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Author Topic: Dear Expert  (Read 151691 times)

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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #850 on: August 25, 2014, 12:36:40 PM »
English articles are probably the most difficult aspect of writing for non-native speakers to master. There really aren't very good, concise rules and so many uses are complicated or idiomatic. I had a classmate from Japan whose English was impeccable who would ask me about article rules and challenge me to teach him all of them. I never won that challenge - every day he'd come up with a new sentence to stump me.

Realistically, I wish there weren't such a stigma against non-native speakers. If a decent editor can make sense of the writing, there isn't any reason she should be treated differently than other writers. Native speakers need to have their writing edited as well. But I see what you mean about the practicality of the situation in terms of how she's perceived in the workplace.

There are resources like this one, but again, there are more rules than are presented there and some of the hardest situations to explain are those in which no article is used or things are used as abstractions (Think of the sentence The invention of the computer revolutionized the American workplace.)

My preference, rather than providing her with a huge number of counterexamples and a giant maze of rules, would be to provide her with lots of chances to get input of positive examples. The best way to do this is through extensive listening and reading. The best second-language speakers are the ones who listen to/read a lot of the target language and then speak/write by imitating the style that they've been exposed to. If you have the time, you could help her out by finding published articles in the style she's expected to write in and isolate examples of the kind of sentences she needs to imitate. Have her write her own sentences based on those patterns, and reinforce it every day. Maybe even send her an email in the morning saying "Please write me a sentence that uses the like this sentence does and send it to me by this afternoon."
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Offline Dro_Trebor

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #851 on: August 25, 2014, 12:43:11 PM »
Thank you! That's exactly the kind of advice and warnings I need!

I will try to implement your suggestions, and basically, while it still comes down to practice and exposure, you've given me ideas on how to make it less frustrating for all concerned.

Yay!

Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #852 on: August 25, 2014, 12:59:20 PM »
Well, that's good. Be warned that my approach is heavily biased by Western ESL methods and that I harbor a deep dislike of the way Chinese people teach their students English. This rubs a lot of Asians the wrong way because they grew up being told that if you memorize and follow rules X, Y, and Z your English will be "correct." I'm still right, of course ;) , but I do acknowledge that there are cultural factors at play.
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Offline Dro_Trebor

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #853 on: August 25, 2014, 02:52:01 PM »
I'd live fir there to be a rules based approach, but clearly if there were this wouldn't be a problem for so many.

Offline pooka

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #854 on: August 27, 2014, 10:10:35 AM »
Something I liked to think about is that there are different scopes of complexity in the different languages.  English writes everything with permutations of 26 letters, while chinese can express most words with a pair of radicals, but there have to be a lot more radicals to accomplish this.  Likewise they have less syllabic diversity but more tones.  It's not a concept* proper linguists put much stock in (at least in my day), but might appease her need for there to be an explanation behind the "Just so" ness of it.  There are different article usages between English speaking countries, notably "in the hospital" vs. "in hospital."  

*the concept I mean is that every language has some area of unreasoning complexity, compensated by areas of simplicity.  Where this claim really jumps the shark for proper linguists is in countenancing writing systems.  But I think this kind of thinking about languages helps break down some of the prejudice that accompanies language learning.
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Offline Dro_Trebor

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #855 on: August 27, 2014, 10:49:01 AM »
Interesting thoughts.

Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #856 on: August 27, 2014, 11:00:45 AM »
Something I liked to think about is that there are different scopes of complexity in the different languages.  English writes everything with permutations of 26 letters, while chinese can express most words with a pair of radicals, but there have to be a lot more radicals to accomplish this.  Likewise they have less syllabic diversity but more tones.  It's not a concept* proper linguists put much stock in (at least in my day), but might appease her need for there to be an explanation behind the "Just so" ness of it.  There are different article usages between English speaking countries, notably "in the hospital" vs. "in hospital." 

*the concept I mean is that every language has some area of unreasoning complexity, compensated by areas of simplicity.  Where this claim really jumps the shark for proper linguists is in countenancing writing systems.  But I think this kind of thinking about languages helps break down some of the prejudice that accompanies language learning.

I totally believe the same thing, totally anecdotally. Every language is hard in a different way. Spanish is super easy, right? Wait until you have to juggle dialectal differences, different countries using different pronouns, or the never-ending complexity of sociolinguistic factors. Japanese is super hard, right? Well, yeah, until you get the hang of an SOV language and different registers and then everything is extremely regular and predictable. Humans all speak their native language at about the same level of difficulty.
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #857 on: August 27, 2014, 11:46:27 AM »
In recent years I've heard some linguists push back agains the idea that all languages are equally complex. I think that idea was an overreaction to the idea that some languages (mostly creoles, regional languages, and nonstandard dialects) have overly simple grammar or no grammar at all.

But some languages do actually take longer to learn, even for native speakers. And standardized languages tend to have less complexity than nonstandard dialects, because they've had more people acquire the language as adults, and adults rarely acquire a language perfectly.
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #858 on: August 28, 2014, 11:44:59 AM »
What if you factor in idiomatic expressions? I'm not saying you can't learn an official, standard version of one language relatively easily, but I feel like the way native speakers use idioms, not to mention registers, would make it just as hard to sound like a convincing Spanish-speaking teenage dude as a Chinese businessman.
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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #859 on: October 02, 2014, 09:05:33 PM »
Do we have a word for a male ballet dancer?   We have ballerinas, but I never hear about ballerinos.
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #860 on: October 03, 2014, 08:09:40 AM »
Looks like in Italian it is indeed ballerino. It's funny that all the ballet terms in English are French except for the names of the dancers. Apparently ballet started in Italy first but got all famous in France. The dancers are called ballerin and ballerine in French.
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #861 on: October 03, 2014, 08:14:06 AM »
This is fun too: Italian uses the verbs ballare and danzare for dance, while Spanish only keeps bailar and French only keeps danser. (Though Spanish does use the noun danza to mean a specific dance form, as in danza folklorica, and French has the noun bal to mean a formal dance party.)
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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #862 on: October 03, 2014, 08:20:50 AM »
So "ballroom dancing" would pretty much be redundant.
Fighting thread drift with guilt, reverse psychology, and chicken soup.
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Offline pooka

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #863 on: October 21, 2014, 12:19:23 PM »
Never connected ball and ballet before.  Cool.
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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #864 on: November 07, 2014, 08:40:19 PM »
Would beddy-bye as in, "Time for beddy-bye" be an example of babies influencing language?
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #865 on: November 07, 2014, 10:04:00 PM »
Yup. Or at least adults imitating children's language.
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Offline dkw

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #866 on: November 10, 2014, 07:33:06 PM »
How did "house" come to refer to the part of the theater where the audience sits?

Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #867 on: November 10, 2014, 08:09:47 PM »
It looks like it was actually a pretty straightforward development. House has long been used for buildings that aren't actually dwelling places (alehouse, bathhouse, courthouse, etc.), including theaters. The OED offers this definition:

Quote
A place for public entertainment; (originally) a theatre or playhouse; (later also) a cinema, concert hall, or other venue. Hence: the audience or attendance at this. Also: a (specified) performance, esp. one that closely follows another, as first house, second house, etc.

So it's mostly a simple case of metonymy: the house first refers to the building, and then it comes to refer to the people in the building or the place where they sit. I'm not exactly sure why it would refer only to the audience and not the cast or staff, except that it seems handier as a term to refer to the audience.
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Offline Noemon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #868 on: November 10, 2014, 08:33:29 PM »
I was listening to something this morning on Morning Edition in which the person being interviewed was talking about the centrality of bread in human culture, and the way all sorts of words are entwined with bread. He gave the example of "companion" literally being someone you had bread with. He said in the piece that he had literally written the book on the subject, but I can't remember his name or the name of the book, and I'm not finding any references to the piece when I look on the Morning Edition website. Are you by any chance familiar with it?
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #869 on: November 11, 2014, 07:41:44 AM »
Sadly, I am not.
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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #870 on: November 11, 2014, 11:40:30 AM »
I was listening to something this morning on Morning Edition in which the person being interviewed was talking about the centrality of bread in human culture, and the way all sorts of words are entwined with bread. He gave the example of "companion" literally being someone you had bread with. He said in the piece that he had literally written the book on the subject, but I can't remember his name or the name of the book, and I'm not finding any references to the piece when I look on the Morning Edition website. Are you by any chance familiar with it?

I don't want to be that guy, but bread is definitely not a central component of Asian culture.
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Offline Annie Subjunctive

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #871 on: November 26, 2014, 12:08:39 PM »
I was listening to something this morning on Morning Edition in which the person being interviewed was talking about the centrality of bread in human culture, and the way all sorts of words are entwined with bread. He gave the example of "companion" literally being someone you had bread with. He said in the piece that he had literally written the book on the subject, but I can't remember his name or the name of the book, and I'm not finding any references to the piece when I look on the Morning Edition website. Are you by any chance familiar with it?
I don't want to be that guy, but bread is definitely not a central component of Asian culture.

I was going to be that guy if you didn't. :) Just insert a pedantic remark about how they should have said "Western culture."

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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #872 on: December 08, 2014, 07:57:45 AM »
Why does my spellchecker say I misspell "omelette" and "analogue"?  Did the truncated "omelet" and "analog" become standard when I wasn't looking, and I missed the memo?  Is this the kind of thing that marks me as a relic of the last century, like habitually putting two spaces after a period?
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #873 on: December 08, 2014, 08:02:46 AM »
Omelet and omelette are pretty close in frequency, but analog has taken a pretty significant lead over analogue. I wouldn't mark any of those as wrong, though. It's just that built-in spellcheckers tend to be pretty limited, so they often leave out perfectly standard variants like those.
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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: Dear Expert
« Reply #874 on: December 08, 2014, 08:34:04 AM »
Cool.  It looks like about 20 years ago, "dialog" took off out of nowhere.  Who decided in the last decades of the last century to start lopping off the ends of the spelling words I learned in elementary school?
Fighting thread drift with guilt, reverse psychology, and chicken soup.
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I love Bones.  -- Sweet Clementine
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. -- anonymous