Speedy's Cafe - General Chat about anything you like!

[Arcadia]

[Pseudonym]

Uh, have you guys seen these really disturbing Orangina ads? WTF?!

 

 

 

WWHHHHHYYYYYYYyyyyyyy....... 

[Fantasy Lover]

My eyes, MY EYES!

[Pseudonym]

Be thankful I didn't include the octopus. ;) Besides there's nothing like sharing a little trauma on a Thursday morning. :P

[Arcadia]

Gah!

[Doe]

Where is everyone?

[Arcadia]

Good question! I was teaching all morning, and now I have to get ready for tonight. But where is everyone else?

[Doe]

Good question! I was teaching all morning, and now I have to get ready for tonight. But where is everyone else?

 

Are you teacher? What are you teaching?

[Fantasy Lover]

Good question! I was teaching all morning, and now I have to get ready for tonight. But where is everyone else?

I was spending time with my dad.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

I just had a random message from one of my friends telling me that apparently I'm exactly like Meg from Disney's Hercules. So, my question is, what characters have you ever been told you're like? Or which do you see yourself as?

I had an uncle refer to me as Princess Grace Kelly a couple of times when I was dressed up fancy for a couple of family events requiring such dress. That's the closest I've come.

[Arcadia]

I just had a random message from one of my friends telling me that apparently I'm exactly like Meg from Disney's Hercules. So, my question is, what characters have you ever been told you're like? Or which do you see yourself as?

 

Someone once told me she thought I was like Meg from "A Wrinkle in Time" (which our class was reading) ... but she didn't know me that well, so I don't know how accurate that is. It may have been the same person who predicted I would become a nurse, which was soooooo never gonna happen!

[T.o.b.y]

Before Molly, the only fictional character I could see myself in was Sophie in the Anime "Howl's Moving Castle". Other people have never compared me to anybody else yet.

[Doe]

 

I was a child, they called me Heidi. )))

[Van Buren Supernova]

I have no desire to take over the world, but can I choose him?

:p

 

[Pseudonym]

Braaaaaiiiiin! I loved brain! Who will you choose to be Pinky?

[Van Buren Supernova]

ermm..... my dog? :P

[Pseudonym]

Excellent idea.

[Caya]

Speaking of taking over the world, I had to laugh when I saw this:

 

[Pseudonym]

Google is Skynet! Arrrghhh!

[Carol the Dabbler]

Different forms of nouns depending on a subject of a sentence are often found in Slavic languages.

The same is in numerals, and often when my students complain that "English is so difficult" I show them this graphic:

 

 

And if you add "second", there appears some other version of it in Polish. ;)

Aaaand back to just your average everyday insanity for a moment -- Mateos, could you tell us why there are so many forms?

 

In the languages I'm aware of, most change their numbers and other adjectives depending on whether you're talking about one thing or multiple and/or what its grammatical gender is and/or whether the thing is the subject of the sentence or object, etc.

 

Then there's Japanese, where the numbers themselves are simple enough, but must be accompanied by a word denoting the type of thing being counted -- e.g., people, small animals, flat objects, cylindrical objects, small round objects, units of time, etc. (Note that I speak only a few words of Japanese, so most of this is only hearsay.)

[Caya]

Can't speak for Slavic languages, I'm afraid, but Latin for example has four basic forms of numerals, which might also get declined (or not, depends on form and number).

 

For instance, there's unus, una, unum, meaning (cardinal) one (the forms are male, female, neuter, and they do get declined into Latin's six cases, again by gender mostly, though at least with one there's no plural for obvious reasons), and then there's primus, prima, primum, which is the (ordinal) first, again changing by gender and case, and this does have a plural too. So far so good, but then there's also semel (once, and not declined for a change) and singulus, singula, singulum (one each or a single one, declined again as per usual). Counting all the deflection, that's a decent block of words for a single numeral. :lol:

 

eta: Oh, forgot simplex, one time (as in multiplying).

[Carol the Dabbler]

But those would not all be translated as "one" or "two," as Mateo says the Polish words are.

[Caya]

I was lazy in typing it out. Say,

 

unus/una/unum

unius(x3)

uni(x3)

unum/unam/unum

une/una/unum

uno/una/uno

 

all mean "one". Just a matter of gender and case, which English doesn't do - say, unus amicus me salutat means one (male) friend greets me, while unam amicam amo means I love one (female) friend. English makes clear who acts and who doesn't by position, Latin by case (you could jumble the words and it wouldn't change anything but emphasis).

[J.P.]

Aaaand back to just your average everyday insanity for a moment -- Mateos, could you tell us why there are so many forms?

 

Hehehe… only if you tell me why there are so many ways to read the same letters in English. Or why is this:

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Quite true. That's why when some non-native speaker asks me why it's one way rather than the other, I say "because it sounds right.

 

Grammatical "rules" are, after all, merely tradition. They were never designed, they just kind of happened. So they don't necessarily make any kind of observable sense, and anyone who claims otherwise is indulging in wishful thinking.