Maths & statistics exercises / French and English lessons

[humbert]

All I know is that this level of grammatic correctness is not needed in real life 

You're absolutely right. Yesterday I read in the news that during the putsch on 6/1/2021, one fanatical member of Congress sent Trump a text message asking him to invoke marshall law (note the spelling). Once I saw a picture of a protest sign in the paper. Trumpist fanatics protesting immigration. The sign read: This is ARE country! What makes this even worse is these are Americans who speak no other language except English. You can forgive someone who's just learning, but not these guys.

Scarface: Many years ago I learned in school that if you're talking a hypothetical situation, you always use the plural of the verb was, i.e., were. Example: "I wish I were a billionaire" is correct. Why? Who knows. Ask the idiots who wrote this bastard language. Sadly the British Empire spread it throughtout the globe, and that was followed by strong American influence everywhere.

[Shadow.97]

Scarface: Many years ago I learned in school that if you're talking a hypothetical situation, you always use the plural of the verb was, i.e., were. Example: "I wish I were a billionaire" is correct. Why? Who knows. Ask the idiots who wrote this bastard language. Sadly the British Empire spread it throughtout the globe, and that was followed by strong American influence everywhere.

We were also taught this, I had completely forgotten about it until you mentioned it.. 

My biggest pet peeve in english is when people use Am instead of I'm/I am:
"Am home" instead of "I am home"/"I'm home"

(PS. My 700th post!)

[humbert]

My biggest pet peeve in english is when people use Am instead of I'm/I am:
"Am home" instead of "I am home"/"I'm home"

As you know, the correct spelling is "I'm home". The "am home" pronunciation is typical of the southern American states and also black Americans - just their accent or dialect.

(PS. My 700th post!)

Keep 'em coming! You're a very sharp valued member of our forum with plenty of intelligent things to say. Your input is always welcome.

[Daniil]

Maybe humbert, Gulliver, Daniil, Vasudev, or shadow.97... can tell us if they knew the form "If I were" and not if I was (I have no doubt about it), and if they were aware they were using a subjunctive form.

Very interesting thing! For me as native Russian speaker, this grammaitc construction looks (and even hears) as something very familliar. Because in Russian there is a form "Если бы я был ...", which literally can be translated "If (it were the situation when) I was ..."
English speakers, same as in Russian, just cropped the sentence probably. (BTW, my shiz stubbornly pushed me a word "trunked" instead of "cropped"... Is that a correct replacement, or the sence of sentence would be lost?)

At first I thought Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy was a neighborhood in St Petersburg. This until it occurred to me to look for it on Google Maps. Wow!! That place is on the other side of the country! Who even lives in the Kamchatka Peninsula? Did she go to St Petersburg or did you go there? If she came to you how did she get there? No major airports anywhere near there. Maybe a week or more on the Trans-Siberian railroad.?

On Kamchatka lives a lot of geologists, fishers, and military personnel. She was from a family of geologist. Yes, she went to Moscow, for learning in uni, and then she got here to St.Petersburg (but we met each other in internet long before this). It's not so difficult to get from Kamchatka to Moscow - on a regional plane to Khabarovsk, and from there on airliner to Moscow.

Incredible, as in Sweden, driving 1h(or maybe 2) gives you a completely new accent..

It looks just like a madness for me. BTW, probably that's why a lot of Russians have a troubles with foreign languages - we use to live in very unified language space and most of those who lives not in central cities could never hear any other languages in whole their life (except from TV). BTW, probably in China now they faced same.

You're absolutely right. Yesterday I read in the news that during the putsch on 6/1/2021, one fanatical member of Congress sent Trump a text message asking him to invoke marshall law (note the spelling). Once I saw a picture of a protest sign in the paper. Trumpist fanatics protesting immigration. The sign read: This is ARE country! What makes this even worse is these are Americans who speak no other language except English. You can forgive someone who's just learning, but not these guys.

  In Soviet Union grammatical correctness for everyone was heavily obligatory. 'cause everyone must knew how to write main mottos of communism etc., and you can imagine, that nobody should made a mistakes in this. I.e., you can imagine what it could ended, I mean "how you dare to write sacred words of Lenin and Marks in incorrect way?!?!?!"
In Stalin's time that could be finished in deadly punishment, and even in late USSR you can after this "put your party ticket on a table". (That idiom means being excluded from Soviet Communistic Party, very hard punishment, denying to you a lot of priviledges).

My biggest pet peeve in english is when people use Am instead of I'm/I am:
"Am home" instead of "I am home"/"I'm home"

Oh, I faced same troubles when I tried to listen songs of black Americans. Their throaty pronounciation sounds sometimes nice but understand them, especially on a fast talking, is tricky thing.

[Daniil]

Sooo, comrades, I want to say some words about English and Russian prepositions (pretexts?)

It's quite difficult thing for Russian speaker to learn how to use English prepositions. Because here we can see the best way the differences in the way how we thinking (we can say - cultural differences).

Take a look. In my previous I wrote:

In Stalin's time that could be finished in deadly punishment ...

For English speakers it seems incorrect, because I used word "In" for a time. I know that I must use "At" at this case. But for Russian language, here is no mistake. We would said "В сталинское время", literally "In Stalin's time".

I thought a lot about this... And you know what? Probably it's because of cultural differences in how we thinking about the time! English speakers are very carefully differentiate (almost in mathematical sense) time of an event (that's why in English there is so much tenses!) In Russian we because of our culture used to think about time in prolonged way (try to imagine, how to sit at home for a loooong winter evenings). So when we say about time we in most cases saying about a period (from -> to), and specially mentioned when we saying about a special moment. (Also, maybe because of this we have in Russian language very nasty form "успеть" - literally "catch in time", which causes a lot of troubles in life, but that's a separate topic).

I can't understand how to explain in that logic why in English you saying "at" about time ("at some date", "at age of ..." etc.) Maybe together we can find out the roots of this.

[scarface]

Sooo, comrades, I want to say some words about English and Russian prepositions (pretexts?)

Take a look. In my previous I wrote:

In Stalin's time that could be finished in deadly punishment ...

For English speakers it seems incorrect, because I used word "In" for a time. I know that I must use "At" at this case. But for Russian language, here is no mistake. We would said "В сталинское время", literally "In Stalin's time".

I can't understand how to explain in that logic why in English you saying "at" about time ("at some date", "at age of ..." etc.) Maybe together we can find out the roots of this.

Hi Daniil, well I'm certain that the phrase "In Stalin's time" is correct. But I'm sure there are other syntax errors in your message (no matter...).
And note that you can use "in" with the word age, for example in the expression "in his old age" (when the exact age is mentioned the preposition "at" is used indeed).

As far as prepositions are concerned, it's true that you are not using them properly. But you are going to see that if I was applying my own logic, I would make much more syntax errors. And if I don't make these errors, it's because my level of proficiency in English allows me to interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party (but for that I studied and read many English books).

Let's take the French preposition "en".
In French the preposition "en" is generally translated by "in" in English.
If I translate the sentence above: En français la préposition "en" est généralement traduite par "in" en anglais. This time it's logical.
Now we say in French: "Je suis bon en math" translated in English by "I'm good at math" and not "in math".
This time it's not logical. That's why for a French speaker the syntax error "I'm good in" is common.
Well, what I'm saying is not totally true, since the expression "good in" exists but for very specific cases such as "Chocolate is good in cake".

For a Russian speaker, it might not be easy to learn and study English easily. For me Cyrillic and Chinese words look like hieroglyphics so I guess it's not easy for you to use a different alphabet.
But even for a French beginner, the English language is somewhat difficult because there are many "false friends": Some similar words, with a different meaning or a different but very similar spelling (language/langage). Actually, the influence of French on English pertains mainly to its lexicon but also to its syntax, grammar, orthography, and pronunciation. Most of the French vocabulary in English entered the language after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, when Old French, specifically the Old Norman dialect, became the language of the new Anglo-Norman court, and nowadays, words of French origin represent more than two-thirds of the English vocabulary.
And because of this, if a French learner doesn't read grammar books, or if one tries to apply one's logic, there can be misinterpretations or even nonsense.


And if we take a look at the "false friends" in English/French it's getting worse because they are numerous.
For instance, the word important can be applied practically for everything in French and has a broader meaning than is implied in the English term. It means both important and valuable. In French we can say "une somme importante". In English we say "a significant sum".
It's the same thing for the word "force", which has a broader meaning in French. It means both strength and force. For instance we say "force physique/physical strength. And If we are translating "force physique by "physical force", we are mistranslating it, because physical force involves a notion of violence, a force or physical means used upon or directed towards another person, or an act committed by a police officer for the purpose of restricting the movement of others. Unless I'm mistaken, we can't say "Mr Baboon is very strong, his physical force enables him to run as fast as a cheetah", in this case the substantive strength should be used.
But to show the power of an impact, then the same word is used in French and English: force de l'explosion/force of the blast...

Maybe a piece of advice: you could try to reread your messages before sending them, I'm sure you could see more misspellings/errors.

[humbert]

Guys, you gotta keep in mind that every language has it's own set of prepositions, expressions, meanings, and everything else. There is no such thing as a literal word-for-word translation. Whenever I need to translate I hear the statement in one language, get a mental picture of what they said, then explain it in the other language.

Scarface: There is nothing hard about the Cyrillic alphabet. Once you learn the different sound of the letters the rest is easy. I'm noticing that Russian is very phonetic. The one I've had trouble with is the Arabic alphabet. This is because it's a cursive alphabet and the letters are written differently according to whether they're alone or what part of the word they're in.

Daniil: Khabarovsk is almost as far away from St Petersburg as the Kamchatka Peninsula itself. To get to St Petersburg from there is it a non-stop flight or does the plane stop somewhere. Either way it's a long flight.

BTW out of curiosity alone, may I ask, is the lady from Kamchatka now your girlfriend?