ESC English Speaking Circle

[Ciramon]

Hello,

this is of course no try to duplicate the present topics in english, but a new one for english topics.

Feel free to contribute and discuss everything concerning the english language, for example

- vocabulary and grammar
- regional specifics
- puns and jokes
- phrases and proverbs
- misunderstood lyrics

For starters, maybe you didn't know this dictionary - there are few things it does not know and then there is the forum for further help

http://dict.leo.org/ende/index_de.html

The "Spotlight" magazine offers a free newsletter which along other topics includes phrases and proverbs

http://www.spotlight-online.de/

So in this spirit:

Time flies like an arrow

Fruit flies like an apple

 

[Shao]

Wait, what? I'm gonna have to keep an eye on this thread.

 

[Asmodan]

Oh, an english Thread in a German Forum. I think my Pig whistles.

 

[Ciramon]

Things I learned they say them no more...

In school they said animals are not gendered, but referred to as "it" unless they are given a kind of personality like pets. But what is this:

"The snowbird sings a song he always sings" (Elvis Presley, "Snowbird")

"The nightingale tells his fairy tale" (Nat King Cole, "Stardust")

Do teachers sometimes forget about exceptions? Or is it some kind of artistic liberty? Maybe colloquial speaking?


Similar to this: sometimes even object have genders:

"Does he know about the ship? - He knows that she sails on the 15th" (Columbo)

 

[Wedge]

Of course objects can have a gender if you give them a gender, a personality or an identity. So the same way the ocean itself is often female (the sea is a harsh mistress and all that stuff) Ships (in the water or in space ) are mostly female too. Sometimes even cars are gendered, if people give them names. And that isn't even limited to english. My mother had a car we called Kermit once and it became a he.

The birds might be just literary figueres instead of literal animals, although a nightingale is almost always female in my experience.

 

[Lisra]

Sir, Sir, I have a question (yes Shao this means you )!

When I was a lot younger than now I bought the first 2 Linkin park albums on ebay for like 50ct each (which by the way was a bad idea because Hybrid Theory came from a smoker household and had to sit on my balcony for a week before I let it into my room..) - anyway - something has always bothered me about two lines.

1.)
In Papercut it says

the sun goes down/I feel the light betray me

now... are these lines mean as two statements and an imperative as in the sun really goes down, he feels and light and for heaven's sake betray me please? And if not shouldn't it be I feel the light betraying me? Because then he must surely mean that the light is betraying him... and leaving him to the dark... or something. Or is this some sort of grammatical play I don't know?

And 2.) .... I can't find it right now but I will report back.

So I leave you all instead with this classic classroom nightmare.

 

[Shao]

@Lisra
Feel is a verb of perception. Those can be followed either by a gerund (betraying) or by a infinitive without to (betray) - so that line is actually correct.
The difference is that the gerund implies that whatever action is observed is in progress at the time. The bare infinitive states that you were witness to the whole thing.

Example:
I heard him sing. - You want to convey that you heard someone sing an entire song, from start to finish.

I heard him singing (while I walked past his door). - You wanna stress that this action, the singing, was happening at a specific point in time and you probably didn't hear the whole song/observed the whole action.



Also, these pronunciation poems are awesome. Kudos to whoever can correctly say the whole thing out loud without making any mistakes.

PS: You made me listen to a Linkin Park song. I feel dirty now. I require some form of compensation.

 

[Kraven]

Better now?

 

[Lisra]

There you go.

I see! Always something new to learn though I probably learned this once and then forgot. The gerund stayed in my mind (since we spend like 3 months doing this stupid thing over and over again) so maybe that's why I expected it and forgot all abot the alternative.

 

[Turjan]

I still tend to overuse the gerund. I guess the use of the infinitive in sentences like that is something that tends to get lost during English language training.

 

[Malik ibn Harun]

Is there any way of stating "my back hurts" without being ambigious about if one means the butt- or non-butt-back? Same for "rear". I don't know any good way to phrase that in English.

 

[Ciramon]

Maybe your spine hurts? But I don't know if this use of the word is common or only for anatomical issues. At least I only know the use you first quotated.

 

[Lisra]

AFAIK "my back hurts" refers to the spine exclusively. Same for "back-ache". Even in semi-medical terms. If you want to be very speficic you could say "my lower back hurts" which is as accurate as you can be without going into orthopaedic descriptions.

 

[Shao]

@Malik
Yeh, I wouldn't see any ambiguity in the term "My back hurts." Your 'backside' or your 'rear-end' are your butt. Your back is your back.

 

[Malik ibn Harun]

OK, thanks. I forgot about "back-ache" also good to know the original sentence is not really ambigious, after all.

 

[Ciramon]

Gender of animals and things: yesterday I watched another episode of Columbo, and they even referred to a tooth crown as "she"...

More things I learned different:

Teacher: English Dates are September, 10th

Time Magazin and almost everywhere: 10th September


Teacher: bad - worse - worst

Jim Croce ("Bad Bad Leroy Brown"): Well the south side of Chicago ist the baddest part of town

I guess this is just colloquial or slang like the one following:

"Is it you, sir? They told me you was busy" (also Columbo)

 

[Kraven]

Yeah, it's slang. Language is a very fluid thing, so while your teachers will do their best to teach you just the finest form of Oxford English, which, granted, is the correct one - how everyday people talk is just a whole new ball game. Especially if you consider the size of the englisch speaking community worldwide.
Just think about how many different dialects there are in Germany alone, and Germany is merely the size of... well, Texas, for example. So of course there are a lot of variations.

 

[Lisra]

Language atent dead.







That's a joke for some people.

 

[Kraven]

[flüster]If those people read Pratchett, that is[/flüster]

 

[Lisra]

Don't explain the joke man.