Friday, March 19, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Meaning of "Know the local drug scene for yourself" in “What Every Kid Should Be Able to Do by Age Sixteen”

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 10:54 AM PDT

From "What Every Kid Should Be Able to Do by Age Sixteen" by Audrey Sutherland:

  • Read a topographic map and a chart
  • Know the local drug scene for yourself
  • Handle a boat safely and competently (canoe, kayak, skiff, sailboat)

The bolded phrase seems out of sorts with the rest of the list. Does it mean "a kid ot 16 should know where to get illegal drugs"? It puzzled me. I'm not a native speaker, maybe I'm missing something.

What is the true meaning of this?

What is the word for a person who shift working alone?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 08:47 AM PDT

The kind of worker (shift worker) who to do all job alone without co-worker, like someone who works in such fast food or retail but he got the single person shift. Is there any specific term about that. Thank you for you answer.

How to convert the Following sentence into complex and simple sentence?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 09:02 AM PDT

The sentence is "Do this work or go out of this room". It is I believe a compound sentence and I want it to converted into complex and simple sentence. I have tried to do so but I am not sure. Here is my attempt: Complex:If u don't do this work,you will go out of this room. Simple:Without Doing this work, you will go out of this room.

Please be polite as I not aware of any rules and regulations of this community.

Is there a word for a solemn type of happiness, contentedness, or joy?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 10:11 AM PDT

Consider someone who feels that the world is full of suffering, and they themselves have suffered much, but nonetheless they see the beauty in the world and derive happiness from that beauty. Is there a word to describe that emotion?

Meaning of "Mind mice at crossroads"

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 08:58 AM PDT

What does mean: She said her landlord was so mean that she would mind mice at crossroads ?

When is the word rate used in the plural?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 07:42 AM PDT

To evaluate the transmission rate of the LRU channel,we evaluate it as a covert channel using one target set.

When d = {2, 4, 6}, the error rate is large on E5-2690.

Figure 5 (top) shows the error rate of the channel versus the different transmission rates

Detailed analysis and evaluation of the LRU channels, including evaluation of the transmission rates and bit error rates of the LRU covert channels on both Intel and AMD processors and comparison of the LRU channels with the existing cache channels from the perspective of encoding time and cache miss rates.

The rate in the last sentence is plural. Why not use a plural number for the previous rate? Especially in the second sentence, it clearly refers to not one. Including words such as channel makes me very confused. Sometimes they use plurals, sometimes not? Is there any way to judge? These rates all refer to the results on a graph. Thanks!

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WHEN + PAST PARTICIPLE

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 08:09 AM PDT

I am struggling a little with a question I received from one of my Russian students today.

She doesn't understand the sense of :

You can go to the country break when you have passed your last examination

and

We can pass this exercise when we have done this one.

I am of the opinion that WHEN is being used as a conditional

"If you pass your exams, you can go to the country for a break" but if I do this it changes the tense and she wants to know why they use past participle / present perfect and I cannot for the life of it, figure it out.

I said it could be that WHEN is being used as a conjunction here.

Her objective is to change this sentence using "will be able to"

"We will be able to pass this exercise when we have done this one." but does not understand the original sentence.

I have also explained that "pass your exam" in Russian is very different to that of British English as we "take an exam" and "pass the exam" but they use "pass the exam" to say they have taken the exam.

Can anyone please help me here? I am trained as a TEFL teacher but do not have full indepth knowledge/training as a Teacher of English as the 1st language.

I would appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance.

me and whom? vs me and who?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 06:45 AM PDT

I'm sure some of us have heard of the Internet meme "me and who?" Strictly speaking, if no fun were allowed, shouldn't it be "me and whom" instead?

I'm a little confused though, because what would the subject, in this case, be?

Can you use the expression "unreliable narrator" as a metaphor to describe a real person?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 08:15 AM PDT

Can you use the expression "unreliable narrator" as a metaphor to describe a real person who's relaying unreliable information?

For example:

"TikTok alleges that they don't send their user's personal information to China. They are an unreliable narrator in my opinion but you should keep that in mind."

to transcend or to be transcended

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 06:40 AM PDT

"In basic terms, transculturalism might be provisionally defined as the transcendence and questioning of cultural delimitations."

What is meant in the text I'm working on is that transculturalism transcends cultural delimitations. To me, the use of "transcendence" here sounds like the cultural limitations are doing the transcending, so to speak, rather than being transcended. I am considering changing "transcendence" to "transcending" (i.e., "the transcending of"). Am I wrong?

(Looking ahead, I see that "transcendence" is used quite a lot in this text, so I want to make sure I'm right before rejecting every instance.)

Differences in word order?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 05:58 AM PDT

The independent clause, "He is carrying a heavy load", might be connected with a dependent clause of varying order:

  • most of which is to be consumed.
  • which most of, is to be consumed.
  • of which, most is to be consumed.

What are the reasons for the variation? Is it simply a question of style or preference? Is there a right answer?

If you don’t eat for a long time, you ........ hungry [migrated]

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 06:18 AM PDT

Which one is it?

1- would become
2- become
3- will become

I got this question in a homework and I didn't know which one to choose, but I think the correct answer would be "will become". Can anyone help me with that?

The use of "US" in address ---- Chicago, the US or Chicago, US [closed]

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 05:00 AM PDT

If I want to say something happened in a US city, should I use US or the US after the city?

There was an investigation in Chicago, the US.

or

There was an investigation in Chicago, US.

Which one is correct?

Is there a word for measuring "how easily change can happen or be made"?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 05:33 AM PDT

If one word exists, I will call it X.

X would describe how easily change can happen or be made, in general. Example:

This building is made out of legos, so it has a high X, thus making it easy to make changes to it.

The wind today can be very weak or very strong. Either way, it's gonna have high X.

Making a sculpture out of stone is hard. You can only take bits out of it and doing that is not very easy neither precise. The stone has low X.

I'd imagine X would be used in physics for example.

How to syllabify "very" or "merry" etc in British English?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 05:40 AM PDT

How should words like merry or very be syllabified in British English. I learned from the answer to my first question that words that have vowels like /ʌ ɪ ʊ ɛ/ should have a consonant after that vowel. So "obsessive" is /əb.sɛs.sɪv/ (the middle syllable has a consonant after the vowel ɛ).

Below is the paragraph from that answer: Yet another theory says that the consonant following the lax vowels /ʌ ɪ ʊ ɛ/ should be ambisyllabic. 'Ambisyllabic' means that it it belongs to both the preceding and the following syllable. So according to the ambisyllabicity theory, obsessive can be syllabified as:

/əb.sɛs.sɪv/

--

But what if there is an r after the vowel ɛ in words like "merry" and "very"?

If I divide "very" into syllables as vɛr.i (because the vowel ɛ should have a consonant after it) then the first syllables ends in an r and in British English, words do not end in R sound (for example the R in "bar" is silent).

What should I do in the case I described above? How should one syllabify?

..........

"Closed. This question needs details or clarity. It is not currently accepting answers."

It is strange that this question was closed. I have provided details in my question. Could you please tell me how else can I clarify it?

Is there really no way to do the division of those words? Please consider reopening my question; I really am confused as to how to do the division of those words. Thank you so much.

Why would you need to know this? For example, for writing music for singers:

music

more music

Schedule the meeting in/on the remaining slots

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 06:00 AM PDT

Hello to the community,

I am unclear whether I should use in or on in the sentence: "Schedule the meeting ___ the remaining slots." I want to express that only a certain number of slots are left, and I wish to schedule a meeting ___ one of those.

Thanks

A word for being willing to accept the decisions and/or actions of machines

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 08:25 AM PDT

Is there a word that describes the attitude of a human willingly accepting the decisions and/or actions of machines (automation, robots, control systems, etc). e.g. I have just bought a new car with autonomous braking which initially I did not trust and tended to turn off. Some models of human/machine interaction are based on trust building as the person's knowledge of the purpose of a machine, how it functions and what is its actual performance becomes clear and understood. I distrust the autonomous braking on my car even though I have some idea of its purpose and how it functions. I cannot however verify its performance because I cannot test it without potentially wrecking my new car (simulate a frontal collision). The essential characteristics of the relationship between human and machine seems to be that the machine extends human capability and can do things (in the case of autonomous braking) beyond our cognitive ability and speed of response. Also the human's life or safety depends on it and there is no alternative or escape because the actions needed when the machine detects danger and intervenes happens independently of our own ability to act. I welcome any suggestions for a term that describes our attitude towards "submission to machines" in this particular context that involves our personal safety.

"would we not" vs. "wouldn't we" in questions

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 04:03 AM PDT

Is there a difference between the following two sentences? Is the second sentence grammatically wrong?

Why would we not expect the body to revolt?

Why wouldn't we expect the body to revolt?

Is it correct to say the first sentence puts an emphasis on the negation, meaning that it's a bit shocking that we do not have that expectation?

Participial constructions using "it"

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 05:03 AM PDT

  1. Feeling hot, I opened the window.
  2. It being hot, I opened the window.

A non-English speaking acquaintance of mine said that her textbook identified sentence 1 as being correct and sentence 2 as being incorrect. On the other hand, a different textbook apparently said that the following sentence was correct:

It being the holiday season, the train was full.

So naturally, her question to me was why "It being hot,..." is incorrect, but "It being the holiday season,..." is correct. I have no experience explaining the nuances of participial constructions and had only my intuition to suggest to me that BOTH sentences beginning with "It" are incorrect. Is one of the books wrong? Are they both wrong? Am I wrong?

Any explanations that are not overly technical would be appreciated.

Are there Official Rules for Comma Placement?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 10:07 AM PDT

In this answer, the linguist John Lawler gave the following advice concerning comma placement:

If you would use that intonation in speaking, write a comma. Otherwise don't.

This sounds like as if one could decide for oneself when to use a comma and when not. But I have seen many punctuation guides on the internet that list rules of comma placement (in english). That is why I wonder whether these rules are kind of official rules or just some conventions.

On professional bias

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 09:51 AM PDT

The well-known expression professional bias appears to date back to the very first years when professions started to exist:

  • "Professional bias" designates a mental conditioning brought about by the particularities of one's job. A contrived example is that of a race-car driver, say, who overtakes dangerously when he's out driving in the family automobile with his wife and kids.

Ngram shows that the expression was first used towards the end of the 18th century, roughly during the same years when the first professions were born.

Professional (adj.):

  • early 15c., of religious orders; 1747 of careers (especially of the skilled or learned trades from c.1793); see profession. In sports, opposed to amateur, from 1846.

  • professional (n): "one who does it for a living," 1798, from professional (adj.). (Etymonline)

Was the expression coined with the birth of the first professional activities in England or did it already exist in religious contexts where the term profession seems to come from.

Is "left for heaven" a common phrase in English?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 04:56 AM PDT

Is "left for heaven" a common phrase for native English speakers?

"How did I do this" or "how did I do that"?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 06:49 AM PDT

Is there a difference between:

How did I do this?

and

How did I do that?

If not, is there a preferred one? If they are different, when should I choose one over the other?

I am not a native English speaker.

Should I write "module/theme" or "module / theme"?

Posted: 19 Mar 2021 10:32 AM PDT

I usually put a space before and after a slash, when indicating alternatives.

We review a module / theme per user.

Is it correct, or should I rewrite the sentence to remove those spaces?

We review a module/theme per user.
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