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MarvinTheMartian Posted 18 years ago
Grammar
Help me repair the damage
Hi,
As many of you know by now, it's very hard for me to maintain a satisfactory level of language due to my brain's vulnerability to broken English. One grammatical mistake or unidiomatic expression is often enough to impair my verbal skills for days - sometimes weeks or months. It doesn't help that most of my friends are non-native speakers. One of them in particular - a French-speaking Lebanese guy - seems to have a knack for confusing me and making my mind go "tilt!" like a pinball machine.
He often uses odd constructions like "He made me a joke" (which, as far as I can figure, either means "He played a joke on me" or "He told me a joke.") The other day, I was showing him the classic comedy "The Return of the Pink Panther". At the part where Inspector Clouseau crashes a car into a swimming pool for the second time, he exclaimed something along the lines of:
"They had not even finished fishing out the first car and he's driving a second car into the swiming pool."
Actually, what he said was a lot more jumbled. Still, despite my "improvements", there's something about this sentence that doesn't quite seem to work... I've spent the last two days trying to pinpoint the problem to no avail. Is my confusion justified, or is this just the result of a bias I've developped against my friend's poor command of English? What do you think? Have I become so paranoid that I automatically dismiss eveything he says as "poor English"?
Before I sign off, here's something else he said that sounded weird to me. Explaining the behavioral differences between cats and dogs, he said something like:
"When you point at something for a dog, he looks at the thing being pointed. When you point at something for a cat, he looks at your finger."
Once again, the meaning is clear, but the syntax is just weird. The only alternate wording I can think of right now is "When you point something out to a dog, etc." but there's no way I can be sure if that's actually an improvement... In my present state of confusion, I can't tell what works and what doesn't. Could someone please help me here?
P.S.: It will probably be days before I can speak and write normally again... If you find any mistakes in my post or deem a sentence to be poorly wordred, please let me know. It will help me regain my proficiency.
As many of you know by now, it's very hard for me to maintain a satisfactory level of language due to my brain's vulnerability to broken English. One grammatical mistake or unidiomatic expression is often enough to impair my verbal skills for days - sometimes weeks or months. It doesn't help that most of my friends are non-native speakers. One of them in particular - a French-speaking Lebanese guy - seems to have a knack for confusing me and making my mind go "tilt!" like a pinball machine.
He often uses odd constructions like "He made me a joke" (which, as far as I can figure, either means "He played a joke on me" or "He told me a joke.") The other day, I was showing him the classic comedy "The Return of the Pink Panther". At the part where Inspector Clouseau crashes a car into a swimming pool for the second time, he exclaimed something along the lines of:"They had not even finished fishing out the first car and he's driving a second car into the swiming pool."
Actually, what he said was a lot more jumbled. Still, despite my "improvements", there's something about this sentence that doesn't quite seem to work... I've spent the last two days trying to pinpoint the problem to no avail. Is my confusion justified, or is this just the result of a bias I've developped against my friend's poor command of English? What do you think? Have I become so paranoid that I automatically dismiss eveything he says as "poor English"?
Before I sign off, here's something else he said that sounded weird to me. Explaining the behavioral differences between cats and dogs, he said something like:
"When you point at something for a dog, he looks at the thing being pointed. When you point at something for a cat, he looks at your finger."
Once again, the meaning is clear, but the syntax is just weird. The only alternate wording I can think of right now is "When you point something out to a dog, etc." but there's no way I can be sure if that's actually an improvement... In my present state of confusion, I can't tell what works and what doesn't. Could someone please help me here?
P.S.: It will probably be days before I can speak and write normally again... If you find any mistakes in my post or deem a sentence to be poorly wordred, please let me know. It will help me regain my proficiency.
Top answer
Okay, here's the best advice I can give you: RELAX!! The first purpose of language is to communicate! If the meaning is clear, then worry about the rest as details, okay?
- Okay, here's the best advice I can give you: RELAX!!
- The first purpose of language is to communicate!
- If the meaning is clear, then worry about the rest as details, okay?
- For you to spend two days agonizing over things like this is not healthy.
- As to your first question, oftne when we are describing a movie, we change tenses all over the place.
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5 Answers
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Okay, here's the best advice I can give you: RELAX!!
The first purpose of language is to communicate! If the meaning is clear, then worry about the rest as details, okay? For you to spend two days agonizing over things like this is not healthy.
As to your first question, oftne when we are describing a movie, we change tenses all over the place. So he goes, and he want, and he was, and th
The first purpose of language is to communicate! If the meaning is clear, then worry about the rest as details, okay? For you to spend two days agonizing over things like this is not healthy.
As to your first question, oftne when we are describing a movie, we change tenses all over the place. So he goes, and he want, and he was, and th
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Thanks for the advice, Grammar Geek, but relaxing is a luxury I can't afford. My neurological condition doesn't allow it. The last time I let my guard down, I ended up talking like this: "Me... not... can... talk... Me... not... okay... Me... not... can... say... words..." It took me two weeks to learn to speak like a normal human being again. I'm not even kidding. I have to keep my
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"They had not even finished fishing out the first car and he's driving a second car into the swiming pool."
Pretty close to that.
Jeez. They hadn't even finished fishing that first car out, and here he is, dumping a second one in!
Pretty close to that.
Jeez. They hadn't even finished fishing that first car out, and here he is, dumping a second one in!
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Grammar Geek"They had not even finished fishing out the first car and he's driving a second car into the swiming pool."Thanks, I guess it must have been his intonation then. Or maybe his accent. Yikes, my min
Pretty close to that.
Jeez. They hadn't even finished fishing that first car out, and here he is, dumping a second one in!
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I don't see how yours is more succint than the others.
If you want to make the first car the subject, put it in the passive. The first car had not yet been removed from the pool when Clouseau drove a second one in.
If you want to make the first car the subject, put it in the passive. The first car had not yet been removed from the pool when Clouseau drove a second one in.
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