In which we yet again post yet another ten thousand plus interesting or amusing -or neither- tweets

Discussion in 'Politics & Current Events' started by argentine soccer fan, Jul 11, 2024.

  1. Sounders78

    Sounders78 Member+

    Apr 20, 2009
    Olympia
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    France

    For me the best way to learn grammar was to learn another language.
     
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  2. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    1843375184449024482 is not a valid tweet id
     
  3. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
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  4. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
     
  5. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  6. rslfanboy

    rslfanboy Member+

    Jul 24, 2007
    Section 26
    Pronunciation and homonyms are just f********ed.
     
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  7. Sounders78

    Sounders78 Member+

    Apr 20, 2009
    Olympia
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    France

    Polynesian languages are brilliant that way - no verb conjugations at all (the only time a verb changes is if it is passive, but in Rapanui that doesn't even happen). Tense/aspect/mood is indicated by a separate word placed before the "verb". They also do not gender nouns or pronouns.

    On the down side, they usually have 11 subject pronouns, instead of gendering nouns and pronouns you have to "status" possessives and categories of verb/noun/adjective are fluid, given there is no verb "to be" or "to have".
     
  8. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
     
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  9. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Esperanto or get ********ed
     
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  10. bigredfutbol

    bigredfutbol Moderator
    Staff Member

    Sep 5, 2000
    Woodbridge, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    My wife had to learn English after immigrating (she'd studied it a bit before coming but had a lot to learn) at the age of 19, and her command of grammar is FAR superior to mine.
     
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  11. Sounders78

    Sounders78 Member+

    Apr 20, 2009
    Olympia
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    France

    And then there's the past tense in English, which makes absolutely no sense.

    In my Advanced Linguistics class when I was a graduate student, the languages I most hated were Luiseno and Diegueno (American Indian languages from California). Those languages were a nightmare for me to figure out when they were included in assignments.
     
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  12. Sounders78

    Sounders78 Member+

    Apr 20, 2009
    Olympia
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    France

    My problem growing up is that mom was still new at speaking English and dad was not educated (dropped out of high school to go to war in Korea). Thus, bad grammar seemed ok to me. That's why learning another language was helpful for me to finally understand English grammar.
     
  13. ToMhIlL

    ToMhIlL Member+

    Feb 18, 1999
    Boxborough, MA
    Club:
    New England Revolution
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Naw, if anything, it's the opposite. Ask anyone who is learning English why "rough" "cough" and "through" aren't pronounced the same way. Cuff? Roo? Rawf? And then there is the "Pacific Ocean," where the letter "C" appears 3 different times but is pronounced differently each time. Hamburgers are not made of ham, nor do eggplants have anything to do with eggs. Then you get the same words that mean different things, like being too close to close the door, or the farm that could produce lots of produce.

    Anyway, if you're even at a high-beginner level of learning another language and you see a word you don't know, you could take a guess and you'd have a very good chance of getting it right.

    But a lot of Asian languages do make it easier, since there are no tenses. "Today I go to the store, yesterday I go to the store and tomorrow I go to the store."
     
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  14. superdave

    superdave Member+

    Jul 14, 1999
    VB, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Fair points…I was speaking of speaking and hearing English. The reading and writing is tough because you’ve got German words and Latin words mashed up together. As noted, the spelling of words is super erratic. You just have to memorize it.
     
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  15. charlie15

    charlie15 Member+

    Mar 9, 2000
    Bethesda, Md
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Leftist? huh?
     
  16. rslfanboy

    rslfanboy Member+

    Jul 24, 2007
    Section 26
    It's amazing to see my 5-yr-old (she's pretty smart) intuit a word she hasn't encountered, and she comes up with some very straightforward guesses that I have a very hard time explaining why it is not quite right. I often default to "It doesn't make sense. You just have to memorize it."
     
  17. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Here's how bad my grammar is: I have no idea what statusing possessives even means.
     
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  18. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Doug wins the internet today.
     
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  19. JamesA

    JamesA Member+

    Dec 7, 2004
    Victoria
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    English is a tough, tough language to learn from a grammar perspective. It's filled with inconsistencies.


    Even small things, such as words being both a verb and noun, while written in an identical fashion.

    We're building a building.
     
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  20. lanman

    lanman BigSoccer Supporter

    Aug 30, 2002
    Of course there's also "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo", which is grammatically correct.
     
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  21. Sounders78

    Sounders78 Member+

    Apr 20, 2009
    Olympia
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    France

    lol, yeah, it's not something Western cultures do.

    Here are some examples. the first vowel in a possessive is either ā (long vowels are indicated by the macron) or o. For example:

    my = tāku, toku
    your (singular) = tāu, tou
    his/her = tāna, tona

    (These are pretty universal in East Polynesian languages - so if you know it for one, it works for the others, although sometimes with consistent consonant changes - for example, Hawaiian changes t to k and k to a glottal stop).

    If you had studied a Romance language, you might think those differences are to distinguish gender, such as in French:

    my = mon, ma
    your (singular) = ton, ta
    his/her = son, sa

    But in Polynesian languages it has nothing to do with the gender of the object possessed, given nouns don't have genders like they do in French. Instead, it depends on your relationship to the object possessed: the "o-vowel possessive" indicates you are submissive to it, while the "ā-vowel possessive" indicates you are dominant to it. Thus, in Rapanui:

    my child = tāku poki
    my parent = toku matu'a

    The trick is to understand, based on the Polynesian worldview, how dominance/submissiveness works. Emotions control you, so those get the submissive o. Boats, cars, planes, horses etc transport you, so those get the submissive o. Pets (but not horses) get the dominant ā. Parts of things get the submissive o, but when in their entirety they can get the dominant ā.

    By now you might see how the Western concept of "possessive" doesn't translate well, as sometimes you are submissive to what you "possess". Not surprisingly, individual property wasn't really a thing, as most things were collectively owned. Furthermore, because in many Polynesian languages the words for "to want" and "to like" are the same thing, if you tell someone you "like their hat", they will often give it to you because you are also telling them "you want their hat".

    One more note, if the object possessed is in the plural, then just drop the initial t.
     
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  22. Sounders78

    Sounders78 Member+

    Apr 20, 2009
    Olympia
    Club:
    Seattle Sounders
    Nat'l Team:
    France

    That's all Jabberwocky to me!
     
  23. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    No, they're not. The people who turn their noses up at classical education end up being tech workers, destroying culture with their personalities.

    The inconsistencies in English are astounding. But the only grammatical terms I know and can define, I know and can define because of Schoolhouse Rock. I arrive at my noun, and try to get my adjectives unpacked before the verbs start happening.
     
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  24. dapip

    dapip Member+

    Sep 5, 2003
    South Florida
    Club:
    Millonarios Bogota
    Nat'l Team:
    Colombia
    I posted a very detailed tweet on the Leon thread, but to make it concise, the main giveaways were:

    1. The amount of money thrown into it
    2. That he's using his burner account to talk about it.
     
  25. rslfanboy

    rslfanboy Member+

    Jul 24, 2007
    Section 26
    You're right. I meant the people who arrogantly correct others, or sneer/ get upset when it is used incorrectly. Intent really does matter.
     
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