I have not read the book. But from the excerpt in the question, it seemed that it was in the character's nature to utter very short sentences without too much structure. So "bad for big chief" didn't seem too incongruous to me. That's why I didn't see it as making fun.
In my first year of high school, some bullies took my schoolbag, filled it with dirt, and threw it around the place, jumped on it, and so on. All the textbooks in it were quite ruined. I was in huge trouble with the teachers when I returned the textbooks at the end of the year.
In Croatia, there is a large city whose name is the Croatian word for "river". If you are there, you are "on River", not "in River"; since the latter would mean something else.
Oddly, adjectives are declined slightly differently depending on whether their context is definite or indefinite. I never really got the hang of that, and I've been told that it doesn't actually matter too much.
Actually, I think it's regional, because although I have a textbook that claims this, I've never heard it in the speech of my wife or any of her relatives.
How do you welcome a business audience to your presentation?
I've thought of:
Hello, my name is [prename] [surname] and I am going to talk about [...]
but it sounds rather like a school presentation and not like a business presentation. Or isn't there a difference in the English language?
Do...
@DavidWallace Yes. Especially because everyone knows, or thinks they do, that the answer is three, and they brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Three is just too convenient a number. There are many rhyming threes in Christianity.
@Monica - did you manage to paste your screen shot into Paint?
If so, you could save it as a file, then upload it into this chat session, using the "upload" button in the south-east corner of the screen. Shog9 is here, so he'll see it.
@Monica If it was visible when you took the screenshot, then it will probably be in the actual file, and therefore visible here when you upload it. It doesn't matter if you have to scroll in Paint to see it.
Pah, I misread Zairja's comment on english.stackexchange.com/a/80775/16269 as "... raise your arm so that you face palm the one you're greeting ...". This might seem rude to some.
@Monica would you consider either decreasing the brightness or increasing the contrast on your monitor? I'm sure there are other pale grey things that you are missing out on, due to the same problem!
I am wondering how many other people are having the same issue? Should we ask the SE programmers to make it something different, like the black outline of a tick instead of a solid pale grey tick?
Also, you don't need to accept an answer on every question you've ever asked. If a question hasn't really received good answers, feel free to leave it as is
@Monica I know of no word in English that starts with an O when written, but not with an O sound. So I think it's fairly safe to say that before ANY word starting with O, you should write "an", not "a".
But the general principle is - say it out loud. If it starts with a vowel SOUND, write "an".
@Monica You should know that in some circles it is considered an affectation to drop the h and use an as the indefinite article; in other circles it is considered low class.
@DavidWallace And it is considered an affectation here in some circles to do so. Also for other words in which the h is pronounced: "An heroic event." "An historic moment."
My problem with Russian is that the only things I know how to say are "yes", "no", "thank you", "good-bye" and "I'm fucking your mother". There's a limit to the conversational usefulness of this collection.
John McWhorter: "English really is easy(-ish) at first and hard later, while other languages like Russian are hard at first and then just as hard later! Show me one person who has said that learning Russian was no problem after they mastered the basics—after the basics you just keep wondering how anybody could speak the language without blacking out."
youtube.com/watch?v=LSaywrrTCts "An historic" is only in the title here. I find this interesting that Al-Jezeera tv has a Scottish sounding guy reading the news about American Southern Baptists.
So if you will have the ability to fix it in the future will you already have had that ability if you come from the future to the past and lost the ability? I suppose you only need to wait and realise that you have hadden it already in your timeline when you reach the future again and willen have...
How do you welcome a business audience to your presentation?
I've thought of:
Hello, my name is [prename] [surname] and I am going to talk about [...]
but it sounds rather like a school presentation and not like a business presentation. Or isn't there a difference in the English language?
Do...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…