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Why Are People Confused About Us Calling Hair Treatments “Serums” When They Call Shampoos “Conditioners”?
They might be as confused as to why you keep calling pudding “biscuits”. Step out of your own cultural context for a minute. You do not own English, and there is no reason that the way it is used elsewhere should be understandable to you, or vice versa. If anyone had rights to the language, for thatRead more
They might be as confused as to why you keep calling pudding “biscuits”.
Step out of your own cultural context for a minute. You do not own English, and there is no reason that the way it is used elsewhere should be understandable to you, or vice versa. If anyone had rights to the language, for that matter, it sort of makes sense that it would be English people, right?
But that doesn’t really matter. English is the first language of millions of people around the globe, and the second language of maybe billions. Not only each disparate group out there using it, but actually each person within each group uses it differently. This is the nature of language–it is dynamic. It grows, evolves, regionalizes, incorporates words from other languages, and changes to meet unique cultural context.
It is not the role of English people to account to you for their use and understanding of their own language.
See lessWhy Are People Confused About Us Calling Hair Treatments “Serums” When They Call Shampoos “Conditioners”?
Most British people understand that the English and American English have drifted slightly away, so that we have different definitions of words. Now, to the British people who insists our naming is incorrect, they need to understand that our language is not the same. Please don’t try to tell me thatRead more
Most British people understand that the English and American English have drifted slightly away, so that we have different definitions of words.
Now, to the British people who insists our naming is incorrect, they need to understand that our language is not the same. Please don’t try to tell me that we speak the same language, because in all honesty we don’t. However, our languages are incredibly similar.
See lessWhy Are People Confused About Us Calling Hair Treatments “Serums” When They Call Shampoos “Conditioners”?
We aren’t, and we don’t. You are misinformed. In Britain, the word ‘biscuit’ means a hard baked cookie, like a graham cracker. Since this is the normal use of this word in the UK, we don’t automatically think of the plain scone-type baked goods for which Americans use the word ‘biscuit’. US EnglishRead more
We aren’t, and we don’t. You are misinformed.
In Britain, the word ‘biscuit’ means a hard baked cookie, like a graham cracker. Since this is the normal use of this word in the UK, we don’t automatically think of the plain scone-type baked goods for which Americans use the word ‘biscuit’. US English is a different dialect of English, and there are many words which have different meanings from U.K. English (jumper, braces, suspenders, tap etc.)
What on earth makes you think we call bread rolls ‘puddings’? In the U.K., pudding is any dessert, not just the blancmange-stuff which Americans use that word for. It is correct in the U.K. to say “I’m having apple pie for pudding.”.
See lessHow do native speakers tell I’m foreign based on my English alone?
Because non-native speakers use English differently as compared to native speakers. It’s… it’s as simple as that. I can also usually tell within the first few moments of talking to somebody on the internet whether they are from a native English-speaking country or not. They’ll use slightly differentRead more
Because non-native speakers use English differently as compared to native speakers. It’s… it’s as simple as that.
I can also usually tell within the first few moments of talking to somebody on the internet whether they are from a native English-speaking country or not. They’ll use slightly different phrasing. Use of idioms is also a dead giveaway.
I dunno. It’s usually patently obvious. This doesn’t make a non-native English speaker’s English bad by any stretch; just different.
I can also generally tell where native English speakers are from as well, at least in a general sense. Canadians tend to sound like Americans (even in writing) but spell more like the Brits. British persons obviously use British English and will use British colloquiums and the word ‘whilst’ often will pop up. Australians lean heavy on the word ‘mate’ a lot of the time. Americans use American spellings and sound like Americans.
And so on.
See lessHow do native speakers tell I’m foreign based on my English alone?
It may be little things like not using native idioms, that you would pick up from living in the UK. But, hey. That’s just a guess. Also, I don’t think I would’ve noticed you were foreign from what you wrote, if you didn’t point it out.
It may be little things like not using native idioms, that you would pick up from living in the UK.
But, hey. That’s just a guess.
Also, I don’t think I would’ve noticed you were foreign from what you wrote, if you didn’t point it out.
See lessIs this statement, “i see him last night” can be understood as “I saw him last night”?
No, ‘I see him last night’ is always incorrect and will be only just barely understandable. It is a very serious and basic error, and it will be tiring for a native speaker to converse with someone who speaks like this, because they will constantly have to be remembering what the person really meansRead more
No, ‘I see him last night’ is always incorrect and will be only just barely understandable. It is a very serious and basic error, and it will be tiring for a native speaker to converse with someone who speaks like this, because they will constantly have to be remembering what the person really means. It will not be ‘immediately obvious without thinking about it’.
Someone just asked this question recently, and I replied, saying that ‘I see him last night’ is never correct. That is exactly what i meant.
See lessIs this statement, “i see him last night” can be understood as “I saw him last night”?
Yes, I understand it. I hear a lot of this incorrect grammar from my wife. I would expect that the person that spoke this was possibly Chinese. In Chinese there are no tenses or plurals. No he or she pronouns. The context tells all. So it might have been a direct translation from Chinese.
Yes, I understand it. I hear a lot of this incorrect grammar from my wife. I would expect that the person that spoke this was possibly Chinese. In Chinese there are no tenses or plurals. No he or she pronouns. The context tells all. So it might have been a direct translation from Chinese.
See lessGoogle Analytics reads like a seismic chart lately
My clients have seen big changes the last couple of weeks, but all for the good thankfully. The “Fred” update was a biggie and it looks like some websites that have massive ads with little quality content got hit hard. I saw one post where their traffic plummeted 95% and they are virtually invisibleRead more
My clients have seen big changes the last couple of weeks, but all for the good thankfully. The “Fred” update was a biggie and it looks like some websites that have massive ads with little quality content got hit hard. I saw one post where their traffic plummeted 95% and they are virtually invisible in search now……it is times like these I am thrilled I only do white-hat work….sometimes I scratch my head and am tempted when I see competitors outrank me with crappy sites with no backlinks…but I have hope their day will come! ?
See lessWhat is a nice way to end an interview that is clearly going badly?
Well, you probably are ending things politely so I’m leaving that part out. What I have experienced and have tried to apply since it happened to me as an applicant is offering advice. Interviews are a great experience not only for getting a job but for finding your weaknesses and knowledge gaps. IfRead more
Well, you probably are ending things politely so I’m leaving that part out. What I have experienced and have tried to apply since it happened to me as an applicant is offering advice. Interviews are a great experience not only for getting a job but for finding your weaknesses and knowledge gaps.
If you are not willing to move on with the interview you can openly say it, but sugar coating that hit with some advice is a nice thing to do.
See lessWhat is a nice way to end an interview that is clearly going badly?
I’ve also ended interviews as a candidate on the phone myself. They asked a question that I didn’t’ have the answer to and I told them that I didn’t know. The next 2 questions were in that same direction, with them knowing that I’d already said I wasn’t particularly fluent in that area but they keptRead more
I’ve also ended interviews as a candidate on the phone myself. They asked a question that I didn’t’ have the answer to and I told them that I didn’t know. The next 2 questions were in that same direction, with them knowing that I’d already said I wasn’t particularly fluent in that area but they kept on. At that point I said, “Let’s just stop here. We both know that I’m not doing well answering your questions and to be honest, that you’re restating the same topic after being told that already I don’t know probably means we wouldn’t be a good fit.” Too many people forget that it’s a two-way street and they seems shocked that anyone would actually end their interview.
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