Mark my words!

[sister_luck]

I'm in marking hell again and as always there are a couple of language issues you might be able to help me with. (And no, I'm perfectly fine with ending sentences with prepositions, that's a non-issue for me, most of the time. Call me a sloppy teacher if you will, but I just don't care about this silly rule.)



Again, this is mostly stuff that is not quite idiomatic and I'm not sure how to fix it.

One of my students is very fond of this construction:

...it wasn't that funny evening
...it wasn't that good idea

Now I know that this does not work - it's probably easiest to tell him to switch the sentence around: the evening/idea wasn't that funny/good, but what about that good of an idea - is that possible, too?

Could you say that one hears muffled music?

Reflexive pronoun issues

I'm not sure whether the reflexive pronoun is just plain wrong here or whether it's just an added extra:

he doesn't know how he should behave himself
he steals himself out of the window

Looking up words in the dictionary:

One girl was looking for a way of saying Draufgänger in English. She got go-getter. What she actually means is a word for a guy who is fond of the ladies and likes taking risks. Any ideas what might be better?

Someone who keeps drinking lemonade the whole evening while everyone around him gets drunk, could be said to stick to lemonade, right?

Getting close to one another

(Mostly for your amusement, but a better way of saying it would be appreciated though one of them might not need fixing:)

They have each other in arms and dance wild and hot
...she tries to kiss him with her tongue
the girls kiss him left and right of his face

Also, what adjective would you use for a person who is making advances to someone? I know that she becomes obstrustive - which I guess is a misspelling of obtrusive is wrong.

And, how would you fix he is in forbidden love with an English girl?



Thanks in advance - I value and enjoy your input very much!

Comments

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

(And no, I'm perfectly fine with ending sentences with prepositions, that's a non-issue for me,

It used to bother me. I was pretty sure it was wrong to end sentences with prepositions yet I saw everybody doing it on LJ, in fictions I read, or even in blogs, so I began to think I might have been wrong about the whole thing. Now I'm just confused.

As for your questions, about the first construction

...it wasn't that funny evening
...it wasn't that good idea

but what about that good of an idea - is that possible, too?

I've seen constructions like "it wasn't that good an idea" or "it wasn't that big a deal" a lot of times.

But again shall I trust the uses I see?

[gillo]

It used to bother me. I was pretty sure it was wrong to end sentences with prepositions yet I saw everybody doing it on LJ, in fictions I read, or even in blogs, so I began to think I might have been wrong about the whole thing. Now I'm just confused.

It's an old one, that. In Latin it's very poor style to end a sentence with a proposition. So in the Victorian period, when academics like Sweet (of "Anglo-Saxon Reader fame) and his cohorts were working to make English studies respectable in universities, one way they did it was to extend and develop a prescriptive grammar, which included many Latin-style prohibitions. Split infinitives are another.

In most cases it's a matter of euphony. If it's possible to put the preposition elsewhere and still flow smoothly, fine. If not, it's better to put the preposition at the end that add extra words and phrases to extend the sentence and create a laboured sentence-structure. Churchill famously wrote "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.", where the sentence is so clearly clunky that it satirises the whole idea.

This does not help the non-native speaker who hasn't got the instinctive feel for what sounds right, I know. I'd say these days you would worry about it only in the most formal of contexts. Does that help?

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I wonder where I picked the rule, I don't think it has anyhting to do with my latin classes...probably got it from an English teacher when I was in Hghschool.

Speaking of Churchill, I heard today that about 20% of British teenagers think he's a fictional character!

[gillo]

Oh the rule was common enough in old-fashioned grammar books, of the sort used fifty or sixty years ago. If you look in any of the usage guides, though - Partridge, Fowler, Gower - you will find it rejected as an absolute rule any time since.

For example, Eric Partridge in

Usage and Abusage

(my edition is an old Penguin paperback, based on a 1957 revision!) Says "... too great a fear of putting the preposition at the end sometimes leads to even worse errors." He quotes "The late HW Fowler" thus:"it is a cherished superstition that prepositions must, in site of the ineradicable English instinct for putting them late... be kept true to their name and placed before the word they govern... The fact is that the remarkable freedom enjoyed by English in putting its prepositions late and omitting its relatives is an important element in the flexibility of the language..." (There's quite a lot more. Fowler felt pretty strongly about this. His

Modern English Usage

is still in print, regularly revised and considered a major reference in the minutiae of usage.)

Yes, apparently British teenagers are as dopy about the difference between fact and fiction as American teenagers. It's very sad.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Thanks for explaining the history of the rule - I was too lazy to write it all down and you put it so much better than I ever could.

[gillo]

I'm glad it made sense!

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, I think that's the form what I was going for, but I couldn't put it into writing.

[simonf.livejournal.com]

...it wasn't that funny evening
...it wasn't that good idea

I would go with:

It wasn't that funny an evening.
It wasn't that good an idea.

he doesn't know how he should behave himself
he steals himself out of the window
The first sentence is fine but I'm sure what the person is trying to say in the second one.

One girl was looking for a way of saying Draufgänger in English. She got go-getter. What she actually means is a word for a guy who is fond of the ladies and likes taking risks. Any ideas what might be better?


Ladies man or a casanova.


They have each other in arms and dance wild and hot
...she tries to kiss him with her tongue
the girls kiss him left and right of his face

They hold each other in their arms and dance passionately.
She tried to french kiss him.
The girls kiss him on both cheeks or the girls air kissed. Depending on whether they kissed on the face or away from the face.

Also, what adjective would you use for a person who is making advances to someone?

Forward. He was being forward. Or he was hitting on her.


And, how would you fix he is in forbidden love with an English girl?

His love for the English girl was forbidden.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Yes, casanova was my first idea, too.

The second reflexive pronoun example seems to be a variation of 'she stole out of the room quietly' - but I suppose that in English you'd have to say he stole out of his bedroom through the window for it to make any sense.

Ah, thanks for the passionately variation - that's a great way of saying it and I like forward. Interestingly, this time it's a girl who is being forward and not a guy!

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

They have each other in arms and dance wild and hot.

For some reason I think he or she is indicating gay cowboy sex with guns.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's a funny one, isn't it?

[gillo]

...it wasn't that funny evening
...it wasn't that good idea

Now I know that this does not work - it's probably easiest to tell him to switch the sentence around: the evening/idea wasn't that funny/good, but what about that good of an idea - is that possible, too?

In British English none of these work. And I'm very wary about "funny evening" in any context, because it is often used to mean "enjoyable", rather than "hilarious". It is not a synonym for "amusing" used to describe an evening.

I'd use:

It wasn't that good an idea.
It wasn't such an amusing evening.

Could you say that one hears muffled music?

Yes.

he doesn't know how he should behave himself
he steals himself out of the window

"He doesn't know how

to

behave himself" is fine. "How he should behave himself" is long-winded and clunky. The second one sounds like larceny - definitely to be avoided!

One girl was looking for a way of saying Draufgänger in English. She got go-getter. What she actually means is a word for a guy who is fond of the ladies and likes taking risks. Any ideas what might be better?

I'd suggest "a Lothario" or possibly a "ladies' man", though that lacks the risk-taking element.

They have each other in arms and dance wild and hot
...she tries to kiss him with her tongue
the girls kiss him left and right of his face

First one - using adjectives instead of adverbs is the main problem. They would "hold each other in their arms and dance wildly and hotly". But stylistically that feels like too much. "Holding each other close, they danced passionately." is simpler and clearer.

Second - she tries to "French kiss him". (Yes, the traditional English use of "French" to define anything naughty!)

The third one isn't clear. Are they both kissing him at once or air-kissing each cheek in turn? "each side of his face" would be better than "left and right", too.

"His love for the English girl is forbidden." Or, more romantically (if a little cheesy)"He felt all the power of his forbidden love for the English girl."

Hope these help.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comment - I messed up with "that good an idea" and somehow ended up with an extra 'of', probably because this is something I know from spoken language and couldn't quite put it into writing.

Thanks, for the 'behave' variation - I knew that it didn't quite work the way it was put, but couldn't figure out what was odd about it.

I know about French kissing and French letters and all that - this kind of vocabulary tends to be very memorable, but I wasn't sure whether the student's sentence might work, too.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Oh and I think the student used the word 'funny' exactly in the sense of 'enjoyable', because the person he's writing about definitely didn't enjoy the evening.

[gillo]

It's a very common mistake in non-native speakers. In very colloquial language (teen-speak, for instance) you might use the noun as an adjective - "it wasn't a fun evening", though that would be really wrong in any formal or semi-formal context. (I mark it as "wrong" in my students' writing, and don't say it myself, but they nearly all use it between themselves. The language changes and the young speak a different version!)

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

My, you're strict! My poor students are supposed to switch between registers - writing a formal essay and then as a third task they often have to do some creative task, like composing a diary entry for one of the characters and in that they often have to use informal language.

That said, I usually don't mark anything wrong that is idiomatic English, except for slang or taboo expressions in the formal part of the writing, like the 'go ape-shit' example in my reply below.

[gillo]

Yes, but I'm teaching English to intelligent native speakers, who are trying to get high grades in GCSE exams. They need to recognise that the use of a noun as an adjective is fine in colloquial speech, but risky in any examination or formal context.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

With style issues I usually just use a squiggly line to underline the offending word or phrase and then tell them not to do it again - except for real clunkers like the use of 'gonna'.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

it wasn't that good idea
Either "it wasn't that good an idea" or "it wasn't such a good idea" would be right.

Technically, you should probably say "the muffled sound of music", but "muffled music" is a more concise way of getting the same idea across.

'Draufgänger' - it depends on context and mood, really. 'Lothario' is quite old fashioned and Victorian, whereas 'Jack-the-lad' is still slightly dated, but much more earthy. Or you could say 'a real chancer' or 'a smoothie'.

'Sticking to lemonade' - exactly right.

They have each other in arms and dance wild and hot.
They hold each other in their arms and dance wild and hot. (Techically those last two words should be adverbs not adjectives, but 'wildly and hotly' sounds clumsy).

she tries to kiss him with her tongue
She tried to french-kiss him. (or 'tongue-kiss him')

the girls kiss him left and right of his face
The girls kiss him on either side of his face.

Making advances - forward or pushy if it's unwelcome, perhaps flirtatious (or flirty) if it's fun?

he is in forbidden love with an English girl?
'Ours is a forbidden love', to quote Willow Rosenberg. :-)

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Hm, I quite like 'chancer' as a description of this particular character, thanks! I suppose it is a bit colloquial for an essay, but then my students look up 'really angry' and come up with "to go ape-shit" and write it down without a second thought. They really shouldn't have allowed them to use German-English dictionaries in their exams.