Grammar Nazi
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...Stieg then, ya hater
Yeah, but this stuff really matters in most Germanic languages. Consider, for example (from German):
Nicht schiessen, kamerad! - Don't shoot, comrade!
Nicht scheissen, kamerad! - means, er...something very different.
I've no idea what 'steig' might mean in Swedish, though, only that the pronunciation would change.
Kurben! Over to you.
Love it.
Big thread. I don't know if this has been addressed. But here's a handy way (for some people) of remembering that "its" is possessive and "it's" means "it is," and that's the way it is, close it out, amen.
Third-person possessive pronouns don't use apostrophes. Not hi's. Or his'. Not her's or hers'. Not their's or theirs'. Likewise: Not it's or its'.
It's easy.
And just because it's plural, does not mean that you add an apostrophe in spite of recent trends (not trend's)!!!!!! *twitch*
You got it. Oh, baby.
English is full of exceptions, and one exception to this is do's and don'ts. I've tried to do that "do's" every other way, and this seems to work the best, at least for me. But it's an outlier, not a trend or an example.
From Imgur.com - roadside produce stand in E. Texas
There are no words.
No, seriously. You might give an exception for "bail," except it's not the right one.
If you can't figure out the apostrophyzes, make up a new word.
Or just construct the sentence more better.
Or just construct the sentence more better.
Another one from the facebook page of my sister-in-law. I don't really like her but I can't delete her because then I'd lose these gems
(This comment was under a pic of the kids sleeping in the car.
I think the woman was trying to say "Wow, they must've had a ball! They're all knocked out lol!")
(This comment was under a pic of the kids sleeping in the car.
I think the woman was trying to say "Wow, they must've had a ball! They're all knocked out lol!")
Oh I like that, that's a roadside sales keeperFrom Imgur.com - roadside produce stand in E. Texas
...but it does make me curious, I mean I gotta wonder about that one tater
...hmm, ah, yeah probably justa typo
Ask this guy about Taters....mmmmmmmmmmmhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm
That makes me wonder what the hell he's wonderin' about, I mean seems to me he's almost all at once decided, 'Deeeelicious!', and yet also wonders, why...hmmm, o' course considerin' the source, could beAsk this guy about Taters....mmmmmmmmmmmhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmm
Well I've been in this thread too long, feel as if I'ma gonna get snucked up on and gets me a butt full of grammar shots
I almost suspect that this one was contrived to appear the way that it does.
What's that about?? Usually I can work out what is meant, but this is beyond me. As was the previous one, which you had already translated.
Or am I missing some context?
Some of the things Dark Tower's (or is it Towers?) Detta Walker says is also pretty hard for me to work out by the way. Most sentences I could work out by reading them out loud, but some really were too ****** (I hope I'm not offending anyone, I'm using it because Detta Walker uses it).
Apostrophes for plurals is also great fun for me. In Dutch an apostrophe should be used when the singular ends in a vowel, because otherwise the pronunciation changes. So if you ever see me write something like taxi's or casino's, you now know why. "Do's" from a couple of posts back doesn't look odd to me, because in the Netherlands we use a lot of anglicisms and one of them is "do's and don'ts".
Steig isn't a Swedish word, if I can trust Google Translate. Your example of schiessen/scheissen also applies to Dutch: schieten/scheiten, (although the latter should be spelled schijten, but in pronunciation there's no difference). For the ones not familiar with German and Dutch: scheissen (German)/schijten (Dutch) translates in English to a word that actually looks a bit like shoot. Only with an "i" instead of "oo".
How come you know (a bit of) German by the way, Mr Nobody? Most English people aren't that aware of foreign languages.
Or am I missing some context?
Some of the things Dark Tower's (or is it Towers?) Detta Walker says is also pretty hard for me to work out by the way. Most sentences I could work out by reading them out loud, but some really were too ****** (I hope I'm not offending anyone, I'm using it because Detta Walker uses it).
Apostrophes for plurals is also great fun for me. In Dutch an apostrophe should be used when the singular ends in a vowel, because otherwise the pronunciation changes. So if you ever see me write something like taxi's or casino's, you now know why. "Do's" from a couple of posts back doesn't look odd to me, because in the Netherlands we use a lot of anglicisms and one of them is "do's and don'ts".
Yeah, but this stuff really matters in most Germanic languages. Consider, for example (from German):
Nicht schiessen, kamerad! - Don't shoot, comrade!
Nicht scheissen, kamerad! - means, er...something very different.
I've no idea what 'steig' might mean in Swedish, though, only that the pronunciation would change.
Kurben! Over to you.
Steig isn't a Swedish word, if I can trust Google Translate. Your example of schiessen/scheissen also applies to Dutch: schieten/scheiten, (although the latter should be spelled schijten, but in pronunciation there's no difference). For the ones not familiar with German and Dutch: scheissen (German)/schijten (Dutch) translates in English to a word that actually looks a bit like shoot. Only with an "i" instead of "oo".
How come you know (a bit of) German by the way, Mr Nobody? Most English people aren't that aware of foreign languages.
I have no idea with that post, @PM.
And she is like 30 years old. I don't know how she manages to get through life.
And she is like 30 years old. I don't know how she manages to get through life.
It's probably right in this instance, but you can't trust Google Translate. I did when I tried to communicate with a Ukrainian friend whose English wasn't up to much (though it was still better than my very, very basic Russian, and I know Ukrainian only as far as it has words in common with Russian). The results were apparently hilarious and made about as much sense as if I'd just bluffed it in the first place.
I learnt French and German while at school. Both are very rusty now through lack of use. I'm trying to polish those skills up a bit, though. I also have a German aunt (uncle was a soldier stationed there, he met a girl, the rest is history) and my cousin was born and raised over there so...family interest, I guess you could say.
But yes, generally English/British folks are monolingual. It's partly down to attitude ("why bother when most of the rest of the world speaks English?"), but maybe that attitude itself is the downside to English spreading around the world through colonization, etc, as a lingua franca.
Whatever the case, it's true that language skills aren't highly prized by most of the population (who then moan about London hotels employing foreigners, which they only do due to the multinational make-up of their clientele
), but I'm interested in linguistics and languages, and enjoy the challenge of learning something new. In addition to brushing up on French and German, I'm currently trying to learn Spanish, Italian, Danish and Russian. Dutch, Swedish, Greek, Estonian (I have a couple of friends over there) and Welsh are on my 'hit list' after that.Of the ones I'm learning right now, Danish is probably my strongest one - at least as far as reading and understanding go. Listening is getting there, but my pronunciation sounds terrible even to me!
Interesting story. I have a certain interest in foreign languages myself (for example I know of most of the Russian letters what the Latin equivalent is), although I'm no good at learning them. I barely scraped a 6 in my English exam at school, and only because I had thought of trying to close my eyes at the audio test (except for scribbling down the answer and reading the next question of course) just before that exam, otherwise I'd go like "hey look, a squirrel" all the time, instead of listening to the (usually boring) stories and interviews.
Courtesy of the internet and movies/tv-shows I consider myself much better at English now. I can't read it as fast as Dutch, but it's close, and I can understand most people on the telly without needing subtitles (those I don't understand can be categorized as having a too strong accent, but the same goes for some Dutch people: when my uncle from the other side of the country is talking to me, I'm totally clueless about what he's saying and I have to guess whether to reply yes or no and when is the appropriate moment to do so).
I was also taught German and French (that's compulsory over here for a couple of years). I ditched them as soon as I could, so French is mostly gone. When somebody asks if I speak French, my standard reply is "je ne parle pas Français" Truth is though that I can get at least some information from French texts, as well as Italian and Spanish as these languages have the same origin.
When the company I work for spread its wings across the German border, I had to brush up on my German, so that's now acceptable. It still takes a lot of looking up words though (the correct choice of possible translations and the way sentences should be constructed isn't that much of a problem) and in conversation the German person shouldn't speak too fast (which is often a problem). Might also depend on where they come from, because of an accent, but as of today I can't distinguish one accent from the other, as opposed to English speaking people, who I can usually categorize in being English, Scottish, Irish, American, Canadian, Dutch, French, German, Italian and other.
About the trustworthyness of Google Translate (and similar translators): a few months ago I send an e-mail in English to a German colleague of mine. His reply was undoubtedly written in German, then translated by Google Translate or similar. Most telling was the word "they" instead of "she" (as he was referring to a female colleague in the previous sentence), which is the same word in German "sie"
As my Dutch colleague who also received that e-mail put it: "It's time they stop dubbing the movies over here" (his office is at the German factory). He also told me he quit speaking English to that particular colleage from day one, because he can hardly hold back his laughter about the way the German replies.
I think it's highly respectable you are learning so many languages, I couldn't do that! Good luck with it. I don't know about the other languages you're planning to learn, but Dutch certainly holds some challenges.
Courtesy of the internet and movies/tv-shows I consider myself much better at English now. I can't read it as fast as Dutch, but it's close, and I can understand most people on the telly without needing subtitles (those I don't understand can be categorized as having a too strong accent, but the same goes for some Dutch people: when my uncle from the other side of the country is talking to me, I'm totally clueless about what he's saying and I have to guess whether to reply yes or no and when is the appropriate moment to do so).
I was also taught German and French (that's compulsory over here for a couple of years). I ditched them as soon as I could, so French is mostly gone. When somebody asks if I speak French, my standard reply is "je ne parle pas Français"
Truth is though that I can get at least some information from French texts, as well as Italian and Spanish as these languages have the same origin.When the company I work for spread its wings across the German border, I had to brush up on my German, so that's now acceptable. It still takes a lot of looking up words though (the correct choice of possible translations and the way sentences should be constructed isn't that much of a problem) and in conversation the German person shouldn't speak too fast (which is often a problem). Might also depend on where they come from, because of an accent, but as of today I can't distinguish one accent from the other, as opposed to English speaking people, who I can usually categorize in being English, Scottish, Irish, American, Canadian, Dutch, French, German, Italian and other.
About the trustworthyness of Google Translate (and similar translators): a few months ago I send an e-mail in English to a German colleague of mine. His reply was undoubtedly written in German, then translated by Google Translate or similar. Most telling was the word "they" instead of "she" (as he was referring to a female colleague in the previous sentence), which is the same word in German "sie"
As my Dutch colleague who also received that e-mail put it: "It's time they stop dubbing the movies over here" (his office is at the German factory). He also told me he quit speaking English to that particular colleage from day one, because he can hardly hold back his laughter about the way the German replies.
I think it's highly respectable you are learning so many languages, I couldn't do that! Good luck with it. I don't know about the other languages you're planning to learn, but Dutch certainly holds some challenges.
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