Matt

Although correct ("his" and "he" are the original gender neutral pronouns) it is becoming uncommon to see this deployed in practice - with a clear swing in academic papers to deliberate use of the word "her" instead. (e.g. The interested reader should continue her studies by doing the exercises at the end of this chapter).

room topic changed to English Language Learners: A room where our astute members sardonically vivisect English sentences, discuss linguistics and talk about anything they want. But remember this is a public room: do not give out personal contact information here. (no tags)

room topic changed to English Language Learners: A room where our astute members sardonically vivisect English sentences, discuss linguistics and talk about anything they want. Do not give out personal contact information in this room. (no tags)

If the dialect is important to the question you are asking (for instance, you are asking a question that is specific to Australian English), then you must include it in the question - not merely add the "Australian English" tag to it.

Hence I claim that tags are not part of a question. They are descriptors of the question.

Quote: "The reason meta-tags are a problem is that they do not describe the content of the question"

@Theta30: Also here: blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags

@Theta30: meta.ell.stackexchange.com/questions/362/…

My fundamental objection is that old texts - and particularly classic old fiction texts are not everyday English. And in my mind, that is what ELL is about. The question is perfectly good, as it stands, for ELU. But questions that are asking about uncommon grammatical structures in old literature are always likely to be a better fit for ELU than ELL.

That is the reason I object to some of the OP's questions. Not that I think that they are not good questions, nor that I think they are not worthy of answer, and not even that I object to the OP's learning style, or wish to impose any views I may or may not hold on "how to learn English" on the OP.

On the other hand, if ELL is a site that is different to ELU, rather than subordinate to ELU, then we, like ELU, need to discuss what is off-topic to ELL. We are not here to answer the questions that are off-topic to ELU. We are here to answer the questions that are on-topic to ELL.

If ELL is merely the trash-heap of ELU, or the junior site to ELU where questioners then "graduate" to when they grow up, then I want no part of it.

I do not like the implication that questions here are answered because we do not wish to infantilize our questioners - firstly because that is not what I am saying - and secondly because that is the same attitude that some people on ELU have been using as a justification for sending their "trash" questions to ELL (because "this is off-topic here and ELL will answer any awful question, no matter how bad")

To me, ELL is not, and must not be a free-for-all party where any question is answered "just because". If we do not have a niche that we answer questions for, and more importantly, a scope that we do not answer outside, then we are not a Stack Exchange site at all, but merely a luxury Ask-Me-Anything Answers site. That is perhaps what Yahoo Answers is, but it is not (IMO) what ELL is, or should aspire to be.

I did not send it to ELU because it was beneath an answer. I sent it to ELU because IMO it is off-topic to ELL. It's a fantastic question, and I loved reading the answers to it on ELU. And it's not to say that we couldn't have answered it here, either. It's just not a good question for ELL (it is not about learning how to use everyday English), and is a great question for ELU (because it is about history of English, and ELU is much more about the academic study of English).

Such as "Why do we capitalize the pronoun 'I'? " which I sent to ELU a few weeks ago.

And I am certainly not saying that the OP's question is not worthy of an answer, or even that it is not worth of my answer. There are very many questions that I migrate to ELU that are fantastic questions.

And we should not be going by who the learner is either. The distinction between the two sites cannot and must not be whether the person is learning English. "What is the etymology of the word 'Hello'?" is a great question for ELU and a bad one for ELL, whether the questioner is a native speaker and Professor of English or a third grader two days into learning English as a foreign language.

@StoneyB: Sure, our value may derive from our answers and the quality of them, but that does not mean that all questions are on-topic or within scope of ELL. If all questions are on topic for ELL, then there is no point having a distinction between ELL and ELU, and we should all go back to being the same site.

But replace "product" with "Stack Exchange Site" and "ship" with "graduate".

Related: blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2007/03/21/…

and the silly notion that we are somehow required to answer all questions and spare no thought for what is on- and, perhaps more importantly, what is off- topic for ELL.

What I really am trying to get at, is we need to dispel the notion that ELL is defined as "everything that is off-topic for ELU"

But if that the remit of ELL, then questions such as "Why does this pre-war author write this sentence in his grand book of fiction in this particular way?" are very borderline off-topic. And if that is not the remit of ELL, then we need to decide what the remit of ELL is.

@kiamlaluno: If ELL were for teaching everything about English, it would overlap ELU, since everything that is on-topic for ELU could be construed as learning something about English. In order to try and keep the two from overlapping too overtly, I think ELL should really be concentrating on helping people how to read, write and speak everyday English, and that ELU should really be concentrating on everything else.

I feel that ELL is doing Listenever a disservice by not pointing this out.

And that, IMHO, is the remit of ELL. If you wish to learn non-standard English, or understand words and structures that are not part of the everyday language, ELU is a much better place for you to do so.

Now that is not to say that those texts are not worth reading - they are great books - but merely to say that they are written to entertain the audience of the day. Not to teach 21st Century English.

It is easier to learn everyday English by reading texts and listening to everyday English than by learning it from something that is very much not everyday English, such as James Joyce, Shakespeare, or frankly even Game of Thrones.

Finding a strange sentence or word in a old fiction book by a master of English only tells you that you either (A) don't understand the structure because you need to learn more English (B) that the structure is indecipherable now, but was valid then or (C) that the structure was invalid even then, but was put there because the author was using artistic licence

That is my objection. This is why your quote from the New York Times is so much better for ELL than the OP's original quote from James Joyce.

Learning modern colloquial English from old texts is a minefield; and it's commonly the case that things that do not appear as they seem in old texts (and particularly old fiction texts - and even more particularly in old fiction texts by famous authors), the language is not what is in everyday use

but the word "to-morrow" does not exist anymore. It might be perfectly understandable, but the way to spell tomorrow is without the hypen nowadays. The language of 1925 is not the same as the language of today, and people speaking or writing it as if there have been no changes will appear strange to those of us living in the 21st Century.

The Great Gatsby written in 1925 right at the end contains the sentence "It eluded us then, but that's no matter - to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . . . And one fine morning ----"

My objection is not that they are famous, or even that they are classics, but that they are old (and also fictional) texts.

@StoneyB: I disagree. He speaks a similar language, sure, but there are important changes that would make someone speaking like him (or anyone from that time) appear stilted and strange if they were to copy their style of language in a modern setting.

to that end, I worry that many of these questions (on aggregate) get awfully close to being about English Literature, rather than being about everyday English.

And part of me thinks that the difference between ELL and ELU is really more of a divide along the lines of whether the English in question is part of everyday English (and thus ELL) or esoteric or abstract questions about English (and thus ELU).

but part of me worries that OP in this case is trying to derive everyday modern usage from several different books, many of which are old, and many of which are fiction

@StoneyB: I don't doubt that many of Listenever's questions are very interesting, and many of them touch on topics that are relevant to modern everyday English

@snailboat: The first tag is the most important, sure, but the other four still aid searchability too. Google (and all other search engines) index the content of pages as well as the title. But yes, I certainly agree that it is much more important to have good tags than to have lots of tags.

@Theta30: Add as many tags as you think are appropriate. The only important thing from my perspective is that the question needs to include all of the important information independent of the tags (and the question title). The Question Title and tags are really there to aid searchability of the question. But the question should stand on its own merits without them.

@MattЭллен: Questions that can be solved with a quick dictionary-lookup are not on-topic for ELL, no.

@theUg: Actually I think they're more suited to ELL than to ELU. ELU isn't so much a "more advanced, but still learning English" site - but rather is more of a "Studying English at a degree level or above" site. For that reason (IMO) phrase requests are generally a better fit for ELL than ELU.

particularly if you have a particular example you could throw into the question

something like "Is it rude to start a sentence with 'first off'"

You might want to rephrase it slightly though

@kiamlaluno: I don't see why that question wouldn't be suitable.

I just came in to read what was going on. Unfortunately SE's chat rooms notice when you come in, but don't notice when you leave. So when you posted that message I wasn't here :/

@HowardPautz: Affirmative. I am here