Ok, i need your opinions about my typing in the english language...
Why?
This is the last year of my career in Informatics and Computing bla,bla.... and now is a mandatory for all the students in my University to have a good knowledge about English language. Well, its time, i have to do an exam to accomplish this. its claimed to be VERY HARD (maybe they dont want IT`s without a single idea of what the fvck means WTF) and i have two weeks since this day to study.
So feel free to give me some advice in my flat spots when i write something (until now i know that i write wrong times in verbs, or forget some "s" , or simply i use incorrect expresions) , but you guys may know more of my errors in the use of the English .
So again, flame me about my typing ! its free ! (and its for a good cause....)
It looks ok to me. A few things I notice is you don't do to the (I's) In this, you left all of them lowercase.
Flat spots IMHO..... stuff like " thats cool" where they have the textbok meaning then the slang meaning. I don't have a clue on the test, but I'd assume it bad to use slang on the test ya know. I don't know the extent of your knowlage but I thought I'd throw that out
Be wary of the advice you get from message forums like these. Many people who will try to correct you will just be giving you more mistakes. I wouldn't use this at all, in fact.
You seem to have a good command over the language so far.
There are plenty of websites with correct information on grammar, punctuation and writing style.
Consider browsing through several until you find an area where you're not doing so well.
I often visit these websites to check up on my own punctuation. I seem to have problems with commas, for some reason.
Fila should be the last person to give punctuation advice.
and not too be a smartass, but proper grammar and punctuation should have been covered in grade school. it shouldn't be a hard exam at all. message boards are full of acronyms(IMHO, WTF, idk) and slang terms(w00t!) that aren't going to be taken lightly if seen on a term paper.
All I said was to not use ALL lowercase I's. Then I stated that he should not use slang; then you said the same thing.;)
before or after you edited your post? :flip:
Before, I re-worded it to make more sence:toilet:
I'm pretty sure I fixed most of the errors in that paragraph. I mostly noticed that you forgot to put the apostrophes in "it's" and you didn't capitalize Is.
Here are some things that I see people miss all the time:
The "Theres"
There - Use this to descibe a location. "It is over there."
Their - Use this version to express ownership. "It is their car."
They're (They are) - This is used for describing. "They're great people."
The "its"
Its - This one is used to show ownership. "Its color looks terrible."
It's (It is) - Used to describe something. "It's not a smart thing to do."
Also, don't overruse commas. Many people just stick them wherever. A good trick I found is to read the sentence. If there is a pause somewhere in the sentence, then a comma is more than likely supposed to be there. This trick isn't 100% accurate, but is a very good way to point yourself in the right direction.
Many people also forget the power of the semicolon. It is a very easy way to combine two sentences. I like to use them between two sentences that relate to the same thing. For example:
"That car looks really great; I would love to paint my car that color."
If you were to just use a comma instead of a semicolon, it would be considered a run-on sentence, which is another big mistake I see people make. A period and two spaces also does the same job of a semicolon and one space.
Anyway, I think that about covers all I can think of off the top of my head. I hope that helps and if you have any more questions, feel free to ask.
Sense would make more sense than sence.
But what if you have no cents???
cougarcrager has the right idea...
:2c:
right here buddy
:flip:
My advice: English is such a screwed up language there is no getting it right these days. Forget it and learn Russian instead.
Kingcars: Thank you, i was having problems with the apostrophes because practically we never use it in the spanish language, but with the advice you gave to me i'll try to be more careful. For sure these ' ' can get some extra points for me.
About the "They're/Their/There" , those were a real headache for me when i was starting to learn english like 6 or more years ago. The same "Were/We're/Where" gave to me big problems at the time i needed it. Fortunately i developed some rules (like yours) to not forget their correct use. Thanks again.
32VFoxBird:
Excuse me about the poor grammar, but the mexican education system cares very little for the english language. Virtually every guy can pass english exams with flying colors in Secondary school (equivalent to 7 or 8th grade).Now, in the University, is a must to learn english, even more for me, because practically every thing in the computer`s world is in english.
Fila: I`m correcting my puntuation. I`m too lazy to use commas, but well....thank you...
Cougarcragar: I like to know how the people "talks" because at the time i`ll be talking with people i can undertand them better. But i know what is your point, or at least i guess. I use wordreference every time i need to learn something.
MAYHEM: Russian ? it has names with sooo many silabes....but well, i'm trying to learn portuguese, let`s see what happen.
I have a question for you all:
When to use IN, ON or AT ? i`m never sure when to use these. Someone gave me advice about these some years ago, but i did forget them completely....
Actually mexcougar.. I'll tell you this.. a long time ago you ask a similar question regarding your grammar. You have come a very long way since then. When I first read some of your posts you type very much like the new Mexican member that just joined.. Now it would be hard to tell you didn't speak it natively.
When you knock on someones door, you are at the door.
when they don't answer and you kick the door down, you step on the door and then you go in the room.
You get in your car and step on the gas when the light turns yellow at the intersection.
In = inside. On = on top of. At = very near to.
Hope that helps. ;)
In a house
On a boat
At the movies
Claude : Did you remeber that ? Yeah, i have been doing improvements about my english (because if you want a decent Job in this poor country where used cougars cost 2000 usd and up , you have to learn it). Thanks for your compliments. I have not been in the forum for awhile...what happened with the 3.8 with T-5 ? I hope it`s still running strong.....
MAYHEM: Absolutely it helps a lot ! with this easy rule i won`t forget anymore the uses of the IN/ON/AT. Thank You !
Thanks to all !
Is Dell outsourcing to Mexico now?
I dont know, would be nice (i think). Ford opened a plant in hermosillo mexico some years ago, maybe i`ll give a try there....
Mexcougar, I consider myself a grammar puppies and I can say with confidence that your grasp of the English language is as good or better than a large percentage of people raised to speak the language. Is there room for some improvement? Yes, but the fact that you're actually trying to improve speaks volumes about you.
I once read that English is the hardest language to learn, and I see proof of it every time I see somebody who has been speaking/writing the language all their life and still hasn't gotten a grip on it.
To add to some of the others' suggestions: Latin-based languages like Spanish and French tend to assign a gender to a noun. I'll never forget my French teachers trying to drill "Masculine et feminine" into my head, even though I've long forgotten the actual French they taught me. The English language rarely gender-izes words. For example you, having Spanish as your first language, might say (when speaking in English):
"I really like my Cougar. His ride is nice and he is a nice colour".
An English person would say "I really like my Cougar. Its ride is nice and it is a nice colour".
You will sometimes hear gender, but it is usually slang and is almost always feminine ("Yeah, that Cougar, she's a beaut").
Another confusing thing about English is that it usually swaps the nouns (http://"http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/hypergrammar/nouns.html") and adjectives (http://"http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/hypergrammar/adjectve.html") around in most sentences, compared to Latin-based languages.
An English person would say "That's a red Cougar"
A French person would say "C'est un Cougar rouge"
This is not always the case, though - sometimes the Latin-based language and the English language share the order:
English: That's a small Prius
French: C'est une petite Prius (note the gender thing - the "une" makes the Prius feminine, which is exactly how things should be :hick:)
Usually, in English, the adjective comes BEFORE the noun.
To add a bit more confusion to the mix: You may notice that whenever I or most other Canadians (and Eric, when he's making fun of us) type a word that ends in "or", such as "color", "valor", etc) we add a "u" ("colour", "valour"). We Canadians are spelling it right. Americans dropped the "u" in many of these words, but most other English-speaking countries (including England) use the "u". Sadly, because of USA's dominance in printed media in Canada, many Canadians spell their words wrong too. This is because they're used to seeing them spelled the "American" way in books, magazines, etc.
Kingcars already covered "Their/They're/There" and "Its/It's". The "Terrible two/too/to"'s are worth mentioning as well.
Two is easy. It's the number 2. It is not used in any other context.
Too is also easy - it can only mean two things: "Also" (as in, "I want to go to Cat Jam too!" or "He was speeding too!") or excess ("It's too ed hot out", or "Not only was he speeding, he was driving too fast").
To is difficult to explain, except that in any cases where the other two too's don't belong, use "to". If you're not describing a specific number (two, or 2) or describing an addition (too) or something excessive (too), use "to". Examples: I'm going to help you out. I'm giving this grammar info to you. What do you want to do about it? If you've got a problem I'm going to ban your ass.
...And yours too, Fila. The two of you will cower to the almighty banhammer. If you don't like it, too bad. I'm not going to take my orders from somebody with nothing better to do than tell me who to ban and who not to ban. Life's too short to worry about you two.
So...um... did I confuse you yet? :D (don't worry, I'm not banning anybody)
I'm not laughing
at you, Carm, I'm laughing
with you. ;)
Actually you're not too far off from how Spanish works. It's set up fairly close to French, as far as the sentence structure. Spanish nearly mirrors English in that respect (actually most of the Romance languages do).
In English: White cars are the best.
En español: Los autos blancos estan el major.
MexCougar: Another use of the word 'to' is with decribing a verb. In español the verb is conjugated differently, but the translation of the major Spanish verb into English always has a 'to' in front of it. So 'ir' means 'to go', 'gustar' means 'to like', etc. Also note that in English terms, the Spanish verb shows action:
español: Yo voy a Summit Racing.
English: I am going to Summit Racing. (Literal: I go to Summit Racing).
Now when translating from English to Spanish, it is not TOO difficult to figure out. But for the reverse it can get tricky...as shown, there are two ways to translate the verb into English, and both ways are technically correct, but in real-world situations one is going to be MORE correct than the other.
Another thing: sometimes words that are capitalized in English are not capitalized in Spanish. This is where things can confuse someone that is learning English:
Monday = lunes
Tuesday = martes
January = enero
...and so on. We are used to seeing upper- and lower-case letters to help us establish proper nouns. In Spanish you really have to pay attention when reading because you can easily skip over a word like "marzo", which means the month of March.
Thus, the reason why "I" is sometimes "i".
English is definitely difficult. For me it was easy; I was lucky to be born with the ability to grasp the English language quickly and correctly. But I did watch a lot of classmates struggle with it. As a whole, English has roots that go back over a thousand years. Half of the language is taken from Old English, a very rough and guttural proto-language. Some of it is from Latin, some from German, some from French...it's truly a melting pot language. And the way things are spelled sometimes go back to those early roots. So you can't blame anything on modern-speaking English people; the problems go waaayyyy back before us. ;)
Otherwise...you're doing great, my man. I'm proud of you! I remember the first time that you e-mailed me, some of it in English, some in Spanish. Somehow I understood what you were trying to say. You've come a LONG way since then. It would be almost impossible for anyone to know that you didn't natively speak (type) English.
Alex (baxo) is the same way...his native language is Hungarian. He's a transplant to Canada and learned (their ized version of) English on his own. He now speaks English perfectly; you would never be able to hear any hint of Hungarian accent in his voice if you heard him speak. But you will always hear the Canadian accent. Eh. :flip:
This is great, I'm learning too.
Now the one that always confuses me is gone and went, never did learn that one.
Any good lessons for when to use GONE and when to use WENT.
I'm terrible at English and it's the only language I kind of speak.
TED
Gone is a general term for "not here". Went is a more specific term used when indicating a location.
"Joe is gone for the day."
"Joe went to the parts store."
Watch the BBC. American television will lead you astray!
Though the sentence you wrote isn't wrong, "Joe
has gone for the day." is proper.
"Joe is gone for the day" Would be an answer to a question like "Where is Joe?" But then again "Joe is gone for the day." is kind of Americanized..
In most cases, ending a sentence with a preposition is just fine.
People will tell you otherwise, but they're just trying to obey the rigid rules that their 2nd grade teacher taught them.