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DIR Return to: Questions about the Use of Language
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#Post#: 13648--------------------------------------------------
Re: Does off of sound a bit off to you?
By: Nikola Date: March 25, 2019, 4:56 am
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SHL, I want to address multiple comments you posted yesterday.
Please take this as friendly feedback rather than a personal
attack. You got kicked out of another forum and you're annoyed,
we get that. Then you went and commented on every topic that
reminded you of the topic you disagreed about with people
elsewhere. People see rules where there are none, people discuss
small nuances in meanings, they don't understand how language
works, they ask about all the unimportant stuff and you are here
to tell them what is important and what is not. This is the
message I got. And it made me feel like I never want to ask any
language-related question here again. It probably made some
people feel like never replying to a language question again. Is
this what you want? From what I know about you, I'd say it's
not. You're not like that.
If I'm interested to find out about a particular nuance in
meaning and someone else is equally interested in explaining it
to me, do you want us to worry about what you're going think
about it? Have you ever looked inside an old-fashioned music
box? You acquired the English language, you know the tune and
don't need to worry about what's in the box. Many of us had to
learn it, that's the messy work where you have to know what
every single piece does. Once you've learned all the essential
stuff, you have to do the fine tuning because otherwise it will
never sound right. You have no idea how many little rules and
word differences I had to learn to reach my current level, half
of them you've probably never heard of, even though you apply
them in your day-to-day life. It doesn't mean they don't exist,
just because they're buried deep inside the box. Where would I
have been if I'd stuck to "just focus on the essential stuff"?
Please try to be open-minded. Or try being open-minded? :)
#Post#: 13664--------------------------------------------------
Re: Does off of sound a bit off to you?
By: SHL Date: March 25, 2019, 2:04 pm
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Nikola,
Thank you so much for your well-stated reply. And please, do not
let me inhibit you or anyone from asking any language question
you like. I`m no expert in languages, that´s for sure. My
opinion, as they say in German, „ist für die Katz“, you know
it`s for the cat, the birds!
I do love you box analogy. It is spot on. And you are 100%
correct. It takes years and a lot of work to understand the fine
nuances of words and phrases when you`re learning a foreign
language and I appreciate that, and even native speakers can
disagree on things a little.
I think a better teaching style, is to rank order things a bit?
You know what I mean? It´s like saying „this is standard style,
so it´s fit for book publication or an article in a good
newspaper, but this other way of speaking is non-standard,
regional, not something you publish in writing. Native speakers
say it, so you can`t call it wrong. So we don`t publish it.“
That´s gives you a broader understanding of the nuances of a
language. German has the authority Duden, and Duden will
classify words and phrases as „technical, elevated, colloquial,
saloop, regional´-sometimes specifying the region,
youth-language, archaic, dated, etc) so you kind of can
classify the word? We have no such authority in English so you
have no such guide. I think good English teachers tell you that.
But that´s hard to do with all the variations-BrEnglish,
USEnglish, Australian English, and so on.
Actually, I didn`t get kicked off the other forums. Quora just
suspended me for two weeks and now I`m back on but don`t use the
site much. Italki just banned me a few times and then
auto-reinstated me without me asking. That was a mystery. And
that was a year ago. I was never banned from the
german.stackexchange.com, and only temporarily on the
english.stackexchange.com one because of a Frenchmen who went
after me, I didn`t go after him. He was saying it was normal and
well-understood when someone asked about that ridiculous
sentence about „repaying the depths of their heightened
enlightenment“ or some other dribble no one would ever say. Then
he criticized me for saying I didn`t know what I was talking
about?
But please, again, don`t let anything I say hold you back. You
all are great people and the last thing I`d ever want to do is
offend you.
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