Random Babbling 115

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Hey guys...its me Dragonfly - sorry about the name change, it was kind of necessary for my situation.

 

ROTFL - good one DMC

 

Don't mind me folk I'm just babbling for the sake of babbling. I haven't got anything specific to say butt I will say this however: Frater Magnum Te Spectat ! -- Latin's cool.

 

hehehe ... he said "butt". (Insert Bevis and Butthead voice.)

 

That's a typo, obviously meh what the hell, I'll leave it. Gotta own one's mistake no ?

 

Typos are OK, they keep things interesting in a grammar conscience world.

 

Oh indeed, but with the advent of high literacy rate around the world and mass communication technologies, it's now more important than ever to respect grammatical rules if we are to understand one and another.

Btw, did you know that there is as of now more people in the world who speaks English as a second language than there are who speaks it as a first language ? That fact has always amused me.

 

Does that make me a minority then?

 

It does indeed, it does indeed. Cheer up you can always complain at all of us for not speaking correctly or speaking in weird accents.

 

I would never complain, I love grammatical written accents and I like the ones you can hear too. It give language more flavor.

 

Uh, how can you write an accent ? You mean purposefully make spelling error to approximate the spoken accent of non native ? Like if I were to do so according to my one;

'ello der Dice, 'auw doo yoo doo on dis fine day ?

Hello there Dice, How do you do on this fine day ?

Y'know my major is linguistic, this stuff fascinate me too

 

Actually what I meant was by written accents were things like how people who have a Latin based language will sometimes end a statement with "...no?" when asking if a person agrees whereas a British person would end the same statement with "...yes?"

I also like Freudian typos. Very entertaining.

 

I end sentences with a "no?" when assessing agreement I like to have fun with language though, when I was little my mother was doing two english degrees from home so I grew up immersed in how language can be wrestled into any mould. A pity I lack eloquence though!

 

Uh, never realized the subtle yes/no difference, but now that you mention it, that does seems to generally be the case. Btw, are split infinitive ok now ? Some people seems to be categorically against it while other would allow it. I mean Star Trek used it after all.

 

To eight - "language can be wrestled into any mould." That is such a beautiful phrase. It could be a one line poem.

To Flix - sorry, what is a split infinitive? Maybe my grammar is not that good.

 

Don't feel bad it's not uncommon for non native to have more meta-knowledge about the grammar of their second language. For instance some international students at Uni asked me some pretty subtle question about French's grammar and I had absolutely no idea what they were saying. The difference between your English and mine is that yours is intuitive you learn how to speak before you learn its formal grammar in school, whereas I learn both the language itself and its formal grammar at the same time.

Anyway split infinitive;

According to dictionary.com

" an expression in which there is a word or phrase, especially an adverb or adverbial phrase, between to and its accompanying verb form in an infinitive, as in to readily understand. "

Or as in "To boldly go where no man has gone before" -- that's why I quoted Star Trek

Thing is it's pretty controversial, some people, all native English speaker, that I discussed this issue with said it's ungrammatical and should be avoided, while others said it was grammatically ok to do so. I wanted to know Bom's opinion on the matter, that's all.

To me both "to boldly go" and "to go boldly" seems ok though.

 

It's essentially using the 'rules' of poetry in prose to inspire and evoke a reaction that the 'rules' of prose wouldn't convey adequately.

Many speeches and mottos are guilty of bending one little rule or another

It partly plays on the intuition of the listener who expects a sentence to be formulated a certain way, it's a trick Derron Brown uses as well, once that structure of expectation is broken or bent, the listener suddenly has to be more attentive to what is being spoken - it's no longer a point of listening from interest, but also one of concentration, you're more likely to remember it and attach the passion of the speaker to the words if you repeat them yourself.

It's pretty nifty actually.

 

Some mistakes you can only make once I guess. She will never see the irony.