egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5698 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch
| Message 945 of 3737 02 August 2010 at 12:36am | IP Logged |
When, walking a trail at a national park, listening and repeating to Dutch tapes, you
walk obliviously into a large group of tourists. Sensing that something is awry, you take
off the headphones only to find to your horror, that the aforementioned group of
tourists, fifteen or so in all, who happen to be conversing excitedly, are in fact native
Dutch speakers.
Now, perhaps it's just your imagination, but one or two of them seem to be looking at you
funny.
3 persons have voted this message useful
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Flip_flop Triglot Newbie France Joined 5254 days ago 11 posts - 16 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German, Mandarin, Polish
| Message 946 of 3737 02 August 2010 at 10:25am | IP Logged |
You can spend hours in libraries looking at methods until you feel like buying them all.
You hate being asked why you pay so much attention to languages whereas you could easily get by with those you already know.
1 person has voted this message useful
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Polyglotted Triglot Newbie Joined 5231 days ago 35 posts - 40 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Mandarin
| Message 947 of 3737 02 August 2010 at 8:34pm | IP Logged |
When you question your friendship with someone because they ended a sentence in English with a preposition
"I had to complain to the catalogue it was bought through" instead of "the catalogue through which it was bought"
1 person has voted this message useful
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ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian
| Message 948 of 3737 03 August 2010 at 2:25am | IP Logged |
Rhian wrote:
Polyglotted wrote:
When you question your friendship with someone because they ended a sentence in English
with a preposition:
"I had to complain to the catalogue it was bought through" instead of "the catalogue through which it was bought."
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It is perfectly fine to end a sentence with a preposition. I have even read that it is one of the biggest myths
regarding English grammar! |
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Good to know!
...when you spend over two hours talking with another member of this forum about languages in general and doing a language exchange, and don't want it to end (because it's so nice to finally talk to someone knowledgeable and with the same interest as you) but then panic because you still haven't done any studying!
2 persons have voted this message useful
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Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5569 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian
| Message 949 of 3737 03 August 2010 at 4:36am | IP Logged |
Rhian wrote:
Polyglotted wrote:
When you question your friendship with someone because they ended a sentence in English
with a preposition:
"I had to complain to the catalogue it was bought through" instead of "the catalogue through which it was bought."
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It is perfectly fine to end a sentence with a preposition. I have even read that it is one of the biggest myths
regarding English grammar! |
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Indeed, English like all the Germanic languages allows prepositions to end sentences. The insistence on not doing so was an attempt to force Latin grammar rules on English (so too is the insistence on saying "it is I" rather than "it is me"). But English is not Latin nor a Latinate language, and relies heavily on verb + preposition phrases. Consider the following sentences, which can't really be reworded so as to not end in a preposition:
• Check it out!
• Come in!
• The plane is taking off.
• My friend wants to stop by.
• What's he going on about?
2 persons have voted this message useful
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mashmusic11235 Groupie United States Joined 5501 days ago 85 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese
| Message 950 of 3737 03 August 2010 at 4:42am | IP Logged |
When you explain code switching to a friend with the example sentance: Code switching is where someone who speaks several languages will, in the middle of a sentance, ga uit van een spraak naar een ander; and it completley slips your mind to translate the Dutch part.
And then you do it again when posting about it! Lol
(Dutch part: go from one language to another)
2 persons have voted this message useful
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psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5593 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French
| Message 951 of 3737 04 August 2010 at 2:59am | IP Logged |
when you celebrate today as your "first birthday" because it was one year ago today that you joined this fantastic on-line community of language learners and lovers of languages, many of whom,otherwise totally unknown to you, you have come to consider role models for your own language learning.
3 persons have voted this message useful
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B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5529 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish
| Message 952 of 3737 04 August 2010 at 12:47pm | IP Logged |
When you start ironing even though your clothes don't actually need it for the sole reason that this gives you an excuse for listening to another language podcast while ironing.
4 persons have voted this message useful
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