Monday, September 27, 2021

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Recent Questions - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

Is "Thus" stilted at the beginning of a sentence?

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 10:39 AM PDT

I'm French, and my students keep using "thus" at the beginning of sentences, which is close to "ainsi, ...", very much used in French. It's a way of rounding up their paragraph.

Example:

Thus, we can say that the toppling of statues by angry mobs is an attack on democracy.

Personaly, I find it stilted, and I prefer them to use "therefore". Am I right or wrong? Is "thus" at the beginning of a sentence too formal or is it fine?

Term or phrase similar to ghost town but without remaining structures

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 10:50 AM PDT

I'm a local historian and I was wondering what the term might be for former railroad communities/mill towns with no remaining structures? I realize ghost town is the wrong term because they have no remaining buildings or architecture. Thanks in advance!

Who determines the correct way to pronounce an acronym if the creator never specifies (if the acronym can be pronounced in multiple ways)?

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 09:54 AM PDT

This is more to settle an argument between a buddy and I. There is a program we use that goes by the acronym PRDA (Personnel Records Display Application) which I pronounce as "per-duh" and my friend pronounces as "prah-duh". Most people will refer to it using the latter pronunciation but there has never been anything published that clarifies how it is supposed to be pronounced. Is the latter the more correct way to pronounce it since that is how most people refer to it, or is it just a matter of preference since it is ambiguously spelled?

By or From book? [migrated]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 08:29 AM PDT

Can you tell me how to say the following correctly?

  • I am studying from book

or

  • I am studying by book.

I want to say that I get information from book to study. I read that "by" is used for describing method which is used, while "from" describes what is origin of something or somebody.

Nobokov's Lolita: sentence comprehension [closed]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 08:08 AM PDT

I am reading Lolita by Nobokov, and having trouble with this sentence. I am not sure what it means, especially the last if clause, to what does it refer?

The passion I had developed for that nymphet–for the first nymphet in my life that could be reached at last by my awkward, aching, timid claws–would have certainly landed me again in a sanatorium, had not the devil realized that I was to be granted some relief if he wanted to have me as a plaything for some time longer.

What is the word for editing debris? [closed]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 07:41 AM PDT

What do you call extraneous/intruder words left over from sentence editing?

( in -by-with) tradition , children play tricks on 1st april? [migrated]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 07:09 AM PDT

What is the correct prepostion accompanied with tradition , it means here traditionally or usually the children play tricks , so what is the correct , I think that the popular form is by tradition ?

Describing both genetic and non-genetic relatedness in one word

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 06:11 AM PDT

Say I'm describing the relationship between pairs of people, and I want to succinctly convey that certain pairs of people can be genetically related but also otherwise related (i.e. familiar with each other, such as friends or colleagues).

If I said 'These pairs of individuals are related to each other', would a native speaker understand that this doesn't necessarily mean they're genetically related? Is there a better word that I'm unaware of?

Are these examples correct reported speech? [closed]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 06:10 AM PDT

Are these examples of reported speech correct?
I said let me not reveal the author name, but for advantage, I reveal :

English Grammar and Writing Skills By Saidu Challay, Paul F.M. Al-Gbahan Lahai
link : https://books.google.iq/books?id=ctryDwAAQBAJ&pg=PR13&dq=indirect+speech++%E2%80%9CCan+you+drive+a+car?%E2%80%9D+he++said+++She+asked+if+I+could+drive+a+car&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjqgJ6E757zAhX9SvEDHalHDckQ6AF6BAgLEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false

I ask this question lest I got confused with those Indian or not natives!! I am from Iraq and in all my life I have been learning British English. I want you as a group of brightened scholars without any partiality discuss the examples and say whether they are acceptable or not.

I know we use the indirect question as a way of politeness and we usually start our sentence with ( Do you know \ I wonder \ Could you tell me) etc… I see this author, whom I do not want to spell his name out, has got himself confused!!

One comment I have read tells : Grammar: indirect questions When we report a question, it is not necessary to change the tense of a verb if the action in the original question has not happened or finished yet, e.g. direct question: The stranger asked me, 'When does the procession start?' indirect question: The stranger asked me when the procession starts. or: The stranger wants to know when the procession starts. direct question: 'When is Uncle leaving for Miami?' Karen asked her mother. indirect question: Karen asked her mother when her uncle is leaving for Miami. But if we knew that Uncle had already gone, we would report the question like this: indirect: Karen asked her mother when her uncle was leaving for Miami.

I got them from one book of Google's books:

Direct question Reported question

Direct : 'Is she the head of the group?' Peter asked
Indirect : Peter asked if she is the head of the group.

Direct : 'Are there many people in town?'
Indirect : Tom asked Tom asked if there are were many people in town.

Direct : 'When are we living for Freetown?' He asked
Indirect : He asked when we are living for Freetown.

Direct : 'Do you know who owns the school?'
Indirect : He asked He asked if you know owner of the school.

Direct : 'Can you drive a car?' Asked Tom
Indirect : Tom asked if you could/can drive a car perfectly.

Direct: 'Where are your friends?' the man asked
Indirect : The man asked for the whereabouts of my friends.

Direct : 'Where are my pens?' Jones asked
Indirect : Jones asked where his pens were.

And here is the photo I picked

enter image description here

Comma Between Adverbs [closed]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 07:12 AM PDT

Is a comma needed between the adverbs in the following sentence?

I can smell her obviously newly ironed hair.

In the Capitalization of City, Town, and Village [duplicate]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 04:28 AM PDT

So here is my question:

Let's say, I have a place known as ABC, and it is a city. I know that whenever I call it city of ABC, the word city isn't capitalized, unless it is revering to government of the city itself. But what about ABC City? Would you capitalize it? Or is it just a matter of style?
The same goes for town and village. I see that a lot of novels can't agree to one single answer. One such novel capitalized the words like city, town, and village whenever they appear after the name. But what's the most right?
This sometimes also appear for region, but at least I know for a fact that mountain and hill with name are capitalized -- as stated by google.

Thank you in advance.

Daily writings or forums written by native english speakers [migrated]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 03:30 AM PDT

I am searching for some kind of forums or Q/A sites, written by native English speakers. I want to learn the daily speech, not the grammar or something else.

Everything can be discussed on that site. No matter.

Waiting for your recommendation.

Thank you.

when to use what are earth are you doing [closed]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 03:13 AM PDT

In what situations can I use 'what are earth are you doing now' to simply ask for information? Could you give me some examples of it? Thank you very much.

Is "I would never eat what you cook" correct? [closed]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 02:46 AM PDT

Is "I would never eat what you cook" grammatically correct ? What I intend to convey is that I would never eat what is cooked by the person in question.

Does 'develop' in "In Chapter 2 we develop essential aspects of elliptic curve cryptography." strike you as not the right word?

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 10:22 AM PDT

The quote in question comes from the Introduction, page 12, to this book:

In our quest for comprehensiveness, we have chosen to present all the basic elements of cryptography needed to understand the complexities of Monero, and their mathematical antecedents. In Chapter 2 we develop essential aspects of elliptic curve cryptography.

I cannot help thinking about rewriting this sentence with another word, such as cover or discover, like so:

In our quest for comprehensiveness, we have chosen to present all the basic elements of cryptography needed to understand the complexities of Monero, and their mathematical antecedents. In Chapter 2 we cover essential aspects of elliptic curve cryptography.

Does develop fit well in the cited passage?

Meaning of mount in software engineering [closed]

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 01:37 AM PDT

What does "mount" mean in the following sentence:

If you mount a local folder inside a docker container

How to describe percentage numerator and denominator in a sentence?

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 12:56 AM PDT

I want to provide an English legend for the table column, which describes percentage of squares occupied by a certain bird, and 100 % is the total number of squares monitored (not the total number of squares, only the monitored ones, so it should be stated somehow). How do I describe this?

Column B shows the number of squares occupied by bird X, along with the percentage out of the total number of squares monitored.

I am not sure with the "out of", it could also be "of", "within" or "from" or completely different formulation?

Thanks!

Period within quotation mark? [duplicate]

Posted: 26 Sep 2021 09:45 PM PDT

Would this sentence be punctually correct?

Yet, I still consider the losses as part of the "epic highs of high school football."

“pig book” -when, where & why has a booklet of college students with photos been called a “pig book”?

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 07:28 AM PDT

I'm wondering 1) how widespread geographically and in time was the usage was of calling a paper "face book" (list of 1st year college students with photos, hometown & dorm room) a "pig book" 2) what the word "pig" was understood to refer to.

At Brown (incoming class of 1978) it was called a pig book, and I don't remember another term ever used for it. I long thought the word "pig" to refer in a derogatory way to the young men who would look in the book to find women, not to those pictured, as some have suggested online. Looking recently on the Internet I see the term was used for college photo books prior to the feminist use of the word pig to describe a sexist man, so i think i am mistaken. A recent glossary from Alma college in Michigan mentions the phrase, and says PIG is an acronym for "personal identification guide", but I'm a little skeptical, as there is a tendency for acronyms given as false etymologies.

Is Merriam-Webster wrong about sympathy and empathy?

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 03:03 AM PDT

According to Merriam-Webster:

In general, 'sympathy' is when you share the feelings of another; 'empathy' is when you understand the feelings of another but do not necessarily share them.

This seems at odds with the information given in the answers to How can empathy be distinguished from sympathy?, which states that:

With sympathy, you feel sorry that someone else has experienced something bad even if you have no idea how they feel. With empathy, if they are sorrowful, you feel their sorrow.

Is Merriam-Webster wrong?

Legitimacy of the word "imput"

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 02:59 AM PDT

I see Merriam Webster defines "imput" as a "variant of input" but no other dictionaries have entries (unless you count the Urban Dictionary's "The usual idiotic misspelling of the word input").

Google Ngram has entries for "imput" in books, including a spike in the late 1970s, but even that spike is of trivial volume (<0.00001%), around where you'd expect typos to live.

I see a reference to "imput" in this answer to a different question, noting:

the phoneme /n/ is also highly unstable in English. It tends to change its place of articulation according to the following consonant. For this reason we see words like input being pronounced imput and so forth. This is called anticipatory assimilation

My spouse, a professor in STEM, is seeing this spelling in a few students' works, though this is from a text field notably lacking spellcheck.

Are people starting to actually use "imput" as a valid word, or is it still a typo?
(In other words, am I bucking a trend, yelling at kids to get off my lawn?)

Is 'request denial' a phrase?

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 06:03 AM PDT

So I and my mom are having a debate over whether 'request denial' is even a phrase in the English language. Is it used in the common language, and if so where is it used? My mother says that it could be used in this sentence:
'If you have any reason for this request denial, then please inform me'.

Can such a phrase like this exist?

Personally, I don't think that it's a phrase, but my mother seems adamant about and I just want to know if such a phrase even exists.

particle vs preposition? How to know the difference?

Posted: 26 Sep 2021 11:06 PM PDT

I tried to research the difference beween particle and preposition in phrasal verb, but the information on this website is not very clear. According to the website, in "She is making up excuses" up is called particle, but in the sentence "stop picking on your brother " on is preposition because the information comes immediatey after the phrasal verb completes a prepositional phrase. Without these prepositional phrase, the sentence would be incomplete. Can't the same be said about "she is making up excuses"? Without the preposition, the sentence would also be incomplete. I would appreciate greatly a more detailed explanation.

"He would have done anything you [would ask/would have asked/had asked] him to"

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 10:03 AM PDT

I want to say "He'll do anything you ask him to" but in the past tense, as that was the case 10 years ago, but he's not like that anymore. Which of the following should I use?

  1. He would have done anything you would ask him to!
  2. He would have done anything you would have asked him to!
  3. He would have done anything you had asked him to!

Which is correct or otherwise preferable?

Someone who thinks he's very important, but isn't

Posted: 26 Sep 2021 11:56 PM PDT

I cannot find a good equivalent of the Russian "Watchman's syndrome" in English. It refers to someone who thinks he's very important, but isn't.

For example, this guy has "Watchman's syndrome":

enter image description here

This expression is often used in Russian IT.

Meaning of "What are your new coordinates"?

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 04:16 AM PDT

I have moved to a new job in a new country. One of my old colleagues send me an email asking "what are you new coordinates?". Does he/she mean what is your new contact information? Or it is an idiom and he/she means how things are going at the new country/workplace?

Sorry if my question seems silly, but I am not an English native speaker.

Looking for another term for "reality tv"

Posted: 27 Sep 2021 09:48 AM PDT

My own opinion is that "reality tv" is a misnomer and I would feel better if I had a more accurate term. I'm unable personally to come up with anything better than pseudo-reality tv. Has anyone come across a good term for it? It should be self-explanatory. I don't want to have to explain the term or get into a discussion whenever I use it with a new person.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)