Hey PLUSAs! Thanks to jb (obvs) and kens and cgar and etson for coming on Saturday. Unfortunately you missed my lurker friend who showed up in the first wave of the party – he asked about some of the, shall we say, well-known personalities on here! Ok, back to packing up…will be in touch soon.
One of the fun things about learning a second or third language, is that you begin to understand why native speakers of a particular language mangle English in similar ways. It’s because they are threading English through the language they already know.
That is why speakers of Chinese very often mix up the words “he” and “she”. Because Chinese isn’t gender-inflected–there’s no he or she, just a unisex third person “ta” (or, in Canto, “keuih”).
I have the reverse problem as an English-dominant person speaking Spanish, where every noun carries a gender (unlike English, where nouns are gender-neutral). I confuse my “la” with my “el” nouns all the time…cause I’ve never figured out why you can have “la pinga”.
Kens, the entire English class curriculum when I was in 6th or 7th grade consisted of “diagramming” which involved carving up sentences into funny little branches according to the parts of speech (noun, verb, adverb, conjunction, etc.).
We spent the entire YEAR doing this exercise, which was mind-numbing, but which I liked because I was good at it. I don’t think that schools teach this anymore…the kids would rebel, and the parents would complain that it isn’t “creative” enough.
“Yes, WonTon…you must have had nuns”
Dave, I had NUN of them!
Hey PLUSAs! Thanks to jb (obvs) and kens and cgar and etson for coming on Saturday. Unfortunately you missed my lurker friend who showed up in the first wave of the party – he asked about some of the, shall we say, well-known personalities on here! Ok, back to packing up…will be in touch soon.
One of the fun things about learning a second or third language, is that you begin to understand why native speakers of a particular language mangle English in similar ways. It’s because they are threading English through the language they already know.
That is why speakers of Chinese very often mix up the words “he” and “she”. Because Chinese isn’t gender-inflected–there’s no he or she, just a unisex third person “ta” (or, in Canto, “keuih”).
I have the reverse problem as an English-dominant person speaking Spanish, where every noun carries a gender (unlike English, where nouns are gender-neutral). I confuse my “la” with my “el” nouns all the time…cause I’ve never figured out why you can have “la pinga”.
Yes, WonTon…you must have had nuns because I “diagrammed” sentences for years with them
Subject/Verb/Object
dave- between Marcy and Tompkins.
“Reading and posting here has helped me greatly, beleive it or not.”
“i” before “e” except after “c” or when sounded like “a” as in “neighbor” and “weigh”
beleive=believe
Kens, the entire English class curriculum when I was in 6th or 7th grade consisted of “diagramming” which involved carving up sentences into funny little branches according to the parts of speech (noun, verb, adverb, conjunction, etc.).
We spent the entire YEAR doing this exercise, which was mind-numbing, but which I liked because I was good at it. I don’t think that schools teach this anymore…the kids would rebel, and the parents would complain that it isn’t “creative” enough.
That one I knew Dave. typo.