English Questions

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
MaggieMae
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Re: English Questions

Postby MaggieMae » Thu Mar 23, 2023 9:47 pm

Iversen wrote:I can't exclude the possibility that "full of troble" in some dialects simply means troublesome, but I have looked it up, and it seems that the expression comes from Job, and poor biblical Job may have been quite irritating and potentially dangerous for his surroundings who got hit with all the troubles that some evil God sent to Job to test his unwawering and unfounded beliefs - but it was not Job that caused the troubles, it was God. As I read the quote it says that any man (maybe also women, but that's not part of the statement) lives a short life full of problems, period.

That's fair, and I definitely didn't look into the biblical reference that the person was quoting. Thanks for the insight!
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Re: English Questions

Postby allf100 » Thu Apr 13, 2023 6:30 am

Hello,

Re: Shadowing a Narrator

In order to improve my English, especially the accent, I'm going to shadow the female narrator of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I'd like to imitate her accent until I feel my pronunciation is very close to hers.

Here's the link with an audio player online.
https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/34/the-adven ... chapter-1/

The reasons I choose her are as below:
- I like her voice and accent.
- I enjoy this story by Mark Twain.
- It's not very long for each chapter.
I plan to spend half an hour on shadowing her every day from today or tomorrow.

Do you think her accent is very good for me to imitate? If you have a better idea for me to improve my accent, please let me know.

Another option is I can choose a news broadcaster from VOA or the BBC to shadow, but news reports are boring to me.

Thank you very much!
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Re: English Questions

Postby Kraut » Thu Apr 13, 2023 11:08 am

Edge Browser has a large collection of English voices inbuilt. You can have them read the Mark Twain text to compare. I'd go for a more neutral accent, whether American or British English. I'd also choose texts from spoken language.
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Re: English Questions

Postby allf100 » Thu Apr 13, 2023 11:57 am

Kraut wrote:Edge Browser has a large collection of English voices inbuilt. You can have them read the Mark Twain text to compare. I'd go for a more neutral accent, whether American or British English. I'd also choose texts from spoken language.


Guten Tag! Thank you very much for your advice.
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Re: English Questions

Postby allf100 » Thu Apr 13, 2023 2:24 pm

Hello,

Re: Professional vs (Well) educated person.

e.g.1. I'm professional. (I assume it implies the person is educated, and sounds more polite.)
e.g.2. I'm well-educated. (I assume this might jar to some people who don't have a higher educational background.)

Do you think my understanding in brankets is correct?

Thank you!
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Re: English Questions

Postby iguanamon » Thu Apr 13, 2023 5:21 pm

allf100 wrote:...Re: Professional vs (Well) educated person.
e.g.1. I'm professional. (I assume it implies the person is educated, and sounds more polite.)
e.g.2. I'm well-educated. (I assume this might jar to some people who don't have a higher educational background.)
Do you think my understanding in brankets is correct?

The terms "well-educated" and professional can and do certainly cross paths together but are not equivalent.

Professional is job or career related. It can be used to refer to how someone in an employed position may relate to a client or group. Typically, behaving in a professional manner means ignoring personality and perhaps uncouth behavior from someone by maintaining a calm and cool demeanor sticking to company policy and ignoring outbursts and/or outrageous comments from someone. A "professional" sticks to business.

A well-educated person is someone who not only knows what pertains to their field of specialization but also is conversant in other disciplines such as literature; philosophy; art; and science to a certain extent.

A professional may be well-educated... or not as long as they know their profession (job) well. Being well-educated is not a prerequisite for being professional or acting in a professional manner.
A carpenter can be highly professional in his skill-set but may not be well-educated.

Being well-educated does not necessarily imply good behavior as some well-educated people may be rude, intolerant and abusive and still be well-educated.

So, a professional may be well-educated or not. Someone who is well educated may or may not be professional.

You have some mistakes in your English- you misspelled "brackets" as "brankets" which may be a typographical error. Also, you wrote your understanding between "parentheses "( )". These are brackets "[ ]". Also, I don't quite understand this "I assume this might jar to some people". Jar to some people" is not good English phrasing. "This might be jarring to some people" is better and most common in syntax. I think you mean to say that using the term "well-educated" might upset people who are not well-educated. You can use this term and (obviously depending on context) it will not offend people who are not well-educated to call someone else who is, well-educated. Hope this helps.
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Re: English Questions

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Thu Apr 13, 2023 6:02 pm

The voice you chose reading Tom Sawyer sounds suitable to me for shadowing.
Be sure you understand iguanamon's posted reply about well-educated and professional.
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Re: English Questions

Postby allf100 » Fri Apr 14, 2023 4:28 am

Hello iguanamon and MorkTheFiddle,

Thank you very much for both of your help!

iguanamon wrote:I think you mean to say that using the term "well-educated" might upset people who are not well-educated. You can use this term and (obviously depending on context) it will not offend people who are not well-educated to call someone else who is, well-educated. Hope this helps.


It's very kind of you to answer my question and correct my errors as well.

Yes, this is what I meant.

I talked to an Australian and I used 'well-educated' to refer to some people. And he switched the word 'well-educated' in my context to 'professional' and told me he was not a professional.

By intuition I realised then that my word - 'well-educated' might not be well phrased when I talked to him. Luckily he was not offended or upset by my wording because he understood I didn't intend to be rude to him.

Sorry I didn't provide with the proper context in my previous post.

MorkTheFiddle wrote:The voice you chose reading Tom Sawyer sounds suitable to me for shadowing.
Be sure you understand iguanamon's posted reply about well-educated and professional.


Thank you very much for your help. You're thoughtful. I've understood those words!

Have a great one!
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Re: English Questions

Postby allf100 » Tue May 09, 2023 5:13 am

Hello,

Re: Moby Dick by Herman Melville
(I put the whole paragraph with the link in the end of my post.)

Would someone help me with the following questions on Moby Dick, please? I'm very confused by the meaning of the paragraph Melville presents. Thank you!

Q = Question
Q1: What does "poor Paul’s tossed craft" refer to?

Q2: Would you paraphrase the following words for me, please?
And Melville indicates the window refers to his eyes and the house is his body. What does the metaphor of frost refer to?
it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier


Q3: Who is 'Old Dives'?
Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper⁠—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh!


Q4: How are the stars relevant to the story? Are they metaphors?
how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.


Q5: I've known 'Lazarus' was figure in the Bible, and was brought back to life by Jesus from my search on the Internet. What is the purpose of mentioning Lazarus here?
Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corncob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon.


Q6: I think it is very necessary for me to read through the Bible in order to understand Western literatures, classic music. Do you think so?

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/herma ... /chapter-2

It was a queer sort of place⁠—a gable-ended old house, one side palsied as it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner, where that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than ever it did about poor Paul’s tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless, is a mighty pleasant zephyr to anyone indoors, with his feet on the hob quietly toasting for bed. “In judging of that tempestuous wind called Euroclydon,” says an old writer⁠—of whose works I possess the only copy extant⁠—“it maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou lookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the outside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where the frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only glazier.” True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my mind⁠—old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are windows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn’t stop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint here and there. But it’s too late to make any improvements now. The universe is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted off a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corncob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken wrapper⁠—(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty night; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my own coals.
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Re: English Questions

Postby Dragon27 » Tue May 09, 2023 5:42 am

Q5: I've known 'Lazarus' was figure in the Bible, and was brought back to life by Jesus from my search on the Internet. What is the purpose of mentioning Lazarus here?

It's the different Lazarus.

edit:
Here's an interesting summary of this specific part of the narration:
Melville, thou reasonest well.
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