Help with English

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by Saint, Aug 24, 2011.

  1. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    Music got plural? Musics?
     
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  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Is music both singular and plural? Yes.
     
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  5. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    systemic vs. systematic
     
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  7. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    English is weird, the words brother/sister do not tell you elder or younger?
    Chinese language got different words for younger and elder sister/brother.
     
  8. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Yet there is no difference between "him" and "her", right?
     
  9. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Systemic refers to the system as a whole as in "systemic racism". Systematic refers to an ordered way of doing something. A systematic way of solving a problem is to start from the beginning and not skipping any steps along the way.
     
  10. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    there is different, pronunciation is the same, but writing is different,
    female 她
    male 他
     
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  11. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    Grandmother and grandfather,
    in Chinese, the mother/father of your mother and father, are of different words.
    Normally, we call the grandparents of mother as "outer grandparents"
    father's one as "inner grandparents".
     
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  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    "Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you're currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out."
     
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  13. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Funny you should say that

    I have a Transaction app
    English / Indonesian, Indonesian / English

    Most of the girls I chat with are much better with their understanding of English than I am with Indonesian

    If I do need to translate for them I type English top window and obtain Indonesian bottom window

    I have learnt to copy the transaction, place it under the English in top window and select Translate to English

    I get the bottom two when translating the top two into Indonesian
    • boyfriend
    • girlfriend

    • pacar
    • pacar perempuan
    When I put all four of the above in top window and ask to translate to English I get
    • boyfriend
    • girlfriend

    • girlfriend
    • girlfriend

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    Last edited: Nov 27, 2020
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  14. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    Fell into a hole.
     
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  15. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Doesn't Chinese tend to use compound words, though, where they build a single word from multiple smaller words ? Such as your example of different words for paternal and maternal grandparents. If you broke it down into those simpler words, you'd still be using two ideas - as you describe "inner/outer grandparent" etc?

    In English we tend to keep the ideas separately expressed (the grandparent, and whether on mother's or father's side etc), separating adjective from noun, adverb from verb etc, although we still do use plenty of compound words (e.g. weekend etc).

    There are languages in Europe that use far more compound words than English, and almost seem to prefer to just push smaller words together to form one word. So where as in English we would say "legislative law for the monitoring of pork-meat labeling", in Germany they came up with the single word Schweinefleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.

    Now that is what I would call weird.

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  16. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    ability vs. capability,
    any difference?
     
  17. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, and it can be exampled as follows:
    Most people have the capability of searching the internet for answers to questions they might have.
    However, some show less of an ability than others in doing so.

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    i.e. A capability is either a yes/no matter - you either have the capability or you don't.
    An ability is a skill that can be quantified / compared.

    But people do tend to use them interchangeably.
     
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  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    "Grammarly" is a very useful linguistic tool. Even better, it's free.
     
  19. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Wow, this Grammarly program is really interesting. It is much more than a spell checker
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammarly

    Here are some notifications from Grammarly in context of this post;
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2021
  20. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    Is skiff and boat the same?
     
  21. Saint Valued Senior Member

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    Why fisherman count in fathom (=6 ft)? Instead of meter, feet?
     
  22. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    No. Look it up.
     
  23. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Depth in modern nautical charts is expressed in metres.

    The fathom is just one of many old units of measure, deriving from the times when trades and professions were much more self-contained than today, so the need to compare measures across different applications was far less. According to Wikipedia, the fathom seems to go back to the Ancient Greeks (ὀργυιά, meaning "outstretched" - the distance of a man's outstretched arms, approx 2 m or 6ft.).
     
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