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Author Topic: Does off of sound a bit off to you?  (Read 1769 times)

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Re: Does off of sound a bit off to you?
« Reply #30 on: March 25, 2019, 09:56:15 am »
SHL, I want to address multiple comments you posted yesterday. Please take this as friendly feedback rather than a personal attack. You got kicked out of another forum and you're annoyed, we get that. Then you went and commented on every topic that reminded you of the topic you disagreed about with people elsewhere. People see rules where there are none, people discuss small nuances in meanings, they don't understand how language works, they ask about all the unimportant stuff and you are here to tell them what is important and what is not. This is the message I got. And it made me feel like I never want to ask any language-related question here again. It probably made some people feel like never replying to a language question again. Is this what you want? From what I know about you, I'd say it's not. You're not like that.

If I'm interested to find out about a particular nuance in meaning and someone else is equally interested in explaining it to me, do you want us to worry about what you're going think about it? Have you ever looked inside an old-fashioned music box? You acquired the English language, you know the tune and don't need to worry about what's in the box. Many of us had to learn it, that's the messy work where you have to know what every single piece does. Once you've learned all the essential stuff, you have to do the fine tuning because otherwise it will never sound right. You have no idea how many little rules and word differences I had to learn to reach my current level, half of them you've probably never heard of, even though you apply them in your day-to-day life. It doesn't mean they don't exist, just because they're buried deep inside the box. Where would I have been if I'd stuck to "just focus on the essential stuff"? Please try to be open-minded. Or try being open-minded? :)
« Last Edit: March 25, 2019, 10:13:03 am by Nikola »
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Re: Does off of sound a bit off to you?
« Reply #31 on: March 25, 2019, 07:04:07 pm »
Nikola,

Thank you so much for your well-stated reply. And please, do not let me inhibit you or anyone from asking any language question you like. I`m no expert in languages, that´s for sure. My opinion, as they say in German, „ist für die Katz“, you know it`s for the cat, the birds!

I do love you box analogy. It is spot on. And you are 100% correct. It takes years and a lot of work to understand the fine nuances of words and phrases when you`re learning a foreign language and I appreciate that, and even native speakers can disagree on things a little.

I think a better teaching style, is to rank order things a bit? You know what I mean? It´s like saying „this is standard style, so it´s fit for book publication or an article in a good newspaper, but this other way of speaking is non-standard, regional, not something you publish in writing. Native speakers say it, so you can`t call it wrong. So we don`t publish it.“ That´s gives you a broader understanding of the nuances of a language. German has the authority Duden, and Duden will classify words and phrases as „technical, elevated, colloquial, saloop, regional´-sometimes specifying the region, youth-language, archaic, dated, etc)  so you kind of can classify the word? We have no such authority in English so you have no such guide. I think good English teachers tell you that.
But that´s hard to do with all the variations-BrEnglish, USEnglish, Australian English, and so on.

Actually, I didn`t get kicked off the other forums. Quora just suspended me for two weeks and now I`m back on but don`t use the site much. Italki just banned me a few times and then auto-reinstated me without me asking. That was a mystery. And that was a year ago. I was never banned from the german.stackexchange.com, and only temporarily on the english.stackexchange.com one because of a Frenchmen who went after me, I didn`t go after him. He was saying it was normal and well-understood when someone asked about that ridiculous sentence about „repaying the depths of their heightened enlightenment“ or some other dribble no one would ever say. Then he criticized me for saying I didn`t know what I was talking about?

But please, again, don`t let anything I say hold you back. You all are great people and the last thing I`d ever want to do is offend you.
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