Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Egan_BW]

The prettiest things you can do with the english language often involve abusing or ignoring the rules a bit, so carry on. ;P
I thought what you posted looked pretty correct, but people here have good suggestions. I'll just add that if I were reading this aloud I'd put a great big dramatic pause after "break", because I like narrating needlessly dramatically.

[jocan2003]

Hmm. There's something about it that feels like it's a direct translation. As though you wrote it in French first and turned the words over to English. That's not a terrible thing but at the same time it definitely shows you're not a native speaker.

So other than the sentence itself being mostly sound on a technical level, it's "bad" English because your choice and order of words betrays that it's a French sentence that turned English I would guess?

That could be it, however, i dont remember last time i fked up the words order. And nah when i write or speak english, it comes from english thinking hell i even think in english 99% of the time, i hate french.

[chaoticag]

Well, it's more a matter of word choice over word order. Around here a lot of people say "can you open the lights?" and that sounds fine until you really think about it. But well, I can tell that Arabic is your first language if you say that even if it sounds like you're from southern california.

[Frumple]

Everyone fixed it but no one mentioned it! The second I wasn't capitalized, which is a terrible sin for anyone not living in a primarily english using area and idle hobby for many of those that do _{i swear i'm capable of (properly, even!) editing master's plus level academic papers and crap, i just don't bother going that far better than 99% of the time because not is more fun}

... other than that folks hit the high points. Wunnit particularly terrible, but somewhat unpolished, per'aps? Can't quite put my finger on it (outside what's been already mentioned, anyway), but it kinda' feels like a sentence I would see in a non-beta'd fanfic and probably pass over it paying more attention to meaning than structure. One of those things where you'd miss any mistakes on first glance because you're used to mentally autocorrecting anything off involving grammatical or whatev' hiccups. Is actually the comma overuse and uncapitalised I that does it, heh.

Not horrible, though. Not nearly horrible. I've seen horrible, and there's apostrophes in horrible where no apostrophe should ever venture. Also that ruddy space between the end of the sentence and exclamation marks or whatever. Very blatant tell the writer's more used to using a different language, that.

[scriver]

Well, it's more a matter of word choice over word order. Around here a lot of people say "can you open the lights?" and that sounds fine until you really think about it. But well, I can tell that Arabic is your first language if you say that even if it sounds like you're from southern california.

My Spanish cousins always asked me "how many years do you have?" instead of "How many years old are you?" when they were kids, because that's how age is formulated in Spanish.

[wierd]

Quantos anos tiene?

"How many years do you have?"

Yup.

[thvaz]

Quantos anos tiene?

"How many years do you have?"

Yup.

¿Quantos años tienes?

"Ano" is a completely different thing. In spanish it means "anus"

As a portuguese speaker (in portuguese, year is "ano") living in a spanish speaking country this led to some funny situations.

[Reelya]

I'll just note that the thread title should be "am I bad at ... ?" because it's a question. "I am" is a statement while "am I ... ?" is the normal order for a question.

One type of exception to that, however, is when you're mirroring a statement made to you. e.g. if someone says "you are bad at English!" then responding "I am?" or "I am bad at English, am I?" is the normal usage.

[wierd]

Quantos anos tiene?

"How many years do you have?"

Yup.

¿Quantos años tienes?

"Ano" is a completely different thing. In spanish it means "anus"

As a portuguese speaker (in portuguese, year is "ano") living in a spanish speaking country this led to some funny situations.

Yes, I am aware of the difference, just I did not want to hunt down the alt+### sequence to make an ñ.  The subject verb agreement is totally an error though.

[thvaz]

Quantos anos tiene?

"How many years do you have?"

Yup.

¿Quantos años tienes?

"Ano" is a completely different thing. In spanish it means "anus"

As a portuguese speaker (in portuguese, year is "ano") living in a spanish speaking country this led to some funny situations.

Yes, I am aware of the difference, just I did not want to hunt down the alt+### sequence to make an ñ.  The subject verb agreement is totally an error though.

In fact I was also wrong. "Quantos" is portuguese, spanish is "Cuántos" .

[Cruxador]

Of the punctuation proposed, I'm going to weigh in in favor of the period. It preserves the dramatic pacing of the sentence, which omission doesn't do, and emphasizes it a bit more even, which I think enhances the poignance. Additionally, it's not weird, which the colon is. That might be acceptable or even recommended by some manual of style somewhere, but it doesn't reflect the normal use of the language and I don't think any particular aim is achieved by changing it.

As a side note, I've noticed that French people often seek out and appreciate feedback on their use of language, and so do Spaniards and maybe Italians to a lesser degree, but speakers of Germanic languages lack the same drive and in fact tend to be pretty touchy about it. I don't know if there's any particular reason for that. Maybe because of how it's handled in schools, or some underlying cultural difference?

In fact I was also wrong. "Quantos" is portuguese, spanish is "Cuántos" .

Though to be fair, no Spanish speaker would fail to understand that.