English Language Learners

infinitesimal

01:06

stared.github.io/tagoverflow/?site=ell&size=32

From here

Damkerng T.

11:20

0

Q: "feeling"vs"with feeling"vs"while you are feeling"?

There are 3 sentences that I'd like to compare. You come feeling more motivated and ready to work harder after a vacation. You come with feeling more motivated and ready to work harder after a vacation. You come while you are feeling more motivated and ready to work harder after a v...

sentence-construction

My impression: You come (here/to me/etc.) feeling ... and You come (here/to me/etc.) while you are feeling ... are close in meaning. The first one is more idiomatic. You come (here/to me/etc.) with feeling ... is probably ungrammatical. Maybe You come (here/to me/etc.) with the feeling that you're yada, yada, yada, is better.

Damkerng T.

11:38

@infinitesimal Cool!

Anonymous

Your impression seems good to me

Damkerng T.

Ah, hello! @snaliboat

Anonymous

I also agree with ignoring grizzly wizzly.

Anonymous

Hello!

Anonymous

That user's English is good but not native-like, so I'd choose someone else to mimic if I were learning

Damkerng T.

11:52

nods -- I didn't look into his English much, but I remember that his English is generally great.

Anonymous

It's definitely good!

Damkerng T.

BTW, about the feeling question, I shied away from expressing my impression as a comment in that question. I was afraid that it could mislead all the answers that come after my comment.

How are you doing?

I feel like it's almost a week already that we haven't talked to each other!

Anonymous

Oh, well, that's up to you of course, but I think if you posted it could be helpful :-) I think the third sentence might be subtly different in meaning

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

Hehe, sorry I've been offline!

Damkerng T.

11:56

I'm sure you have very good reasons for that. :D

I'm kinda busy myself lately, too.

Anonymous

Ahh, I remember you saying so!

Damkerng T.

Hehe! :D

Man_From_India

Hi @DamkerngT. @snailboat

how are you doing?

Damkerng T.

Hi! I'm doing okay!

Man_From_India

Just now finished watching the high pressure India-Pakistan world cup match...oh waht a match!!!

Damkerng T.

12:03

Oh, who won the cup?!

Man_From_India

not the cup, it's just India's first match

Damkerng T.

Ah, sorry! I thought it was the final match!

Man_From_India

no but the importance of this match was huge...whenever India meets Pakistan it's something special

Damkerng T.

Ahh

Man_From_India

and the record shows India is unbeatable against Pakistan in every World cup so far...that's the main reason for pressure :-)

Damkerng T.

12:05

I guess that they are the top seeds in the tournament.

@Man_From_India A-ha!

Man_From_India

@DamkerngT. No just the opposite. Last year India indeed won the cup, but since then the form is completely down...noone expects much this time :-(

Damkerng T.

Aww

Anonymous

Hello!

Man_From_India

Good morning @snailboat

Damkerng T.

BTW, I'm dying to know who won the match. :-)

Man_From_India

12:08

Obviously India :-)

Damkerng T.

Oh, that's good news! (Thanks)

Man_From_India

it's sounds a bit arrogant...but I can't help this time :-)

Damkerng T.

lol

Man_From_India

Fans are crazy in both countries...lot of things happened in the past. though those incidents never happen any more now. If u loose the captain will be removed. even people break the glass of their cars. Attack them...throw bricks at them...it's common in both countries. But they are the images of the past. No more such things happen at least in India

Damkerng T.

Oh! That sounds chaotic!

Good thing that it's passed!

Man_From_India

12:12

yea

Damkerng T.

There's also some related info in the 2002 reference grammar CGEL, page 505, examples [18.ii.a-c]: "[What is/are needed] is/are managers with new ideas and the will to apply them", where both singular and plural verbs (in any combination) in both the matrix and the subordinate clauses are acceptable when the predicative complement (PC) is a plural NP (such as "managers with new ideas and the will to apply them" in the CGEL example). I'm assuming that your example would have used a plural PC if it had been filled out for us. — F.E. 2 hours ago

Oh, an interesting comment!

Particularly this part: where both singular and plural verbs (in any combination) in both the matrix and the subordinate clauses are acceptable when the predicative complement (PC) is a plural NP

So all these 4 possibilities are acceptable, I think:

> What makes/make her laugh is/are dirty jokes.

Ahh... This is an example in one of the answers:

> What makes her laugh are dirty jokes, slapstick comedy and bad puns.

> ell.stackexchange.com/a/49777/3281

Damkerng T.

An interesting exchange between me and a seller:

> Me: Hello, I'm interested in your Nokia N95 housing, but I'm not sure about the color. (As we all know, colors in an image could look false and it's hard to tell the exact colors when the two colors are very close.)
The color I'm looking for is sort of gold. It's definitely not brown, but it's not a light-gold like the leftmost one in http://i01.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/32279242573/For-Nokia-N95-8G-New-Full-Complete-Mobile-Phone-Housing-Cover-Case-English-Keypad-Tools.jpg. (I think it must be either #3 or #6 from the left, but I'm not sure.) It looks rather like the leftmost one in http://…

> Seller: which color
i have 6color
i have gold white black red brown and red which color with you

That makes me think, how did they count "gold white black red brown and red" as 6 colors?

trying to match "gold white black red brown and red" to the colors in the photo...

Anonymous

Maybe they meant to say grey instead of repeating red

Damkerng T.

But it's not exactly grey! (It's grey enough, maybe.)

Anonymous

I've noticed that pictures of guitars online often seem to have rather different colors than they do in person

Anonymous

12:27

I was taking #3 as grey and #6 as possibly brown (I can't really tell)

Damkerng T.

nods -- The colors in the photos on the web are really hard to tell indeed!

I remember that when I bought this phone a long time ago, the sell rep showed me black, brown, and this sort of gold-brown, I picked the last one (gold-brown).

Anonymous

I mean, it doesn't really look brown, but if not that one, then which?

Damkerng T.

I think it looks like #6, but it could be #3.

Oh, hey! What's more interesting is that on their product page, there are only 5 colors to choose from! (aliexpress.com/item/…)

Anonymous

The "gold" in that picture I would just call "yellow", but I suppose it sounds fancier that way

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think that "gold" would look great with women! :-)

Anonymous

12:32

A-ha! Are #3 and #6 the same color, perhaps, and only look different due to the angle?

Damkerng T.

Very feminine-ish!

Oh! Hmm....

Could be!

Anonymous

When I got my electronic dictionary, it only came in one color

Damkerng T.

Black, I guess. :D

Anonymous

But the previous year's came in lots of colors!

Damkerng T.

Oh!

Anonymous

12:33

I was slightly sad :-)

Damkerng T.

Aww

Anonymous

I wanted the wine red one

Damkerng T.

Ah, one of my PCs is sort of black + wine red!

Anonymous

Neat!

Anonymous

My last two computers have been black.

Damkerng T.

12:36

I think black is the case color! It's black almost everywhere!

Anonymous

This one has lots of blue glowy lights

Damkerng T.

(If Corsair was on sales, I'd probably buy one!)

@snailboat Ah, I guess your fans are glowing, too, perhaps?

Anonymous

Yes! :-)

Damkerng T.

A-ha! Neat!

Anonymous

I like glowy lights

Anonymous

12:39

I remember when I was younger and computers were rarely black

Damkerng T.

I can't really remember that now.

Hmm... maybe mostly sort of white or cream, I think.

Anonymous

In the 90s and earlier we mostly had white or cream, yeah, those sorts of colors

Damkerng T.

I think black is more cool! :-)

Anonymous

I like it! :-) My computer now has a big window on the side so you can see inside

Damkerng T.

Oh, that sounds like a Corsair Obsidian!

Anonymous

12:43

This one is actually a Lian Li case my friend recommended for me

Damkerng T.

If the cable management is done right, these cases will look really, really cool!

Ah, Lian Li. I think I know its name from other lines of their products.

Anonymous

It has a tool-less design!

Damkerng T.

Oh, you mean no screws and all?

Anonymous

You don't need to screw things in. (But I screwed in the power supply anyway)

Damkerng T.

Neat!

Anonymous

12:45

It does have a few hand screws

Damkerng T.

Mentioning Lian Li makes me think of that!

Anonymous

Oh, this looks like a robot!

Damkerng T.

Hehe! I think it's for people who need to test a lot of motherboards.

Anonymous

Ahh, I've never been a hardware person

Anonymous

So I don't know much about that!

Damkerng T.

12:47

I'm not really a hardware person, but I think this kind of stuff is doable for me. :-)

BTW, I've just ordered an Intel Pentium G3285!

After checking out its info, I think for general uses, it's about as capable as a Core i5.

(Minus vector processing, that is)

And it could even outperform my best PC (Core i7 3770) on overclocking!

That would be my new browsing rig. :-)

(I don't know if anyone would call anything a "browsing rig". People usually talk about their gaming rigs, though.)

Anonymous

Hee

Anonymous

You're extreme about browsing!

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Anonymous

I still play computer games sometimes.

Anonymous

I don't think that you need a super bleeding edge computer to play much of any games these days, though

Damkerng T.

12:53

nods -- Probably it's more about a decent graphic card.

I still don't have any plan to buy a new graphic card. But who knows? :-)

Anonymous

14:01

1

Q: Problem with usage of pronoun "I"

I am totally confused in the usage of pronoun "I". We use the verb "have" with "I" not "has" though it is singular. "I" is singular but again we don't use (s, es, ies) with the verb while making the sentence of present simple tense.

grammar

Anonymous

The problem seems to be that they don't know what the forms of verbs are

Anonymous

They wrote their question pretty well in spite of that!

MARamezani

17:13

Hmm. "They"... @snailboat how colloquial is it to refer to a single with they? (I believe it's as a sign of respect)

MARamezani

17:34

Ah man! I just earned "peer-pressure"! I learned something from my mistake though, and that's all that matters.

Tell me @DamkerngT. How did you feel when you earned the badge? :)

However, apparently you're sleep now! :)

Damkerng T.

18:53

@MARamezani Hi! I'm not sure how I felt. Frankly, I've already forgotten about it!

One thing I'm quite certain is that it's really, really rare for me to delete anything on ELL.

MARamezani

Someone hacked your account then :)

Damkerng T.

Perhaps there are only about 3-5 answers that I deleted.

No, I'm sure that I really deleted some of them. :-)

MARamezani

Wait. Aren't you in East Asia now?

Damkerng T.

It mostly happened when I misread the OP's intention answered something irrelevant!

@MARamezani Yes, I usually sleep rather late.

It's almost like I lived in Frankfurt's time zone. That's why I'm an owl. :D

MARamezani

Talk about late. I haven't slept any sooner than 2:30 a.m. in the past month or so.

Damkerng T.

18:57

I think what's really important is the number of hours you sleep a day.

MARamezani

Yes, but even more important than that is when you do it.

Trust me. I'm a big nerd when it gets to sleeping sience. :)

Damkerng T.

lol -- Okay, I will trust you on that. :D

How do you feel about your new badge, by the way? :-)

MARamezani

Look at that misspelling: Science!

Damkerng T.

Oh, I didn't even notice it!

MARamezani

I felt depressed at first...

Damkerng T.

19:00

Aww

MARamezani

But then realized that I just learnt something new.

I'm being very "cliched" here. :)

Damkerng T.

Ah, that sounds good! I'm glad that it's useful for you.

I see. :D

MARamezani

Anyways, I was saying that sleeping time matters, and not only hours.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

MARamezani

You see, there's this hormone melatonin which is the main reson when you sleep.

Damkerng T.

19:04

Yes?

MARamezani

For an average person, melatonin is produced and released in the blood around 2 a.m. though.

Damkerng T.

Oh, how do we know that it's 2 a.m.?

MARamezani

We can put it as "what that makes you remain sleep".

Damkerng T.

Um, I mean, our bodies.

MARamezani

Look at that misspelling: asleep.

Damkerng T.

19:05

Don't worry too much about spelling. :-)

I'm not really trying to catch them at the moment. :D

MARamezani

Btw, 2 a.m. is when you enter the REM phase, when you sleep normally (as in, normal time of sleeping)

Damkerng T.

nods

MARamezani

When you sleep late, the biological "clock" in your body gets out of balance.

You can put it this way: Anything unbalanced in the body causes troubles.

Damkerng T.

I think what people think normal is perhaps just arbitrary.

The real problem for a night person like me is that we have to contact other morning people.

And that's kinda disruptive.

MARamezani

That is arbitrary! But arbitrary is what that makes evolution.

Damkerng T.

19:09

I don't know for sure, but I can tell that there are lots of people who aren't really a morning person.

I guess it's like being left-handed.

MARamezani

Our ancestors slept around 11 o'clock (That was random) and that's when we have to sleep. It's painful!

See the new question (feed)? Didn't I tell you we have cool users?

It's commented and answered in two minutes!

Damkerng T.

Nice!

MARamezani

Do you have any interest in any of the sciences?

Damkerng T.

That would be a weird question for me since I'm an engineer.

And I think linguistics is a branch of science.

MARamezani

Depends on what you define to be a science.

Damkerng T.

19:15

Linguistics is more scientific than other pseudo-sciences, if you asked me.

MARamezani

Ah, my math grades are 20 (that's the top score in my home country), but I never grew any especial interests in mathematics.

Damkerng T.

Unless we don't count computing and mathematics as science.

MARamezani

Maybe it's because of our teacher.

Math doesn't count as a science. That's for sure.

Damkerng T.

nods -- Teachers could be very influential.

Depends on how you think of it, I guess. To many people, math is not science.

Anyway, science is just a word.

MARamezani

Actually, it was my chemistry teacher who made me a semi-chemist-lover.

Damkerng T.

19:17

I guess to them, technologies aren't science either.

@MARamezani Nice!

MARamezani

Let me go find something that backs the math-not-being-a-science thing up.

Damkerng T.

It's alright. I'm not really interested in a debate whether math is science or not.

I usually go like: just tell me what you think about this thing (or concept or frame of work or whatever) and I will think along your idea.

Because to me, most of them are just labels.

MARamezani

Einstein knew math as rules but others (physics, biology etc.) as nature.

All hail Albert!

Damkerng T.

Just like people call the same thing in different languages with different words.

He was a great guy indeed!

MARamezani

So you'll get shot if you think math is a science. Einstein is always right. :)

Damkerng T.

19:21

I think I don't really think that he is always right.

MARamezani

He wasn't.

In fact, when he built up quantum mechanics,

He denied it and said: "God doesn't play poker"

Actually, I don't know the English equivalent. I translated that from Persian. :)

Damkerng T.

It was Heisenberg, I think, who argued with Einstein.

MARamezani

There's even a book about his mistakes!

Damkerng T.

The typical translation of that line would be: God doesn't play dice.

MARamezani

Einstein was a human, wasn't he?!

Damkerng T.

19:24

Yes. He sure was.

MARamezani

Oh, right! I'll keep that in mind.

Btw, do you prefer to know my second language as Persian or Farsi?

Damkerng T.

Hmm... what would you call it?

And it's your second language?

MARamezani

I prefer Persian. But what I see more (especially on the web) is Farsi.

Yes, it's not my mother language.

Damkerng T.

Ahh

What's your first language?

MARamezani

My mother language is Turkish. (I live in the northwest part of Iran)

Damkerng T.

19:29

A-ha!

That's cool!

MARamezani

Iran is a wierd country when it gets to mother languages!

Damkerng T.

Tell me more about it!

MARamezani

Iranians' mother languages can be: Turkish, Kurdish, Baloch, Turkoman etc. etc. !

Ours is a bit different from the Turkish people speak in Turkey, but we do understand them a little bit.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... So I take it that people in different areas of Iran will have different first languages.

Oh, so your Turkish is not identical to the Turkish spoken in Turkey?

It's another dialect of Turkish, perhaps?

MARamezani

Yes. Because Iran is a country that very different cultures have ruled in.

No, our Turkish isn't identical to theirs.

Damkerng T.

19:33

nods

MARamezani

In fact, we had another "branch" of Turkish.

Damkerng T.

That would be "dialect", I think.

MARamezani

It has a bit wider differences than dialects normally do.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... Interesting!

MARamezani

The problem is the unattainable history of this part of the world.

We call it Azerbaijan.

Damkerng T.

19:35

The geographical area or the language?

MARamezani

The area.

Damkerng T.

I see.

MARamezani

Legends were apparently way more popular around here than anywhere I can imagine :).

Damkerng T.

:D

I suppose!

MARamezani

That could be because here is a "natural stronghold".

Mountains and mountains... Oooh!

Damkerng T.

19:40

nods -- I remember that it's an area where a lot of things happened in the history.

MARamezani

Iran is always "in the way"!

Damkerng T.

Aww

MARamezani

Look at it this way: Iran was in the middle of the silk road.

Englishmen had to pass Iran to conquer India.

Damkerng T.

Oh! I thought they went (to India) by sea!

MARamezani

That was the second time in history they wanted to conquer India. Because in the 2nd time Germans were very powerful here.

Damkerng T.

19:43

nods

MARamezani

Let me think of more examples... Oh, yes. Christian people used Iran for trading with Arabs before the era of The crusades.

Damkerng T.

Ahh... middle of the road indeed!

MARamezani

All in all, Iran was a major place as an intermediate.

That was the reason many cultures found themselves "growable".

Let me invite Majid to this discussion (He's a friend of mine)

Damkerng T.

Sure!

MARamezani

He's making up his thoughts I guess! He'll join in.

Damkerng T.

19:53

Hello @Majid! Welcome to the room!

MARamezani

Hi @Majid!

Majid

Hello I'm confused. what are you discussing about?

Damkerng T.

We were talking a little bit about Iran's history.

(It was more like MARamezani was telling me about it.)

MARamezani

More precisely, about why so many cultures and languages exist in Iran.

Damkerng T.

Right!

MARamezani

19:57

As I was saying, I estimate the other important factor to be the geographic climate variations.

I don't even know if this makes sense!

Majid

oh,yeah . there are lots of languages in Iran, But I don't know nothing about their history except of my language.

Damkerng T.

@Majid If I may ask, what is your first language? Is it Turkish as well?

MARamezani

Iran is cold and frigid, hot and humid, rainy and damp all at the same time!

Damkerng T.

@MARamezani :D

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