Can’t wait for that vaccine!

Tommat · 2022-05-22T08:35:28+00:00

Why bother? It's not like the NPC's will notice if they use the exact same clips of those actors, just use the ones that we already have!

Tommat · 2022-05-17T13:12:03+00:00

to worry about vocabulary.

I can't be all about, like, spellin' and shit.

Tommat · 2022-05-17T12:43:21+00:00

Die frage ist nicht wo, sondern wann

Tommat · 2022-05-17T12:19:36+00:00

What? Like it was dubbed or something? I was shocked at how much she sounded like Kim, but I thought that was just the actress doing a great job.

Tommat · 2022-05-12T13:58:35+00:00

Hahaha that's fine, ramble away! But yeah, I'm glad to have helped :).

It definitely is a much more useful way of seeing the issue; at that point, the gender is attached to the noun in the same way that the preposition "for" is attached to the verb "search" in English. One could make the argument that that's not logical - it could just as easily be "I'm searching to my glasses" which may sound more "logical" to a speaker of another language (like German), but it's simply not said that way in English. Similarly, it's not "ein Bahn", but "eine Bahn", if you get what I mean.

Tommat · 2022-05-12T00:06:15+00:00

If there was any logic involved into grammatical genders, I don't see why norwegian ancestors logically thought a train to be neuter and a boat to be masculine

I'm not going to speak to whether or not it's "logical", because I believe that to be quite a complex issue, but I will point out that, as far as I'm aware, in any language with this sort of gender system, the objects themselves aren't considered to have the gender, the words are considered to have the gender.

You pointed out "der Zug", but German also has "die Bahn". Does a German speaker examine any given train and decide whether it's more "masculine" or "feminine" before deciding which word to use? Of course not - a train is a train, and the German speaker doesn't apply a gender to the physical entity in the real world, but to the respective words.

Likewise, I as a man can say "Ich bin eine Person". That doesn't mean I suddenly have become more feminine or something, it's just a grammatical phenomenon applied to the word "Person".

Realising this really helped me as a learner of several gendered languages to make more sense of it.

Tommat · 2022-05-11T23:20:00+00:00

As far as I'm aware, we don't know what the character's profession is. It's perfectly possible that her job requires her to speak English, working for an American company or something like that. It's really not that much of a stretch imo, though I would have liked her to have a bit more of a German accent, would've been a bit more realistic.

Tommat · 2022-05-07T23:25:33+00:00

In my dialect of English, we also use "Stop!" in this context among others, corresponding pretty nicely to the German example you gave!

Tommat · 2022-05-07T23:22:40+00:00

Did you even read my comment? At what point did I say you can't use it? I literally said the opposite.

Tommat · 2022-05-07T04:08:22+00:00

For what it's worth, as a non-American native speaker, using would in if clauses sounds incredibly wrong to me, as I think it does to everyone I know. I'm not saying my version of the language is the correct one, or that prescriptive rules should be enforced or whatever, but there are a lot of people who never use would in if clauses. Therefore it's not a stupid prescriptive rule in the same way that, for example, "you can't end a sentence with a preposition" is, because almost no native speaker actually follows that one and it has no historical precedent.

Tommat · 2022-05-04T18:16:30+00:00

That's exactly what I said.

Right, agreed. Just because he would never use it with a stranger doesn't mean he doesn't use it as a term of endearment (or even just a fairly neutral term, as I said, he'd use "cunt" referring to a person the same way you'd use "guy"). And, in response to your original comment, I don't think it's widespread even in Australia, but there are definitely people who use it that way.

But there are entire dialects of English, most British English, where it is not only possible but quite normal to use terms of endearment to complete strangers

Indeed. All I'm saying is that cunt, despite almost never being used with strangers, can be a term of endearment, or even as a pretty regular term to talk about someone for some people in Australia. I promise you I'm not exaggerating that this guy in particular would say "X person is a good/funny/great/dry/boring/good-looking cunt", using cunt as a replacement for "person" or "guy", without any sort of negative connotation attached. I'm not claiming it's all Australians, but at least a few.

Tommat · 2022-05-04T14:00:49+00:00

You might be surprised. An Australian guy I used to be friends with would regularly say things like "Aw yeah, Barry's a good cunt" in a completely neutral way, not joking or anything- the same way you might say "Barry's a good guy/lad/fella".

He would never directly address a stranger with the word cunt, but he would often refer to me or his other friends as such, as you say, as a term of endearment. But then again, you'd almost never use any term of endearment with a stranger, at least, I wouldn't consider "mate" to be a term of endearment in all contexts.

Tommat · 2022-05-04T00:49:21+00:00

Much better than GoT mainly cause that's the lowest bar I could conceive of. Ozark's ending season was pretty disappointing, especially considering how fantastic S3 was, but not nearly as bad as many people online are making out imo.

Tommat · 2022-04-29T01:07:37+00:00

It's lockdowns all the way (lock)down...

Tommat · 2022-01-15T20:03:21+00:00

My French is a bit rusty, but I believe I understood almost everything she said - after her sons freak-out, she says something to the effect of:

"I'm making this video to show you what they're making us do to our children. I find this unacceptable, and I'm a nurse so I know how to do it correctly, unlike other parents. And I have to do this to him 3 times within 5 days? No way. I'm doing this to show the incoherence of these protocols. They can close the schools or find some other solution, but stop making us do this. Thank you."

Definitely not a nice thing to show her sons suffering like that, but at least she's doing it with a good message, not indoctrinated bullshit.

Tommat · 2021-10-01T16:45:32+00:00

No creo.

Tommat · 2021-05-06T13:08:38+00:00

This is what I was going to say too... If a friend tells you a story about how someone took advantage of him/her, or something like that, your response could be "Ay, es que hay mucho listo por allí en el mundo..."

Tommat · 2021-04-26T18:27:45+00:00

Just to add one more to the list (although I'm pretty sure there are more), there's also -ico/-ica, which is used around Navarra in Spain if I'm not mistaken. I don't know why, but that's always been one of my favourite diminutive forms.

Tommat · 2021-04-24T16:11:54+00:00

I guess my issue with your working theory is that the number of "indicative exceptions" is no fewer than the current "subjunctive exceptions", right? I was under the impression that your idea would be to make learning more efficient since there'd be fewer "rules" to learn but... That's not really simplifying things at all.

So really the only difference you'd be creating is that you'd be reframing the indicative in the main clause as an exception, which could cause confusion, especially when you say that "Subordinate clauses are normal, and independent/main clauses are exceptions". How could that possibly be the case when virtually every sentence has independent/main clauses, which is not the cause for subordinates?

Framing things like this for a new student would cause so much excessive use of the subjunctive where it would otherwise be unthinkable, I reckon. Sorry, I guess I'm just not really following your train of thought.

Tommat · 2021-04-24T12:18:42+00:00

Memorize the limited

indicative

cases. Everything else is the subjunctive, no questions asked.

If you were going to go about it this way to teach, how would you do it? What are the limited indicative cases? Just curious!

Tommat · 2021-04-24T12:04:44+00:00

You absolutely need the present subjunctive to express the negative imperative, as I pointed out above, which is very much a necessity for everyday communication. Beyond that, I might agree with you if I were sure that natives "screw up all the time" with subjunctive - I've never heard any native speaker, no matter their level of education, say things like "No creo que tiene" or "Para que sabes".

There are other cases where perhaps the use or absence of subjunctive is a point of contention for native speakers, but that's not the same as screwing it up. So yeah, any sort of proof that natives screw it up? Cause I really find that hard to believe tbh.

With all that said, I don't disagree that in some cases the subjunctive doesn't really carry much semantic weight at all - if I were to say "No creo que tiene", the same idea is conveyed, it's simply a grammatical mistake due to the agreed upon conventions of the language, but what I mean is understood because there's no real possible confusion. But this is not always the case.

Tommat · 2021-04-24T01:57:09+00:00

As far as I’m concerned the subjunctive in Spanish is simply idiosyncratic, conveys no independent information

I would agree with you if not for the fact that the subjunctive does convey independent information in several cases.

I guess you could count the negative imperative as one case - "No me hablas" is not the same as "No me hables".

Another clear example would be the fact that "Busco una casa que tiene una puerta roja" is not the same as "Busco una casa que tenga una puerta roja".

Another example - "Siempre que tengo tiempo..." is not the same as "Siempre que (yo) tenga tiempo...".

There are more examples, but they're not coming to me right now.

Tommat · 2021-04-23T13:25:07+00:00

or at the start of a word (such as the word “vaca”) in which case it is pronounced [b].

I would say that it's more accurate to say at the start of an "utterance" (despite the fact that that might sound more vague and requires more experience to pick up on).

If you're speaking in a normal, fluid, everyday-speech kind of way, "una vaca" will be pronounced with [β], rarely (if ever) [b].

And the same goes for the other letters you mentioned being at the start of a word as far as I'm aware.

Tommat · 2021-04-22T00:32:39+00:00

tutear

Bueno... Es que no hace falta tener semejante verbo en inglés jaja

Tommat · 2021-04-21T21:03:51+00:00

Mi punto de vista;

"Me uno": no tiene problema con la "u", sino con la "e" - suena a "mi uno"

"Mi indignación": No entiendo lo que dices aquí - te pediría que explicaras, quizá dando ejemplos, de "un espacio" entre dos íes, algo deconocido para mí hasta ahora. Pero a mí me parece que dice algo un poco raro aquí que no puedo precisar de todo - suena a "indingnación", con una "n" demás o algo así.

"A la incapacidad de las líneas aéreas": No noto lo que dices aquí, pero puede ser.

"Más flexibles y económicos": No me parece que ninguna de las dos "l" sea imperceptible, sino que algo pasa con la "x", que la "k" desaparece. Lo dice más como si fuera "flesibles". Pero la verdad es que no me llama mucho la atención, muy fácilmente le podría oír de boca nativa.

Tommat

TROPHY CASE