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 Discussion on question by ColleenV: W…

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.meta.stackexchange.c...
gotube
Feb 16, 2024 21:04
A tangent, but I'm always surprised at people who answer questions, then don't upvote them. If I can't stomach to upvote a question, I won't answer it. Overwhelmingly answerers get the most upvotes --as it should be since they provide the value-- but I think expecting there should be at least one upvote per answer is reasonable.
gotube
Feb 16, 2024 21:04
I'm unsure your purpose here. Are you asking people who read that question and didn't upvote it why they didn't upvote it? Or asking for opinions why? Or is lack of upvotes for otherwise well-received questions a topic you want to draw attention to generally? Or something else?
 

 Discussion on answer by Laurel: An Am…

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.stackexchange.com/qu...
gotube
Nov 27, 2023 23:34
@MichaelHarvey You don't call them "tortilla crisps"??
 

 Discussion on question by Nyenok: Wha…

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.stackexchange.com/qu...
gotube
Jun 6, 2023 16:37
Yes. That's a quote from the Cambridge Dictionary. Did you actually look there?
gotube
Jun 6, 2023 16:37
From Cambridge: "to be the time or place when something happens: This summer has seen the end of water restrictions in the area thanks to a new reservoir."
gotube
Jun 6, 2023 16:37
What dictionaries did you look in?
gotube
Jun 6, 2023 16:37
Have you looked up "see" in any good online dictionaries? Did you find any definitions that match this context?
 

 Language Overflow

This is the main chat room for ell.stackexchange.com. Welcome!
2
gotube
Dec 23, 2022 03:29
There's probably a bunch of questions on the site about the differences between "for me" and "to me".
gotube
Dec 23, 2022 03:28
@SergeyZolotarev It's "elusive to someone", not "for"
gotube
Dec 22, 2022 06:58
What does Santa Claus call his helpers?
Subordinate Clauses.
2
gotube
Nov 27, 2022 01:12
@CowperKettle That's it exactly
gotube
Nov 24, 2022 05:39
Bit of bad luck there, as you accidentally ran into two problems in a row. Your question is fine, but David's right that you should have edited in the relevant text, rather than pasting an image of it. I have typed out the one section I think is relevant, and removed the image.

If you want to open it again, it's a good question now, but like I said in the comments last week, it's unlikely anybody will be able to answer it. It looks like a printing mistake.
gotube
Sep 17, 2022 23:59
@DialFrost You can close vote any question for appropriate reasons. Even if the rules have changed, we go by what the rules are now.
gotube
Sep 14, 2022 14:33
That's only if high quality questions are being closed. Are they?
gotube
Sep 14, 2022 14:24
If questions with lack of research are being closed, that's good. We want high quality questions.
gotube
Sep 14, 2022 14:22
That sounds like a good thing. Why raise it on Meta?
gotube
Sep 14, 2022 13:23
I'm not clear what you're saying. If there are some specific questions that have been closed that should not have been closed, that's an issue. Can you link some?
gotube
Sep 14, 2022 05:49
Why is it an issue?
gotube
Aug 7, 2022 00:38
@DialFrost
From Canonical #2: "*So there are no cut-and-dried rules you can always apply in every situation. The best I can offer is rules of thumb. These will work in nine cases out of ten—and nobody has yet figured out the rules for the tenth case!*"

I disagree. Everything in grammar is the result of a rule, and while we haven't figured out absolutely everything, what we know is closer to 99.9% than to 90%, as the post claims. Especially with perfects, I can't think of anything that isn't governed by a known rule, at least nothing that ELL learners would need to know.
gotube
Aug 3, 2022 13:51
Looks to me like anyone can edit it, especially since it's a "community" page. Something to consider is that official-ish pages like that have usually been thought out a lot, and they tend to be the way they are for a reason. So before you make any edit, ask yourself if there might be a reason nobody else has made that change yet.

But in the end, it's basically a Wiki page, and anybody can just revert your edit, so have at it!
gotube
Aug 2, 2022 13:36
In fact, for the election to happen, I believe we need 1 more candidate than there are positions available.
gotube
Aug 2, 2022 13:35
The election fails and we decide if/when to have another one
gotube
Aug 2, 2022 03:18
@DialFrost My attempt at humour
2
gotube
Jul 27, 2022 02:30
Do you think I should run?
 

 Discussion on question by Helen: What…

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.stackexchange.com/qu...
gotube
Oct 24, 2022 15:18
Is there a term like that in your language?
 

 Room for DialFrost and gotube

gotube
Sep 6, 2022 16:14
yo
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 07:23
IMO, it should all be in our own words. If we want to add sources to various parts, that's even better. Nobody wants to read a collection of quotes from various grammar books. We want one voice that's tailored to our audience.
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 06:56
That's it
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 06:56
***
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 06:56
Now, it's possible that my standards are too high, or that "Good enough is good enough" and it will improve over time as others edit it, but to me, like attracts like, and it's got too many issues to present as if it's pseudo-official.
Like I said, I love that you're doing this and if done right I think it would be a great tool for the community
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 06:56
Technical issues
* bad grammar in examples ("The paintings in the cave were suggested to be made in the stone age")
* "Truth" isn't a reason to use passive voice. The example "Rules are made to be broken" falls under "The person is irrelevant".
* bare claims with no justification or examples ("Additional note, using the passive voice can make things unnecessarily hard for you, and can be wordy and indirect to anybody who is reading your sentences.")
* ambiguous sentences as examples ("The water was polluted" could be a sentence describing the water with the adjective "polluted", rather than…
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 06:56
Here's some of the issues I noticed:

Style issues
* the use of first person throughout ("I would first like to define the terminology")
* conversational tone ("To put that in perspective")
* inefficiency (after reading the first two paragraphs of "Question: What is the Passive Voice?", the reader is no smarter than they were before)
* dull, low-hanging-fruit examples ("John threw the ball")
* exclamation points ("[You don't know who made it!]")
* organization (The sections, "When to use and avoid the passive voice?" and "Pros and cons of the passive voice" are very similar and could be rol…
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 06:55
I love how enthusiastic you are about this project, and I wish I could give you my thumbs up, but unfortunately, I can't. A canonical post should read like and be of comparable quality to a chapter from a major ESL textbook, but I found lots of major issues with the style and technical accuracy. The overall structure is mostly good, but in my opinion, the content needs a lot of help.
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 06:55
I don't want to say negative things about the post publicly because I want the project to succeed, and if the average user reads what I have to say in full, it might sour them. Now, this chat room is technically public, but very few will come in here.
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 06:55
Found it. I'll past the comments in one at a time again
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 06:52
I'll see what I can do...
gotube
Sep 6, 2022 06:51
Wassup?
 

 2022 English Language Learners Stack …

Open discussion for ell.stackexchange.com/election/6
gotube
Aug 3, 2022 13:52
@ElectionBot What can I ask you?
 

 Discussion on question by Faj: Using …

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.stackexchange.com/qu...
gotube
Jul 13, 2022 16:42
@Faj If you have a single question about the English language, please get answers in the answer section. Please do not use the comment section as a writing clinic. Comments are for notes and questions about the question itself.
gotube
Jul 13, 2022 16:42
@Faj I don't know how to make it right because I need more context. Is that the end of the story?
gotube
Jul 13, 2022 16:42
Is this the end of the story, or does something happen after that, perhaps interrupting their living together? If this is the end, this is bad grammar.
 

 Discussion on question by TK Kim: “th…

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.stackexchange.com/qu...
gotube
May 7, 2022 05:42
I'm quite typical in that I hate "irregardless", even though it's been in common usage since at least the 1800s. Every time I hear it I think that person is stupid. It's not fair at all, but it's just that awful to my ear. It sounds as bad as if there was a shared delusion that "irrespectful" or the like was a real word. I don't talk about that opinion publicly because I like to maintain my image as a pure descriptivist :)
gotube
May 7, 2022 05:40
Yes, most people picture ESL lessons as fun and games with vocabulary cards, but a whole lot of it is focusing on grammar structures and their related functions. The questions we get here on ELL are very similar to the ones we get in a classroom, including the variety in quality and effort put in. I have no time for students who want me to do the work for them, either in a classroom or on ELL.
gotube
May 4, 2022 19:56
@PeterJennings By "mistake", do you mean teaching native speakers not to end a sentence with a preposition, or that native speakers of Jamaican Standard English never do so?

You've caught on to something interesting: native speakers don't need to be taught any grammar; we just pick it up naturally without noticing. The only reason grammar is taught at all is to get children to conform to the standard variety of a language for their own future success. Which variety is considered the standard is arbitrarily determined by whoever is in power at the time, so a standard variety can be replaced…
gotube
May 2, 2022 22:08
Having no previous concept of English, Jamaican learners absorbed the rule completely, and still today, speakers of Jamaican Standard English will twist sentences into a knot (from our perspective) to keep all prepositions in front of their objects. Poole (or whomever)'s utter grammatical fantasy became an ironic reality.
gotube
May 2, 2022 22:08
The book was considered an (otherwise) excellent book, so people assumed that this rule about prepositions was also correct and everyone else was wrong. The rule was never followed anywhere on Earth until British colonizers, starting in 1655, used the book to introduce English to the then Spanish-speaking population of Jamaica.
gotube
May 2, 2022 22:08
@PeterJennings All that's basically true, but the details are hilarious. The story, as I understand it, is that there was a grammar (I believe called "The English Accidence" by Joshua Poole, but I can't find verification on that point) that was briefly popular in the mid 1600s. It included a rule about keeping prepositions in front of their objects, though without specifically mentioning not ending a sentence with one.
gotube
May 2, 2022 21:18
@PeterJennings That's literally only a followed rule of English in Jamaica. Funny story. If you want to hear it, reply and I'll move this to chat.
 

 Discussion on answer by Lambie: Does …

Imported from a comment discussion on ell.stackexchange.com/qu...
gotube
Feb 7, 2022 23:11
I'm sorry to hear you think I'm doing a bad job. If you're interested in escalating this, you can report me using this link: https://ell.stackexchange.com/contact. It's the "Contact" or "Contact Us" button at the bottom of every main SE network page (not chat pages). It will connect you with a CM (SE paid staff person) who will handle it.

We should continue this in a private channel. I'll set one up for us now.
gotube
Feb 7, 2022 22:39
@Lambie Yes. You flagged it as improperly deleted. I declined the flag with a note along the lines of: "One sentence of your answer addresses the OP, and the rest of it is about vocabulary choice, which the OP doesn't ask about." So now it stays deleted