Sorry if this disappoints you, but we British have now abandoned the 'million million' billion. We now use the American billion (one thousand million) and American trillion (one million million).
In British English, a billion used to be equivalent to a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,0...
OK now that is confusing because the Germans use Milliarde for 1000 million and Billion for 1 million million. So they have sort of kept the flame alive in a way.
Tonight I watched a movie (The Gospel of John) in which Jesus said (as quoted from the written Gospel of John), "It is I."
How does this expression differ from "It is me?"
I was taught at school that following expression is invalid in the sense of grammar:
Who is there? It's me.
The correct one is:
Who is there? It's I.
Can you let me know which one is accurate?
Here is a good explanation about both forms.
"It is ME" is not grammatically correct in the academic sense, but is used in spoken English.
"It is I" is grammatically correct in the pure sense, but would never be used in spoken English - or very rarely by people who speak in an ultra-formal dialect.
"It is I" would have been correct in ...
If a pronoun is the subject of a verb, then you use I. Otherwise you use me.
Exceptions:
If it is the object of a linking verb (such as be), traditional grammar says to use I but this is very formal and use of me is extremely widespread in all but the most formal contexts.
Myself is used as th...
I am a native speaker, so if I just say something without thinking about the grammatical correctness of it all, it is automatically grammatically correct. Me is always right!
Ok not sure if this question is on topic (maybe it just needs to be rephrased) but since this made global headlines due to the Dalai Lama not being able to understand it, I figure most non-native speakers would have trouble getting the joke too.
This is the joke on YouTube.
The Dalai Lama wa...
@Cerberus yeah, I beat it with flying colors. I sent the invitation because I thought this one would require like 20 people, too. But then it turned out that not all raids are that hard.
And now I am not allowed to begin another raid for 1 day 4 hours. No idea why.
But hey, I kicked off a war and it looks like we can only win if I chicken out and let you handle it.
I still need a few cards for a stronger deck, or 17 war bonds to unlock the vault where I can just buy them directly.
When there is a possibility one is refereeing to plural or a singular and makes so apparent using (s) like: The computer(s) are on. Should 'are' or 'is' be used?
@RegDwight Aww, yeah it sucks that it often pays off to just sit still and do nothing now.
Oh, and someone told me a trick.
If are on auto and click several times on the "fight" button in the arena, before the battle takes over, you can fight several battles at once. There is a lag of about a second. With an Autohotkey script I can click about 35 times at a time. The goal is to win the "Emperor" achievement, which unlocks a rather good card. You need to win 5000 battles against humans to get the achievement. Still a lot of work, though, even with the script.
This is a type of ambiguous headline known as a crash blossom. From the Wikipedia link:
Newspaper headlines are written in a telegraphic style (headlinese) which often omits the copula and therefore lends itself to syntactic ambiguity, usually of the garden path type. The name 'crash blossoms...
By the way, do you understand why some people insist on putting these plastic bulbs with detergent in their washing machines? I just poor it into the top detergent drawer.
Although such variation could be the result of things like when the word was borrowed into the language, this variation is probably due to the prosodic structure of the words; we get different vowel sounds because of the way that stress influences vowel quality in English.
In English, unstressed...
By the way, this bit from Kosmonaut's answer struck me as funny:
> The noun form takes first syllable stress: [ˈrɛ kɚd]. If you aren't familiar with IPA, note in particular the [ɛ] vowel and the [ɚ] r-colored schwa vowel. Schwa (and sometimes [ɪ]) is what often shows up in reduced, unstressed vowels in English. Since stress is on the first syllable, we get the r-colored schwa in the second syllable.
The Pope would have absolutely no problems coming here. I doubt there would be more than a handful of protesters. And yet the Netherlands is extremely secularized and becoming even more so.
@Jez Really? Mosque attendence, which has always been low, is decreasing here as well.
Not exactly... the thing is that coffeeshops are mostly owned by criminals, even though they are legal: the reason is that buying it in great quantities is illegal (which is a major flaw; but we can't allow that or we'd risk the wrath of France and America).
It is mostly the mayors who are suffering from the littering and destruction from mass drugs tourism, in Amsterdam and along the borders, who want to curb down on it a bit. And a few Christian parties. But the biggest parties, Liberals and Socialists, are for it in general.
Oh, and many people don't like coffeeshops' being near schools.
@Alenanno Everybody in my school was smoking joints. One of my classmates had a habit of rolling a joint in class and sticking behind his ear all through class. He might or might not be told to put it away...
Oh and we didn't have a coffeeshop nearby. About 5 or 10 minutes by bike.
Sorry if this disappoints you, but we British have now abandoned the 'million million' billion. We now use the American billion (one thousand million) and American trillion (one million million).
In British English, a billion used to be equivalent to a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,0...
I was taught at school that following expression is invalid in the sense of grammar:
Who is there? It's me.
The correct one is:
Who is there? It's I.
Can you let me know which one is accurate?
Here is a good explanation about both forms.
If a pronoun is the subject of a verb, then you use I. Otherwise you use me.
Exceptions:
If it is the object of a linking verb (such as be), traditional grammar says to use I but this is very formal and use of me is extremely widespread in all but the most formal contexts.
Myself is used as th...
Ok not sure if this question is on topic (maybe it just needs to be rephrased) but since this made global headlines due to the Dalai Lama not being able to understand it, I figure most non-native speakers would have trouble getting the joke too.
This is the joke on YouTube.
The Dalai Lama wa...
When there is a possibility one is refereeing to plural or a singular and makes so apparent using (s) like: The computer(s) are on. Should 'are' or 'is' be used?
This is a type of ambiguous headline known as a crash blossom. From the Wikipedia link:
Newspaper headlines are written in a telegraphic style (headlinese) which often omits the copula and therefore lends itself to syntactic ambiguity, usually of the garden path type. The name 'crash blossoms...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…