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From: "alexander koryagin" <koryagin@newmail.ru>

F2EP
Hi, Ardith Hinton! How are you?
on Monday, 16 of January, I read your messsage to alexander koryagin
about "Q of an article (sent through demos gate)"

 ak>> We forget that English has no totalitarian rules as has the
 ak>> Russian language, due to the history of Russia.

 ak>> English is easier than Russian.
 AH> This is grammatically correct usage.

 ak>> The English language is easier than the Russian Language.
 AH> This is also grammatically correct usage. The problem, as I see
 AH> it, is that by changing horses in midstream you ended up with a
 AH> faulty parallelism.

I was sure that "English" == "the English language". So the reason,
why I used both variants in one sentence was for the sake of variety.


 AH> Now there's a technical term which might help you locate more
 AH> information. :-)

 AH> As for "due to", here's what my GAGE CANADIAN DICTIONARY says:
...[e.g.] "Her success was due to hard work."
<skipped>
So, it's better not to use "due to" to introduce an adverb phase.

Probably it will be interesting to supplement it with a passage from the
Longman dictionary:

------
USAGE: Compare "due to" and "owing to," which are similar in meaning.
1. Due to is used after the verb "to be"; you cannot use "owing to" in
this sentence [His absence was due to the storm.]
2. Some people think that "due to should only be used after the verb
"to be," but many speakers use it after other verbs, in the same way
as "owing to": [He arrived late due to/owing to (=because of) the
storm.]
------

Maybe the rule "it is better to use 'due to' after 'to be' only" is
easier to remember?
<skipped>

 ak>>  imho according exactly to this rules we omit "the"
                                |>this rule, these rules

 ak>>  before "youth unemployment".


Looking at this my error I remembered a TV show I watched recently. It
was very funny one. The presenter said to the TV audience:

"Look, behind me there are four people. They have a ball. Now they
will throw the ball to each other. You task is to count how many
passes they will make before I'll say 'stop.' Please, try your best, it
is an important test."

Well, those guys started throwing the ball to each other, and I, as a
fool, started to count the passes. I counted honestly and my number
was 20 or so.

Then the presenter said, "I recorded this game on video. Now let's
watch it."

When I started watching it I was amazed. Between the people playing
ball game there was walking an artist dressed up as an Abominable
Snowman. When I was counting the passes I didn't see him.

Human eyesight is so imperfect. When a man is concentrated on the ball he
DOESN'T SEE ANYTHING ELSE. It was the idea of this test. It is the main 
trick
any fakir uses during his performance.

;-)
When I think hard what to write, I forget many things. 

[...Pride goes before a fall]
Bye Ardith!
Alexander (yAlexKo[]yandex.ru) + 2:5020/2140.91
fido7.english-tutor 2012 


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