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Shameful English Grammar Questions! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7187 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 1 of 19 12 January 2009 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thought I need to start a post about my terrible grammar. Considering i'm a native speaker I feel pretty ashamed to ask some of these questions but you know what if I never ask i'll never know.
Which sentence is correct? Do the man and the boy have apples? Does the man and the boy have apples? I'm not sure if you would modify the sentence by placing the man and the boy together (they) or would you take them one at a time (he/she) When used as a verb is there really a big difference between these two words? Affect (v) Effect (n/v) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 40pancakes Newbie Australia Joined 5811 days ago 38 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 2 of 19 12 January 2009 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The first apple related sentence is correct...
I'm not sure about the difference between affect/effect. I know an "effect" is a noun, "to affect" is a verb and "affected" is an adjective. I'd be interested to see an answer to this myself. And it's not shameful to seek grammar advice for your own language: no one can claim to speak perfect English! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6086 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 19 12 January 2009 at 2:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I would say that DOES.... is right. The "Do" sentence sounds gramatically correct but not correct, if you catch my drift. Perhaps it's just dialect/accent.
TEL 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7187 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 4 of 19 12 January 2009 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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TheElvenLord, I thought this too. I think a lot of native speakers would use does. But from a text book point of view is this correct.
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| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6017 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 19 12 January 2009 at 5:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
No need to be ashamed. The reason that you can't work out which one is correct is that... (drum roll please)... neither one of them if real English. It would be the first, becaues "the man and the boy" = "they". But no English speaker would say this, so there's no pattern in your head that feels natural. Think "John and Sally do it every night." Now that's a fairly natural sentence. However, a phrase like "the man and the boy" is too clumsy to be of any use, and besides, what would it mean? We wouldn't ask a question like yours without knowing who we're talking about, and once we know who we're talking about, we say "they". So fret ye not -- where you are really stuck about whether something is proper English or not, it's normally not, even if the grammar books can't explicitly tell you so!
When in doubt, ask Oxford! (.com)
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutspelling/aff ect?view=uk Edited by Cainntear on 12 January 2009 at 5:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| RedRabbit Newbie United States Joined 5841 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 19 12 January 2009 at 11:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The first sentence is the correct one because "the man and the boy" is a plural subject. However the first sounds natural enough to me just because "Does the Man..." sounds right. In a conversation, if I heard someone say the second sentence, I wouldn't even catch their mistake.
I've always thought of them as affect=verb, effect=noun. Example. The new law will affect many people. The effect of the law is unknown. Edited by RedRabbit on 12 January 2009 at 11:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6017 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 19 12 January 2009 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
But there is a noun and a verb in each form.... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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