Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Shinae]

Hi there,

There are several questions in line for you if you are up to it (or them?).
Here they are:

1. Differences between using "someone" or "a someone"
2. Differences between using "amongst" and "among"

This is one question that is going to digress from the previous two - When you have a multiple adjectives describing a noun, I know some need to include a comma or two or don't need at all. I know the basic rules but maybe due to insufficient practices in that area, the rules did not sink in completely in my mind yet. Maybe someone can help me solidify the rules in my mind completely, if that is possible to do, or give me a great site to visiit.

THANK YOU.

[ebb]

"amongst" is literary... not used in American English (whatever that is). The Brits use it, but I don't know how much in ordinary conversation. In any case, the words are synonyms.
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"This is insolence up with which I will not put." Winston Churchill, upon reading a newspaper�s criticism of his having ended a sentence with a preposition.

"You can get more with a kind word and a gun, than with just a kind word." Al Capone.

[ebb]

there is no ordinary usage of "a someone" -- the word is already indefinite, by nature, so prefixing "a" is not correct.

However, you can say poetically "There's a certain someone waiting for me at the cafe." The bolded phrase is an idiom.. it has a romantic connotation of course. I cannot think of any other examples using the construction "a ... someone" and the above is simply idiomatic.... you could also say "that certain someone" ... "someone" is used here in a literary or poetic sense, that is not strictly grammatical (as occurs in poetic usages).
_________________
"This is insolence up with which I will not put." Winston Churchill, upon reading a newspaper�s criticism of his having ended a sentence with a preposition.

"You can get more with a kind word and a gun, than with just a kind word." Al Capone.