Message Area
Casually read the BBS message area using an easy to use interface. Messages are categorized exactly like they are on the BBS. You may post new messages or reply to existing messages!

You are not logged in. Login here for full access privileges.

Previous Message | Next Message | Back to English Tutoring for Students of...  <--  <--- Return to Home Page
   Networked Database  English Tutoring for Students of...   [770 / 900] RSS
 From   To   Subject   Date/Time 
Message   Alexander Koryagin    Ardith Hinton   They knows?   March 17, 2019
 1:33 PM *  

Hi, Ardith Hinton!
I read your message from 16.03.2019 17:52

 AK>> It is difficult to fight with people when they have a bad habit. I
 AK>> remember a thing from Pygmalion, by Bernard Shaw:

 AK>>  -----Beginning of the citation-----
 AK>> HIGGINS.  How the devil do I know what's to become  of  you?  What
 AK>> does it matter what becomes of you?
 AK>> LIZA. You don't care. I know you don't care.  You wouldn't care if
 AK>> I was dead. I'm nothing to you -- not so much as them slippers.
 AK>> HIGGINS [thundering] THOSE slippers.
 AK>>  ----- The end of the citation -----

 AK>> I  still  cannot  see  the  logic  why  she  used  _them_  instead
 AK>> of _those_. It is not a kind of error a Russian could make.

 AH> No... it's the sort of error a lower-class native speaker who'd had
 AH> little or no formal education  would  have  made  at  the  time  of
 AH> writing.  Higgins conducted an experiment to  find  out  whether  a
 AH> young adult who was motivated to learn  would  be  able  to  change
 AH> habitual speech patterns.  Both he  &  his  student  seem  to  have
 AH> reverted to old habits when they were emotionally upset.... :-))

Well, _them_ is well known pronoun, who can we mix it up with _those_?. Can I,
for instance, say, "I gave _them_ _them_ books"? Not of course. It is not a
matter of education, IMHO. ;)

 AH> Those who are not native speakers of English tend to make different
 AH> errors.  People from Russia have difficulty with articles,  for the
 AH> same reason people from China have  difficulty  with  plurals:  the
 AH> rules are a bit different in their  language.  I  see  no  need  to
 AH> pluralize "broccoli", e.g.,  because it is plural already...  yet I
 AH> would say "a bunch of grapes".  When I visit the local greengrocery
 AH> I understand that from a Chinese POV it might be  more  appropriate
 AH> to say "one potato, two potato, three potato" (i.e. a counting game
 AH> used in my childhood).  From my  POV  as  an  advanced  student  of
 AH> English  it's  easier  to   sort   out   many   of   the   apparent
 AH> inconsistencies with a dictionary which explains what language  xxx
 AH> came from & how it was spelled in this language at the time.

But Eliza got her English with her mother's milk. We can admit that she had an
ignoble pronunciation, but mixing _them_ and _those_ is too much, IMHO.

 AH>>>> Its use in formal English has become more common with the  trend
 AH>>>> toward gender-neutral language,

 AH>> It has become more common in recent years,  but  not  because  the
 AH>> mood at the time of its resurgence  took  into  account  that  our
 AH>> ancestors knew things we might well pay attention  to.  Quite  the
 AH>> contrary...  Jerry Rubin,  e.g.,  made headlines when  he  advised
 AH>> other folks not to trust anybody over 30. I suppose they must have
 AH>> followed his advice because he doesn't make headlines now.

 AK>> I imagine what does a foreign student  think  when  he  hears  the
 AK>> sentence like the first sentence in last paragraph.  After reading
 AK>> it ten times I think I understood what you meant. ;=)

 AH> Good point.  Alexander has been with us for over a decade, he reads
 AH> widely,  and I know that if he doesn't understand what I'm babbling
 AH> about he'll say so...  but I don't mean to leave him & other  folks
 AH> behind in the dust.

Well, in reality, I like when you write something complicated and
nativenglishly. ;=) But when a person has nothing to say to the point he
usually starts carping at other person. ;)

Bye, Ardith!
Alexander Koryagin
english_tutor 2019

---
 * Origin: nntps://fidonews.mine.nu - Lake Ylo - Finland (2:221/6.0)
  Show ANSI Codes | Hide BBCodes | Show Color Codes | Hide Encoding | Hide HTML Tags | Show Routing
Previous Message | Next Message | Back to English Tutoring for Students of...  <--  <--- Return to Home Page

VADV-PHP
Execution Time: 0.0841 seconds

If you experience any problems with this website or need help, contact the webmaster.
VADV-PHP Copyright © 2002-2024 Steve Winn, Aspect Technologies. All Rights Reserved.
Virtual Advanced Copyright © 1995-1997 Roland De Graaf.
v2.0.140505

Warning: Unknown: open(c:\Sessions\sess_65g4fgcks8ai67ntdhoi4t2mv7, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in Unknown on line 0 Warning: Unknown: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (c:\Sessions) in Unknown on line 0 PHP Warning: session_start(): open(c:\Sessions\sess_65g4fgcks8ai67ntdhoi4t2mv7, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in D:\wc5\http\public\VADV\include\common.inc.php on line 45 PHP Warning: Unknown: open(c:\Sessions\sess_65g4fgcks8ai67ntdhoi4t2mv7, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in Unknown on line 0 PHP Warning: Unknown: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct (c:\Sessions) in Unknown on line 0