How would I write a formal email?
- Thread starter Da'an
- Start date
I teach French as a second language, and my students seem to think that I can't tell their writing from an online translator... strangely enough, online translators have a hard time translating "omg" or "b4" 
^ Yeah...translators don't always translate things properly, and when they do, it's often at a level that the student hasn't learned yet...making it kinda obvious...
I never use the translators to do my course work, but if I need to find the meaning of a word, and ye goode olde French-English dictionary isn't handy...it's a nice resource. Having taken my French final exam this morning though...I can say that I don't want to see another french verb conjugation for a while. And to think...I'm even taking the AP class next year...
I never use the translators to do my course work, but if I need to find the meaning of a word, and ye goode olde French-English dictionary isn't handy...it's a nice resource. Having taken my French final exam this morning though...I can say that I don't want to see another french verb conjugation for a while. And to think...I'm even taking the AP class next year...
Oh, I certainly don't mind if they use an online dictionary (I give them this website, in fact : http://wordreference.com/) It's just that they're lazy 
I once had a student hand in a French project and swear up and down that he had used a dictionary to get all the words...
.... the whole thing was written in Spanish
I once had a student hand in a French project and swear up and down that he had used a dictionary to get all the words....... the whole thing was written in Spanish
OK, that person deserves to fail for just being that dumb.
Oh, I certainly don't mind if they use an online dictionary (I give them this website, in fact : http://wordreference.com/) It's just that they're lazy
.... the whole thing was written in Spanish
*head-desk*
As a student, it never fails to amaze me how dumb others can be. Last year, our teacher reminded us that "Franglais" wouldn't be accepted on the exam paper, so one of the kids wrote both of his 100 word compositions in English.
Well, he didn't say that he used a French dictionary. 
Les gens semblent devenir plus stupides et plus stupides chaque année.
Les gens semblent devenir plus stupides et plus stupides chaque année.
^Oui, c'est un fait trieste.
Les gens semblent devenir plus stupides et plus stupides chaque année.
Ack! Online translator
^RJ? Never! He actually does speak some french if I'm not mistaken.
He actually does speak some french if I'm not mistaken.
^^ Er, not lately. I used BabelFish. 
^RJ? Never!
^^ Er, not lately. I used BabelFish.
Yes, I really am THAT good at telling the difference
^The only thing that stands out to me is the use of an accent on annee. Which, I believe is correct, however, most people don't know how to add accents on a keyboard. I guess I still have much to learn...
What about fishes? oxes?
When does "gooder" and "goodest" become okay?
Back to the fora/forums thing, fine, you are welcome to your opinion, but surely you agree that it borders on insane that spell check would REJECT "fora".
It's unlikely that gooder/goodest will evolve any time soon. Word evolution (like species evolution) is a function of the abundance/frequency of use. Good is used so frequently that it will evolve very slowly and is unlikely to regularize. For verbs, one used 100 times less frequently will evolve 10 times as fast (based on this fascinating study or here if you have access to Nature).
Of 177 irregular verbs in Old English, only 145 were irregular in Middle English and only 98 of them remain irregular today. The verbs that have become regularized are not used as frequently, and the ones that have remained irregular are used very frequently (the 10 most common verbs are all irregular). The next verb on the chopping block: to wed. The irregular usage of wed/wed/wed is already being replaced in some instances by the regular wed/wedded/wedded.
It's unlikely that gooder/goodest will evolve any time soon. Word evolution (like species evolution) is a function of the abundance/frequency of use. Good is used so frequently that it will evolve very slowly and is unlikely to regularize. For verbs, one used 100 times less frequently will evolve 10 times as fast (based on this fascinating study or here if you have access to Nature).
Of 177 irregular verbs in Old English, only 145 were irregular in Middle English and only 98 of them remain irregular today. The verbs that have become regularized are not used as frequently, and the ones that have remained irregular are used very frequently (the 10 most common verbs are all irregular). The next verb on the chopping block: to wed. The irregular usage of wed/wed/wed is already being replaced in some instances by the regular wed/wedded/wedded.
Awsome study, but the #1 verb, the "be" verb, is, in fact, under brutal attack.
"I be.." "You is..." "They is..."
"Ain't" is beyond common, and it is the bastardization of the "be" verb.
That may be true, but that's not the same as regularization of the present/past/past participle conjugation. I have never heard anyone use "beed" as the simple past tense rather than "was" (it's certainly not prevalent). "Is" is already an existing word, so the barrier to co-opting it for related uses should be lower than the barrier to evolving an entirely new word.
Edit: But that does raise another interesting question (to me at least). Most (or all?) of the other irregular verbs have regular conjugations for first/second/third person singular and plural. I have/you have/he has, I do/you do/she does, I say/you say/he says - nearly the same as regular verbs like I help/you help/she helps etc. Are there examples from Old/Middle English where those sort of verb conjugations also used to be more irregular (like in the Romance languages), with "to be" remaining as the last vestige of that, although in the process of changing, due to its frequent use? (I suppose you could argue that "he haves" could be the regular form too and so "to have" is also irregular in that sense.)
Edit: But that does raise another interesting question (to me at least). Most (or all?) of the other irregular verbs have regular conjugations for first/second/third person singular and plural. I have/you have/he has, I do/you do/she does, I say/you say/he says - nearly the same as regular verbs like I help/you help/she helps etc. Are there examples from Old/Middle English where those sort of verb conjugations also used to be more irregular (like in the Romance languages), with "to be" remaining as the last vestige of that, although in the process of changing, due to its frequent use? (I suppose you could argue that "he haves" could be the regular form too and so "to have" is also irregular in that sense.)
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Not sure I follow you exactly... to make up an example, are you wondering if there was something like this...in the style of I am/he is/they are...
kick/kicks/kick from...
I kick/he koke/they koken
...that what you're looking for?
Yeah, something along those lines - but more irregular and not just different suffixes. Maybe there has never been an equivalent to am/are/is in English. It seems like English used to have different verb endings for 1st/2nd/3rd person (give, givest, giveth) but they still followed a regular rule (albeit a different one from the modern rule). I just thought it would be interesting to see if conjugation within the present tense regularized more easily because existing words used for one person could be taken directly for other people (like "you is"). Maybe that wasn't the case.
