📚｜english-questions

[frail river]

therefore this method doesnt work

[boreal ingot]

it's an alphabet linguists use to write how words sound in various languages. In it, you indicate a syllable boundary with a full stop
/pʰɑɪn.ˈæp.l̩/

[frail river]

it would be a pain to work with because those contain utf-8 characters that take more than 1 byte of memory

and I have 0 experience in IPA

[boreal ingot]

yea that would be three syllables, the suffix is on its own

[frail river]

i have no idea what those characters are

[frail river]

Are suffixes always on their own?

no exceptions?

[boreal ingot]

I can't think of any exceptions. That's not to say there aren't any

[frail river]

if they are really rare

I can pass it

i will consider a suffix as 1 syllable

So a method is. If a word contains suffix, remove it and separate the remaining into syllables using CVC method.

Will it work?

Interesting how -burger is considered a suffix

[boreal ingot]

I think '-ed' often merges into the syllable, but that's normally indkicated with the spelling

Said, tried.
but that's not always the case:
Played

played is one syllable, with a suffix

[frail river]

Any ideas in your mind?

Of the steps

without using IPA

[boreal ingot]

Can't think of anything, sorry mate

but the suffix idea wouldnt work with '-ed'

[frail river]

okay

Then I will think of something else

[flat rune]

i-de-a

[boreal ingot]

further, some words are pronounced with any extra syllable depending on how theyre used

I learnt/learned something
^ one syllable 'learnt'

He is a learned man
^ two syllables 'learn - id'

[frail river]

so every vowel combination such as ae, io, uo, au are considered a single vowel?

headphones
head-pho-nes

[boreal ingot]

that would be
head - phones

two syllables. The vowel method isn't that good

[frail river]

why is phones 1 syllable?

[boreal ingot]

look at how you pronounce it

fownz

that's one syllable

[frail river]

yes

[boreal ingot]

the spelling doesn't say much about how many syllables are in a word

[frail river]

spelling contains no information about syllables?

well

Then another question rises in my mind

Is it possible to convert phones into fownz and then fownz back into phones conveniently?

ph is always f

[boreal ingot]

it can, but English spelling is too irregular for it to be reliable

[frail river]

?

god damn

english is a big mess

i think enough questions from me

[boreal ingot]

well, the IPA is an exact way to represent sounds. You could use some database, if exists one, that has English words in normal spelling and in IPA

[frail river]

I'll just look for a web API that will do that work for me

[crimson vortex]

@boreal ingot . Hello, you seem to be a pretty advanced english speaker. What's your method of learning english?

[flat rune]

They have already learnt english

[boreal ingot]

Oh my, thank you 😅 I'm still learning. I mostly just intook a lot of content and looked up all that I didn't know. I later became interested in the grammar of the language and then the phonology. I'd say I'm not the best person to ask for a method of study since I mostly learnt through osmosis from constant immersion in English content online over the years

[flat rune]

still learning

[frail river]

i found something

https://www.wordsapi.com/docs/#get-word-details

[boreal ingot]

interesting

I suppose that solves your issue lol

[frail river]

I guess lol

[crimson vortex]

What is phonology. I looked it up on the Internet, but I still can't understand what exactly it is. But I understood your method of learning English, I do the same.

[crimson vortex]

What program exactly are you going to build?

[frail river]

I want to make a function that takes in an English word and returns an array of syllables that make up that word

This is what I wanted to do for several hours now

no one has been able to help me yet, people only give me remotely accurate answers

@crimson vortex

[flat rune]

And ?

We don't know anything about your program

Because we DO NOT have the knowledge

[frail river]

This program doesnt exist yet

[frail river]

And this is exactly what it does

what I want it to do

[flat rune]

Be happy that some of us gave you answers

One day, i asked a question no one answered me

[crimson vortex]

I am not sure that English language has a specific algorithm that can spread a word into separate syllables. Try asking chatGPT about it or google it

[flat rune]

He said he already did that

[frail river]

ChatGPT just told me about CVC method that will turn "pineapple" into "pi-nea-pple"

[flat rune]

But apprezntly google and chatgpt weren't helpful

Then we're not better than google and chatgpt

[crimson vortex]

So what's his current question now?

[flat rune]

.

[frail river]

I think I already got the answer. Spelling contains no userful information about syllables

[flat rune]

Then why are you still axsking the same question

[frail river]

i answered their question

[flat rune]

What question

[frail river]

the program i was planning to build

[crimson vortex]

I recalled the moment when I asked a question and no one answered it. So after long time of waiting I complained about why this channel was so inactive and some guy strictly scolded me for being super impatient and many other unnecessary silly things. He bothered to write a huge message about how wrong I was, but didn't answer my question, lol

[flat rune]

Yeah

And him he's complaining because he hasn't gotten a ( good ) answer

Be happy brother

[frail river]

maybe there is no answer to my question

The only thing I learned is that spelling contains no info about syllables

[flat rune]

Yes there's no answer

[crimson vortex]

Can I ask you why you need this kind of function in your programm if you don't mind?

[frail river]

It's my weekend programming project

I wanted to create a language translator

For that I need to know the syllables of a word

[crimson vortex]

Apparently It's a pretty hard project. Do you use API for translation process?

[frail river]

nope

It's just a novelty translation program

nothing serious

I will make the translation myself from scratch, because I know how it works

[crimson vortex]

You have a database containing english words and their translations into some other languages?

[frail river]

Nope

I just have a wordlist containing about 180k english words

but the language I will be translating to isnt english

its a cryptic language

[crimson vortex]

What is a cryptic language?

[frail river]

a language that allows you to secretly communicate with someone else

Basically the method is, I separate a word into syllables and give every syllable a unique ID.

Then I will find an English word which ID matches with the syllable and take 1 random syllable from that word.

I will construct a new word this way

This will work bidirectionally

meaning this can be reversed and that translated text can be translated back to english

[flat rune]

Like C'

[frail river]

I think I will use the CVC method

Even though it isnt correct, in my case it will work fine

[boreal ingot]

I'm no phonologist, so I can't give you an exact definition, but phonology is like the study of sounds in a language. To be specific, phonemes, as opposed to any sounds. A phoneme is a set of sounds that are connected in a speaker's mind as one.

For example, 'p' in 'pin' and 'p' in 'spin' are slightly different sounds, but to an English speaker, they are the same sound (even though some languages treat them as separate), which means that these two types of 'p' together, probably along with some other similar sounds, form the phoneme /p/. Phonemes, while on their own not having any semantic significance, combine to form morphemes with meaning. You can test if two sounds are phonemes in a given language if swapping one out for the other could (in some word in the language) change the meaning. An example would be 'pin' and 'bin'. They are identical save for the first sound, and when you swap one sound for the other the meaning changes, which means that those two sounds belong in separate phonemes.

Phonology is all about studying these phonemes, studying the relationships between them, studying allophones within these phonemes, and so on. While I've not gone very deep into it, it slightly interests me. However, the fact I haven't studied it extensively means I'm not the best to give you an exact answer for what phonology is.

This video describes the difference between phonetics and phonology and explains both of them: https://youtu.be/80d2CEeMyQQ

[crimson vortex]

Thanks, it is a quite precise answer, I'll necessarily check out the video

[verbal heron]

I noticed that, but it'd better to bear with it, as we are here to help and to be helped

[verbal heron]

Ah, the person must have endeavored to cloak their unknowingness

[flat rune]

vampire

why is ur role beginner ?

[verbal heron]

The reasons behind my taking the beginner role are: (1) my vocabulary does not contain much colloquials, (2) I learn from books and dictionary only, (3) it is less pertinent to the question, but I am not good at enunciating my thoughts during an oral conversation

[crimson vortex]

Do you intentionally use quite advanced vocabulary in your messages to practice it?

[verbal heron]

Yes, sometimes, but I keep in mind that the readers of the messages should be able to infer the meaning of the expressions which may be obscure to them, from the context. So I try to provide more background to them

[verbal heron]

Btw, that's a really good way to retain them in your memory

[distant hazel]

Please repeat the problem for me.

[frail river]

It was a problem about extracting syllables from a word based on spelling alone

[boreal ingot]

They were trying to find an algorithm for separating syllables from only the spelling of a word

[distant hazel]

difficult to impossible

[boreal ingot]

yea what I was thinking. English spelling is much too irregular for that

[frail river]

Well, I will not attempt this any further

[distant hazel]

that's what is meant by calling the spelling arbitrary

the best thing is simply to learn the phonetics

Are you familiar with this book? #esl-material message

[frail river]

I would have to somehow convert a word into it's phonetic representation, and then extract the syllables

[boreal ingot]

Further, I'd like to note that syllable count can vary from speaker to speaker, and in some cases, from one usage of a word to another (the only example I can think of is 'learned person', but I remember there being at least one other word following that same pattern).
A lot of the time people don't even mark syllable boundaries in their IPA transcriptions, so you'd need something that converts to IPA and marks syllable boundaries, unless it's the case that through having the exact pronunciation of a word it's possible to derive where the syllables are through some algorithm

Maybe if you research English phonotactics and use a good database of words and their IPA, you could arrive at a decent method

[cloud badge]

Yeah, for some words said in certain contexts, the syllable count is just something you have to memorize, like in 'learned'. 'I learned(1) something today' vs 'i am a learned(2, lear-ned) person' And some accents change how many syllables are annunciated.

Also fun fact, the words 'strengths' is the longest 1 syllable word in the English language

[boreal ingot]

Yea exactly. The other word I was thinking of was 'blessed' as in 'blessed souls' and 'cursed' as in 'cursed place'

Though I think the latter may be pronounced either way?

[cloud badge]

Oh yes those are other great examples. Many words with that suffix can be said that way

[boreal ingot]

Fun fact from me: when '-ed' is supposed to be pronounced separately, it can be written as '-èd'. I,e, 'learned person' would be 'learnèd person'

This is mostly for poems

[cloud badge]

Interesting, I've never seen that before but it makes sense based on what i know about French. But people who don't know about that accent will probably be confused by that 😅 that's the cool thing about poetry though, you can be very creative with everything.

[boreal ingot]

I haven't seen it in actual use, but I've seen it being talked about lol. I find that sort of funny
but yea, English retains some diacritics here and there. the diaeresis in 'naïve', the acute accent in 'café', and the grave accent (I think it's called) in my example above.

I like these niche things, they're cool. Even though I'll never really use them or see them in use

[cloud badge]

One i can think of that depends on accent is the word flour. In the south, it's common for people to blend the ou together and drop the r a bit, and the word comes out more like flar, one syllable, but further north where i am, there's a clear difference, it sounds like flow-wer. So if you were to see the word flour in, say, a haiku, where it only makes sense to have one, you may also be able to assume the poem was meant to be read in a southern American accent :p

[boreal ingot]

yeah, 'fire' is a similar situation

[cloud badge]

Yeah true, usually people drop the accents but its cool to see them. And yeah fire is another, and so is crayon, it can be pronounced cran, crown, cray-ahn, all depends where you live.

[boreal ingot]

'fire' in older posh rp was either a slight diphthong (almost a monophthong) or at some point it was a triphthong? Nowawadays, it's a two syllables

Both of the first ones would be 1 syllable

[cloud badge]

Yeah they would. And yeah, my best friend growing up was from western Pennsylvania and they all say fire like faarr.

Oil is another. Can be oll, or oy-ul

And I'm sure there's many more but yeah, not easily predictable with a computer program

[boreal ingot]

Yeah, I always found it a little funny how Southern American and old-timey RP share this smoothing of triphthongs

[boreal ingot]

Is Pennsylvania southern, actually? Idk my geography

[robust bone]

isn't handout supposed to mean pamphlet?

[boreal ingot]

an impossible task

[boreal ingot]

I haven't heard it, but it's a thing:

look at sense 3

[cloud badge]

nope, its part of the midatlantic region, and considered north.

[boreal ingot]

I see. Wonder why they do the 'faaarr' thing then :p

Interesting

[cloud badge]

mhmm, im not sure, maybe because the accents that far west are closer to southern accents, Pennsylvania has a ton of interesting accents throughout it tho. I guess thats partly why they call the west part pennsyltucky :p

[cloud badge]

a handout is just something, can be paper, can be money, can be food, anything that is handed out to poeple or given away to a lot of people.

[boreal ingot]

It's only a matter of time until the whole world will turn against me
Should that 'will turn' not be 'turns'?

Also, 'before' or 'until'? I'm seeing both are used, but which is prefered?

[random lava]

No Pennsylvania is North East US.

[boreal ingot]

I see

thanks

[robust bone]

how often is the word "gruesome" used?

[boreal ingot]

it's very common

[robust bone]

just learned "oftenly" isn't a real word five minutes ago

[boreal ingot]

Lol

[amber jackal]

what does 'yall' mean ? and 'tbh' ?

[fallow saddle]

Yall is shorter version of you all, and tbh is an abbreviation of to be honest.

[amber jackal]

ok thanks

[neat bone]

Is it correct to say "There's some rice residue stuck to the pan"?

[boreal ingot]

You must document every word and the derivatives thereof in this exact format.
Is this sentence correct?

[median sapphire]

Hye

[amber jackal]

hi

[neat bone]

What does the phrase "Sensitize teachers to the experiences of their students" mean?

[boreal ingot]

So when someone is desensitised to something bad, they don't care anymore cuz they've been so exposed to it or for some other reason, but it doesn't inspire any bad emotion in them. So to desensitise someone is to make them desensitised, to make them apathetic to something. Now reverse the meaning of 'desensitise', which is much more common than 'sensitise', as far as I know, and you get 'make more sensitive to something'. They're saying 'make teachers more sensitive and sympathetic to their students' experiences'. The opposit of making someone apathetic to something is making someone able to feel emotional about a certain matter. It's much more common to use 'resensitise' for this, but that word implies the person has already been desensitised, and they're being sensitised again, which 'sensitise' doesn't imply

[rapid bison]

1. being "desensitized" is not expressing emotions to situations, usually because they've seen them so much.
2. being "sensitized" is, then, be likely to express emotions to situations, or become sensitive.
3. this means, teachers should be sensitive to what the students experience/go through.

// oversimplified for fun - scella's answer is sufficient

[obsidian marsh]

Hi

[neat bone]

Thx guys

[boreal ingot]

No problem!

[obsidian marsh]

I need helps I need someone who is living in the U S text me in private please I need a friends

[hardy jay]

[boreal ingot]

^ ?

[boreal ingot]

... choose [of/up] the 48 mages ...

What does he say?

[boreal ingot]

oh wow how did I miss that to

now that you say it it's clear as day lmao

[sour fulcrum]

Hi everyone

I'm new here

I still don't know how to use this app

But I'm searching for a debate club to improve my speaking skills

[cloud badge]

Yes it is, if you mean the starch or something from the rice. If youre talking about whole grains of rice then no.

[graceful hare]

Up to 48

[boreal ingot]

yes, thank you. Someone has already answered, but they deleted their answer for some reason

I appreciate it regardless

[boreal ingot]

If you're able to answer this I'd be thankful ^

It has yet to be answered sadly

[graceful hare]

Strictly speaking, the grammar is perfectly correct.

However, depending on the context, it could be improved for clarity. For example, in a casual conversation, "thereof" would be considered archaic, and it would be better to say "and its derivatives" as opposed to "and the derivatives thereof".

[boreal ingot]

Yes, I intended for it to have a more formal tone. I'm not very experienced in using 'thereof', so I'm glad I managed to use it correctly! Thanks for your help

[swift canopy]

Hi guys could someone tell me how can I improve my pronunciation

[hoary lichen]

it’d be better to ask in #🗒｜pronunciation

[jolly mica]

up to

[warm garden]

I’m writing translations, can anyone help me with the grammar and mistakes or better word to use in this.

“History keeps telling that war will occur terrible disasters.”

and

“Avoid conflict, keeping the world peace should be the goal of the mankind.”

Thanks for the time

[boreal ingot]

I see. What about 'until' vs. 'before'?

[boreal ingot]

thanks!

[jolly mica]

also he doesn't say "the" he says "Chose up to 48 mages"

👍

[boreal ingot]

For the second, get rid of two 'the's: the one before 'world' and the one before 'mankind'

As for the first, I'm not sure what you're trying to say, so I can't properly correct it

[jolly mica]

“History keeps telling that war will occur have terrible disasters.”

“Avoid conflict, keeping the world peaceful should be the goal of the mankind.”

[boreal ingot]

yea I was mishearing the 'to' as 'the', and wasn't sure if the 'up' was 'up' or 'of'

[jolly mica]

definite article is hard especially in languages where it behaves differently or languages that dont have it at all

[boreal ingot]

But I think it's 'choose' not 'chose'

[boreal ingot]

I don't struggle with using articles much. This was mainly me mishearing what was said

[jolly mica]

yeah youre right, even as a native speaker i make spelling mistakes like that

[boreal ingot]

yeye, sorry. I thought that was meant to be a correction to inform me it's actually 'chose' 😅

[boreal ingot]

'keeping the world peaceful' or 'keeping world peace', I think both work. Not sure which is better though

[jolly mica]

both are good

[boreal ingot]

Anyway, I'll bump this question ^ Someone already told me they think 'turns' is better, but I still dk about the second question

[jolly mica]

world peace implies that there are no conflicts at all, "the world peaceful" means that the world is peaceful to the best of its ability

[boreal ingot]

That makes sense

thank you :>

[verbal heron]

Wouldn't 'maintain' be a better choice here?

[boreal ingot]

'to keep the peace/world peace' is more of a set expression, I'd say, but I would imagine it derives from this definition of keep, which I was not familiar with

'Maintain' would work fine too, ofc

[bitter hill]

Personally I don't really have a preference but 'before' is a lot more common

[acoustic geyser]

Hello

I wonder whether idiom is counted as a noun phrase

[flat rune]

Yo fam.

I think TEXT is the output we make whenever we CHAT

[boreal ingot]

Thank youuuu!

[wise anchor]

how do I know if the sentence has a faulty parallelism

[cloud badge]

All of these sentences are examples of faulty parallelism. You can know that by the first sentence is the challenge where it says 'identify THE faulty parallelism'

[cloud badge]

And how you know is by looking at the verb tenses and making sure that they are all in agreement, they all are happening at the same time as eachother.

[cloud badge]

Archaic is not the same as formal. The suggestion was still very formal, using thereof is archaic in that it sounds out of place and jarring to read in modern writing, formal or otherwise.

[boreal ingot]

I think the last one could be fixed by adding 'to' before 'attain' and 'be'
but idk what the issue with the second is

[boreal ingot]

'thereof' isn't really archaic afaik. It's still used (you often hear 'or the lack thereof')

archaic means it's actually not used anymore, liek 'wherefore' and 'whither'

'unto' and 'thee', those are archaic

[cloud badge]

That phrase, yes, but more because its a whole phrase that has stuck around, rather than because therof is a common word. Thereof on its own is definitely archaic in my mind.

[boreal ingot]

I'm not saying it's not old, but it hasn't really fallen out of use yet, afaik. I'm pretty sure you see it around in legeal stuff, but idk.
Looking at the Collins sentences section for 'thereof', most are 'lack thereof', but there are these two from the 1990s which use it differently:

Ofc iss old, I jus don't think it's so old it deserves to be called archaic

tbh Im not really in any mood to argue abt anything, I just wanted to know if I used 'thereof' properly

[cloud badge]

Yeah i just wanted to let you know that to most, it will be confusing to see that, because it's so seldom used, it can trip people up, (like that second sentence is doing to me), that's why peoples suggestions for simplifying and just saying 'its' is preferred, and still formal.

Cuz it looked like you thought the suggestions werent as formal but they are, that's all.

[boreal ingot]

Btw, Im just sharing this in the least argumentative way possible, cuz I know we often get into debates here, which im trying to avoid: these three dictionaries classify it as either formal or law

But yea, I 100% understand how it can be unnatural or odd, since it's so seldom used. I don't disagree

[boreal ingot]

It did sound less formal to me to say 'and its derivatives' but I dont read enough formal texts to know for sure

So it's formal too?

[cloud badge]

Yup, the sentence still sounds formal and clear c:

[boreal ingot]

I see, many thanks

[cloud badge]

For the first sentence, look at the last two things in the list. They don't follow the same pattern as the first three. Students like teachers who are 'being patient'? Students like teachers who are 'with creativity'? those don't sound right. I don't want to tell you the answers if this is homework but happy to help if you ask more questions.

[boreal ingot]

ngl I still dk what's wrong with the second :p

[cloud badge]

The second sentence or the 'with creativity'

[boreal ingot]

nono second sentence

sorry shoulve veen clearer

second sentence sounds okay to me

[bitter hill]

Compare the conjuncts

[cloud badge]

The value of excellence, and peoples passion to learn are not written the same way. It does make sense, but they want the focus on the passion. The value, the passion, not the peoples something.

[boreal ingot]

'[the value of excelence] and [how people are pattionate to learn] '

is it that one is a noun phrase while the other is a noun cluase?

[bitter hill]

Yep

[boreal ingot]

you're not allowed to whaa, that breaks parallelism? It sounds fine tho

does it sound weird?

I don't get parallelism :p

[cloud badge]

IDK, i would say a torch symbolizes passion before id say it symbolizes what someone is passionate about.

You want the parallels to match, and excellence and passionate do not

[bitter hill]

I mean technically, but I probably wouldn't pick up on it if I wasn't actively looking out for it

It'd probably be more glaring if it was a list

[boreal ingot]

Alrighty alrighty thank you both

💜

[frozen ore]

CHAT GPT:

1. "Would you please ______ late?"
   In the context of TOEFL or grammar-based exams, we usually choose the answer that is grammatically correct. However, in this question, the given answer is "Don’t be" because:

• TOEFL often tests understanding of common phrases or expressions in English, not just formal rules.
• A phrase like "Don’t be late" is a more idiomatic form of polite request and is commonly used in everyday conversation.

Why not "not be"?

• "Would you please not be late?" is grammatically correct but sounds very formal or outdated. In practice, this form is rarely used, even in formal writing.
• TOEFL often prioritizes answers that match modern English usage.

Guys , is this true?

[boreal ingot]

uh

'would you please don't be late' is wrong

if that's what it's saying

the blank should have 'not be'

It's either 'Would you please not be late?' or 'Don't be late' but not both

[frozen ore]

yupp, it sounds weird. I’ve no idea what’s wrong with chat gpt, his answer makes no sense

[boreal ingot]

ChatGPT isn't a good grammar tool

It's good for vocabulary or as a conversation partner, but it can't really answer English questions or tell you the difference in nuance between multiple things

[sly pier]

Adding onto what Scella said (the first part is incorrect), “Would you please not be late?” is not outdated at all. It is perfectly acceptable in modern English usage.

When you ask ChatGPT why something is wrong/right (even when it 100% isn’t) it’ll simply just make up reasons to support a point.

[ruby void]

Lowkey we need to touch it up by training it (cuz it has memory now). We can just point out where it went wrong and tell it to not make such mistakes next time.

[flat rune]

What's the difference between : Nonetheless, i wish he became doctor instead of becoming artist. Nevertheless, i wish he became doctor instead of becoming artist.

[sly pier]

They are synonyms and can be used interchangeably.

Both definitions are “in spite of that”

Just a note: you’re missing articles in both sentences.

I wish he became a doctor instead of becoming an artist.

[flat rune]

ty

[boreal ingot]

This grammarly article seems to think there' some difference between them, but I didn't really understand what they exaplined, to be honest:
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/commonly-confused-words/nonetheless-nevertheless

To me they're synonymous but idk

[boreal ingot]

Hey, isn't it acceptable to drop articles in more poetic texts?
This is something I wrote a while ago. I feel that it's alright to drop the article when it's something poetic, but idk, so I'd like to know what you have to say

I would like to be composer of book, painter of a world whence many a person might derive a great deal of joy.

[cloud badge]

That sounds so wrong, it makes me think the writer was joking 😅 definitely not acceptable. The only way that would be gramatically ok is if 'Composer of Book' was some kind of title, like Spider Man. Even then, its really weird and book should still be plural... idk. Dropping articles isn't a good idea unless you're doing it for a reason (like making a joke about wanting to be a writer while writing badly)

Its making me think of The Office quote 'why waste time say lot word when few word do trick' haha

[flat rune]

Can anyone explain me the difference between even though and even if

same for as though and as if

[bitter hill]

I would expect that sort of thing when using grandiose titles

[rapid ingot]

is it racist or bad if i refre to how black people speak english to "black English "?

[flat rune]

.

[lunar token]

No, there are plenty of people in academia that call it exactly this

Some other names floating around are African American English (AAE), African American Language (AAL) and Black Language (I don't know what academia outside the US uses)

[cloud badge]

ehm i dont know if its racist but there is a proper word for it. "ebonics" or AAVE to be more formal, (african american vernacular english). it has a lot of very inteterting characteristics. anyone please correct me if im wrong about any of this

[lunar token]

there are also people who would have a little bit of a problem with the 'V' in AAVE if you're using it as a generic way of labeling all black speech (like a lot of people seem to do)

because obviously not everything a black person says differently is because they're speaking 'vernacular'

[cloud badge]

vernacular is just another word for vocabulary though?

[bitter hill]

I usually see people use ebonics

[cloud badge]

but yes not every black person uses that vernacular

[verbal heron]

For precise answers what we need to do is to entertain no partiality in our questions

[cloud badge]

i saw this video about black english a while ago, it was really interesting and might give you a better answer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDAj9OVooyY&t=105s

[verbal heron]

Doesn't the word "black" often convey the idea of corruption?

[cloud badge]

there any many things the word black conveys, positive negative, everything in between, as do most if not all the color names

[lunar token]

i mean yeah, but calling the way black people talk 'black' is just about as neutral as calling black people themselves 'black'

jones also has another video that explicitly talks about names for the language https://youtu.be/a4NrrUtRShw

[flat rune]

No one has answered my question

[verbal heron]

It rarely conveys positivity though

[lunar token]

X, even though Y = Y definitely happens
X, even if Y = Y might not happen

X, as though Y / X, as if Y = these are synonyms

[bitter hill]

Well 'neutral' is a debatable topic for some

[flat rune]

ty

[cloud badge]

as though and as if are the same pretty much, but though and even if are not.

[verbal heron]

However, don't you think 'black english' might be perceived to be a corrupted version of english?

[flat rune]

ty too

[bitter hill]

No

[cloud badge]

not at all, at least to me.

[lunar token]

again not more than 'black people' is seen as pejorative by itself

there are plenty of people who use black/Black (sometimes capitalized explicitly out of respect/because it's a racial category) without playing into stereotypes that black people are inferior

and there are a whole lot of people who use 'more respectful' terms like African American while still definitely playing into those stereotypes

[verbal heron]

In that case I can't comment anything more on it

From the way we use terms like 'black magic', 'black money', 'black market', it is quite plausible to think that the usage of 'black english' might have a negative connotation

Moreover, we often use the color black to symbolise sombre or grief

[lunar token]

what I'm getting at is how much power those associations have is just as much power as you give them (this is exactly the same mechanism that allows other once offensive words like 'deaf' and 'gay' and 'qu*er' to be reclaimed and reused as a source of identity)

[boreal ingot]

Hmm, so I take it from your and RedSunBlues' answers that articles shouldn't be elided, be it in a poetic text or a normal one. What would you say about these sentences then?

With shield and sword, she fought valiantly to the very end.
Then in blood I write this will to you, without paper or pen.

Do they sound fine?

[rapid ingot]

thanks

I play gta v

its really hard to understand the converstion between lamar and frank they're black

and they always use n word

but i dont have issue when frank talks to white people

[cloud badge]

there are plenty of examples to the contrary though as well, black tie, black friday, black belts ha it depends on context. the use of black here is just about color, oversimplified but not with negative associations necessarily

[lunar token]

These sound fine, but I get the feeling that the meaning changes to be more abstract, like instead of a literal shield & literal sword it's also referring to the notion of what a shield & sword mean (i.e. with protection & strength)

When talking about people, there's a (to me) unrelated way of using the zero-article with positions of power: When I become king, As president I will, etc... these don't sound like abstract notions to me & they only work with certain positions

[boreal ingot]

I see, then I wonder what sets apart 'without paper or pen' and 'with shield and sword' from my 'composer of book' in 'I would like to be composer of book, painter of a world whence many a person might derive a great deal of joy.' Is it the fact that this one doesn't contain 'with'? Can 'a'/'the' only be elided after 'with' and 'without'?

[cloud badge]

they sound fine because the things theyre talking about have such symbolic significance or something, im not exactly sure how to explain it, but yeah its ok there.

[lunar token]

why not 'composer' = re read my second paragraph: this isn't a position of power like 'king' or 'advisor'

why not 'book' = re read my first paragraph: I could see how this could maybe work but it really has to fit into the notion of what a book represents

I also thought it might have something to do with the word 'with', but also be careful with that (I'm not really sure how good a sentence like 'I sat down at my desk without book' would sound even in a poetic style)

[boreal ingot]

Hmm, I understand

Thank you three

[bitter hill]

Might just boil down to idiomatic usage, also not necessarily about with/without

Sword and shield in hand, she fought valiantly to the very end.

[boreal ingot]

I'd like to know how this sounds, then I think I'm done asking about this:

With magic tome* in hand, she recited words from a time immemorial, and thereby damned him to a ghastly end.

[lunar token]

tome, not tomb

[boreal ingot]

Ohh, I see, that makes a lot of sense

[boreal ingot]

right, sorry. But that one doesn't need an article?

[bitter hill]

With article sounds better here

[lunar token]

I can see it working if the tome is like really important to the story, or the tome is like an object she is always associated with/always carries, etc...

but again the meaning really plays into the poetic/literary style

[boreal ingot]

Damn, wish I had a good intuition for this. I'll grow it in due time, hopefully

Well, thank you @lunar token, @bitter hill, and @cloud badge for all your help 💜

[bitter hill]

However, after considering corb's response, I do think no article sounds fine without the 'with'

Magic tome in hand, she recited words...

[boreal ingot]

What might you be doing?
What sort of effect does 'might' have on this question? In other words, what's the difference between 'What are you doing?' and 'What might you be doing?'

[boreal ingot]

I guess this confirms it's not the 'with' that allows article omission

[cloud badge]

Agreed

I think it would also be ok if magic wasn't there, like 'with tome in hand' but with the adjective its too much, unless like, the magic tome was very significant.

[lunar token]

it has to be a big boy tome

[bitter hill]

Might as well make it a proper noun

[cloud badge]

lol

[boreal ingot]

Also, small metaquestion: how should I have punctuated that question? At the end there, I know I'm supposed to have a question mark, but the question mark at the end of the quote disallows me from using one after it, so what do I do? Is it okay as is? Imagine it's an essay or a formal email, how should such a sentence be punctuated?

[bitter hill]

Kind of sounds formal/posh, but in terms of effect it makes the question less direct and more polite

[cloud badge]

its the same as saying 'what, possibly, could you be doing' like therye being extra curious, there are many possibilities

[bitter hill]

But also depends on context

[cloud badge]

it could also be asking about a time in the future

[boreal ingot]

Ohhh thank you both! It seems my intuition lines up with both your answers. Thank you

[boreal ingot]

Also, meta-metaquestion: did I use 'metaquestion' properly there, and have I used 'meta-metaquestion' properly here?

[lunar token]

in an essay or a formal email: just end it exactly like you did, question mark end quote and nothing after (you would do the same thing with a period to show that the end of a declarative quote is the end of a statement)

metaquestion seems fine, i don't really think i've seen a style guide address whether to use a hyphen when you're nesting things multiple times like this

[cloud badge]

Yeah i think you used both correctly haha

[boreal ingot]

And if the quote didn't have terminating punctuation, would the question mark go outisde or inside the quote?

[bitter hill]

If question mark is part of quoted material you put inside quote and leave it as that

If not then outside

[cloud badge]

agreed

[boreal ingot]

So

What is the meaning of 'What might you be doing?'
What is the meaning of 'Hello'?
What is the meaning of 'I hereby renounce smoking.'
Yes?

[lunar token]

What I was taught in school (America) was:

1 - He used the word "cute" often.
2 - Did he use the word "cute" often?
3 - He often used the word "cute."
4 - Did he often use the word "cute?"
5 - She told him, "You often use that word."
6 - She asked him, "Do you often use that word?"

I was also taught that British writers & some American writers put the punctuation outside the quote in 3 & 4, but I don't think they would add anything outside the quote in 5 or 6

personally i put it outside the quote in 3 & 4 because i think it looks less silly

[cloud badge]

the first would be
"What is the meaning of 'What might you be doing?'?"

[lunar token]

I would have to look up an actual style guide for how the 3rd one here goes because I really don't remember

[cloud badge]

so like
"What is the meaning of 'What might you be doing?'?"

[boreal ingot]

Two marks in a row??

That is very odd, I could have sworn one must be removed

[lunar token]

I was definitely taught it without the two marks like that, just the one inside the quote

[cloud badge]

yeah cuz the first is part of the quote, and you still didnt end the question

so you need the second, but many would reorganize the sentence if that happened. i dont mind it

[boreal ingot]

Oh I see. I think that's what I tend to follow (although I put my punctuation outside for 3 and 4). Thank you for explaining!

[boreal ingot]

I think I'll DM Jbuck and ask him about the third case. Thank you for your help with the rest 💜

[cloud badge]

the third should still have a question mark on the end as well
What is the meaning of 'I hereby renounce smoking.'?

[boreal ingot]

I don't really know how to use guides or where to find them :p

[boreal ingot]

So in a context where you're trying to be as formal as possible and punctuate everything properly, you would write it thus? I must admit I've not seen anything written like that before

[cloud badge]

yes, 100%, and it doesnt even have to be formal, it just depends on if you want to end your sentence properly or not. quotes are never used to end a sentence, only to show where a piece of quoted text ends.

[boreal ingot]

I see, thanks

I have another question. Is it appropriate to use quotation marks alongside 'quote ... unquote'?
For example,

He said that I sound, quote, 'like a mad killer', unquote. I find that quite funny.
He said that I sound, quote, like a mad killer, unquote. I find that quite funny.

[cloud badge]

if youre writing, you dont need to type out the words, but if youre writing dialog, or speaking out loud, and the person said the word quotes out loud, you could write that. If i read "He said that I sound 'like a mad killer'. I find that quite funny." I would say "He said that I sound, quote, like a mad killer, unquote. I find that quite funny." out loud, so yeah, it depends but i think saying AND typing the quotes is too much.

[boreal ingot]

I mean, I sometimes use 'quoute ... unquote' in writing to get that same sarcastic tone or to emphasise that what I'm saying is a quote. I've always used both the quotes and teh expression 'quote ... unquote'. Is that really too much? If so, is it also stylistically incorrect?

[cloud badge]

yeah, i think its redundant, type them out if you really want to make sure the sarcasm is emphasized, i think

[boreal ingot]

I mean, looking around online, I'm seeing both examples with and without the quotation marks, but idk what would count as the proper way, since both are used

[cloud badge]

If i was to read the one with both out loud id say 'quote quote... unquote unquote' though lol so i think just using one is best technically but it's nitpicking at that point, people will understand either way.

[boreal ingot]

Alrighty, thanks

Does 'pulverise' have any implication of fire?

[bitter hill]

Not to my knowledge

[boreal ingot]

Ah alright, thank you

For some reason, my brain thought it was like 'incinerate', so when I heard it in a context without fire I was confused, and when I looked it up and saw nothing about fire I was doubly so

I guess it doesn't have anything to do with fire lol

[flat rune]

Can we say : it doesn't bother you if i do that? instead of Do you mind me doing that?

[lunar token]

does it bother you if I...? (or even more hypothetical 'would it bother you')

Asking somebody 'it doesn't bother you if I...?' makes it sound like you're genuinely expecting them to say they're bothered

[flat rune]

Would it bother you if i took that

[grand agate]

Can we use "mustn't" for negative deductions?

[flat rune]

Yes

[trail slate]

"seems like you have had a tough start to the year." Is this okay to say?

Can I also say it has been a tough start to the year for you?

[boreal ingot]

I'd add 'it' at the start but this is fine informally

[boreal ingot]

I think this technically works (?), but it sounds bad

[trail slate]

Thank you

[final cargo]

your parrot?

[boreal ingot]

What's the difference between 'circumfixation' and 'parasynthesis'?

Actually does this even count as an English question

[leaden herald]

As a native english person, i was stunned looking at this question

A lot of people who are fluent in English never use those words,m

I like calling them filler words

[boreal ingot]

Well, they are linguistic terms. I wouldn't expect laypeople to know them. I myself am only getting acquainted with the latter, since I don't really have a linguistic background

[leaden herald]

According to Google

Parasynthesis is kind of like a way to remake words

Like for example

Black eyes, black-eyed

Black eyes is for multiple but black-eyed can be refered to for one person

So while they mean the same thing, they’re used in a different context

Does that make sense?

[boreal ingot]

Well, I'd say they're argot, not filler 😅

[lunar token]

parasynthesis is my favorite word to use when i can't think of what to say next

[boreal ingot]

Oh, that's the other defenition, a compound combined with an affix. I was more wondering about this second one:

[lunar token]

Oh hold on I can actually try to answer this one

[boreal ingot]

:0

[leaden herald]

I suck at explaining, so go ahead

[boreal ingot]

Are you a linguistics professor, perchance 👀

either way, it would be appreciated :>

[lunar token]

multifaceted doesn't use a circumfix (= an affix that goes on both sides of a word), it just uses a prefix & a suffix (= two different affixes)

circumfixes are really rare in languages, but english has one if you've ever heard a word like 'he was a-hunting' (a...ing is the circumfix)

[boreal ingot]

hey at least you tried. I appreciate that too

[boreal ingot]

Ohhh

I see

I thought that in parasynthesis the word would be incorrect if either affix should be removed, which reminds me of circumfixes, since, well, if you remove half the circumfix the word would be incorrect

Would, say, 'crosslinguistically' be considered a parasynthetic construction? It does use multiple affixes, after all: 'cross-' + 'linguist' + '-ic' + '-al' + '-ly'

[lunar token]

I've never heard of parasynthesis before right now, but it looks like people use it as a label for any word that looks like it's derived from a compound/other derived word that doesn't exist (so browneye+ed counts, multifacet+ed counts, French embarqu+er counts)

This article says it's mostly for words like French embarquer because it's mostly a Romance technical word https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-509

either way crosslinguistically wouldn't count because the 'crosslinguistic' part of crosslinguistic+ly already exists

but maybe crosslinguist+ic would count (i have no idea because again i have never heard of parasynthesis before)

I'm leaning toward it maybe doesn't count because cross+linguistic already exists, unlike em+barquer which doesn't exist no matter which way you split it

[boreal ingot]

Hmm I see. Thank you a lot for explaining 💜 I was confused over what the difference is. It's still a bit hard to grasp but this helps decentely

[boreal ingot]

By the way, I love that example of a circumfix in English. It hadn't ever occured to me that 'a- ... -ing' is one! It's very interesting

If I'm not mistaken the derives from the preposition 'on' becoming a prefix and '-ing/-ung' verb forms being used as the prepositional complement right?

I heard something about that being how English got its progressive tenses

[lunar token]

Apparently Czech uses a circumfix to make superlatives (where English uses -est)

so 'strong' is silný, 'strongest' is nej+silněj+ší (where nej+ší both make up the meaning of '-est')

& yes historically a+ing came from adding a separate word to ones like hunting, but in dialects that use it there's no real reason to say it acts like two words

[lunar token]

& german participles like ge+mach+t ('made')

[boreal ingot]

Oh that's really cool. I read a short paper abt this language called Degema, and apparently they form agent nouns, what they called 'Gerundive nominals' and nouns that mean 'the state of being [x]'. I found that pretty cool but I didnt understand most of the paper :p Iss always fun learning about random language facts lol

[lunar token]

i'm not a professor or plan on being one, i just take college classes for it

[boreal ingot]

Ohh I see, that's cool

[lunar token]

before college i read as many wikipedia articles on language phonologies that i could, so i know about how you feel

[boreal ingot]

yeaa it's pretty fun :p I wonder if uni will sap the fun out of it or not, since id like to go into linguistics

[lunar token]

I know for me it didn't, I just need a career plan for something that's slightly different because I'm not planning on doing a linguistics masters

if anything going to college just let me learn more about how insanely broad "linguistics" really is

[verbal heron]

You may be right here, though I am not sure if 'black english' will be accepted universally. However I look at it, it appears to be something that cannot refer to the English spoken by black people alone, as even asians are regarded as black (though they are coloured) in relation to westerners.
That's my opinion though, it may be correct or incorrect

Moreover, it's Africa which is known as 'dark continent'

[verbal heron]

The examples you mentioned are not that traditional if we we don't count Black Friday.
Apparently, it would be more reasonable to call a day 'black day', if a reknowned person were assissinated on that day—marked by the color black

[cloud badge]

It's not "more reasonable". It's just a different use

And the ones i mentioned are very common. Black isn't always associated with bad things...

[verbal heron]

It's because people nowadays tend to think that black is a sophisticated color

[verbal heron]

Maybe in your culture

[cloud badge]

In English in general there are many different uses of the word black. Some positive some negative some neutral.

None 'more reasonable' than the rest

[verbal heron]

That may be true, but I don't think it would be very good to use it together with 'English'

[verbal heron]

Ah, in the west, don't people often wear black dresses on funerals tho?

[cloud badge]

And weddings

And fancy events

And parties

[verbal heron]

They didn't use to do that in the past

[cloud badge]

And sports games, doing a blackout is fun, everybody dresses in black to stand out and show suppirt to the team

[cloud badge]

We're not in the past

[verbal heron]

These are relatively new

[cloud badge]

So?

[verbal heron]

Did I dip so much into old literature 💀

[cloud badge]

If by new you mean since the 1900s then sure

[cloud badge]

I think you always do haha

[verbal heron]

That period is regarded as 'modern' tho

[cloud badge]

So is this one

[verbal heron]

💀

[cloud badge]

I really think it would benefit you greatly to read more modern books, meaning within the last 10/20 years.

Even the past 50 years, would greatly help some of the gaps that seem to be in your understanding sometimes

[verbal heron]

I even made a notebook to jot the down the meanings of all the unknown expressions. I did that when reading To Kill A Mockingbird

[cloud badge]

That book is oldddd

[verbal heron]

60 yrs old ig

or 70

[boreal ingot]

But older books are so much prettier in language

[verbal heron]

Moreover, I prefer plot-driven narratives

[cloud badge]

They are pretty but they do not help with understanding modern/ current English

[verbal heron]

xD

[cloud badge]

There is no lack of plot driven narratives in current literature

[boreal ingot]

I'm just gonna sit over here with Robinson Crusoe and A Study in Scarlet

[verbal heron]

But they do not employ as powerful language as the Victorians did

[cloud badge]

That's not true, you just haven't found the ones that do

[cloud badge]

And that's great, i only suggest this to @verbal heron because it seems to be where they have the biggest gap of understanding

[boreal ingot]

Oh my understanding is tiny lol

But yea, immesring oneself in more modern stuff is good too

Doesnt have to be books

[cloud badge]

Youre both very good with English, but yeah, focusing on one time period will not help you understand the others

[boreal ingot]

I personally like older writing cuz I find myself in awe at the English of yore, but I also am engaged in online media so Im not fully unaware of what's going on in the modern times (if you ignore my total lack of political knowledge). Vampire, I think even if you don't read modern books, engaging with modern online media could serve the same use

[cloud badge]

So yeah, in current English, black does not have an inherent negative connotation and most people will see nothing wrong with calling African American or African English language 'black English'

[verbal heron]

Recently, I found a book, called The Time Traveller's Wife, which I greatly admired at first. But as I read more chapters, the story didn't progress directly. Instead the story was written as separate parts within the book

[verbal heron]

Thank you 🙏

[cloud badge]

Every book is different. My favorites are cheezy mystery novels by dean koontz. I love the creativity, imagery, and vocabulary he uses, and the pacing of the stories. Hope you find some more you can like c:

[boreal ingot]

Yea, it's not insulting afaik. It's the same as calling a black person, well, a black person :p I know 'black' can have negative connotations, but 'green' can be jealousy but also nature, blue is sadness but also serenity, red is anger but also passion, white is 'cold and clinical' but also holy, and so on. All the colours have both positive and negatives meanings, and 'black' is no different

[cloud badge]

Yes exactly c:

[verbal heron]

Yea, thanks for the suggestion

[verbal heron]

Hey what do you mean by 'cheezy', is it same as 'cheesy'?
It has only been 2 years since I developed passion for English 💀

I have taken the beginner role to mask the fact that I've been learning English for 12 years 💀

[boreal ingot]

7 years here, but only 3 or 2.5 with actual interest

[cloud badge]

Yeah i always mess up the spelling of that one haha

[boreal ingot]

lmao

[verbal heron]

All I learnt were “tense”, “voice”, "narration”

[verbal heron]

You are doing great

[boreal ingot]

I've much to learn, but thank you :>

[verbal heron]

American English sometimes replace 's' with 'z', so I thought it could have been a spelling unbeknown to me

[cloud badge]

You're both doing really well c: better than half the people i see in person most days haha

And yeah, cheezy is like, the cheezy way to say cheesy hahaha

[boreal ingot]

American English silly like that

[boreal ingot]

Thanks so much :D

[cloud badge]

https://tenor.com/view/animation-disney-movies-bobby-look-gif-14836329

[boreal ingot]

Too much cheese

[cloud badge]

Hahaha

[cloud badge]

Impossible

[verbal heron]

Thanks mate, I hope you will be helping us whenever we need you 😆

[boreal ingot]

Can 'cheese' be used as a noun in the same sense as the verb?

There's a way to cheese this section of the level
Can I say this, for example?
This section has cheese
If so, can an adjective be derived? Something like this:
This level is pretty cheesy. It's obvious no play-testing was done

[cloud badge]

Cheesing and cheesy have different meanings, you can say the first one, but the rest don't really make sense the way you mean them to.

[boreal ingot]

I see, that's a shame

Thanks :p

[cloud badge]

You can call a level cheesy but itd be because it has a lot of overly-used tropes or stereotypes, or is gimmicky

[boreal ingot]

Oh, so not the meaning I intended, yeah

[cloud badge]

Yeah

[verbal heron]

I have a question: can we use parentheses inside parentheses, that is, to capture additional information inside additional information?

This is often resolved with commas, semicolons or colons. But I am not sure as to whether double parentheses is possible

[verbal heron]

Scella, the second example gives me the idea of the setting being a bakery

This section has cheese, this section has pizza, this section has doughnut

[boreal ingot]

Lmfao

[boreal ingot]

Inside round brackets you use square brackets for parenthetical comments

[verbal heron]

😅

[verbal heron]

Could you give an example as to how to use it?

[boreal ingot]

It's a bit hard to come up with examples for double-nested brackets that soun natural, but I'll try:

So, if you wanna pronounce far-back consonants (stuff like uvulars or [god forbid] pharyngeals [or epiglottals, if you for whatever fucking reason wanna go there...]), you have to practice a lot. We Arabic speakers are lucky it's natural for us

This is not good practice

[verbal heron]

Ah, there are so many terms here which I do not understand at all 😅

[boreal ingot]

Don't worry about em, they're places of articulation

They're just places you can make sounds that are far back in your throat lol

'uvular', 'pharyngeal', and 'epiglottal'. 'epiglottal' is technically considered 'lower pharyngeal'

anyways, I shouldn't bore you with my phonology crap

That example shows two instances of brackets in brackets

[boreal ingot]

A simpler example would be this:

I recited your instructions to the team 3 times (I also made sure they read the whole manual [which, by the way, you provided] cover to cover), and I made sure everyone followed everything to a tee, so this failure is entierly on you. I only did as you asked me to.
You'll most often see it when a citation is added to something that's already between round brackets:
Gemination has semantic significance in Finnish (e.g., 'muta' means 'mud', but 'mutta' means 'but' [example from 'Finnish: An Essential Grammar' by Fred Karlsson]), so, yes, you do need to learn how to geminate plosives.

[trail slate]

Nah 😅

[final cargo]

oh~

do you like bird?

[quiet ridge]

Fuck u all I'm at school and I receive notification

[livid tiger]

Same dude.. same

[rapid bison]

must you alternate brackets?

[boreal ingot]

I think that depends on the style guide you use

But I've always been told to alternate but never go past 2

[rapid bison]

you didn't say "you can use" but "you use", hence my question

[boreal ingot]

I'm not sure what style guide that's in accordance with

[rapid bison]

when in dire need of nesting, you can just ( [ { } ] ) the heck out of it lol

[boreal ingot]

Sorry for the phrasing

[rapid bison]

it's oki

[boreal ingot]

I think I've heard something about curly brackets for the third layer, but Idk if it was credible or not. I sometimes get to 2 but I've never actually had any need for 3, and if I were to need it, I'd probably rephrase to make it 2

[rapid bison]

that something might just as well be order of mathematical operations crap

[verbal heron]

Now that's much clearer to me, thanks a lot

[boreal ingot]

Found this

It seems Chicago Manual say not to use them like brackets

[rapid bison]

what would be the examples 🤔

[boreal ingot]

Here's the full thing if you're interested https://jamesg.blog/2024/03/30/braces/#:~:text=Chicago Manual of Style%2C AP Stylebook&text=Braces ({})%2C also,see%2C e.g.%2C 12.28).

[lunar token]

Nobody ever told me anything about alternating with brackets in school either, I was taught the same thing about parentheses & brackets meaning two different things

the alternating was only for math, not writing

[verbal heron]

Do you mean the curly brackets?

[lunar token]

like x(y[z{a}])

[fading needle]

is there any difference between "will not" and "won't"?

[verbal heron]

Bodmas rule huh

Do you still remember that?

[verbal heron]

The latter is the contraction

[boreal ingot]

I'm positive it's used in writing as well. Maybe your school followed a guide that doesn't use square brackets as nested brackets?

Found this article that backs it up and claims Chicago Style follows that: https://knowadays.com/blog/proofreading-tips-parentheses-and-square-brackets-in-chicago-style/

[boreal ingot]

As I said, it's common for when a citation is in round brackets already

[boreal ingot]

^ But if you meant curly brackets/braces, then yeah, according to this they aren't used like round and square brackets. A shame, but tbh, if I'm nesting 3 times, at that point what am I even doing lmao

I mean, if you need a third nest, you could use em dashes

Anyway, if anything interesting about brackets comes up, do ping me. I'd like to check it out when I wake up lmao.
I should stop delaying my sleep for square brackets

[acoustic geyser]

Hello

Can I use either singular or plural with collective nouns in BrE?

[gaunt mango]

I believe it depends on the noun

“A group of mates”
“A catch of fish”

[acoustic geyser]

I mean, it is like that:
The band are playing
The band is playing

[gaunt mango]

You would say “The bands are playing”
So I assume yes to your original question?

[acoustic geyser]

Thanks

[gaunt mango]

Main difference being “The band is playing” and “the bands are playing” is you’re signaling that there is a single band playing or there are multiple bands playing

[trail slate]

Yeah

[neat bone]

What does depot mean?

[rapid bison]

in which context? most likely, it's a railroad; could be a storage of stuff

[silk flower]

I'm able to ask for how do I could translate or adapt some idiom in Spanish to English?

[neat bone]

What's the meaning of "speak emphatically"?

[boreal ingot]

My favourite is 'an unkindness of ravens'

[boreal ingot]

This is called notional agreement. It means the verb (and sometimes pronouns) agrees in number with the meaning of the subject, not with the actual form. Brits are more likely to use plural verbs for singular collective nouns like this than Americans are. When you use the plural, you emphasise the multi-individual-ed-ness of the group (if you will), the fact of them not being one entity.
The best example of this is when talking about Instagram lmao:

Instagram are bad = the people who run Instagram are bad
Instagram is bad = the app Instagram is bad

An example where 'are' is more natural than 'is' is this:

The band are having a barbecue together.

Though I'm guessing an American would still use 'is'

[boreal ingot]

I think it would mean you're emphasising a lot, stressing most words

[boreal ingot]

I think water has to be my most[-]drank thing ever
I saw this on Reddit. Why is it 'most-drank' and not 'most-drunk'?

[wise anchor]

please

can anyone help me answer this

[sly pier]

We can’t help with homework, but we can answer specific questions.

[wise anchor]

i'm just confused with "be"

and how do I even know that I used it correctly

plus "present"

had been present or had present

it doesn't even match the sentence

[gaunt mango]

It’s telling you to use “Be” in that form

For example, “Be” in perfect tense would be “Been”

“The literature of Thailand had been greatly influenced by Indian culture”

The text also says “Comprise - Past” so similarly you would use the past tense of comprise

[gaunt mango]

They were wrong. It is most-drunk

[boreal ingot]

Ohh I see

thank you

[cloud badge]

Yeah an American would indeed use is, because a band and a company (Instagram) are 1 unit comprised of multiple people.

[boreal ingot]

yea, seems this confirms that Americans tend to not do notional agreement

but wiki does say that some amount of it is used

[cloud badge]

Yeah there's probably a few niche exceptions, and some things are hard to tell weather you're talking about singular or plural until you see the is or are. Like moose, and fish. They can be either singular or plural.

[boreal ingot]

I think the examples they give fall under the verb agreeing with the closest noun

[boreal ingot]

@cloud badge, in the folowing example, would you use singular or plural?

This group of seven old tired men [was/were] aproaching us. [They/It] [was/were] weary as all hell, as was evidenced by [its/their] pitiable state.

[cloud badge]

Was, they, were, their. I think because the second sentence is referring more specifically to the men than the group but the first is more about the group unit itself.

[signal shell]

I tend to agree with this. Although, I wouldn't complain if the first option was "were"

[cloud badge]

Yeah true, same here, it just wouldnt be my preference.

[boreal ingot]

I see, thank you both! @cloud badge @signal shell

[boreal ingot]

I think it's funny that I learnt 'sinewy' from a book, then went on to learn 'sinious' from the same book but around a year and a half or two later and assumed it meant 'sinewy' lol

Is there a way to make this sentence more natural? Is ir natural already?

[iron star]

In English, 'you' can mean one person or many people,
if i only want to mean one or many people,what should i do?

[gaunt mango]

In what context

[gaunt mango]

I think it's funny that I learnt 'sinewy' from a book, then around 1 or 2 years later I went on to learn 'sinious' from the same book and assumed it meant 'sinewy' lol

You can move some stuff around to make it a little smoother

[boreal ingot]

You can make 'you' mean 'many people' by saying 'you all' or 'y'all', but 'you' can mean either, and there isn't a way to make it only plural or only singular. In English, both of them are the same, unlike many other languages

You can only tell them apart through context

People noramlly would specify 'all of you/you all/you lot/the bunch of you' if they think 'you' would be ambiguous

[boreal ingot]

Ohh that sounds much better

thank you

💜

[boreal ingot]

If I should happen upon them, the wishes of the dying shall become fulfiled, for the final want of a soul can bind it to its mortal coil, unable to wander off, not to heaven or to hell.

Is this sentence correct?

[gaunt mango]

Yeah

The only thing I can think of it changing “become” to “be” but I assume you chose become on purpose

[boreal ingot]

Would you say there is any meaningful difference between 'become' and 'be' there? I feel it doesn't change much, as is the case with 'I will become/be a doctor when I'm older', no?

[gaunt mango]

It just makes it the tiniest bit more smooth imo

Like I said it’s fine as is but that’s really the only thing I can think of, if anything

[boreal ingot]

I mean, I'm using it more to mean 'the wishes shall be trasnitioned into a state of (become) being fulfiled'

[gaunt mango]

“Be fulfilled” just sounds better but again, “become fulfilled” works fine as well

They mean the same

[boreal ingot]

One uses it as a predicitive adjective while the other (with 'be') uses it as a passive voice verb, I think, but I guess it doesn't affect meaning overall?

[boreal ingot]

Understood

Thank you lots 💜 Is there any punctuation issues?

[gaunt mango]

I don’t think so

[boreal ingot]

Oh, actually, having re-read it, I wonder if the 'or' should be 'nor'

what do you think?

[gaunt mango]

If you want you can use “-“ between “wander off” and “not to”

“Wander of—not to”

[gaunt mango]

Nor needs “neither” to precede it

So yeah

“Not to heaven nor to hell”

[boreal ingot]

Wait, you said 'nor' needs 'neither', then showed an example using 'nor' without 'neither'. Sorry, I'm jus a lil confused 😅

[rapid ingot]

what does cult mean in gen z language ?

[boreal ingot]

Ig it's like 'group of people obsessed with [x]'

[rapid ingot]

twitter?

[boreal ingot]

instead of the more-typical, more-stagmatised religious meaning, informally the term is used as 'group of obsessed people'

[boreal ingot]

Pardon?

[rapid ingot]

x is twitter

[boreal ingot]

Yes, what about it?

I'm not sure what this has to do with cults 😅

Oh

Ohhh wait

'[x]' as in 'repalce this with anything else'

you know, 'x' is used as a variable lol

[verbal heron]

The 'x' here replaces people's name right?

[boreal ingot]

Let me redefine it. Sorry, I haven't faced any confusion with using '[x]' so before 😅
The word 'cult' is used informally in the meaning of 'A group of people that are obsessed with [something]' (that '[something]' could be basketball, a person, an animal, etc.). It's normally used humorously, a way to say that it's funny how focused on the [something] (sport, person, animal, etc.) the people are or used by the 'cult' quote-unquote themselves to refer to themselves, again, humorously. The more typical sense of 'cult' is something like 'a group of people with odd/non-typical religious practices that go against that vox populi'. It implies a sense of 'creepiness' and may inspire ideas of human-, self- or animal-sacrifice and seclusion from society and going into a life of religious misanthropy.

@rapid ingot

[boreal ingot]

It's just 'Something'

I use it liek that

Idk if anyone else does

It's just a variable, you pass it a value

[verbal heron]

K, now it's clearer

[verbal heron]

But I have never seen you using it

[boreal ingot]

Really?

I think I've used it with you even today lol

[verbal heron]

what is the 'it' here?

[boreal ingot]

the '[x]' thing. Is that not what you meant?

[verbal heron]

I mean you don't use the word 'cult'

[rapid ingot]

oh yeah i understand now thanks for your time and typing this

[boreal ingot]

Ohhh I thought you were saying I haven't used '[x]' before

[rapid ingot]

I see

[boreal ingot]

I use it all the time :p But I confused this person somehow by using it

[verbal heron]

No, you always use '[x]'

[boreal ingot]

My apologies by the way 😅

[verbal heron]

At least within my knowledge

[boreal ingot]

No problem!

[winged needle]

what is the best site to do english tests?

[noble wasp]

hello. what does the slang "fw" mean? i saw this comment on a music video: "gang cant know i fw this"

what does it mean in this context tho? cuz i can think only abt the literal meaning and it doesnt make sense

thanks!

also, in "they will do anything except _ [write] their essay", write or writing?

can u explain why it cant be "writing"?

[boreal ingot]

Thanks for the answer, but is 'pitiable' that wierd? I feel I've heard it plenty

is this both American and British or American only?

I see

I feel there is a difference in meaning, though. 'Pitable' isn't really as negative as 'pitful', to me. Something like this:

1. your state is pitiul ~= your state is bad and sad; I pity you (negative),
2. your state is pitabe ~= your state is bad; I feel for you (neutral/positive?)
   I'm not sure if this is correct, but it's what my gut tells me

Not sure what that is

Sorry

But I'm just wondering if this difference is correct. I understand now that 'pitabe' is less common, but I'd also like to know any difference in nuance

oh that sounds interesting

Yea, googled around, no idea how to access one of those :p

Anyways, thank you for all the other corrections

[agile crow]

"Pitiable" sounds more poetic to me.

And unusual.

But there's nothing wrong with being poetic and unusual, sometimes.

[boreal ingot]

https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/commonly-confused-words/pitiable-pitiful-piteous-pitiless/
this site seems to sort of agree with me? I can't find much :p

Ngl I have no idea what this data means

Lol, I get a similar reaction whenever I use 'indeed' or 'I suppose so' in VC with one of my friends

'I suppose so' is like my go-to expression of slight agreement

Oh understood

[agile crow]

I say "indeed" a lot, and "I suppose so" is extremely common.

[boreal ingot]

Is it an age-demographic sort of thing? Are older people more inclined to use those terms?

How do you even document everything you say lol

For me 'I suppose so', 'I guess' and 'Yeah', maybe also 'Typically' would be among the most-used, for sure

[agile crow]

Not sure about that. I think those who tend to read a lot are more likely to say "indeed".

[boreal ingot]

Why I barely read at all 😅

Oh that's true

This is my first time seeing 'SES': google says it's short for 'socioeconomic status'. Is it common at all?

Why would you repeat 'care' thrice? And so many timess

ohh

Yea, that makes sense. I don't read papers much at all

How does 'SES' differ from 'Economic stratum'?

[agile crow]

I thought repercussions were the point

Insults with no repercussions = boring

[boreal ingot]

ahh this is too economic for mee ahh I'll just ignore its existance iss okay

[boreal ingot]

I suppose it can feel like 'hehe they're too dumb to even realise what I'm saying' but, also, it could be a sort of insult that's indirect enough that the insultee can't comment on it but it still attacks them and they recognise it. A polite insult, if you will

I'm not socially competent enough to execute these, but they seem cool

[agile crow]

I suppose one cannot be faulted for occasionally deriving smug satisfaction from insulting an idiot and having it go over their head.

[boreal ingot]

lmfao 😭 that one is amazing, although, I don't think it would work on Americans? As far as I know there aren't different social-class accents over there?

[agile crow]

Indeed. 😉

[boreal ingot]

Oh, really? I had thought it to mainly be a British thing. I can't imagine a 'posh' American accent, to be honest :p

[night ferry]

Does anyone have any advice for those who are learning English and having trouble with some expressions?
The case is that I'm currently reading books completely in English, and I'm around the intermediate level, so I think that it is quite normal to have some struggle with these things...
Expressions such as "Get this over with" "run into" , "somewhere down the line" so I'd like to know how can I fix these things in my mind? Even after I already have seen, I forget and have to take a look again to remember the whole thing

[boreal ingot]

I see

[night ferry]

I have nobody who I can chat with, so maybe I could write imaginary situations or maybe describe my day and try to put them on the context, right?

Oh, I got it! So if I use them at a meeting table it wouldn't be good. but people usually use that in daily conversations?

I just don't know how. People around me don't know English, so I can't practice with them

Fr! You're right

You're amazing, thx for the support!

Haha, LMAO

Now you got me with this example

[worldly radish]

Talking to other people, and after hearing and reading those expressions a lot of times you'll get used to them

[night ferry]

Alr, I'll try to do that!

[worldly radish]

It's practice I think, we learn by practice, so it's that

[night ferry]

Do you guys know any platform focused on English studies where people can chat freely with each other?

[night ferry]

Perfect! Sometimes, I feel a bit frustrated because I don't feel like I belong at the intermediate level...

I think that I need to know more, and I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself

Alr, I'm grateful!

[boreal ingot]

I once read this philosophy thing. I had no idea they liked to define everyyything like that. It was defining 'determinism', but they expanded on soo many parts of the first definition they gave. I found that very cool and interesting, but also surprising and confusing :p

[agile crow]

With weird idioms and expressions, you can try picturing it in your head. For example, with "run into" you can picture in your head someone running into a wall. Why does "piece of cake" mean easy? Well, imagine a piece of cake. It's pleasant and easy to eat; everyone likes cake.

[worldly radish]

Discord is the best place that I know

[teal locust]

what does "put stank on it" mean

[agile crow]

It means, put some real effort into it

[teal locust]

i searched stank and i realize that stank is past tens of stink but i thought stink is a noun

[agile crow]

It's an idiom from black American English

[teal locust]

tysm

[night ferry]

Fr, you really helped me and made me laugh out loud with your analogy 😆

[noble wasp]

can anyone tell me why it cant be "writing"? pls

[agile crow]

Because do... write; doing... writing

[boreal ingot]

It probably has something to do with the first part using 'write'

They are doing everything except writing their essays
but
They will do everything except write their essays

[noble wasp]

thank u!

[night ferry]

@boreal ingot are you there?

[boreal ingot]

Hi?

[night ferry]

In a context that there's a living armor, should I refer to this as "It'? For example, would it be correct to say "It dropped its sword?"

[gaunt mango]

Personally i would say it could change from the POV
if it's from someone who doesn't know the armor is living you could say "The armor dropped it's sword" (nonexclusively though)
whereas if it's in a narrative sense and it's a continuation you could definitely say "it dropped its sword"
"The armor started moving around, making a lot of creaking noises"
...
"It dropped its sword"

[night ferry]

ooooh that's perfect!

I'm really really grateful!

[noble wasp]

if i say im "tweaking out" will it be implied im on drugs? i mean i wonder if i can use it simply as a synonym for "freaking out" without it being related to drugs

[gaunt mango]

'tweaking' or 'tweaking out' is slang for someone who is on drugs, so yeah most people would assume you are on drugs

you could possibly say "stressed out" instead

[noble wasp]

alr, thanks

[night ferry]

Would the same fit well if we were talking about skeletons and demons?
For things that aren't people, should we always use "it" right? I'm just remembering it

[gaunt mango]

not always

a good example is that a lot of people refer to boats as "she"

"Her course is steady"

[boreal ingot]

To me it depends on what you mean by living. If it's seems like a monster, or some not very human entity, something queer and unnatural, or just, more instincts than intellect, I'd call it 'it' (as I have been calling it). If it's treated more as a living, maybe feeling, thinking, human-like being, then I would use 'they' (or, if a gender is assigned to it, the corresponding gendered pronouns)

Zov makes a great point by mentioning the point of view. Some character may think of it as human-like, while another may see it as not, and thus they would use different pronouns

[gaunt mango]

or when sentience is known as well

cause if your dog starts running away you wouldn't say

"it started running, let me go grab it"

instead you could say "he started running, let me go grab him"

[night ferry]

Wow, that's actually a curious fact to me, I've never heard or seen anything similar to that

[night ferry]

I Gotchu!
I appreciate your explanation!

[boreal ingot]

'She' is also used for other vehicles and for countries

[night ferry]

So, thinking by this way that Zov has pointed, there's no correct or incorrect way, right?

[night ferry]

Okay, my mind is about to blow just now

[boreal ingot]

Well, if this typically inanimate/non-living thing is alive, then it's truly a matter of how you perceive it. At least, that's how I understand it

[gaunt mango]

i believe this is where the term 'mother earth' comes from

[boreal ingot]

Mind you, they aren't always refered to as such, but it is a thing

[gaunt mango]

^

[night ferry]

It's really good to talk with you guys. Here, there's knowledge sharing that helps all of us a lot!

[gaunt mango]

you'll see it a lot in people who have strong affections towards the object

though specifically for vehicles it's somewhat more common

[boreal ingot]

I'm jus a gal who likes language :p

I'm glad I can be of help

[night ferry]

Tony stark would call his armor as "she" so

[night ferry]

[night ferry]

Oh, at least

[boreal ingot]

Hmm, re-reading this, I'm not sure if it sounds alright. Is the collocation not 'be of astistance', and if so, does that make 'be of help' unnatural?

Or perhaps even incorrect?

[night ferry]

Even Scella has doubts

[gaunt mango]

i see "I'm glad i can/could be of service" commonly

and when i read it the first time i didn't think anything was wrong with it

[night ferry]

I see already "I'm glad I could be of some help"

[boreal ingot]

Oh, I guess the order goes 'service' then 'assistance' then 'help'?

In terms of most to least natural

[gaunt mango]

i don't know if naturality is really a concern when using a difference between the three terms for that specific sentence

i just seem service or assistance a lot more commonly than help

[boreal ingot]

Understood, yeah

[gaunt mango]

because people who usually say that are subserviant to the person they are speaking to, and therefore speak in a more formal tone

while "help" would be considered a little less formal

[boreal ingot]

It sounded ever so slightly off to me upon my second read, so I felt I had to inquire further

Thanks for the help

[boreal ingot]

I am a learner lol, and I'm someone who often gets stuck on the small details

At least when it comes to English

So yeah, ofc I have doubts

[night ferry]

Zovixi, as a native do you have any advice for those who are learning/practicing English while reading books entirely in English? There's a lot of words and expressions that I've never seen before, I think it's quite normal even for the native people, I mean about all words that do exist in the English language, it's almost impossible to know definitely everything

[night ferry]

Oh, so you're just like me!

[gaunt mango]

you're right, it is pretty hard to know everything

most natives infer definitions and phrases from context

so it's not required to know everything

if you're not at that level yet i would definitely think about just googling or researching the terms you find interesting

(Ai generated sentence)
"After hours of hiking, they found solace in the xeric landscape, where only the hardiest plants like cacti and sagebrush thrived under the scorching sun."

i guarantee most natives don't know "xeric" unless they are spelling bee people or study English every day

however a lot of natives would infer "xeric" to mean desolate, or harsh

[night ferry]

This sentence contains more than one word that I've never seen, bruh

[boreal ingot]

This chart is interesting. It seems 'service' has undergone a bit of a resurgence in recent years. 'Help' has also started to overtake 'assistance'

[gaunt mango]

sorry 😟

[night ferry]

Np, it happens every time while I'm reading, haha

[gaunt mango]

cacti and sagebush are nouns, solace is is kind of like being comforted in a hard time

[boreal ingot]

I can't help but look up every word despite being able to derive the meaning, and it makes reading so tedious

[gaunt mango]

that's not a bad way of going about it at all

[night ferry]

So, because I need to stop sometimes to research words and expressions, you'd say that I'm not at the level for reading books entirely in English yet?

[gaunt mango]

i have found myself sometimes misinterpreting words and then using them incorrectly

[gaunt mango]

not at all. in fact i encourage you to keep reading books entirely in english

pushing yourself outside of any comfort zone is an incredible way to learn

[gaunt mango]

i used to think "marginal" was a large difference

until i was corrected after like 3 years of using it that way

[gaunt mango]

the only time i would really say you probably should dial it back is if you cannot understand literally anything going on

but from the way you speak now it seems you have a pretty good grasp of english

[night ferry]

I'm glad and appreciate it!

So I'll keep it up!

[boreal ingot]

me when Shakespeare

I hate that guy

[gaunt mango]

ugh. yeah

[cloud badge]

That's the best way to learn new words c: i still have to look things up when i read certain authors

[gaunt mango]

i remember having to do shakespeare in english class

it's not that you can't really understand what is being written

it's just like guhhhh

[night ferry]

Oh, that's not the case! I understand everything that's happening even if I can't understand a single word, but I'm the kind of person who likes to understand all the words in a sentence, so sometimes I need to research a word or an expression

[boreal ingot]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle uses a lot of fancy words in his stuff, pretty hard to read but it's still understandable :p

[gaunt mango]

wonderful

the only thing you can do from here is get even better

[boreal ingot]

for me it takes too much thought lmao, I dont have the energy to read, nevermmind think to understand what Im reading

[gaunt mango]

ikr

it takes extra processing power just to comprehend that stuff

[night ferry]

Perfect! I'm grateful for that!

Is that some kind of book or what?

[gaunt mango]

i feel bad for stage performers who have to memorize those lines

[night ferry]

It looks to be helpful

Tysm! 💛

[boreal ingot]

Oh heaven forbid, that must be a dismal task :/

[night ferry]

I was thinking of putting new learned words and expressions on some kind of flashcards system so I can practice them every time constantly

[noble wasp]

is "as of right now" the same as "from now on"? i heard it on a video and in the context itd make more sense if it meant "until now"

[boreal ingot]

It means 'from this moment'
'as of' means this:

[night ferry]

Perfect! I'll do that

[acoustic geyser]

Can I live well in England if I use American English?

[boreal ingot]

I mean, isn't England full of immigrants? I doubt they aren't used to foreign (American or otherwise) accents, but you'd probably need to get used to the slang they use there. Though, I don't live in the UK, so I can't say anything for sure

[night ferry]

Haha, fr

[boreal ingot]

To be honest, I'd imagine a bad immitation of a British accent woul give you more trouble than having an American accent :p

[noble wasp]

im sorry, im a bit confused. like, in "as of now, we havent received any updates", itd have the same usage as "until now", right?

[night ferry]

The situation would be different if he was asking, "Can I live well in England if I use Chinese?"

But bro, you'll be fine with American English

[boreal ingot]

Oh, that would be the other meaning that Riidefi mentioend

'presently'/'currently'

I guess it can mean 2 things, never thought about that

[noble wasp]

so that would be an ambiguous phrase i think?

[boreal ingot]

Which one?

[noble wasp]

the one riidefi used as example

[night ferry]

Sorry, do you study braziliam Portuguese?

[noble wasp]

cuz of the two menaings of that expression

i speak native brazilian portuguese actually

[night ferry]

Oh, that's amazing! Nice to meet you, fellow!
Could we practice English together?

[boreal ingot]

The tense of what follows is different depending on the meaning you're using, I believe, so there is no ambiguity

As of now, laws [exist] to give queer people their rights.
As of now, laws [are being passed] that aim to give queer people their rights.
^ present simple/continuous (meaning: at this moment)
As of now, no one [has been] to Mars.
^ present perfect (meaning: until now)

[night ferry]

Are you all guys who are here with us, studies English by yourselves?

Or do you guys attend any school or course?

[noble wasp]

thank u for the help, guyss

[noble wasp]

sure! are u brazilian?

[night ferry]

You're welcome, fellow!

Feel free to ask always!

[night ferry]

Yeah!

[boreal ingot]

I just kinda absorbed it over the years lol, learning through imerssion online

[night ferry]

Because of that I was surprised

[night ferry]

Oh, you're really intelligent, Scella! It's great to have someone like you on our learning way!

[boreal ingot]

😅 I'm not I just got lucky

[night ferry]

So, gimme some lucky 🫡

Just kidding, haha

[noble wasp]

i took an english course for 2 years. the promise was that id get fluent by the end, but i finished it being b2 lol (i took the toeic exam). i kinda regret taking that course, learning passively with videos or talking with natives on servers like this one is way more effective imo

[night ferry]

Oh, I feel so sorry for hearing that!
There're a lot of courses promising that kind of thing around everywhere. But you're fine, you have a good English ngl! And you seem to be dedicated and focused on your goal, I like to practice with people who are like you!

I took an English course for about 2 years as well, it was quite good for me, I have no complaints about it.
But I'm taking the next steps alone for now

[night ferry]

Sorry to ask, however, how much did you pay for the toeic exam?

[noble wasp]

my english is actually rusty and i make a lotta mistakes. i havent practiced a lot cuz i was busy with entrance exams and other stuff, so ive been stuck at b2 since then. but yea i can communicate fairly well. ill just try to immerse myself more in english now that im on vacation. ur english is really good btw. what level are u at?

[noble wasp]

i actually got it for free

but i think the price back then was around R$400

[night ferry]

I gotchu! Just don't put much pressure on yourself. It's a bad thing to do, and I don't advise anyone doing that.

I finished at the intermediate III in the course I'd done, idk what level would it be in terms, like you said in your case, the "b2" but idk mine

[night ferry]

Wow, you made a bargain!
The price is kind of expensive

[noble wasp]

its prob more expensive now 😛

[night ferry]

Fr 🤕

[noble wasp]

nahh im fine, ill just learn it passively and thats it. i want it to be fun so i wont stress out

[night ferry]

I'm doing that as well!

I think it's the best way

[noble wasp]

ikr? i think u were talking abt learning with books earlier. i got a book entirely in english, ill start reading it soon. the vocabulary doesnt seem too formal, so i think itll be quite easy. ill just write down words and expressions i dont know to google them up and memorize. i think itll be effective and not that stressful

[night ferry]

Yeah, I was! And you're right!

[night ferry]

I usually do it too

There's the only way to not struggle with words and expressions that we don't know

[acoustic geyser]

What's the difference between:
I've done something five times
I did something five times

[neat bone]

"You've 6 months left to live, but I digress" meaning?

[neat bone]

Dark

[primal dagger]

??ban 1329384644033908738 scammer

[neat bone]

Most people here are looking for help with their english

[primal dagger]

Dealt with it.

[hushed abyss]

Fast af boi

[neat bone]

Good job chief

[noble wasp]

reading this makes me so happy, thank u! (:

[rapid bison]

this is at least c1 performance ._.

(in language production, anyway)

[signal shell]

To be fair, we are seeing only their writing skills. Don't they test your fluency in other ways, as well, such as speaking and listening?

[signal shell]

When you admit to digressing, you are acknowledging that you are getting off topic. It's a way to get the conversation back to where it was.

[rapid bison]

the TOEIC is most often taken for the two language reception components (i.e. reading & listening).
you would be right.

[neat bone]

Thought it was getting off the main conversation

[signal shell]

I don't see the difference

[neat bone]

Oh, well I'm basically saying that's it's not a way to get the conversation back to where it was.

It's moving on from that conversation

[acoustic geyser]

What is different?
Darla split up the fish with the chips because she hates the fish taste.
Darla split up the fish from the chips because she hates the fish taste.

[signal shell]

I see what you are saying

[signal shell]

I found at least one person to agree with me on this

[neat bone]

Very interesting, that's a bit of a pickle ay?

Ultimately, it's moving on from a topic whether it's the main or side topic

I think we both can agree on that

[signal shell]

Yeah it would almost certainly be one or the other. I doubt the conversation would just end at that point

[neat bone]

Precisely

[verbal heron]

There seems to be something amiss here

Or am I wrong?

[vocal hill]

Where is the a question?

[livid tiger]

Anyone got knowledge bout how technology is affecting life :^

[signal shell]

It all started back when the printing press was invented...

[winged needle]

To say "I'll go to school" sounds very formal? I always use "will" for future, but i see people saying that is formal and that it's better to say "I'm going to school"

Or I'm gonna

[boreal ingot]

It's not formal, no. 'I'm going to school in 10 minutes' is much more casual, but 'I will go to school' isn't formal. You wouldn't get any weird looks if you said that in an informal context

Especially when contracted as 'I'll go'

[winged needle]

Oh, okay

Thanks for your attention!

[noble wasp]

"i gotta brush up on my english", for the expression "brush up" do i need to always add "on" as well?

[errant kettle]

But saying “I digress” allows the speaker to go back to the original topic.

[lusty marten]

Hi guys

[tardy ember]

Hi

[lusty pollen]

Hi

[noble wasp]

i heard this in a video: "that's my five-step approach to learning...". why is the verb "learn" in the gerund form and not in the infinitive?

[noble wasp]

i see, thanks

in "let's get on to the first step", could "get on" be replaced for "move on"?

[neat bone]

Your answer is similar to mr ross's, but the internet says otherwise

https://prnt.sc/FuN_7td9VwHq

[neat bone]

So me and Ross came to the conclusion that whether it's going back to the original topic or moving on from it, it's a 100% ditching the current topic

The way I see it that that it's either going back to the original topic or start a completely new one

[signal shell]

this brief article expresses some ideas about how "i digress" is used
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/i-digress/

[boreal ingot]

Idk what the consensus is, but I use 'I digress' when I wanna say 'I have gone too off-offtopic, let me move on' :p

[neat bone]

Yeah, same opinion. You move on to a new topic

But some people said you go back to the original topic

Hang on, Ima check ross's link

[verbal heron]

What's wrong with it being continued till it's not resolved?

[neat bone]

No it's not

Look

As early as 1530, digress was being used in its modern sense, “to go off topic in speech or writing.”

By at least the mid-1800s, I digress, usually in the phrase but I digress, was already well-established as a signpost in speech and writing as if to say: “I know I’ve strayed from my point but I’m returning to it now.”

Sorry man

Wish it was simple too

[errant kettle]

I think it is a matter of nuance but I also don’t thin what I said is that different from this definition. You are talking about two different things. There is the verb “to digress” and the phrase “I digress”. So “I digress” is the acknowledgment that you went in an entirely different direction in the conversation or line of reasoning. Stating “I digress” creates a break to then either return to the main point, or yes, potentially move on to something else.

Change the subject if you want to ask something different

[boreal ingot]

I would imagine an adult has already developed the immune system to handle the bacteria in the water and air.
'the' before 'water and air' or no?

[cloud badge]

No, in front of one is enough. You can do either but using 2 thes would sound redundant

[cloud badge]

I digress is closer to going on a tangent than going off topic. Its not off topic, its just getting too deep into something that doesn't progress the conversation. Usually people say it as a segue to loop back to the main point of the conversation or just to say that they are going too deep into something that 'is a story for another day'

Let's say we're talking about the flavor of oranges, and then someone says the pith doesn't taste good, if someone were to then say, 'yeah i don't like the pith because it gets in my teeth' that is digressing. It's still about eating oranges, so not fully off topic, but you've moved away from talking about the flavor, you've gone off on a tangent that does not progress, but digress, the conversion. And saying i digress would prompt people to get back to the topic of flavor or end the conversation if they realize they have no more relevant points about it.

[acoustic geyser]

Hello

When I was watching YouTube reel, I saw a grammar that I didn't know it was correct or not

he is a coming

Did they say it intentionally?

[cloud badge]

Probably, that is a trend of southen speech, its not grammatical but people do that to be playful. You can add a before almost any verb, its for emphasis and i think they just like the way it sounds.

[acoustic geyser]

But that's from a British show.

[cloud badge]

Oh, I'm not sure then, I don't know if they do that there as well.

[boreal ingot]

nono, I mean' do I say 'water and air' or 'the water and air'
'the water and the air' sounds kinda meh

[cloud badge]

Oh oh, i would say yes, because you said 'the immune system' and 'the bacteria'. If you hadn't used the there, i would not necessarily use it before water and air. For example 'developed an immune system to handle bacteria in water and air'