That's probably one of the worst problems nowadays. I went to a library happily going to spend a 150$ pesos voucher a friend gave me for my birthday (plus some of my money), and happily spent them in some Michael Moorcock books I was looking after since several years ago. I checked in the computer/informatics section to see if there was anything about C or C++ (which I am trying to learn), and, found lots of books, guides and manuals about: Microsoft Office (eg powerpoint, excel, etc), how to use an iPhone 3GS (I have one, and it's VERY SIMPLE, like every software apple makes, it's very intuitive), and, a guide to........ Facebook.... and to twitter... I mean................... Is people SO degenerate?
I, too, can't possibly find a single person who wouldn't know how to use a piece of technology that appeared way past their prime
That's probably one of the worst problems nowadays. I went to a library happily going to spend a 150$ pesos voucher a friend gave me for my birthday (plus some of my money), and happily spent them in some Michael Moorcock books I was looking after since several years ago. I checked in the computer/informatics section to see if there was anything about C or C++ (which I am trying to learn), and, found lots of books, guides and manuals about: Microsoft Office (eg powerpoint, excel, etc), how to use an iPhone 3GS (I have one, and it's VERY SIMPLE, like every software apple makes, it's very intuitive), and, a guide to........ Facebook.... and to twitter... I mean................... Is people SO degenerate?
I, too, can't possibly find a single person who wouldn't know how to use a piece of technology that appeared way past their prime
Except everything manmade is technically technology.
'Technos' means 'artificial/manmade' in Greek, and 'logia' means 'knowledge', the basest meaning of this word is literally 'knowledge applied to make artificial matters' - anyone with at least half a brain should have the capacity to deduce that everything from toilet paper to clothes to drugs to the most primitive agricultural equipment *ARE* 'pieces of technology'. So honestly your post makes absolutely no sense at all, since I have yet to meet anyone past their prime, discounting those suffering from extreme dementia, who can't make use of at least one of these things.
@Shandyr, I found French much easier to learn to read and write grammatically, but German much easier to learn to aurally comprehend and to speak with a halfway decent accent, allowing a native listener to understand me easily. (I've had native French speakers say they couldn't understand me at all, while I've had native German speakers compliment me on my accent.)
French noun declensions were relatively simple for me because there are really only two genders, since masculine and neuter use the same article. You only have to memorize whether the noun takes "le" or "la". The plural of both is "les", and the "of" contractions that go with them are "du", "de la", and "des". They don't even change according to case, so you don't have to worry about what function the nouns are serving in your sentence constructions. The indefinite singular articles are always either "un" or "une", so you've got at least a 50-50 chance to be right if you have to take a guess.
German noun declensions are a nightmare for a non-native speaker. (I studied classical Greek, and it was the same thing in that language.) You not only have to know the gender, you have to know what case your noun is being used in, and whether it is a "weak" noun. Both the definite and indefinite articles are fully declined, so there's "der", "das", "die", "den", "dem" "des", "ein", "eine", "einem", "einen", etc, and then you have to put an "-en" suffix on the weak nouns in certain cases. Oh yes, and any adjectives also have to be declined to match the nouns.
As if that weren't enough, all the personal prounouns are fully declined: "mein", "meine", "meinen", "meinem", "dein", "deine", "deinen", deinem", etc., on and on it goes.
I'll never forget an experience I had in college when the teacher got a group of German tourists to visit one of our classes and attend a luncheon with us German students. I tried to go up to a pair of ladies and smile and say "Thank you for the visit." Unfortunately, I had to take a guess at the gender of "Besuch", and I guessed wrong. I said "Danke fuer das Besuch." Both ladies immediately burst out laughing and said in unison, "Danke fuer DEN Besuch!" It was like they couldn't help themselves, I had made such a silly sounding error. It probably made me seem two years old to them.
So i'm living in Germany and you say for "das Besuch" means in correctly "diesen Besuch"
"Den Besuch" means for yourself knowing invisited.
"Diesen Besuch" means to acceptet to generally unknown information to visiting about.
Recently, I've come across these difficulties while posting here.
1. “Thank God” vs “Thanks God”
The first variant is fine as a statement that you are thanking God. It's short for "I thank God for his grace and mercy..." It's not a prayer only because you are not actually addressing God, but it could be part of a conversation, discussion, testimonial in church, etc.
The second variant doesn't work quite right. If you are literally saying "Thanks" to God, as in you are offering a prayer to God and are speaking to him/her, then you will want to to say "Thanks, God, for your grace and mercy..."
If you want more formality, as in "Thanks be to God for ..." that's fine, but what you have is also fine, with the small changes.
2. "It is worth it" vs "It is worthy"
They do not mean the same thing. "It is worth it" means it is worth the money I'm spending or the time I'm investing...
"It is worthy" means it has importance. It is worth remembering. A question could be raised if a person was worthy of an award.
"Worth" is classified as an Adjective and used as one. (Although it also acts differently from all of the Adjectives.)
In some cases, "worth" is used as an Adjective but acts as a Preposition. That's why it's normally followed by a Noun, a Pronoun or a Gerund.
It's worth a try. It's worth it. It's worth trying.
Grammar... many times I've avoided doing something because of grammar. Making mods, stories, etc. I always stop because I think my grammar is piss poor. It's worse in real life, I'm a fully grown man but my handwriting looks like it was done by a dizzy child... Seriously, I find it impossible to write a proper sentence on paper.
I know one asshole that always tries to sound extra smart... He'll find obscure or long words, and then uses them during a normal conversation. Last time I saw him he said "I can't stop pandiculating today!" He eventually explained that it means yawning... like I said, he's an asshole! But it's little things like this that makes writing stuff so annoying, you never know if you're using the right words or grammar.
I don't even know what the hell I'm saying anymore.
A native English speaker and linguistics enthusiast here. A couple modica of information:
English is an Indo-European language with heavy Proto-Germanic roots. However, there is significant influence from Romantic languages, especially Latin, along with Greek when it comes to technical terminology. As a result, the grammatical structure is most like German, while the prefixes and suffixes function much like Greek and Latin. Greek and Latin has influenced English the most when it comes to terminology relating to science, literature, philosophy, and specialist fields. This is due, in part, to the esteem of Latin as a language and how throughout history, the lingua franca of scientists and intellectuals across the Western world was either Latin or French (a heavily corrupted Romantic language evolving from Latin).
One thing you need to get used to in English are loan words and how English-speakers oftentimes use them directly from the language of origin. For example, in this post alone I've used two terms which are actually Latin: modica (plural for modicum, meaning "a small quantity of a particular thing, especially something considered desirable or valuable") and lingua franca, which means "a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different" and translates exactly to "French/Frankish language," depending on whether you are reading it as Latin or Italian, respectively. (This term comes from the fact that previously, the French language was the lingua franca of the Western world.)
Additionally, some loan words are corrupted when brought into English, while others function just as they would in their own respective language, sometimes simultaneously. For example, modicum is Latin for "a little" and it's proper plural form in Latin would be modica. However, in English the plural form is usually written as modicums, which is a corruption of the original term by applying the English plural form to a Latin term. I used the former instead of the latter solely because I prefer to be grammatically correct when using Latin terms. Usually, however, a lot of Latin loan words are corrupted when used in English parlance.
Another important thing to remember about the English language: it is a VERY flexible and forgiving language in terms of how it is spoken and written. While there is some tentatively formed standardization of the language, English is largely interpretative and versatile to the point that hundreds of unique dialects and MILLIONS of slang terms have formed. By "forgivable," I mean that even if you type, write, or speak very poorly, people can generally still figure out what you mean. For example, eevin iff eye tip lyk dis, you can still understand (usually) what I just typed, despite their being multiple typographical errors (typos) and two words which don't even belong ("eye" and "dis"). This is quite unique to the English language, since most other languages are very uniform in their spelling and grammar and even one misplaced or omitted character, or the use of the wrong tense or tone, can change the entire meaning of the sentence. Languages most notable for this sort of rigidity include Japanese, Chinese, Latin, and some Germanic and Nordic languages.
Overall, English as a language is rather easy to learn due to its expansive and ever-growing vocabulary; quick to adapt and make your own due to its flexible vernacular, wide variety of dialects, and immense slang vocabulary; but extremely difficult to master, since there is no centralized or uniform standardization of the language.
TL;DR –
English evolved from Germanic languages, so its structure is similar to that of German and Dutch. However, English is heavily influenced by Romantic and other Indo-European languages, most notably French, Greek, and Latin. The grammatical structure of English is most similar to German, but the word forming and prefixing and suffixing used in technical terminology (like those found in specialized fields in science, philosophy, mathematics, and literature) is much closer to that of Latin, and sometimes Greek. There are a lot of loan words in English from all different types of languages, especially Latin, from which the vast majority of technical terms originate. Sometimes, the loan words are preserved in their original form, while other times they are corrupted or altered to better fit the English language, depending on the dialect.
English is a very flexible and forgiving language in the sense that even if you speak and type with the English skills of a toddler, people can generally still understand you. Unlike other languages, which are much more uniform and rigid in their language expression and interpretation, English is extremely versatile and dynamic. There are thousands of dialects and millions of slang terms, making the English vernacular language arguably larger than its technical side. The good thing for people learning English (which is also the bad thing for those wishing to study, learn, or master the language) is that the vast majority of grammatical rules and most of the standardization of the language can be altered or ignored altogether, while still retaining coherence in the meaning of what you say. While it is not advised and generally considered poor English skills, it's actually possible to convey an entire paragraph or even an entire book without the use of punctuation, capitalization, or even proper spelling. That is just how adaptable English is as a language.
TL;DR, TL;DR that either – I'm not good at writing tersely or concisely. Stop being lazy and read what I typed.
EDIT: Technically, modica is the exact plural reciprocal of modicum, both of which are in the nominative case. The Latin language is much more complex than that, and contains at five other cases, and that's for nouns alone. So, depending on what, or who, you are addressing (along with a bunch of other factors), it can change from modicum to modica to modicōrum to modicō to modicīs among many others. Yeah, Latin is a bitch to learn.
Here's another one I encountered recently on a national news website. I already know the answer, but it's food for thought. The use of 'an' or 'a', representing a singular. An item, a rose. General rule is:
'A' precedes a word starting with a phonetic consonant.
'An' precedes a word starting phonetically with a vowel.
This is very basic English. Here are some examples:
"A Gnome in the garden"—starts with a 'N' sound.
"A plane in the sky"—starts with a 'P' sound.
Those two, N and P, are both consonants.
"You use an 'M' when spelling Monday, the word should be capitalised." M sounds like 'em'.
"A bandit in Baldur's Gate? You should kill him, he's an enemy" (not to be confused with anemone, which is a genus of plant).
'E', from both 'em' and 'en', is a consonant.
Now, basic English lesson out of the way. Abbreviations. Take something like the Measles, mumps, and rubella shot. MMR. "I'm going for an MMR shot" or "I'm going for a MMR shot." MMR is not a word, it's an abbreviation for a series of words. So if you break it down, "I'm going for an Measles, mumps, and rubella shot" or "I'm going for a Measles, mumps, and rubella shot. Saying the letters MMR—it would sound like Em Em Aur—'an' would be correct in this instance, but having the words in mind when saying it—starting with Measles, a definite 'M' sound rather than 'em'—'a' would be more appropriate.
Here's the thing, though, is it grammatically correct to treat abbreviations as actual words, or should they be treated as the individual words they represent?
@Troodon80 I *believe* both are correct. You can make the person read the abbreviation by writing "an MMR" or you can make them read the words by writing "a MMR".
@bengoshi, I'd forgotten how hard it is to know which preposition to use in various kinds of prepositional phrases in foreign languages. Thank you for reminding me of that. It comes naturally to a native speaker, but it seems totally arbitrary to a foreign student of the language, doesn't it?
@bengoshi, I'd forgotten how hard it is to know which preposition to use in various kinds of prepositional phrases in foreign languages. Thank you for reminding me of that. It comes naturally to a native speaker, but it seems totally arbitrary to a foreign student of the language, doesn't it?
Yeah, it's half of the year in German 2. You'd think we could just pick one when things aren't actually physically on something, or in something. What's so wrong about lunch being on 12:00, or my birthday being at September? AT OR ON, PICK ONE:P
I am taking up Spanish next month, looking forward to learning a new language!
Which is your first language/mother tongue/whatever you call it? Learning spanish from english is pretty difficult (since there are differentiations among the adverbs for each gender), many people get confused with that (same for learning german from english, which might be even more difficult).
Comments
'Technos' means 'artificial/manmade' in Greek, and 'logia' means 'knowledge', the basest meaning of this word is literally 'knowledge applied to make artificial matters' - anyone with at least half a brain should have the capacity to deduce that everything from toilet paper to clothes to drugs to the most primitive agricultural equipment *ARE* 'pieces of technology'. So honestly your post makes absolutely no sense at all, since I have yet to meet anyone past their prime, discounting those suffering from extreme dementia, who can't make use of at least one of these things.
e: Probably should expand more on this post but I'm sure everyone knows that I'm laughing at you being a spergy nitpicker.
"Den Besuch" means for yourself knowing invisited.
"Diesen Besuch" means to acceptet to generally unknown information to visiting about.
Yoda: Eure schnelle Kommentare ich ganz gerne lese.
in German calls yodish "subject-adjective+object-adverb-verb"
so it feels nearly to formly at english.
1. “Thank God” vs “Thanks God”
The first variant is fine as a statement that you are thanking God. It's short for "I thank God for his grace and mercy..." It's not a prayer only because you are not actually addressing God, but it could be part of a conversation, discussion, testimonial in church, etc.
The second variant doesn't work quite right. If you are literally saying "Thanks" to God, as in you are offering a prayer to God and are speaking to him/her, then you will want to to say "Thanks, God, for your grace and mercy..."
If you want more formality, as in "Thanks be to God for ..." that's fine, but what you have is also fine, with the small changes.
2. "It is worth it" vs "It is worthy"
They do not mean the same thing. "It is worth it" means it is worth the money I'm spending or the time I'm investing...
"It is worthy" means it has importance. It is worth remembering. A question could be raised if a person was worthy of an award.
"Worth" is classified as an Adjective and used as one. (Although it also acts differently from all of the Adjectives.)
In some cases, "worth" is used as an Adjective but acts as a Preposition. That's why it's normally followed by a Noun, a Pronoun or a Gerund.
It's worth a try.
It's worth it.
It's worth trying.
But never: "It does worth it"
I know one asshole that always tries to sound extra smart... He'll find obscure or long words, and then uses them during a normal conversation. Last time I saw him he said "I can't stop pandiculating today!" He eventually explained that it means yawning... like I said, he's an asshole! But it's little things like this that makes writing stuff so annoying, you never know if you're using the right words or grammar.
I don't even know what the hell I'm saying anymore.
English is an Indo-European language with heavy Proto-Germanic roots. However, there is significant influence from Romantic languages, especially Latin, along with Greek when it comes to technical terminology. As a result, the grammatical structure is most like German, while the prefixes and suffixes function much like Greek and Latin. Greek and Latin has influenced English the most when it comes to terminology relating to science, literature, philosophy, and specialist fields. This is due, in part, to the esteem of Latin as a language and how throughout history, the lingua franca of scientists and intellectuals across the Western world was either Latin or French (a heavily corrupted Romantic language evolving from Latin).
One thing you need to get used to in English are loan words and how English-speakers oftentimes use them directly from the language of origin. For example, in this post alone I've used two terms which are actually Latin: modica (plural for modicum, meaning "a small quantity of a particular thing, especially something considered desirable or valuable") and lingua franca, which means "a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different" and translates exactly to "French/Frankish language," depending on whether you are reading it as Latin or Italian, respectively. (This term comes from the fact that previously, the French language was the lingua franca of the Western world.)
Additionally, some loan words are corrupted when brought into English, while others function just as they would in their own respective language, sometimes simultaneously. For example, modicum is Latin for "a little" and it's proper plural form in Latin would be modica. However, in English the plural form is usually written as modicums, which is a corruption of the original term by applying the English plural form to a Latin term. I used the former instead of the latter solely because I prefer to be grammatically correct when using Latin terms. Usually, however, a lot of Latin loan words are corrupted when used in English parlance.
Another important thing to remember about the English language: it is a VERY flexible and forgiving language in terms of how it is spoken and written. While there is some tentatively formed standardization of the language, English is largely interpretative and versatile to the point that hundreds of unique dialects and MILLIONS of slang terms have formed. By "forgivable," I mean that even if you type, write, or speak very poorly, people can generally still figure out what you mean. For example, eevin iff eye tip lyk dis, you can still understand (usually) what I just typed, despite their being multiple typographical errors (typos) and two words which don't even belong ("eye" and "dis"). This is quite unique to the English language, since most other languages are very uniform in their spelling and grammar and even one misplaced or omitted character, or the use of the wrong tense or tone, can change the entire meaning of the sentence. Languages most notable for this sort of rigidity include Japanese, Chinese, Latin, and some Germanic and Nordic languages.
Overall, English as a language is rather easy to learn due to its expansive and ever-growing vocabulary; quick to adapt and make your own due to its flexible vernacular, wide variety of dialects, and immense slang vocabulary; but extremely difficult to master, since there is no centralized or uniform standardization of the language.
TL;DR –
English evolved from Germanic languages, so its structure is similar to that of German and Dutch. However, English is heavily influenced by Romantic and other Indo-European languages, most notably French, Greek, and Latin. The grammatical structure of English is most similar to German, but the word forming and prefixing and suffixing used in technical terminology (like those found in specialized fields in science, philosophy, mathematics, and literature) is much closer to that of Latin, and sometimes Greek. There are a lot of loan words in English from all different types of languages, especially Latin, from which the vast majority of technical terms originate. Sometimes, the loan words are preserved in their original form, while other times they are corrupted or altered to better fit the English language, depending on the dialect.
English is a very flexible and forgiving language in the sense that even if you speak and type with the English skills of a toddler, people can generally still understand you. Unlike other languages, which are much more uniform and rigid in their language expression and interpretation, English is extremely versatile and dynamic. There are thousands of dialects and millions of slang terms, making the English vernacular language arguably larger than its technical side. The good thing for people learning English (which is also the bad thing for those wishing to study, learn, or master the language) is that the vast majority of grammatical rules and most of the standardization of the language can be altered or ignored altogether, while still retaining coherence in the meaning of what you say. While it is not advised and generally considered poor English skills, it's actually possible to convey an entire paragraph or even an entire book without the use of punctuation, capitalization, or even proper spelling. That is just how adaptable English is as a language.
TL;DR, TL;DR that either – I'm not good at writing tersely or concisely. Stop being lazy and read what I typed.
EDIT: Technically, modica is the exact plural reciprocal of modicum, both of which are in the nominative case. The Latin language is much more complex than that, and contains at five other cases, and that's for nouns alone. So, depending on what, or who, you are addressing (along with a bunch of other factors), it can change from modicum to modica to modicōrum to modicō to modicīs among many others. Yeah, Latin is a bitch to learn.
- 'A' precedes a word starting with a phonetic consonant.
- 'An' precedes a word starting phonetically with a vowel.
This is very basic English. Here are some examples:- "A Gnome in the garden"—starts with a 'N' sound.
- "A plane in the sky"—starts with a 'P' sound.
Those two, N and P, are both consonants.- "You use an 'M' when spelling Monday, the word should be capitalised." M sounds like 'em'.
- "A bandit in Baldur's Gate? You should kill him, he's an enemy" (not to be confused with anemone, which is a genus of plant).
'E', from both 'em' and 'en', is a consonant.Now, basic English lesson out of the way. Abbreviations. Take something like the Measles, mumps, and rubella shot. MMR. "I'm going for an MMR shot" or "I'm going for a MMR shot." MMR is not a word, it's an abbreviation for a series of words. So if you break it down, "I'm going for an Measles, mumps, and rubella shot" or "I'm going for a Measles, mumps, and rubella shot. Saying the letters MMR—it would sound like Em Em Aur—'an' would be correct in this instance, but having the words in mind when saying it—starting with Measles, a definite 'M' sound rather than 'em'—'a' would be more appropriate.
Here's the thing, though, is it grammatically correct to treat abbreviations as actual words, or should they be treated as the individual words they represent?
So I've had to check the following:
in + month or year- In March, In 2003
on + date (with the year or without it) or day of the week- On April 2, On March 3, 1999, On Saturday
at + clock time, midnight, noon- At 3:30 p.m., At 4:01, At noon
Remember also...
in + season- In the summer, In the winter
in + morning, afternoon, evening- In the morning, In the evening
at + night- At night
Who thinks that crap up, anyway?;)
As it turns out, no. "Take a bow" essentially means "Very well done". The phrase that is used better is: "I bow to you".