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livinginkunsan
Joined: 02 Dec 2006
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 Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 7:02 pm Post subject: Re: "The most fast land animal is the cheetah" bad |
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| Young FRANKenstein wrote: |
| The Great Toad wrote: |
but she said this sentence is wrong....
"The most fast land animal is the cheetah." |
And she would be correct. Jesus. |
+1
Toad, you are a tool |
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Privateer
Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Location: Easy Street.
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| Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 9:30 pm Post subject: Re: "The most fast land animal is the cheetah" bad |
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| The Great Toad wrote: |
Today my teacher corrected me in front of the class... I wrote comparative/superlative then showed them you can also use 'most' to much like fastest... but she said this sentence is wrong....
"The most fast land animal is the cheetah."
She had a problem with "most fast" ... admittedly a native English Portly will say fastest or slowest not most slow or most fast but I am still disappointed... still I just blew it off and did not argue with here in fromt of the class as it could not help either of us... |
If I had made a gaffe like that in class, I don't think I'd be coming on Dave's and telling everyone about it expecting sympathy!
I suppose you're thinking of English in certain contexts such as in old-fashioned prose or poetry, but you should really know better than to tell students they can get away with stuff like that! You can't expect students still at school to know when it's ok to do that and what the effect of it is. They need the basic rules. |
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Rufus
Joined: 13 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 10:13 pm Post subject: |
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I had a similar experience with this sentence "In the room is a chair."
Right or wrong? Explain. |
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Chamchiman
Joined: 24 Apr 2006
Location: Digging the Grave
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| Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 10:37 pm Post subject: Re: "The most fast land animal is the cheetah" bad |
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| The Great Toad wrote: |
| ...a native English Portly... |
Absolute classic! 
All hail the Great Toad! (This guy is easily one of the best posters on this board.) |
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lifeinkorea
Joined: 24 Jan 2009
Location: somewhere in China
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| Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 10:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| A domain of evil it is. In you must go. |
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Jammer113
Joined: 13 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 11:56 pm Post subject: |
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| In the room is a chair. |
It works for my personal grammar, but my own personal grammar has Korean, Spanish, Chinese, French, and a couple other pieces of languages mussing things up.
I'm going to say "NO" on whether or not it is correct. It is missing a subject. "In the room" is a location, and therefore can go before or after the sentence (or in the middle, theoretically, although a little weird.) But you still need a subject. In this case a dummy subject (a subject lacking any real meaning).
In the room, there is a chair.
There is a chair in the room.
There is, in the room, a chair.
My first inclination, being that this is Korea, would be that a Korean used Korean grammar rules to write the sentence, as Korean doesn't require subjects.
"방안에 의자가 있어요."
"Room-in chair exists."
Actually... writing it out, in Korean "chair" counts as a subject. |
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lifeinkorea
Joined: 24 Jan 2009
Location: somewhere in China
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| Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 2:13 am Post subject: |
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I think it has to do with emphasis.
The sentence by itself is strange. However, in context it seems more acceptable.
A: What is in the room?
B: In the room is a chair.
Notice A doesn't start the same way. It starts as we would expect, since it is initiating dialogue.
Another use of this would be to avoid the feel of repetition by simply adding something in between A and B.
A: Which room did the murder take place in and what is in the room?
B: The murder took place in a bedroom upstairs. In the room is a chair.
Emphasis is on the room, and the chair is secondary. Perhaps changing "the room" to "that room" might sound better. |
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FMPJ
Joined: 03 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 4:00 am Post subject: |
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It's totally fine. It's an example of an inverted sentence structure, with the subject (lamp) after the verb. It can be used for emphasis, information flow, rhetorical flourish, or suspense.
The last, suspense, can be seen in many Edgar Allen Poe-type sentences, like "At the outskirts of town, atop a moonlit hill, in an abandoned mansion, down a dusty hall, on a table, next to a lamp, was a human skull." In this case, the subject is "a human skull."
Now do we use this construction in common speech? Not often. But not never. |
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Rufus
Joined: 13 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 5:02 am Post subject: |
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| Rufus wrote: |
I had a similar experience with this sentence "In the room is a chair."
Right or wrong? Explain. |
This usage, while not the most common, is perfectly acceptable. In that particular lesson I showed the students three different examples on how to say the same thing. There is a chair in the room, in the room there is a chair, and " in the room is a chair" My coteacher said it was wrong. I told her she was wrong. She told me that thats what she had learned at university and her university was a top school, blah blah blah. I told her she needed to get her money back from that university |
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bobbybigfoot
Joined: 05 May 2007
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 6:44 am Post subject: |
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| Rufus wrote: |
| I told her she needed to get her money back from that university |
lol
Nice one. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 11:18 am Post subject: |
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In the room is a toad.
This toad is the most fast hopping land animal.
It is a native English portly.
Ah, but now, what hath befallen this poor toad?
It has been squashed flat
by a native Korean feline.
Poor toad. |
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Zulethe
Joined: 04 Jul 2008
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| Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 5:14 pm Post subject: |
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Face it, English is a bastard language that changes as whimsically as the seasons. And who is in charge of these changes by the way?
"What up Bra" is used commonly for many years by the boys in the hood and then suddenly Bra becomes an official word for brother.
Then you've got ebonics - another frigging joke.
So aint nobody got no rite to be dissing someone elses englisshhhee cause the way you all speak you'd been castrated in 15th century England.
So get off your high horses you Englishee speaking bastards. The bastard language you speak now will be more bastardized in the future therefore, we all know that the most bastardized language on earth is Englishee.
But you got to admit toad, you really stepped into a big one bra. |
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Tobias
Joined: 02 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 3:33 am Post subject: |
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| Zulethe wrote: |
...
So get off your high horses you Englishee speaking bastards. The bastard language you speak now will be more bastardized in the future therefore, we all know that the most bastardized language on earth is Englishee...
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*Sigh*
Sad, but true, Zu. With more speakers of English today in China than in the USA, 22nd century English will be a lot different than what we're trying to force down their throats in the here and now. Hell, we're well on the way to seeing that, and the proof can be found by watching about 60 minutes of CCTV. |
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Koveras
Joined: 09 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 5:17 am Post subject: Re: "The most fast land animal is the cheetah" bad |
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| Young FRANKenstein wrote: |
| Jesus. |
Yes? |
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Jammer113
Joined: 13 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 8:37 pm Post subject: |
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The sentence by itself is strange. However, in context it seems more acceptable.
A: What is in the room?
B: In the room is a chair. |
In A, you have a subject. "What". In B, you have no subject. English requires subjects. Can we and do we occasionally drop subjects? Yes. Is it proper English? I suppose. By definition of proper, I mean "Anything that native English speakers use in communication."
By that method, this is also proper:
"Like, I was at the house yesterday, ya'know, and I was lookin' around, ya'know, and, well, in the room, umm... anyways, there was a chair there."
While proper English, it isn't something I would teach a student. Sorry, Rufus, I agree with your co-teacher.
| Quote: |
| Face it, English is a bastard language that changes as whimsically as the seasons. And who is in charge of these changes by the way? |
Children. |
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