English Language Learners

Anonymous

15:00

If she's a car collector, sure, that makes sense.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Anonymous

"She's owned three cars so far" is okay, too--we are more likely to own cars in series. I think most people keep at most one or two cars at a time

Anonymous

People don't usually do this with books.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat But it would mean something different than what I might have thought, I think.

I mean it's not continuous.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. We don't know how many cars she has, but 1 is a likely enough guess.

Damkerng T.

15:03

In my L1, She's owned three cars so far is likely to mean that she's collected three cars up to this point.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I think there it's punctual.

Anonymous

But "I'm collecting stamps" makes it durative, probably because that's what the progressive aspect does

Anonymous

> She knocked on the door. 　　　←　Punctual
> She was knocking on the door.　←　Durative

Damkerng T.

I think I kinda get it much clearer than yesterday. (I think ZZ shares this confusion with me too.)

Anonymous

Well, I'm glad, since I'm apparently kind of terrible at explaining this stuff :-)

Anonymous

15:04

But Aktionsart is something I need to get a handle on.

Damkerng T.

The key seems to be, we think of the progress in units of things we own or collect the same way of the progress in time.

It seems like these two kinds of progresses work differently in English.

Ahh... Aktionsart again. It's an important word!

@snailboat I think I agree with that.

Anonymous

We can describe interpretations as continuative if they continue into the present, or non-continuative if they take place wholly in the past.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat This is a big key. If I read it the way my L1 does, 3 would be the likely guess.

No, it's not just likely. It's definitely.

Oh, it's not definitely. I think somehow the sense of English usage also exists in Thai language, but it's not the default interpretation!

Anonymous

And there are multiple types of non-continuative interpretations for perfect constructions, including the experiential ("I have eaten bamboo"), resultative ("She has broken her leg") and the perfect of recent past ("She has just been to Paris")

Damkerng T.

(This, again, must have happened through translation, I guess.)

Anonymous

15:10

@DamkerngT. I don't think the interpretation that she definitely has 3 is possible.

Anonymous

That would imply that own is a punctual verb (as in "She has bought three cars so far")

Anonymous

I don't think own has that interpretation available

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Not in English. I mean 3 is for when I literal translated that line into Thai.

Anonymous

Oh. I read that backwards!

Damkerng T.

So, in English, She's owned three cars so far, means she might have one car now.

But in Thai (if I literal translated it), she must have three cars now.

Anonymous

15:12

Ahh.

Damkerng T.

And this is, I think, the key to solve the confusion ZZ and I have.

Thank you!

To say the same thing I was thinking in Thai, I should say, She owns three cars so far.

Damkerng T.

If I were the one who designed the English proficiency test for ELL, my test would include something like this:

> "She has owned three cars so far."
How many cars does she have?

a) exactly 1
b) exactly 2
c) exactly 3
d) probably 1
e) probably 2
f) probably 3

:)

Anonymous

One seems like a reasonable guess, but it's just a guess. Could be zero, even.

Anonymous

> She's owned three cars so far. She destroyed all of them.

Damkerng T.

I will allow d) e) f) as correct answers. :-)

Anonymous

16:17

@DamkerngT. Like many things in Japanese, Aktionsart (a.k.a. "lexical aspect") is very different from English

Anonymous

I need to have a firm understanding of it in both languages and I don't yet.

Damkerng T.

I don't know if this owns forty books so far will have anything to do with Japanese, but it might be possible, considering that (I believe) it happens in both Thai and Chinese.

Anonymous

Well, Japanese is almost entirely unlike Chinese.

Damkerng T.

(I should have said Mandarin, but I'm not quite sure exactly which dialect/language ZZ uses.)

Anonymous

Chinese is more like English.

Damkerng T.

16:23

Oh!

Grammatically?

Anonymous

Just, you know, in an extremely broad sense.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Yeah, Chinese and English are closer to each other than to Japanese grammatically.

Damkerng T.

And because Thai is close to both Chinese and English, I think grammatically Thai is not very close to Japanese either, perhaps.

Anonymous

But if you look at individual ways languages are alike or unalike, you'll find ways that they're closer.

Anonymous

16:25

Like for example, Thai and Japanese being pro-drop languages.

Damkerng T.

Ah, yes, that's true.

Anonymous

Or being sensitive to the length of sounds.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... I'm not sure about this aspect in Mandarin.

But I can't think of a short-long pair of words in Mandarin.

Anonymous

No, I don't think there are any

Anonymous

But I think Cantonese does

Damkerng T.

16:28

A-ha!

Anonymous

→ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese_phonology#Vowels_and_terminals

Anonymous

Sort of, anyway :-)

Anonymous

I don't know a lot about Cantonese.

Anonymous

Brb, making foods. Delicious, delicious foods.

Damkerng T.

I'm a bit more familiar with Cantonese than Mandarin. Thanks to those Wuxia movies.

Have a nice meal!

Anonymous

16:40

One of my good friends is a Cantonese speaker, but I unfortunately have never taken advantage of this fact ;-)

Anonymous

I mean, we occasionally talk about the language.

Damkerng T.

Cantonese culture was what to this region 20 years ago the way K-Pop is to us now. :)

Anonymous

I think that sentence is ungrammatical, by the way

Anonymous

I can't correct it because it's extraordinarily hard to parse (the use of what, maybe?)

Anonymous

But I think I understood it :-)

Damkerng T.

16:43

Is this better?

Anonymous

The way what is confusing

Damkerng T.

Ahh... yes. retrying...

Aww... I ran out of time to re-edit it. :)

> Cantonese culture was to this region 20 years ago the way K-Pop is to us now. :)

I think this is better.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. What if you left in what but got rid of the way?

Damkerng T.

Ah, that's nice too. writing it...

> Cantonese culture was to this region 20 years ago what K-Pop is to us now.

Hey, I like this version!

Anonymous

Yay!

Damkerng T.

16:48

However, Japanese culture always has strong influence all over the region throughout at least the last four decades.

Especially, cars, utensils, electronic stuff, dramas, and anime.

Anonymous

A lot of that is economic.

Anonymous

Closing a question as primarily opinion-based because the answer is "Both are fine" seems strange to me. — snailplane 20 secs ago

Damkerng T.

Yes.

Anonymous

Anime is fun.

Anonymous

I am not watching any anime series at the moment.

Anonymous

16:50

There seem to be a zillion new one each season!

Damkerng T.

Yeah, I don't know how they can do that. Produce so many animes years over years.

Anonymous

I remember being in awe when I was young at the idea that someone could draw that many pictures, that they could constitute a 20-minute cartoon

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

My favorite cartoons when I was little were Japanese cartoons. Although I didn't know that was true at the time.

Damkerng T.

Up until before we can use computer to create anime, I think Thai had exactly one cartoon. :D

Anonymous

16:52

Hehe!

Anonymous

Hey, I have a question.

Damkerng T.

Yes?

Anonymous

Do you find that Thai dubs tend to re-use the same voice actors?

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes. I think we have only a small number of voice actors.

I mean, a handful of them are specialize in anime.

Anonymous

I noticed that Japan has a lot of dubbed American stuff, and all of it seems to have the same few voice actors. :-)

Damkerng T.

16:53

And a few more groups are specialized in Wuxia.

nods

I usually don't watch things in English voiced over.

The sound quality would be degraded a lot.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. That makes sense for all sorts of reasons.

Awal Garg

Me having doubt, silly doubt...

Anonymous

What is your doubt about?

Awal Garg

Why is the word "read" same in past and present tense?

"I have read it already." "Would you read it?"

Anonymous

Oh, that's a tough question. I think at one point people experimented with spelling it red

Anonymous

16:57

Since after all it's pronounced differently in speech

Awal Garg

And, with different pronounciations!

Damkerng T.

I wish all the verbs could be just like read. :)

Anonymous

Unfortunately, English spelling is very irregular.

Damkerng T.

It would be even better if I could write He read ... :)

Anonymous

Most native speakers are fine with read because the rules are simple: just spell them both read

Anonymous

16:58

But a lot of native speakers mix up led and lead

Awal Garg

@snailboat Of course, English is a weird language. It should be packed and sent to Aliens far away from the multiverse.

Anonymous

Maybe because of confusion with read and read

Awal Garg

^which one is which one?

Damkerng T.

@AwalGarg You speak Hindi, right?

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. Ikr

Anonymous

16:59

@AwalGarg Led is the past tense and past participle of lead.

Damkerng T.

You sure knew, but I wasn't sure, so I had to ask. :)

Awal Garg

thats a silly question to ask an Indian.

Anonymous

In IPA, we could write lead /lid/ and led /led/

Awal Garg

@snailboat ah, ok

Damkerng T.

Tell me, then, what are first, second, third, ..., up to seventh in Hindi?

Anonymous

17:00

But for read /rid/ and read /red/, the spelling is the same. It's silly.

Awal Garg

Well, then what is the answer to my question?

Anonymous

@AwalGarg You mean how did the spelling come to be the way it is?

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. pehla, doora, teesra, chautha, panchva, chatha, satvaan Why?

@snailboat yup, exactly.

Anonymous

I don't know why. I do know that in the past, some writers did mark the differing pronunciation of the past participle/tense read in spelling.

Damkerng T.

@AwalGarg I'm curious if I could see them in Hindi script. Can you write them down for me please?

Awal Garg

17:02

@DamkerngT. ok, wait. Let me open my phonetic Hindi typekit...

@DamkerngT. पेहला, दूसरा, तीसरा, चौथा, पांछवा, छठा, सांतवा, आंठवा, दसवां, ग्यारहवा...

Damkerng T.

Thanks! That's what I thought, I can't really see them.

Anonymous

@AwalGarg I'm not really well versed in the history of English spelling. I know it in only broad strokes

Damkerng T.

पेहला = first?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Why can't you see them?

Awal Garg

I am thinking of opening a cause on causes.com to pack and send English from this beautiful planet....

Damkerng T.

17:05

I see it as 0928, 0947, 0939, ...

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. oh, brilliant guy you are!

@snailboat Its more than enough, IMHO ;-----)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Oh, Unicode substitution glyphs!

Damkerng T.

छठा = six? -- Why does it have only three letters?

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. But then why did you ask for those particular words?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. I thought it was ordinal (sixth)

Damkerng T.

17:07

@snailboat Yes, I see them as blocks of hard-to-read small numbers.

Awal Garg

1 min ago, by Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. But then why did you ask for those particular words?

Damkerng T.

I've heard that Hindi has a unique way for its ordinals.

Anonymous

Unique? How so?

Damkerng T.

But I can't really see them.

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. from where do you hear this bullshit about Indian English Dialect and Hindi?

Damkerng T.

17:08

For example, 4 ~ few, and 6 ~ many.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. books.google.com/…

Damkerng T.

Somewhere on the web, so it might not be very reliable.

Oh, it seems like it's not far from the truth.

Anonymous

You should be able to see them there

Awal Garg

^I'd highly recommend you to tell your ISP to filter what you read....

Anonymous

@AwalGarg Now that was funny.

Damkerng T.

17:10

So, you disagree with that book?

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. wait, I am opening the link.

Anonymous

Wait, what does the book say there that makes Hindi unusual?

Damkerng T.

About the irregularity.

Anonymous

Have you seen the ordinal sequence in English? :-)

Awal Garg

@snailboat how? It wasn't meant to be though.

Anonymous

17:11

@AwalGarg The idea that anyone would need censorship to protect them from ideas.

Awal Garg

@snailboat ok, I am happy you found it funny.

:)

Damkerng T.

> The ordinals for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 9th are irregular.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. But this isn't unusual. Lots of languages have irregular ordinals.

Anonymous

As a rule, the most common words in a language are more likely to be irregular, and the first few ordinals are usually fairly common words.

Anonymous

So having irregular ordinals does not make a language unusual.

Damkerng T.

17:13

Why do they skip 5th, 7th, and 8th?

Anonymous

Although some languages do have more regular sequences than others.

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. They are meant to be so. If they wern't we won't get to counting a lot of numbers and differentiate them...

@DamkerngT. no, they don't. There, I am sure the book is lying.

Damkerng T.

I think it's a fair question for a person to ask about Hindi, the way the same person can ask about irregularities in English.

Anonymous

@AwalGarg The book just says that the 5th, 7th, and 8th ordinals are regularly formed by affixing something to the cardinal numbers 5, 7, and 8

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. oh, certainly. I am happy to discuss it.

Anonymous

17:14

It is fair to ask about irregularities in language. Irregularities aren't unusual, though, so I wanted to point that out.

Anonymous

Every language has lots of irregularities.

Awal Garg

@snailboat yep, and thats why I say, its something either mis-spelled there, or the author can't speak in hindi. :)

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

@AwalGarg Ah, then I am curious. What are 5 and 7?

Awal Garg

@snailboat well, numbers ofcourse. Positive integers...

Anonymous

17:15

Not आंठ and ग्यारह?

Awal Garg

@snailboat no, no no... thats wrong. they are 8 and 11

Damkerng T.

12 mins ago, by Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. पेहला, दूसरा, तीसरा, चौथा, पांछवा, छठा, सांतवा, आंठवा, दसवां, ग्यारहवा...

Are these 1st, ... 10th?

Anonymous

Dang.

Anonymous

I miscounted :-)

Anonymous

Let me try again.

Awal Garg

17:17

@DamkerngT. I missed the ninth between the second last pair. :(

Anonymous

I thought you had typed 1st-7th, so I counted from the end of the list :-)

Awal Garg

पेहला, दूसरा, तीसरा, चौथा, पांछवा, छठा, सांतवा, आंठवा, नोंवा, दसवां, ग्यारहवा...

^ this is correct

Anonymous

Okay!

Awal Garg

now they are first 11

Anonymous

Thank you.

Damkerng T.

17:18

It looks like 7th is in 6 letters, right?

Anonymous

पांछवा　⇔　पांछ
सांतवा　⇔　सांत

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. there is nothing like absolute lettering in hindi. We have a lots of letters and a lots of helpers for letters called matras

@snailboat correct!

Anonymous

Then it looks like the book is correct that the difference is the ordinalizing affix वा in those cases

Awal Garg

That is the reason why I think the author of that book doesn't know how to write or speak in Hindi..

Damkerng T.

I can only see blocks of small numbers. :( -- Will try to follow the discussion, anyway

Awal Garg

17:20

@snailboat no, its wrong...

Anonymous

Can you explain?

Awal Garg

@snailboat yes, certainly I can... Wait..

एक = 1 दो = 2 .... पाँच = 5 छे=6

Damkerng T.

Strange, Google Translate doesn't know this: पांछवा.

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. they might have a different spell version. That's alright :)

Anonymous

Google Translate is usually ridiculous when it comes to Japanese. I don't know about Hindi

Anonymous

17:22

Does Hindi have much spelling variation?

Damkerng T.

@AwalGarg I see. I trust you more than Google Translate. :)

Awal Garg

@snailboat umm, maybe yes in numbers... not much otherwise.

@DamkerngT. :-)

GATA

Hi all :

)

Anonymous

Hello, GATA!

Damkerng T.

Hi! @GATA

Awal Garg

17:24

so, as I was saying... We can't say that cos that "va" thing is appearing in 5, 7, 8 or any number that book mentions, they are "regular". Its just that, they are that way.

@snailboat as we clearly see in the pure number form of 6 :)

Damkerng T.

Oh, six (छे) = good too?

Ah, I can recognize the sound of fifth!

pān̄chavā!

Anonymous

What's that thingy on the letter c?

Damkerng T.

Perhaps it's misplaced. I think it's for "a", just to hint the "soft A". :D

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. ...Soft, eh? ;-)

Damkerng T.

"Soft A" in that ELU question, I mean. :D

Ash

17:28

►

"He is seen so infrequently seen around the office , that his employees nicknamed him __elvis__"
why ?

Anonymous

Fine, ignore my carefully constructed joke. Again. :-)

Awal Garg

I think that is Google's way to define matras!

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Oh, no. I didn't try to. I'm sorry!

Anonymous

@Ash I don't know. Elvis is dead. He was famous. People reported "Elvis sightings" after he was dead

Anonymous

Maybe it's some kind of reference to that. But I don't quite understand.

Anonymous

17:30

But then, I don't always understand stuff.

2

Awal Garg

Another silly doubt bubbling outta me... ready?

Damkerng T.

Is it because of his sideburns?

Anonymous

Sure. Are you using doubt in the Indian English sense meaning "question", by the way?

Ash

@snailboat thanks :)

Awal Garg

@snailboat no.

Anonymous

17:32

Because we don't usually use countable doubt in reference to a specific number of doubts (*one doubt, *a doubt), though we do use plural doubts (I have my doubts)

Anonymous

I associate a doubt with the Indian English sense meaning "a question"

Anonymous

That is why I asked.

Awal Garg

@snailboat yea, I know 'bout that. Its a famous thing...

Anonymous

One doubt sometimes appears in Standard English negated, I think: not one doubt

Awal Garg

My question is, "obstacle" vs "hurdle"? D/F B/W THE 2.

Damkerng T.

17:34

going out to make some tea, be back soon...

Anonymous

"What is the difference between the two"?

Anonymous

@AwalGarg I dunno.

Awal Garg

I know obstacle is something more physical than a hurdle which is just a problem...

Anonymous

I think both obstacles and hurdles can be either physical or figurative

Anonymous

When I hear hurdle, I think of physical hurdles to jump over on a track.

Anonymous

17:36

I suppose the metaphors for the two are a little bit different. I've never thought about it before.

Anonymous

And I doubt I can give a satisfactory description off the top of my head.

Awal Garg

^Why don't ~~you~~ we think about it now? I really wanna discuss about that.

Anonymous

Well, like I said, I think of physical hurdles on a track to jump over.

GATA

Me too. I think obstacle is more common in figurative sense than hurdle.

Anonymous

Obstacles are more general. (Are hurdles a type of obstacle? I'm not sure.)

Anonymous

17:39

But you often go around obstacles.

Awal Garg

I once asked a linguist, why do we have synonyms, he told me that they are just similar, not congruent... I was irritated by that, cos I don't like to leave conversations like that without giving anything back. So, I thought I should give a counter example. This one popped in, and he can't answer :)

Anonymous

One moment.

Awal Garg

Two moments.

Anonymous

Dwight Bolinger wrote in Aspects of Language (1968):

Awal Garg

@GATA hi there!

Anonymous

17:41

> A difference in syntactic form always spells a difference in meaning.

GATA

@AwalGarg hi:)

Anonymous

Arnold Zwicky has a revised, hedged version of this rule:

Anonymous

> Lexical and syntactic variation is unfree; variants usually have (subtly) different meanings or discourse functions, which can be observed in certain contexts (though these differences might not be of consequence in many contexts).

Awal Garg

umm, @snailboat can you please try to be a lil less technical. Its going over my head...

Anonymous

The difference between hurdle and obstacle might not matter, a lot of the time.

Awal Garg

17:42

What you said can be found here - stanford.edu/~zwicky/intro.linginst.pdf

Have you read it?

It makes no sense to me at all.

Anonymous

I have it written down in my notes from something else Zwicky wrote containing the same text.

Awal Garg

Like code didn't make sense to me until I started it :) And I'm not starting linguistics now :)

Anonymous

Zwicky is an eminent linguist (a syntactician)

Anonymous

@AwalGarg I am a coder.

Awal Garg

@snailboat Congos :)

what do you code then?

GATA

17:45

I was :)

Anonymous

Various things. I've mostly worked on websites.

Anonymous

Aside from work, I've written a zillion little programs. A few bigger ones.

GATA

Me too.

Awal Garg

@snailboat work"ed"?

Anonymous

@AwalGarg have worked

Awal Garg

17:46

@GATA congos! What do you code then?

Anonymous

It's an experiential perfect.

Awal Garg

@snailboat so you don't now?

GATA

c#

Anonymous

@AwalGarg I am working on something programming-wise at present.

Awal Garg

@GATA great. I'm a PHP guy.

Anonymous

17:47

That's too bad.

Anonymous

PHP is less logical than English. :-)

GATA

I learned it for Asp.net But then I converted to PHP :)

Anonymous

I do use PHP sometimes for personal things I throw together.

Anonymous

It has its advantages.

Anonymous

I did some rather large projects in it professionally

Awal Garg

17:48

PHP is brilliant, if used wisely.

Anonymous

I would substitute that with "sparingly"

Awal Garg

FB is (mostly) in PHP, as you might know...

GATA

Exaclty.

Anonymous

I doubt anyone would hold up FB as an example of good engineering.

Awal Garg

@GATA nice choice....

@snailboat code.facebook.com/projects

@snailboat I can agree to it, umm, not completely though.

@GATA to what? me or sb?

GATA

17:51

Both

Facebook has many features that we don't know about it. I didn't even know that I had an FB email account :)

Awal Garg

@GATA ok, "wisely" or "sparingly"?

@GATA the huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuumongous API specially :-------------------------------------)

It has some sporadically good features though. (I don't use FB anyway)

GATA

I deleted my account last month.

Anonymous

I don't use FB either.

Damkerng T.

Oh, we should organize a party for non-FB people. :D

GATA

I am in :)

Damkerng T.

17:57

Anyone remembers Myspace?

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. You need do-support there.

Awal Garg

@DamkerngT. I am 16, should I remember it?

GATA

I didn't have one but I had Yahoo360

Anonymous

Oh man, you used 360!

GATA

yes :)

Anonymous

17:59

You're the first person I've ever talked to who used 360 but didn't work at Yahoo!.

Awal Garg

@snailboat You never know!

Damkerng T.

:)

GATA

lol

Anonymous

@AwalGarg I mean the first person to admit it in public.

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