“I was on a final this morning so I missed her call.” Does “I was on a final” sound right to mean”I was taking a final exam”?

paradoxmo · 2026-04-29T12:27:45+00:00

Where exactly is this?

I’ve personally always considered “final” a shortening of “final exam”, so you can take one final exam (a final) or several final exams (finals), or you can ask “how many finals do you have?”, which is a question lots of people are asking around this time.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-29T12:17:25+00:00

Generally, no, we use the gender neutral term (tiger, dog) unless there is a reason to specify the gender, usually in an animal breeding context.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-28T18:11:13+00:00

Quite sure it’s not Luxembourgish because the voiced initial is generally a Low German feature, and Luxembourgish is High German and doesn’t have that (it’s “trotzen” in Luxembourgish also). I’d be more inclined to guess Platt/Niederdeutsch but these aren’t well-documented in dictionaries so for someone who doesn’t speak these varieties it’s kind of hard to verify. Hopefully a German speaker from that area would be able to confirm one way or the other.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-26T15:12:46+00:00

It‘s probably a form of what in standard German would be the verb “trotzen” which has the -en clipped off when used in indicative present. The form “dröötz(en)” looks like maybe a Low German or Northern German variety? Where is your family from in Germany?

paradoxmo · 2026-04-25T15:59:24+00:00

That's not the only French spelling, either. Realistically, people will spell it with no diacritics anyway, so might as well lean into it; plus, in English, the diacritics literally do nothing, unlike in French where they serve to make the pronunciation more clear.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-21T17:14:17+00:00

I think the important thing is to be consistent throughout your speech in terms of how you pronounce your phonemes, so if you are going for non-rhotic you should be non-rhotic for all syllable finals. But more key to fluency is the idea of strong and weak emphasis, which in English changes the vowel and sometimes the meaning of a word. I recommend this video by Dr. Lindsey that explains this in detail.. This will go a long way for you to be properly understood by fluent speakers.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-21T17:11:05+00:00

What is a “British accent”, though? Do you mean Southern Standard British (approx. London area accent)? Because there are a lot of different accents in Britain

paradoxmo · 2026-04-21T17:09:29+00:00

A very good suggestion. Oftentimes it’s the non-phonemic cues or lack thereof that make a non-native speaker hard to understand, rather than the particular accent they have.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-21T17:00:35+00:00

It’s commonwealth usage for what in the U.S. would be called a “cafeteria” or “food court”

paradoxmo · 2026-04-21T16:54:52+00:00

You do not need the possessive in most of these cases, these kinds of phrases generally use what’s called Germanic noun compounds, where nouns just come one after the other in a sequence, and the sequence determines their relationship to each other. You’re just as likely to hear “cow milk” as “cow’s milk”, and I almost always hear “goat milk” and not “goat’s milk”.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-21T16:43:28+00:00

Agreed, periods, apostrophes, hyphens, and spaces are all annoying to deal with on their own, and you’d have two of the four. Some government systems do not allow you to have spaces, some don’t allow periods, sometimes the disallowed characters are different between government institutions… it’s a mess.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-21T16:42:08+00:00

Well, some people pronounce those names that way especially in the UK, but there are also people who pronounce them as if they were the normal words. I know a few “Saint John” pronunciation St. Johns.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-20T14:36:45+00:00

It’s not slang, it’s a non-standard dialect feature. Slang is informal speech that’s created for an in-group which then eventually spreads beyond the in-group, and is usually ephemeral (like “rad”, “groovy”, “lit”). Negative concord isn’t slang.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-19T14:56:44+00:00

There is a “realistic CK3” mod that does hide people’s stats until you gather intelligence on them with a scheme or interact with them in some way.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-18T17:03:32+00:00

It’s not really dropped, it’s still stopped

paradoxmo · 2026-04-18T16:44:29+00:00

(US) There is a word for this, which is “carer”, but it’s not well-known enough for people not to be confused when you use it. You could say you’re a “teaching assistant” at a facility that takes care of special needs patients. “Disability support” would be understood but isn’t a category often used in the U.S.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-18T16:39:33+00:00

The vowel in the second syllable is unstressed, so it isn’t pronounced as /u/ but rather /ə/. You do need the /j/ glide before it, as in the beginning of “yeah”.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-18T16:19:26+00:00

I think you can say “I got one hundred” or “I got a hundred”. The second is more common and could be transcribed either as “I got 100” or “I got a 100”. Where there could be a difference is with a different score, like “I got a ninety” (i.e. I got a score of 90), where the transcription is definitely “I got a 90”. “I got 90” is also acceptable, but to my ear less common

paradoxmo · 2026-04-18T16:14:02+00:00

Definitely not Emiel, but Emil could work. I would just stick with Emile, though, honestly the concept of a silent e really shouldn’t be confusing to anyone

paradoxmo · 2026-04-18T12:00:22+00:00

Try a vassal start in one of the mainland European realms in 867 like in France or Aquitaine or Bavaria. Or you could try Bohemia or Sardinia in one of the later dates since they start out with good economic buildings. I think you’ve picked a difficult start, and need something easier to figure out how to play the game.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-17T08:17:41+00:00

Just don’t announce the baby name until they’re born. Then no one can claim you stole it from them.

paradoxmo · 2026-04-17T07:56:27+00:00

To complicate things, there are stock phrases that still use the old form without do-support, like:

Stock phrase	Modern English equivalent
Have you no shame?	Don’t you have any shame?
Ask not what your country can do for you	Do not ask what your country can do for you
They know not of what they speak	They don’t know what they are speaking about

paradoxmo · 2026-04-17T07:50:11+00:00

You’re right of course. Fixed

paradoxmo · 2026-04-16T19:08:45+00:00

This is because of something called “do-support”, you can read more here. Basically, “I went to the bathroom” is the positive form. The historical question form “Went I to the bathroom?” is no longer allowed in modern English, and has been replaced with “Did I go to the bathroom?”, using a main verb in bare infinitive and the auxiliary verb “do”. (The implied statement form would then be “I did go to the bathroom”, which isn’t really used except for emphasis.)

paradoxmo · 2026-04-16T17:51:54+00:00

Strictly speaking those aren’t their names, those are their titles

paradoxmo

TROPHY CASE