School Days

[Victoria]

Re: School Days

Most American native English-speakers don't speak English very well. It seems I can't go a single day without hearing someone misuse "they," "them," "their," "they're," or hear someone say "less" when he should say "fewer." I won't even start with words like "ginormous."

Thanks for making me feel special, kallikak.

You're a true pal. There's not many of them in this world these days.

[kallikak]

Re: School Days

It should be: "There are not many of them..."

[kelly]

Re: School Days

Icelandic children learn English, Icelandic, and Danish in school. It's too bad the American school system is pure shit or maybe I'd know a second or third language by now like most Icelanders do.

It's not just America. I had the same two years of Indonesian lessons three times. I can say "good morning/day/afternoon/evening/night", "my name is Kelly", "that cat is white," and sing "This is the day that the Lord has made". Even if it was about simple things I couldn't have had a real conversation in it, as opposed to a conversation exercise, at the end of the last lesson, let alone now eight years later. And I was supposedly one of the best in the class.


I was going to post some of my TAFE notes, but the scanner was playing silly buggers.

[Victoria]

Re: School Days

There is both informal and formal English.

A message board is not an occasion for formal English.

There is nothing grammatically incorrect with the sentence "There's not many of them in this world these days."

Languages evolve and adapt over time. Because this kind of sentence is used so frequently, it can be considered valid English.

[Luigi12]

Re: School Days

Chem, I don't take notes. More specifically, I only take notes if I don't understand something well enough to remember it. So basically I don't take notes. I wish I could show you some notes from middle/high school though with all my stickman doodles. They were awesome.

From your notes, it looks like if you're having a keg party, rxn goes forward and there's lots of free energy.
yes I know that says Keq

I'm taking a class about object oriented programming and GUIs that I probably won't get much out of, since we're using Java and Swing. I already know Java, and Swing sucks.

I'm taking a database class where we'll use MySQL and PHP. So that's cool.

I'm taking mathematical foundations of computer science. Always nice to have a math class.

Finally, I have software engineering. Looks like it will be more of a pain than anything, but we'll see.

Oh yeah, I'm also doing an independent study in advanced data structures.

[Victoria]

Re: School Days

Notes are bad.

If you have to write it down, clearly you haven't learned the material. You should focus on having a better memory than relying on paper. That's what you're going to class for, to build up knowledge in your brain, not write shit down.

[Zokita]

Re: School Days

Languages evolve and adapt over time. Because this kind of sentence is used so frequently, it can be considered valid English.

Oh, how I wish it was not so.

I don't mind errors in spoken English so much, since most conversations are rapid-fire and it's pretty easy to confuse words that sound similar. The vast amounts of errors in written English irritate me the most.

These days, I see people using apostrophes to indicate plural nouns, like this: "The apple's fell from the tree." I hope that never becomes acceptable English.

But one thing that has become acceptable is "I could care less" being used when the person means to say "I couldn't care less". If you COULD possibly care less, it means that you care at least somewhat. If you COULD NOT care any less, then it means that you do not care at all. This mistake is so prevalent that I can count five incidents of the wrong phrase for every time I hear or see someone use the right one.

*sigh*

Then again, the grammar here is pretty decent overall, and I'm grateful for that.

[Victoria]

Re: School Days

Languages evolve and adapt over time. Because this kind of sentence is used so frequently, it can be considered valid English.

Oh, how I wish it was not so.

I don't mind errors in spoken English so much, since most conversations are rapid-fire and it's pretty easy to confuse words that sound similar. The vast amounts of errors in written English irritate me the most.

These days, I see people using apostrophes to indicate plural nouns, like this: "The apple's fell from the tree." I hope that never becomes acceptable English.

I could care less is, quite simply, not acceptable. My usage of the apostrophe was not to indicate a plural noun, but rather, to replace the word are. Much in the same way contractions evolved, this is simply a natural evolution of English.

[Zokita]

Re: School Days

Oh, I realized that. Sorry if I wasn't clear. "There" is obviously not a noun, and cannot be pluralized. "There's" looks cleaner than "There're" anyway, even if it's not correct.

Anyway, I still haven't started my Graphic Design III and PE courses yet.
(My school has two different schedules for different days. On some days I take the four academic courses, on others I take Graphics and PE) They're usually fun diversions from the academic classes.

[nindanjoe]

Re: School Days

Hey, Xizer said the same thing to me in IRC before. Unfortunately, it interrupted something important I was saying to fredrick2003.

[kallikak]

Re: School Days

There is both informal and formal English.

A message board is not an occasion for formal English.

There is nothing grammatically incorrect with the sentence "There's not many of them in this world these days."

Languages evolve and adapt over time. Because this kind of sentence is used so frequently, it can be considered valid English.

I was just being facetious, although "there's" is a contraction of "there is" ("is" is third-person singular of "to be") and "them" is plural. The corrected sentence is "There aren't many of them in this world these days." or "There are not many of them in this world these days."

It's valid enough for the Internets, (and so is saying "Internets,") but I would get points taken off for it in any class I've taken, high school or college, if I put that on a paper. "There's not many of them in this world these days." could be considered semi-valid colloquial English if you really wanted to get into semantics, but this grammar usage hasn't "evolved" towards the academic circles...yet.

Ok, enough playing Grammar Nazi for me. Time to get on with the more important things in life

[Frakkyfire]

Re: School Days

As a lover of language, I rather enjoyed the conversation about proper English grammar and semantics. *is a dork* However, my English skillzorz are not usually evident on the Internets since I usually post stuff late at night, and therefore my brain is dead and my amusement at incorrect grammar and spelling rises dramatically. When I'm writing messages on Facebook to my friends, I write sentences like 'My phone are broken, pls use teh emails or teh fayzebooks.' I KNOW the proper way of writing/saying things, but I'm too lazy to pay attention, and anyway it's very amusing to muss it up.

As for school, right now I'm taking French Vocabulary, Introduction to Writing Professional Non-Fiction, Into. to History in Art, Twentieth Century World History, and Intro. to Astronomy. Next term I will add Comparative Political Science to my courses, and swap French Vocab for French Grammar Review. So far I loooooove my classes, and my professors seem pretty cool, too.

I've also familiarized myself with the library. Want to know the very first thing I found while randomly wandering around in there? Icelandic literature and mythology. **** yeah! I've been looking for that all summer!

[Elsiar]

Re: School Days

My school doesn't start until the 23rd.

9th of octoborrrr mutha, Beat that XD

also I don't take notes
I have never in my life did so much as take notes and/or do homework
...aced every test ever save for maths XD

[kallikak]

Re: School Days

As a lover of language, I rather enjoyed the conversation about proper English grammar and semantics. *is a dork* However, my English skillzorz are not usually evident on the Internets since I usually post stuff late at night, and therefore my brain is dead and my amusement at incorrect grammar and spelling rises dramatically. When I'm writing messages on Facebook to my friends, I write sentences like 'My phone are broken, pls use teh emails or teh fayzebooks.' I KNOW the proper way of writing/saying things, but I'm too lazy to pay attention, and anyway it's very amusing to muss it up.

As for school, right now I'm taking French Vocabulary, Introduction to Writing Professional Non-Fiction, Into. to History in Art, Twentieth Century World History, and Intro. to Astronomy. Next term I will add Comparative Political Science to my courses, and swap French Vocab for French Grammar Review. So far I loooooove my classes, and my professors seem pretty cool, too.

I've also familiarized myself with the library. Want to know the very first thing I found while randomly wandering around in there? Icelandic literature and mythology. **** yeah! I've been looking for that all summer!

Nabokov purposely used incorrect Russian words and names (i.e., a masculine surname for a female) in some of his English-language novels as a means of poking fun at critics who made those kinds of mistakes.

I think 'My phone are broken, pls use teh emails or teh fayzebooks.' is not entirely different from that.

[Edgar]

Re: School Days

i learn about the movements of the Things,History,Letters,Computers ETC., Because im in 8th Grade.