Job Discussion Forums

kpjf · Joined: 18 Jan 2012 Posts: 385

Hi

Good grammar test: can you pass?

I thought my grammar was quite good...before doing this test!! But what the hell does Latin have to do with my level of English grammar? Some of these questions confused me quite a bit to be honest.

johntpartee · Joined: 02 Mar 2010 Posts: 3258

johnslat · Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 12:56 pm Post subject:

Ahem - child's play Very Happy

Quiz Completed
You scored 100%!

OK, I'll 'fess up - I guessed on two of them, the one about "my other sibling" and the one about "First or Firstly."

Regards,
John

fluffyhamster · Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 3:19 pm Post subject:

Pah, only 83% (I got last two wrong, sorta lost patience), but then I was in a bit of a rush cos painting needs doing. (Not a bad Keith Lemon impersonation, eh).

I was tempted with Q10 to go the other way, just to stick it to the 'more traditionally correct and technically perfect' BS. (Telegraph readers, gotta love 'em!).

I'll need to look up the doubtless very useful term 'gerundive mood'. Rolling Eyes

As for 'Do you see whom I see?' (answer to Q1), that may for the purposes of the quiz be the "correct" answer, but my, doesn't it sound stuffy (and in real life the speaker would probably define who(m) they were looking at e.g. Do you see that Telegraph hack inventing silly-sounding sentences to try to trip people up?).

RoscoeTX · Joined: 06 Jul 2012 Posts: 56 Location: Moscow, Russia

58%, with several guesses to boot...right in the meaty part of ignorance. This test is culturally biased!)

johnslat · Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 4:04 pm Post subject:

Dear fluffyhamster,

I tell my Transition students not to worry about the who/whom choice and that, in my opinion, the word "whom" (which is even now seldom used by most) will likely virtually disappear from the language in the not-too-distant future

"I'll need to look up the doubtless very useful term 'gerundive mood'."

Only if you're going to be speaking Latin:

"The gerundive is used to form the passive periphrastic in its sense of necessity (also called the gerundive of obligation). The gerundive plus a form of sum conveys a strong sense of obligation in the present, past, or future tenses, and in both moods:
Amandus est. He must be loved.
Amandus erat. He had to be loved.
Amandus erit. He will have to be loved.

http://people.bu.edu/tylert/Latin/gerundives.html

Regards,
John Very Happy

Sashadroogie · Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 5:06 pm Post subject:

Was this a test of grammar, or a metalanguage test? Hic!

johntpartee · Joined: 02 Mar 2010 Posts: 3258

Whadjya get?

fluffyhamster · Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 5:43 pm Post subject:

Fascinating stuff, Johnslat! Laughing

Teacher in Rome · Joined: 09 Jul 2003 Posts: 1286

TIR knows an adverb from an adjective.

But has no clue about Latin names, or whether a preposition governs a verb or a pronoun.

True to Torygraph readers, the examples have a sort of colonel-bent to them. "He had fewer / less men in this campaign." Really.

fluffyhamster · Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 8:42 pm Post subject:

Upon consulting the explanations for the answers just now, I've noticed that some corrections had had to be made to two of the questions (9 and 11):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationquestions/9990622/Good-grammar-quiz-the-answers.html
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationquestions/9998221/Even-grammarians-get-it-wrong.html

A glance in almost any halfway-decent/descriptive grammar, such as those used in ELT, would've left the author (a Nevile Gwynne) in no doubt that "Are you happy with the idea of me teaching you grammar?" is just as acceptable as "Are you happy with the idea of my teaching you grammar?". (The slightly previous version of the quiz had held that only the 'my' sentence was the correct one). F-, Nev! Twisted Evil

nomad soul · Joined: 31 Jan 2010 Posts: 11454 Location: The real world

johnslat · Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 9:32 pm Post subject:

Dear nomad soul,

I should like to see you do that. Very Happy

Regards,
John

fluffyhamster · Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2013 10:07 pm Post subject:

Nobody should like seeing others be made to suffer so!

But seriously, I doubt if anybody at the Beeb talks (presents) too much like that anymore. For example, I recall David Dimbleby being shocked, when looking back at old films of himself as a teenager, at how insufferably plummy he used to sound. It's a mercy though that he didn't go the whole Nigel Kennedy on us, eh!

fluffyhamster · Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2013 8:05 am Post subject:

(A trail of links here...) I came across the following article in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/01/gove-rules-writing-civil-servants , and was wondering if and where and how exactly I should post it. Anyway, I hadn't heard of "Gwynne's Grammar" (which Gove writes 'is a brief guide to the best writing style'), so I decided to see if it was on Amazon (UK). There it was, with a Look Inside preview, in which I noticed there was a website for the book ( http://gwynneteaching.com/ ) that looked, shall we say, a bit idiosyncratic. Then my eye fell upon Michael Rundell's (the MED Editor-in-Chief's) Amazon review, in which he'd posted a link to his fuller review on the Macmillan Dictionary Blog http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/because-i-say-so . In that review, he mentioned that this Gwynne is none other than the Neville who wrote the above 'Good grammar test'. Hence this overly-parenthetical posting of mine on this here thread.

For a review of Gove's other grammar bible (Heffer's Strictly English), see here:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2780

Edit: Some other comment on Gove's writing tips:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4968