From my Correspondent Len Loveday.
The people I taught had Indonesian University degrees and reasonable English - my task was to ready them for study in Australia.
They looked for rules, I could give few. They asked "Why?" and "How can we know" and I could only answer "It just is".
Teach, taught; reach, reached.
Fight, fought; right, righted; light, lit.
The only rule I remember from school was "I before e except after c", Yeah, right - science, conscience, weight, height, feign …..
Good luck - my fondest memory was of a young lady asking me "What is this "fuck"?", having heard it so often in American movies.
From someone else:
You think English is easy?
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture..
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out. That one reminds me of the pettiness of Richard Laidlaw, an expat Australian "activist" who writes a column in a fortnightly rag here taking to task an Indonesian for writing "lead" instead of "led" when the meaning was 100% clear. He will make a rationally indisputable mistake in English in his column one future day and guess who will pick it up! Love to see him write a column in Indonesian even after his many years here.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear..
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
Reply Forwardjohn boltonI have saved that because it brings together so many things that I have seen ...9:05 AM (1 hour ago)I have saved that because it brings together so many things that I have seen ...john bolton9:05 AM (1 hour ago)Loading...john bolton <[email protected]> 9:05 AM (1 hour ago)to L.B.Loveday
I have saved that because it brings together so many things that I have seen in bits and pieces elsewhere.
My question to my ESL teacher was. I can see little point in trying to teach grammar. I do not know it myself. I do know the common word types but when it comes to things like subjugated verbs and split infinitives, I have always been lost. I will not be able to answer any questions about why there is a particular sequence of words in a sentence, for instance.
I like to think, and so I justify my ignorance, that English has developed by adopting and adapting multitudes of languages. There were/are no all encompassing rules. That is why I have not ever understood the rules and the exceptions. They are merely descriptions of English as she is spoke. even though they became described by the early self appointed grammatists were not, and are not, as they would have wished, inscribed in stone.
I struggle with this as I do want to speak and write correctly, and I want others to follow good form as well and I become irritated by others laziness. I excuse it in myself.
I think I am happy with new and developing words, and sentence structures, ie - texting becoming language. What I don't like is social engineering through language and wrong use due to laziness or ignorance - in others.
This brings me to conclude the question that I started. If it is the case that humans communicate through language, and we are just humans communicating in a particular language, and our language is a series of conveyances of thoughts or ideas, and this comes in bursts which mean something and if we call these bursts sentences, or sub-sets, or compounds of sentences, clauses, paragraphs and so on. Is it the case that all languages that we will deal with thoughts come in such bursts and all we are talking about is the order in which the words appear in the bursts. (that was the question). To her credit she answered "I don't know."
Therefore when it comes to grammar, we don't need to talk about or teach or describe the type of words that are needed to make up a burst. We just need to point out the order in which they come. There are no universal rules of English about that and so it is just a question of learning it in each case.
The advertiser columnist Dudley Pope wrote strongly against this and said there is always a rule, there is always a grammatical explanation. There is never a need to resort to "because it sounds right" which is a statement of the ignorant. I think he is probably right about that. "I don't know."
So I resort to the defence of the ignorant, at the same time justifying it in my case for me. I have a few degrees and have read and written a lot. If it sounds right to me it is correct, or the rules should be amended to make it so.I also often deliberately ignore capitalisation. I think I could proof read for capitals properly. Instead I sometimes, but not always, use a capital, or not, when I think it fitting.
To Dudley, this is a flimsy and pathetic excuse. To complete my internal inconsistency. I agree with him.
On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 7:02 AM, L.B.Loveday <> wrote:
The people I taught had Indonesian University degrees and reasonable English - my task was to ready them for study in Australia.
They looked for rules, I could give few. They asked "Why?" and "How can we know" and I could only answer "It just is".
Teach, taught; reach, reached.
Fight, fought; right, righted; light, lit.
The only rule I remember from school was "I before e except after c", Yeah, right - science, conscience, weight, height, feign …..
Good luck - my fondest memory was of a young lady asking me "What is this "fuck"?", having heard it so often in American movies.
From someone else:
You think English is easy?
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture..
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out. That one reminds me of the pettiness of Richard Laidlaw, an expat Australian "activist" who writes a column in a fortnightly rag here taking to task an Indonesian for writing "lead" instead of "led" when the meaning was 100% clear. He will make a rationally indisputable mistake in English in his column one future day and guess who will pick it up! Love to see him write a column in Indonesian even after his many years here.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear..
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
Reply ForwardL.B.LovedayQuote: If it sounds right to me it is correct I operate pretty much on that p...9:59 AM (51 minutes ago)Quote: If it sounds right to me it is correct I operate pretty much on that p...L.B.Loveday9:59 AM (51 minutes ago)Loading...L.B.Loveday 9:59 AM (51 minutes ago)to me Quote: If it sounds right to me it is correct
I operate pretty much on that principle Also with spelling - if it looks right, it almost certainly is.
But that is because we have read millions of words, sentences, articles, books, newspapers at greatly varying levels of literacy - Shakespeare to Snoop Dogg, HCA judgements to Hanson-Young's "logic", comics to The Pilgrim's Progress. Unlike your students.
Bhutani Australians.
Writing this now to record my first contacts while fresh in my memory and naive.
I was at my TAFE, learn to be a voluntary tutor of English as second language, course today. This week they introduced us to about 14 students who were reasonably good English speakers and went one on one with a few. One person I met was a Bhutanese young, married woman. It was ten minutes with each person so obviously things were limited. I learned a little about her, her aspirations and her family, husband, children, work and so on.
The TAFE campus is in Rundle Mall, the old Cox Foys building. You may not be surprised that I tend to ask more questions than most. There is the option of an internet course which any participant can choose. I prefer the interaction, it is how I work best and I like to hear what others ask as well as the answers. The Socratic method.
Because it is at the Mall the best way for me to travel, and not worry about traffic, or parking, is by train. Plus I do my homework on the train.
On the way home I heard a chap asking people for directions. I did the normal thing and ignored what was going on. As the passengers diminished this coffee coloured guy approached me and asked me if it was the train for Gawler. He said he had only been in Australia for 14 days and was having difficulty with English. He was, in my instant opinion, honest, forthright and genuine.
He gave me a handwritten note with the name of a person on it (Carole) and a phone number and was not so easy to understand about saying this person had called him to say that she had papers for him to pick up.
To cut a long story not so short. He was 29 years old, married with two children and had arrived in Adelaide 14 days prior from Bhutan. He had been living in Nepal having escaped with his mother when he was 1 year old and living in a rattan/bamboo hut. He was a legitimate immigrant with his wife and two children, 9 years old and 1 year old. His one year old son had been scalded by hot water, neither his wife, nor he, knew how to use any modern kitchen appliances at all and somehow the child had been burned. He had been released from hospital that day and on the way home from hospital on the train his wife had left her purse containing all documents on the train. They had received a phone call from Gawler Police to say it had been handed in. He was going to collect it. Did not know where Gawler was and did not know where police station was. Was surprised that he would ever recover a lost wallet and money. He told me it would never get back to him in Nepal. And he was worried about seeing the police as his last experience was in Nepal when they just came up to him in the street and took money out of his top pocket.
Rotary at Work. I told him to get off with me at Old Gawler station and drove him up to the police station where Carole Gailee, women police officer who I happened to know as her child had been in same class as one of my boys. Gave him back his wifes wallet. He could barely believe that there was no bribe to be given. I explained that Police here, are helpers, at the most basic level, and he would not normally expect to be either robbed or beaten up by them.
I took him to the farm, let him give the lamb its bottle of milk, let him help me collect the eggs, which I gave him for family, picked a few lemons from the tree, gave him a cup of tea, took him to Leon’s to collect the scraps for the chooks and took him back home. Poor fellow is very intelligent and so tired, but so realistically enthusiastic to do well. He saw the sat/nav and I reckon it is a bit like I would be if Captain Kirk and Scotty beamed me up. I would believe it. I would know it was possible, I would want to know how it all worked.
He invited me in to his home. His mum was there, He told me that she would want to give me a cup of tea as that was a traditional welcome for guests.
In my ignorance making him a cup of tea at Gawler had been exactly the right thing.
Little things please little minds. It was a great day for me.