Over & during the time that

Question

Hello,I find the "over" has a logic meaning.Could any native speaker give your suggestion?(1)    He's taking a long time over it.Can it be rephrased: While he does it in which a long time is necessary.(2)   Let's talk over a cup of coffee.Can it be rephrased: Let's talk in regard to a cup of coffee.Thank you for your help.

JohnParis · Accepted Answer

“Crying over spilt milk”, “slavering over salacious detail” and “over a cup of coffee” are examples of idioms.
Idiomatic expressions are extremely difficult for ESL students to learn and use correctly. I do not know if you have them in Chinese, but they exist in all romance languages that I am familiar with.
“Let's talk over a cup of coffee” means “let’s drink a cup of coffee together and have a discussion.”
To “cry over spilt milk” means “to dwell pointlessly on past misfortunes.” “Slavering over salacious detail” means “to show excessive desire to know all the indecent attributes of something.”

Bepleased - idioms are not, as I said, easy to understand and use properly. Here is a link to an online site that may help you: /

Bepleased · Answer

Hello,

Thanks a lot JohnParis that you'll care for me left stranded in a foreign language.

Yes, it is simply a language from another world to ESL.

We have no gene of it and are not like you can feel it in your bones.

So that if we want to grasp it, not by your way, but looking for a new way to catch the thread of your English feeling.

I've found it to get into the inner language to grasp the logic postion and the status of actors of each words

and give them lines to the definitions in itself.

So I need you give me suggestions and examine about my discovery in English.

“Crying over spilt milk”, “slavering over salacious detail” and “over a cup of coffee” are examples of idioms.
Idiomatic expressions are extremely difficult for ESL students to learn and use correctly. I do not know if you have them in Chinese, but they exist in all romance languages that I am familiar with.
“Let's talk over a cup of coffee” means “let’s drink a cup of coffee together and have a discussion.”
To “cry over spilt milk” means “to dwell pointlessly on past misfortunes.” “Slavering over salacious detail” means “to show excessive desire to know all the indecent attributes of something."

In your teaching, I've found that.

let’s drink a cup of coffee together and have a discussion------that make a cup of coffee as the background and as a cause.

The reason to choice "over" to be the collocation with "slavering" is that the things of details is not a fact or principle accepted as true or for which proof exists, but a suddently happening things.

SO,
She is crying over her ugly face. (bad)
She is crying about her ugly face. (good)

Bepleased · Answer

We know English is a formation.

That is very different from Chines.

So, I must and can see the way in which its meaning is formed.

But the dictionary and native speaker never tell that way but only the conclusion.

I want and need the way in which the meaning is formed.

CalifJim · Answer

bepleasedI want and need the way in which the meaning is formed.

Meaning is use. (Meaning is not definition.)

The meanings of a word are known by observing its usage in speech and writing again and again and again and again. Each observation changes a statistical weighting in the brain. After thousands of observations the statistical weightings become very similar to those in the brain of a native speaker. For a non-native, only continued and intense exposure can enable these statistical weightings to come into balance.

CJ

Bepleased · Answer

Hello CJ,http://www.EnglishForward.com/English/Default/brpqpj/post.htmits your feedback in the post of "what are the first words?"( ) There is a good exercise field for me in your answers.( ) As you say in that answer: ( 1 ) I am not you. For easy way to say, I chang it this way -----If I were you. The verb to be in is the same with [The sky is the limit.]?

Bepleased · Answer

That verb to be shows [have] / [form] / [identify].(   1    ) verb to be  shows "I" as a living party in which "you" formed or developed, so you can control what you want to do or think. (   2    )  verb to be shows "the sky" as living party in which "the limit" formed or developed, so the limit becomes no limit.

Bepleased · Answer

And in I, we must  say this way : If I were you;   and in you, we must say this way: If you were even with me.(         )      In the last sentence, the verb to be shows "exist" that means If there were you in the same as me.

Bepleased · Answer

And in the sky, we must say this way :  The sky is the limit.(       )  And in the limit, we must say this way:    The limit is the same as the sky. = There is the limit in the same as the sky.(     ) And here, the verb to be shows "exists" .My naive ideas above need your confirmation.

Bepleased · Answer

Hello CJ,The following phrase you spoke unto me many times, and please tell me what does it mean?(      )     "a statistical weighting in the brain"Thank you for your help.

Over & during the time that

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