Archivo para el abril de 2007
Dictionary.com nos da la definición siguiente para interjección: “una palabra o palabras, o un cierto ruido, usado para expresar sorpresa, consternación, dolor u otras sensaciones y emociones.”
¿“Oh estimado, así que que es es una qué interjección.?? Nunca realicé.”
La estimada” (o “Oh, estimados”) pieza del “Oh de la oración antedicha representa la interjección [de la etiqueta] [/tag].
¿Las interjecciones son probablemente las más seguras cuando están utilizadas en inglés hablado, y a menos que usted deseara ser?? ¿sarcástico o sardonic, usted no utilizaría probablemente uno en la escritura formal.?? ¿Podría ser incorrecto, y puede haber razones legítimas de utilizar interjecciones en la escritura formal.?? Al ingenio:
¿“Parada!?? Lea no más lejos hasta que usted ha terminado el paso pasado.”
¿Quizá ese trabajos.?? Si usted está escribiendo un manual sobre cómo desactivar una bomba.
Este vídeo del presidente soviético anterior [etiqueta] Boris Yeltsin [/tag] y los E.E.U.U. anteriores El presidente [etiqueta] Bill Clinton [/tag] demuestra cómo uno puede nunca ser seguro si una traducción está correcta o no. Escuchan por favor cuidadosamente la abertura pocas líneas. Mírelo otra vez si usted tiene que. El comienzo del vídeo en la página continuada.
Historia completa”
¿O es apenas ajuste de la vejez adentro?
Soy un nativo y generalmente un buen abecedario, consiguiendo mi educación K-12 antes de las reformas liberales de los años 60 arruinó todo en la educación pública.
Pero apenas he tenido que hoy ya mirar para arriba dos palabras para cerciorarme de que mi memoria estaba correcta. El primer era pasatiempo. No podría convencerme de que no fuera pasatiempo. Más allá-tiempo Sabía tendría que ser una cierta clase de adjetivo, así que lancé eso hacia fuera. El segundo era acquiescence. Apenas no podría recordar si había a c después de s, a que confirmé hay yendo a dictionary.com.
El punto aquí es que puedo, pues envejezco, veo más claramente porqué la gente tiene un rato duro con esta lengua el nuestros. Fortunately, we now have resources at our (keyboard) fingertips to help us out. Maybe some memory-enhancing pills would help as well.
The headline is a non pre-sequitur, whatever the term for that is, but my subject is light, in a way anyway.
My penpal in Taiwan, who is also an English teacher and whose grammar (learned as a second language) is infinitely better than most native Americans, even college graduates, was perplexed when I used the phrase “[tag]lightbulb went off[/tag].”?? She thought it should be “lightbulb came (or went) on.”?? Made sense.
That got me thinking, so I scoured the Internet for about 10 minutes (figuring that was about all the subject was worth) to find the derivation of the phrase, but I failed.?? The best I could conclude was that it derives from the days of those old flashbulbs that??would definitely go off in a flash, thus leading to the phrase “lightbulb went off,”??indicating a flash of realization.
Anybody got a better idea of the roots of the phrase??? If you do, please post a comment.
These two–neither/nor and either/or–are known as correlative conjunctions.
Where most people get tripped up in using these conjunctions is in verb tense and pronoun usage.
Let me give you a couple of examples:
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Now it’s perfectly okay for [tag]Marlon Brando[/tag] to bemoan that he “coulda been a contender.”?? People (some, a lot sometimes) speak that way, and that was a line in??a screenplay.?? Verisimiltude counts.
However, the construction could of, which some/many native users of English think is the correct verb form for could have, needs to be banished forever and corrected immediately.?? I don’t care how much “I could’ve been somebody” sounds like “I could of been somebody,” folks, that’s just bad English.
Speaking-wise, who cares??? But when this usage starts popping up (alongside other abominations like thru) in college-level writing, the alarm clocks should be going off.
Is anybody teaching proper English usage in the lower twelve grades??? Put another way, is anyone paying attention to what’s being taught??? I’d have to sit through several K-12 classes to get a good read, but I bet most instruction never gets much past, “Never start a sentence with because,” which of course isn’t even a rule in English.
I think I just answered my own questions.
I was a little curious as to how the collective American media could pounce upon phrases such as “worst school tragedy in American history” so quickly and so effortlessly.?? Probably, the only point of comparison was Columbine, and that made the 33 deaths at [tag]Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University[/tag] the “worst ever.”
Now, my target here is the media.?? I in no way intend to belittle the tragic consequences of one man’s shooting rampage.?? What gets me is the felicity of judgment??and nonchalance with which those reporting the event immediately determined it was the “worst ever.”
As it turns out, a man named [tag]Andrew Kehoe[/tag] slaughtered 45 Michigan school children in 1927 using homemade bombs.?? Now, those who said “worst school shooting ever” would be on more solid ground.?? However, I think the whole intent of using the superlative worst in any configuration was to sell the news rather than objectively report it.?? That’s my beef.
Media literacy rule:?? Whenever you read or hear a [tag]superlative form of an adjective[/tag] being used, ignore it.?? They’re selling you just like a used car salesman does with “the best 1999 Chevy you can find.”
In the tragedy that consumed [tag]Virginia Tech[/tag] on April 16, leaving 33 dead bodies on campus, I was glued to the TV like anyone else who had the time to do so. I even watched a whole press conference, during which [tag]Security Chief Wendell Flinchum[/tag] said in answer to a question:
"It was probably one of the worst things I’ve seen in my life."
When I heard this, I didn’t think too much about it, but when the same quotation appeared in the newspaper the next morning, I stumbled a bit when I got to it. The understatement of it all suddenly hit home. If this were "one of the worst," what’s the worst? Unless Mr. Flinchum served in Vietnam, and he looked too young for that, it’s hard to imagine he’d ever seen something worse. Anyway, the point here is just that it’s very hard to speak during a crisis because of all the emotions, stresses and challenges. I have no intention of making fun of the gentleman, just to point out how words can escape or confuse the best of us in the heat of a tragedy.
So, wiki–Hawaiian for quick–has now made the [tag]Oxford English Dictionary[/tag].?? No surprise.?? These Oxford people??are the same folks who put their imprimatur??on using they as a generic pronoun for persons and things of singular or plural??nature alike.?? In other words, to say, “They want to fire everyone” is the same thing as saying, “The company wants to fire everyone.”?? Not!?? However, it’s all acceptable to the Oxford judges, whose standards have gone down with the British Empire.??
(Wiki, I actually don’t have a problem with.?? It’s been around long enough to deserve accreditation, but because of its Hawaiian roots, not because of the Web usage to which it has been subjected.)
Nonetheless, I’m holding out that slang contractions such as vlog–video blog–and crog–carefully researched blog–do not enter the Queen’s English, or anyone’s English for that matter.?? I may be old fashioned, but I think that popular constructions and contractions do not (don’t, to iterate) have to be incorporated into proper English.?? Is duh??in the dictionary??? Let’s hope not, but to me these two terms are??in the same NotWord category as duh.?? (Read a discussion of this issue here.)
Sadly, it’s a losing battle to??try to maintain??English as a real, time-honored??language.?? As e-mail takes over for letters and conversations, all grammar usage will become null and void–in short, anything goes!?? Heaven help us.
The actual Cold War, which pitted the U.S and Soviet Union in a battle for??global political supremacy, is reputedly dead, but the term itself was fashioned 60 years ago today.
I teach both communications and history classes to college students, and I’m always shocked at a) the poor English skills and b) the historical ignorance.?? Few even know who Dwight D. Eisenhower was, let alone the [tag]Cold War[/tag].
Anyway, it was financier and presidential confident Bernard M. Baruch who coined the term that swept the world for the next half century while he was speaking at the South Carolina Statehouse on April 16, 1947.
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