English Grammar, Spelling and Vocabulary

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zaidi
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English Grammar, Spelling and Vocabulary

Post by zaidi »

Since the morning , I have been working on English. I wrote an article , imaginative story and a creative writing.
Than I corrected a paragraph that was grammatically wrong written in Mark Twain's book from the book' Practical English Handbook'. Here is the Real extract:

When I was a boy,there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi river . To be a steamboatman.We had transient ambitions of other sorts,however they were only transient. When a circus came and went,it left us all burning to become clowns,the first Negro ministrel show that ever came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life now and then we had a hope that, if we lived and were good.God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions fading out ,each in its turn. The ambition to be a steamboat man always remaining.


This is how I corrected the errors.


When I was a boy, my permanent ambition among my comrades in our village(on the west bank of Mississippi River) was to be a steam boat man. We had other ambitions however they were only transient because when a circus came we wanted to be clowns, when the Negro ministrel came to our section it left us all to try that kind of life. But then we had the hope that if we were good, God may permit us to be pirates. All these ambitions faded, each in it's turn but the ambition to be a steam boat man always remained.
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Re: English GRammar

Post by Fiona1986 »

When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi river. It was to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, however they were only transient. When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first Negro ministrel show that ever came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life. Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions fading out, each in its turn. The ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.

That's how I'd do it, personally.

Zaidi, most changes made by anyone could be debated but you've made some changes that are wrong. For example there was no need to make it "my permanent ambition" the piece is saying that all the kids in the village had the same ambition. You've added brackets around the location of the village but haven't left a space before the first bracket. Changing 'burning to become clowns" to "we wanted to become clowns" has no impact on the grammar, neither does removing "first" or "that ever" from the sentence about the minstrels. You've then started a sentence with 'but'. The word 'its' does not need an apostrophe as "it's" means "it is" or "it has" not "belonging to it".
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Re: English GRammar

Post by Katharine »

I don't know if you meant to Zaidi, but I can't see any reason for having a capital R in the word grammar.
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Re: English GRammar

Post by Lucky Star »

Mark Twain wrote in a 19th century Southern vernacular. To change his words is to remove all the charm and atmosphere from them. Doubtless one could take a modern English Grammar and "correct" Charles Dickens as well. I mean in The Old Curiosity Shop he refers to "a travelling equipage"! Whats that when it's at home? No doubt Zaidi would correct it to read "a car".
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Re: English GRammar

Post by Daisy »

While it might be an interesting exercise to take some writing from a previous era and put it into more modern language, I would take issue with calling the original "wrong" which is what you infer when you say you are 'correcting the errors' Zaidi. They aren't errors. As Lucky Star says, Mark Twain wrote in 19th century (1800s) Southern American 'every day ' or 'homely' speech. It may sound strange to our ears, but it isn't 'wrong'.
We aren't too keen on Enid's works being modified for whatever motive so why meddle with other authors' works? The best way to improve your English is to read and read and read!
Ten out of ten for your determination to improve your english, though.
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Re: English GRammar

Post by Fatty »

Katharine wrote:I don't know if you meant to Zaidi, but I can't see any reason for having a capital R in the word grammar.
Give her a break - she hasn't got to spellings yet. :D
Lucky Star wrote:[Dickens] refers to "a travelling equipage"! Whats that when it's at home? No doubt Zaidi would correct it to read "a car".
I doubt she would. Even I had no clue what that is. :?

Zaidi, editing Mark Twain is a bad idea. Besides, the unabridged Huckleberry Finn is notoriously difficult to read. You might as well try to 'correct' Shakespeare. He made some egregious literary errors, even by the standards of his day, and took certain liberties with the language, but nobody would seriously want to change what he wrote.
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Re: English GRammar

Post by Fiona1986 »

I think there's been some misunderstanding here. I thought the book Zaidi referred to had taken a piece written by Twain and inserted grammatical errors, which the reader then has to correct. I assumed Zaidi had copied the first paragraph exactly from the [English Grammar] book and then 'corrected' it. The original is available online and reads:

When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.

This differs from the way Zaidi typed it the first time.
"It's the ash! It's falling!" yelled Julian, almost startling Dick out of his wits...
"Listen to its terrible groans and creaks!" yelled Julian, almost beside himself with impatience.


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Re: English GRammar

Post by Fatty »

Fiona1986 wrote:I think there's been some misunderstanding here. I thought the book Zaidi referred to had taken a piece written by Twain and inserted grammatical errors, which the reader then has to correct.
If that's the case I feel Zaidi should set her sights a bit lower. When I was her age and in school I was expected to rewrite sentences such as "Fluttering in the breeze I saw a piece of paper" or "I have been learning English since five years". I would be completely out of my depth if confronted with a passage from Twain - both then and now.
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Re: English GRammar

Post by Daisy »

I think you may be right Fiona. I wondered where the "Practical English Handbook" came in, but when Zaidi referred to the Real extract I assumed that meant the original book. Oh the joys of our language!

This sort of reminds me of the précis exercises we used to have to do for O level English language. We had to reduce the given passage by a third and omit all the direct speech. We had start each piece with 'The writer said that....' Anyone else remember it?
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Re: English GRammar

Post by dsr »

I would hazard a guess that Zaidi wasn't doing it from choice. A school exercise, maybe?

I agree that Twain's stuff isn't the best example to follow, if only because he was quite specific that he was deliberately imitating the way the various people of the Mississippi speak. Which may not be the best vernacular to learn. Though I suspect you weren't supposed to alter any words, not if it's just a grammar exercise.

Well done for doing the answer first before asking for advice, though. Much the best way to learn.
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Re: English GRammar

Post by MJE »

     First of all, it might be pointed out that great writers are usually regarded as great for a reason, and that is that they are very good at writing - not only expressing their meaning clearly, but also lending it a certain emotion or atmosphere, when that is appropriate. That means that, even if a writer has broken rules of grammar, they are very likely doing it for a reason relating to style or atmosphere, and not because they were careless or ignorant of the rules. If you are good enough, you can probably get away with breaking almost any rule of grammar.
     So when I first read the version at the top of this thread, I took it to be the original by Twain (which I have not read), and I thought that, although it contained what I would regard as errors, we should be very cautious about presuming to correct it.
     Then I read on and found that it was probably not the original, but a deliberately changed version as an exercise in finding grammatical faults: Twain's original, as given by Fiona, did not contain the errors I thought I originally saw.

     Still, I saw one glaring error which no-one pointed out, and some of the correctors did not correct it. Someone else effectively wrote it out, though, by substantially rewriting the passage.
     It concerns this sentence in the supposed original given by Zaidi:

  We had transient ambitions of other sorts, however they were only transient.

     I'll ignore the tautology of saying "transient" twice, which is too obvious to need comment, and instead focus on the fact that this sentence contains a "comma splice" - that is, using a comma to link together clauses in a way that it can't properly do, where something stronger is needed. In other words, the comma after "sorts" is incorrect, and a semicolon, dash, or new sentence is required here. A semicolon would be best in my opinion - unless you wanted to stress the latter clause, when starting a new sentence might be appropriate. A dash might be best only if you wanted give a sense of the latter clause being unexpected somehow. (Possibly one slight stylistic fault in Enid Blyton is her tendency to use dashes as a jack-of-all-trades to link various parts of sentences together - although since I can read her effortlessly without it jarring or impeding the clarity, I can't say I find it a serious problem.)
     Just removing the comma doesn't fix it either, as someone did:

  We had transient ambitions of other sorts however they were only transient.

I would suggest that this in fact makes the error worse.
     These comma splices are all too common today, even in otherwise very educated writing. So much writing today is riddled with them that it may be irredeemable - but none of this makes it right in my opinion.
     That said, a skilled stylist may get away with using it to give a certain feeling - but it should never be regarded as correct for normal, mainstream use.

     Another point: there's nothing wrong with starting a sentence with "But" (or "And" - or even, on occasion, with "Or"). Such conjunctions are usually regarded as adding more to something preceding; but the preceding content they are adding to can quite properly be in the previous sentence. I do it all the time, and I've never seen why people regard this as a problem. (Similarly, there's nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition; and there's nothing absolutely wrong with a split infinitive, although a sentence often flows better if you avoid them, if an alternative, more natural-sounding word order can be found. But a split infinitive is far better than an awkward or clumsy word-ordering designed to eliminate it. These beliefs about non-existent errors are apparently based on a false analogy with Latin, where such structures indeed are not generally found - and even impossible in the case of the split infinitive, because infinitives in Latin are expressed by a single word - e.g., "amare" means "to love".)

     Finally, I'm sure the capital "R" in "Grammar" and the lack of a space before the (unnecessary) parenthesis were just a simple typing error.

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Re: English Grammar

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Katharine wrote:I don't know if you meant to Zaidi, but I can't see any reason for having a capital R in the word grammar.
I've corrected it now, though it could have implied that the word was said with a slight growl to indicate the frustration one might feel when grappling with the grammar of a foreign language! :)
Fatty wrote:I feel Zaidi should set her sights a bit lower. When I was her age and in school I was expected to rewrite sentences such as "Fluttering in the breeze I saw a piece of paper" or "I have been learning English since five years". I would be completely out of my depth if confronted with a passage from Twain - both then and now.
This may have been a school exercise as Dsr said, but I too would have thought a simpler, more modern passage would be of greater benefit. Over time, though, I expect the pupils tackle a variety of passages.
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Re: English Grammar

Post by Katharine »

Anita Bensoussane wrote:
Katharine wrote:I don't know if you meant to Zaidi, but I can't see any reason for having a capital R in the word grammar.
I've corrected it now, though it could have implied that the word was said with a slight growl to indicate the frustration one might feel when grappling with the grammar of a foreign language! :)
I thought it probably was just a slip of the keyboard, but thought I'd point it out just in case Zaidi thought that it should be written that way as I know she's had a problem with capitals in other posts. I think Anita's explanation is a good one. :lol:

I don't know about other languages, but certainly English grammar can be confusing even if it's a first language. I've had to explain to my 6 year old recently such points as it should be 'taught' not 'teached', 'ran' instead of 'runned' and numerous other examples.
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Re: English Grammar

Post by Fiona1986 »

Katharine wrote: I've had to explain to my 6 year old recently such points as it should be 'taught' not 'teached', 'ran' instead of 'runned' and numerous other examples.
My cousin's son who is 5, and my other cousin's son who is 3 are going through a bit of a phase where everything ending in -ed is pronounced 'ehd' rather than just 'd'. So it's "I runnehd" which is even more wrong than "I runnd" At least neither of them use the one I hate the most which is 'jamp'!! :roll:
"It's the ash! It's falling!" yelled Julian, almost startling Dick out of his wits...
"Listen to its terrible groans and creaks!" yelled Julian, almost beside himself with impatience.


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Re: English Grammar

Post by Katharine »

I don't think I've ever heard of anyone saying 'jamp', presumably it's a version of jump? My daughter came out with something last week, but I can't remember what it was. Something along the lines of 'worser'. It just shows that a child's mind is often far more logical than an adult's.
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