English thread. Why not?

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Ravick
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English thread. Why not?

Post by Ravick »

Well, despite this being an English forum, there are many members that are not native English speakers. And it is a common thing to see English mistakes in mods and posts (mines...), or even seem phrases in mods that are ok grammatically but was construct in a very unusual/unnatural/unrealistic manner. So, why not a thread about expressions, slangs, syntax, common/colloquial ways of saying something in English?

___

Well, for a start, I'm having problems in naming a kind of 'floor door' for a map I'm working on. It is a ship, that is suposed to look 'more or less' just like a La Fayette frigate:
Spoiler:
As in the image, it has some kind of cannon in the front deck. But, in the map,it is storage at the inner floor of the ship. And, when needed, a big 'door' in the deck's floor should open so it can raise the cannon outside the ship. Well, how would it be a good name for this 'door' at the door? Hatch? Hatchway? Trap Door? Scuttle? Bibb? I rly don't know the right word for this. o.õ
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Reactor »

I think a simple "trapdoor" will do it, but "hatch" is also a fine choice. A pod hatch maybe, after all, it is a gun pod.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Ravick »

Reactor wrote:gun pod.
Another expression I didn't know!

Thank you, Reactor! :)
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by NeuralStunner »

"I before E, except after C, unless [disturbingly long list of exceptions]..."

English is a mangled mess held together by tape, and I really don't blame non-native speakers for having problems with it. (Amusingly, a lot of you have better English than many of the people who grew up in the US.)

As for me, a common problem I run into is when I drop unusual words casually. I really don't do it to be conceited, I just read a lot of books (mostly older ones) during my early life. A lot of vocabulary stuck and, unfortunately, not much that's actually useful.* :P


* To paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, a person's mind is a lot like a warehouse: Put too much junk in, and there's not a lot of room for anything else. For example, the fact that I remember that metaphor. :v
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Trance »

Gun pods are add-on attachments to things that didn't already have guns. They're more like part of an ordnance loadout than a built-in component of a military craft. Helicopters and some fighter aircraft typically fit them when needed.

That gun there is part of that ship's original design, and isn't easy to remove or replace. It's called a gun turret.

As for the name of the door that lets the turret be raised or lowered, either "door" or "hatch" would be acceptable enough terms I think. It's not a design I've ever seen on a real ship, so your guess is as good as mine. The only thing I've heard about which has any similarity would be a disappearing gun mounting, but those were extremely rare in anything but a coastal defense context, since those mountings added a lot of weight and complexity to the gun systems.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Rachael »

NeuralStunner wrote:English is a mangled mess held together by tape, and I really don't blame non-native speakers for having problems with it. (Amusingly, a lot of you have better English than many of the people who grew up in the US.)

As for me, a common problem I run into is when I drop unusual words casually. I really don't do it to be conceited, I just read a lot of books (mostly older ones) during my early life. A lot of vocabulary stuck and, unfortunately, not much that's actually useful.* :P
English is a very old language, existing at least for 3 half millenia, though it's certainly not the oldest European language by far.

I would hate to use a coveted source port project (GZDoom) as an analogy, but unfortunately it kinda fits - the longer something exists, the bigger and harder it becomes to manage.

I, too, do not use big words to try and sound conceited. But I try not to be bothered when people see it that way - people judge you for completely random shit all the time and if they have a big problem with that, there's plenty other far more reasonable people you can deal with, instead. So I'll use my vocabulary - especially in instances where an unusual word conveys a feeling in a sentence more than an actual meaning.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by insightguy »

Rachael wrote:
NeuralStunner wrote:English is a mangled mess held together by tape, and I really don't blame non-native speakers for having problems with it. (Amusingly, a lot of you have better English than many of the people who grew up in the US.)

As for me, a common problem I run into is when I drop unusual words casually. I really don't do it to be conceited, I just read a lot of books (mostly older ones) during my early life. A lot of vocabulary stuck and, unfortunately, not much that's actually useful.* :P
English is a very old language, existing at least for 3 half millenia, though it's certainly not the oldest European language by far.

I would hate to use a coveted source port project (GZDoom) as an analogy, but unfortunately it kinda fits - the longer something exists, the bigger and harder it becomes to manage.

I, too, do not use big words to try and sound conceited. But I try not to be bothered when people see it that way - people judge you for completely random shit all the time and if they have a big problem with that, there's plenty other far more reasonable people you can deal with, instead. So I'll use my vocabulary - especially in instances where an unusual word conveys a feeling in a sentence more than an actual meaning.

You think English is bad enough, check out mainland Chinese:
Spoiler: The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den
Spoiler: How it's translated in english
Spoiler: and how you recite it
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by kodi »

The English equivalent ought to be
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.
or with punctuation:
James, while John had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Graf Zahl »

insightguy wrote:
Spoiler: and how you recite it
So that is why Chinese sounds like gibberish to the average European... :mrgreen:
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Reactor »

Well...Arabic is no simpler either :) So many glyphs to understand, dag-nabbit. But hell, humanity messed up its ways at Tower of Babel back then, unjamming it is extremely hard for common people. Sometimes I think about God gave only 70-80 years of lifetime for people because otherwise we would learn and know everything, thus, become gods ourselves.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by NeuralStunner »

Graf Zahl wrote:So that is why Chinese sounds like gibberish to the average European... :mrgreen:
This goes way back, too. The word "barbarian" arose from the Greek sentiment that foreign languages all sound like "bar bar bar bar" to them.*

I've heard from a few places that German is pretty horrible... but if I ever manage to learn a language for fun I'd still like it to be German.


* You know how I said I've picked up a lot of useless trivia? :b
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by ibm5155 »

heh, german is the language from the mad people (they all sounds like if they were in a fight Õ-o)
two things that are strange for me is the difference between "to" and "for" (I heard from sometime they are all the same and you just use the one sounds right in the sentence) and how the hell do I know do I know the sound of 'I' in every given word, like window and little has the letter i with the sound of 'E' while bike and might has the sound of 'I'
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Reactor »

German, as it is, is far less complicated than Chinese IMHO. Its vocabulary is rather easy. What really brought my piss to a boil was the dumb "der-die-das" stuff at the beginning of each word. Uh, same goes for French. And there is absolutely no logic in this shit whatsoever. What makes a table's gender male, but the word for "little girl" is neither male or female? Whoever came up with this was a complete and utter asshole, that's for sure.
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Graf Zahl »

I think you will find insanities like that in every language. For example, who came up with the insane pronounciation of English where most words do not even match the letters they contain!
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Re: English thread. Why not?

Post by Rachael »

Most "silent letters" are used in loanwords from the French language, which despite English's Germanic origins, has had a huge influence on it.

In fact, arguably, English is a merging of French, German, and some bits of Latin (like every European language), with its own crap added to it.
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