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Confused by reviews | ||
Tags: Usefulness | Assimil | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| roncy Pentaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5923 days ago 105 posts - 112 votes  Speaks: French*, English, German, Spanish, Latin | Message 41 of 52 04 December 2008 at 10:47am | IP Logged | |||||
Why didn't you just hit "delete" instead of being your usual self-opinionated know-all. Stop being the figure in goindol's link. The linked-to picture is funny, but you're not, even if or when you think so. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| charlmartell Super Polyglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6250 days ago 286 posts - 298 votes Speaks: French, English, German, Luxembourgish*, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 42 of 52 04 December 2008 at 12:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
You mean: Any school that teaches these is not teaching Scottish. What makes you so sure you actually know eveything better? I was glad to see at least one other person finds your proliferous stubbornly know-it-all-better posts as silly as I do. You may not be a troll, but you're just as irritating. 2 persons have 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 43 of 52 04 December 2008 at 1:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
That would be down to the lack of a "delete" button. I know there used to be one, but it wasn't there today -- I looked. Edit: And I checked after posting this: no delete button.
This is nothing to do with dialectal variation in Scotland, Australia, the USA or even India. Well, maybe they still speak like that in India. However, the post I originally replied to was an Australian saying that "he didn't know" about these rules. There is a very dangerous tendency to defer to old books as he did. And then a non-native speaker says he is glad that these things are still taught. But no-one speaks like that. It is now widely accepted in academia that across the board people do not use whom, except for in a very concious way in formal contexts because they think that they are supposed to. There are some publications that stick to their guns and whose style guides insist that shall and whom are acceptable (eg http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/specials /style_guide/) but even their editors manage to let normal usage pass. The Guardian has a more pragmatic approach, pointing out that "Use of “whom” has all but disappeared from spoken English, and seems to be going the same way in most forms of written English too." and saying that both forms are acceptable in print. http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/200 7/12/11/guardianstylebook2007.pdf I'll shut up about this now. Promise. Zipped. Edited by Cainntear on 04 December 2008 at 1:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ham Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5995 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 44 of 52 04 December 2008 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am confused, I am English, and whilst I don't use 'whom' as often as I should I do say it, and I use 'shall' pretty often . My grammar is by no means perfect but these words I think are perfectly acceptable to use. Edited by Ham on 04 December 2008 at 1:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 45 of 52 04 December 2008 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Huh?
"Whom" seems fine to me. The most that one could say is that the distinction between "who" and "whom" is not made by a lot of speakers, but there are still those (like me) who make the distinction between them, even in speech. "Shall" is not something that I use often, but I couldn't consider it to be wrong if someone were to use it in a construction such as "I shall". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7152 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 46 of 52 04 December 2008 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You missed the point. I was asked if Assimil taught sufficient grammar. My reply was that Assimil did teach sufficient grammar for normal use of the language but, if you want to know more, you buy a grammar book.
My point was that you don't need to know the technicalities of English to get by in the language or even to speak it fluently. These were all questions I was asked when I taught English in Germany. And Cainntear, there are plenty of people who use the grammar examples I gave. When I was in America I would ask for someone on the phone and get the reply, this is she. It is correct English usage but I have only heard Americans use it. I would be wary of an English course that taught that construction as it sounds incredibly stilted. I was careful when teaching English in Germany to explain this but some German teachers didn't like me saying you could get away without saying "whom". Again I make the point, Assimil is a complete language course for all practical purposes. If you want to make the fine grammar distinctions, buy a grammar book. Edited by fanatic on 04 December 2008 at 6:23pm 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 48 of 52 05 December 2008 at 6:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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I quite like the Longman Student Grammar of Written and Spoken English, which was a set text I used at university.
I've also used Practical English Usage, but I find the layout of the Longman book makes things clearer and easier to find (although that may simply be because my tutor explained how to use it!) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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