Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[missdaredevil]

1.
You are just like him, even though you are "manly".

You are just like him even though you are "manly".

Which one of above is correct?

2.
Chinese is the second hardest language to learn.


3.
What is that?
not suffer fools gladly

4
What is the kind of leave that's for people can't be at work or school because they have other important personal things to do?

Thanks

[CP]

1. I guess I'd choose the one with the comma. And put the period inside the double quotation marks. Thank you.

2. Well, it is the hardest for me to learn. What could be harder than Chinese?

3. "To suffer" means "to put up with, to tolerate." Some people are not so patient with fools, not so happy to put up with fools. They are said not to suffer fools gladly.

4. Leave of absence? Compassionate leave? Personal leave? Maternity leave? Somehow I think there's one more kind of leave that I can't think of. . . .
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[missdaredevil]

[CP]

1. Sorry to be so cryptic. I just meant that I would put the period / full stop inside the closing double quotation marks. That is the convention in the U.S.A., even if not always logical. So, your sentence no. 1 would be written:

You are just like him, even though you are "manly."

2. Yes, that sentence is fine. And, yes, Russian probably is harder than Chinese. I believe Polish is harder than Russian, come to think of it.

3. Yes, it can be used in a sentence. The problem is that it has been used in too many sentences already. Practically no one can die without someone saying, "He didn't suffer fools gladly." That's the sentence. Paul McCartney said it about George Harrison, for example.

It is supposed to be a compliment, I guess, implying that the person was smart and didn't put up with foolish people. But tolerance of the foolish is sometimes the mark of a great person. If the departed person didn't suffer fools gladly, was he too impatient with people a little less privileged than he? Did he sneer at anyone whose IQ did not match his? Was everyone a fool to him, so he was mean to everyone?

You also hear / read it as, "He did not suffer fools lightly." It has its roots in the Bible, II Corinthians 11:19, where St. Paul said of the Corinthians, "For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise." He was not saying that the Corinthians are wise, but implying that they are not wise. Hence, only the unwise would suffer fools gladly.

4. "Leave," in these constructions, means or implies "permission." You can say, "by your leave" instead of "with your permission," if you like. In the military, being AWOL, short for "absent without leave," means that the soldier is missing from his assigned place without permission.

A leave of absence is permission to be absent and also the absence itself. "He is not at work this week; he is on / he has a leave of absence to attend a funeral."

My question marks indicated that I wasn't sure which, if any, of those terms might be what you are looking for. A compassionate leave is a leave of absence granted out of compassion for the person who needs the time off.

Personal leave is a leave of absence to attend to personal business.

Maternity leave is a leave of absence to give birth. This one is good, I think, because it is inconvenient to give birth at work.

There is also administrative leave -- the boss makes the worker stay at home until the investigation is completed, although the worker is still paid.
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb