" and "whom" straight.
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
Even the genitive isn't really there, you just append an 's to the noun, but there's no declension of adjectives
@rob Ah, I haven't read the entire conversation yet, I see
 
CooperCape
CooperCape
wait whom is a word?
Thought that was some Shakespeare stuff.
 
rob
rob
9:44 PM
@ACuriousMind I haven't thought before about simultaneous declension of adjectives as a boundary between a full-fledged noun case system and ... whatever it is that English has now.
That's interesting.
 
Anonymous
@CooperCape "Whom are you supposed to visit today?"
 
CooperCape
CooperCape
Yeah I won't lie I'm terrible with words...
 
Anonymous
@0celóñe7 The old Indian professors hardly ever received any formal training in English. So cannot expect their English to be perfect. Hence, you should not judge a population of over a billion people by seeing him.
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
@rob Yeah, the 's is not really a case marking - no concord, and it works much more like a postposition: Consider: "The son's house" vs. "The son of Adam's house". It just gets appended to the end of the noun phrase "son of Adam", instead of marking the case of "son", which doesn't change between the two sentences.
 
rob
rob
@ACuriousMind Can you show the same pair of sentences in German?
 
CooperCape
CooperCape
9:50 PM
I'm pretty sure German says it as "The house of the son"
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
@rob Das Haus des Sohnes vs. Das Haus des Sohnes von Adam
Where Der Sohn means "son" in the nominative and Des Sohnes is the genitive form.
@CooperCape That is possible as Das Haus vom Sohn, but is often considered inelegant/colloquial.
 
rob
rob
So maybe it's better to say that English's case system has already vanished, except for a handful of confusing remnants.
 
Anonymous
@0celóñe7 Another point: Here we are mostly taught either British English (more common) or American English. "Indian English" is just a derived version of these two with some typical terms mixed in it. "Indian English" is not something that is formally taught. Rather it refers to the English which involves a lot of word usage that is typical to India. No Indian language book claims to teach "Indian English", even if it is written by Indian authors.
 
CooperCape
CooperCape
Yeah I like English for not have masculine/feminine nouns... Then again if I was brought up with it would i care...
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
@rob Yes, there are basically just a few remnants of the accusative, and that's it
 
rob
rob
9:54 PM
@CooperCape With the exception of ships. Any sailor will tell you that a ship is "she", not "it."
 
CooperCape
CooperCape
That's always weirded me out.
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
@CooperCape It's terribly confusing at first when you learn that English does not have grammatical gender if you come from a language that has it.
 
Balarka Sen
Balarka Sen
damn i cant sleep
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
Like, there's a whole dimension of meaning that simply doesn't exist - the question of whether "chair" is male, female or neutral doesn't even really make sense in English
 
CooperCape
CooperCape
Other way round we just lazy... I remember assuming everything was masculine and hoping that too many marks wouldn't be lost. Languages really aren't my thing.
 
Balarka Sen
Balarka Sen
9:58 PM
@Blue yeah but there's something distinctively Indian about most works of English literature I have seen written by Indians
It's just different
 
rob
rob
@ACuriousMind Do you ever have trouble recalling the grammatical gender of an object? Can you think of any words whose gender is different in different dialects?
 
Anonymous
@BalarkaSen Obviously. Say, for example English novels written by a Spanish person will obviously have a touch of Spanish lingo in it.
 
Balarka Sen
Balarka Sen
Uhhh well yes and no. The most English works of English literature in the world are actually written by Irish people :P
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
@rob Very rarely. And yes, there are some dialects with variant grammatical gender, e.g. Tunnel is masculine in standard German but neutral in some Southern variants.
There's also an eternal war over what grammatical gender Nutella has. :D
 
rob
rob
@ACuriousMind I know nothing about this but I instantly have a very strong opinion
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
10:05 PM
(Official answer from the manufacturer: You're allowed to use all three genders. Which doesn't mean people don't hold strong opinions on the "correct" one)
 
AccidentalFourierTransform
AccidentalFourierTransform
Female, obviously. Like, please...
 
Anonymous
Can't comment about that because I haven't read much literature written by Irish folks. But some of my favourite English novels written by Indian authors are Malgudi Tales, Jungle Book and the ones by Ruskin Bond. They have something typical to Indian literature which can't be easily expressed in words. @BalarkaSen
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
@AccidentalFourierTransform I belong to the neutral faction.
 
Balarka Sen
Balarka Sen
@Blue Yeah I can't explain it but all of the things you mentioned have a rather distinct watermark to it which I can claim to be Indian. I think it's the definitive descriptiveness.
 
rob
rob
@ACuriousMind The oxymoron "neutral faction" is delicious here
 
Balarka Sen
Balarka Sen
10:07 PM
Or rather, the style of description of a situation or a scenario.
Ruskin Bond definitely has this.
 
ACuriousMind
ACuriousMind
@rob I think the Swiss don't think it's an oxymoron ;)
 
Balarka Sen
Balarka Sen
also duuuude every major english modernist writer is irish with probability 1
Yeats, Wilde, Shaw from classical-modernist age
 
Anonymous
@BalarkaSen Agreed. :) BTW I had once met Ruskin Bond in a mall. Sweet guy. Gave me his autograph. Hehe :P
 
Balarka Sen
Balarka Sen
Conrad
Beckett, Joyce from pomo-modernism
@Blue Oh wow cool
 
AccidentalFourierTransform
AccidentalFourierTransform
and then you have Nabokov, who has a better English than most natives
 
Balarka Sen
Balarka Sen
10:12 PM
<3 Nabokov
 
AccidentalFourierTransform
AccidentalFourierTransform
aint he cute
 
Balarka Sen
Balarka Sen
I need to read Pale Fire before I die
i guess there's a shitload of scottish writers in english literature too
like, major scottish writers
 
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