In need of honest opinions...

Topic: In need of honest opinions... (Read 3438 times) previous topic - next topic

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #15 – August 20, 2007, 12:43:41 PM

Claude : Did you remeber that ? Yeah, i have been doing improvements about my english (because if you want a decent Job in this poor country where used cougars cost 2000 usd and up , you have to learn it). Thanks for your compliments. I have not been in the forum for awhile...what happened with the 3.8 with T-5 ? I hope it`s still running strong.....

MAYHEM: Absolutely it helps a lot ! with this easy rule i won`t forget anymore the uses of the IN/ON/AT. Thank You !

Thanks to all !

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #16 – August 20, 2007, 12:59:29 PM

Is Dell outsourcing to Mexico now?

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #17 – August 20, 2007, 02:03:00 PM

I dont know, would be nice (i think). Ford opened a plant in hermosillo mexico some years ago, maybe i`ll give a try there....

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #18 – August 20, 2007, 03:05:12 PM

Mexcougar, I consider myself a grammar puppies and I can say with confidence that your grasp of the English language is as good or better than a large percentage of people raised to speak the language. Is there room for some improvement? Yes, but the fact that you're actually trying to improve speaks volumes about you.

I once read that English is the hardest language to learn, and I see proof of it every time I see somebody who has been speaking/writing the language all their life and still hasn't gotten a grip on it.

To add to some of the others' suggestions: Latin-based languages like Spanish and French tend to assign a gender to a noun. I'll never forget my French teachers trying to drill "Masculine et feminine" into my head, even though I've long forgotten the actual French they taught me. The English language rarely gender-izes words. For example you, having Spanish as your first language, might say (when speaking in English):

"I really like my Cougar. His ride is nice and he is a nice colour".

An English person would say "I really like my Cougar. Its ride is nice and it is a nice colour".

You will sometimes hear gender, but it is usually slang and is almost always feminine ("Yeah, that Cougar, she's a beaut").

Another confusing thing about English is that it usually swaps the nouns and adjectives around in most sentences, compared to Latin-based languages.

An English person would say "That's a red Cougar"
A French person would say "C'est un Cougar rouge"

This is not always the case, though - sometimes the Latin-based language and the English language share the order:

English: That's a small Prius
French: C'est une petite Prius (note the gender thing - the "une" makes the Prius feminine, which is exactly how things should be :hick:)

Usually, in English, the adjective comes BEFORE the noun.

To add a bit more confusion to the mix: You may notice that whenever I or most other Canadians (and Eric, when he's making fun of us) type a word that ends in "or", such as "color", "valor", etc) we add a "u" ("colour", "valour"). We Canadians are spelling it right. Americans dropped the "u" in many of these words, but most other English-speaking countries (including England) use the "u". Sadly, because of USA's dominance in printed media in Canada, many Canadians spell their words wrong too. This is because they're used to seeing them spelled the "American" way in books, magazines, etc.

Kingcars already covered "Their/They're/There" and "Its/It's". The "Terrible two/too/to"'s are worth mentioning as well.

Two is easy. It's the number 2. It is not used in any other context.

Too is also easy - it can only mean two things: "Also" (as in, "I want to go to Cat Jam too!" or "He was speeding too!") or excess ("It's too ed hot out", or "Not only was he speeding, he was driving too fast").

To is difficult to explain, except that in any cases where the other two too's don't belong, use "to". If you're not describing a specific number (two, or 2) or describing an addition (too) or something excessive (too), use "to". Examples: I'm going to help you out. I'm giving this grammar info to you. What do you want to do about it? If you've got a problem I'm going to ban your ass.

...And yours too, Fila. The two of you will cower to the almighty banhammer. If you don't like it, too bad. I'm not going to take my orders from somebody with nothing better to do than tell me who to ban and who not to ban. Life's too short to worry about you two.

So...um... did I confuse you yet? :D (don't worry, I'm not banning anybody)

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #19 – August 20, 2007, 03:28:20 PM

Quote from: Thunder Chicken;170655

To add a bit more confusion to the mix: You may notice that whenever I or most other Canadians (and Eric, when he's making fun of us) type a word that ends in "or", such as "color", "valor", etc) we add a "u" ("colour", "valour"). We Canadians are spelling it right.

Har-har. :toilet:

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #20 – August 20, 2007, 04:59:43 PM

Quote

You may notice that whenever I or most other Canadians (and Eric, when he's making fun of us) type a word that ends in "or", such as "color", "valor", etc) we add a "u" ("colour", "valour").

I'm not laughing at you, Carm, I'm laughing with you.

Actually you're not too far off from how Spanish works. It's set up fairly close to French, as far as the sentence structure. Spanish nearly mirrors English in that respect (actually most of the Romance languages do).

In English: White cars are the best.
En español: Los autos blancos estan el major.

MexCougar: Another use of the word 'to' is with decribing a verb. In español the verb is conjugated differently, but the translation of the major Spanish verb into English always has a 'to' in front of it. So 'ir' means 'to go', 'gustar' means 'to like', etc. Also note that in English terms, the Spanish verb shows action:

español: Yo voy a Summit Racing.
English: I am going to Summit Racing. (Literal: I go to Summit Racing).

Now when translating from English to Spanish, it is not TOO difficult to figure out. But for the reverse it can get tricky...as shown, there are two ways to translate the verb into English, and both ways are technically correct, but in real-world situations one is going to be MORE correct than the other.

Another thing: sometimes words that are capitalized in English are not capitalized in Spanish. This is where things can confuse someone that is learning English:

Monday = lunes
Tuesday = martes
January = enero

...and so on. We are used to seeing upper- and lower-case letters to help us establish proper nouns. In Spanish you really have to pay attention when reading because you can easily skip over a word like "marzo", which means the month of March.

Thus, the reason why "I" is sometimes "i".

English is definitely difficult. For me it was easy; I was lucky to be born with the ability to grasp the English language quickly and correctly. But I did watch a lot of classmates struggle with it. As a whole, English has roots that go back over a thousand years. Half of the language is taken from Old English, a very rough and guttural proto-language. Some of it is from Latin, some from German, some from French...it's truly a melting pot language. And the way things are spelled sometimes go back to those early roots. So you can't blame anything on modern-speaking English people; the problems go waaayyyy back before us.

Otherwise...you're doing great, my man. I'm proud of you! I remember the first time that you e-mailed me, some of it in English, some in Spanish. Somehow I understood what you were trying to say. You've come a LONG way since then. It would be almost impossible for anyone to know that you didn't natively speak (type) English.

Alex (baxo) is the same way...his native language is Hungarian. He's a transplant to Canada and learned (their ized version of) English on his own. He now speaks English perfectly; you would never be able to hear any hint of Hungarian accent in his voice if you heard him speak. But you will always hear the Canadian accent. Eh. :flip:

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #21 – August 20, 2007, 05:17:58 PM

This is great, I'm learning too.

Now the one that always confuses me is gone and went, never did learn that one.

Any good lessons for when to use GONE and when to use WENT.

I'm terrible at English and it's the only language I kind of speak.

TED

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #22 – August 20, 2007, 05:37:46 PM

Gone is a general term for "not here". Went is a more specific term used when indicating a location.

"Joe is gone for the day."

"Joe went to the parts store."

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #23 – August 20, 2007, 08:30:46 PM

Watch the BBC. American television will lead you astray!

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #24 – August 20, 2007, 08:33:30 PM

Quote from: *MAYHEM*;170698

Gone is a general term for "not here". Went is a more specific term used when indicating a location.

"Joe is gone for the day."

"Joe went to the parts store."

Though the sentence you wrote isn't wrong, "Joe has gone for the day." is proper.

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #25 – August 20, 2007, 08:35:24 PM

"Joe is gone for the day" Would be an answer to a question like "Where is Joe?" But then again "Joe is gone for the day." is kind of Americanized..

In need of honest opinions...

Reply #26 – August 20, 2007, 08:58:29 PM

In most cases, ending a sentence with a preposition is just fine.

People will tell you otherwise, but they're just trying to obey the rigid rules that their 2nd grade teacher taught them.