#practise english everyday

[homunculus-argument]

I don’t think native english-speakers in non-european countries really grasp how everyday needing to speak a second or a third language is in Europe. Languages are a school subject as much as biology and math, nobody really just goes out of their way to independently decide “hmm, I must learn a second language” and just goes on to download duolingo and be self-taught in spanish (okay, some people do, but that’s not the usual and standard way that people learn). The town I live in is historically bilingual - used to be majority swedish-speakers but now it’s about 50-50 as far as I know, and a generation ago you couldn’t really get by without speaking both. The books at the local library are mixed into the shelves, finnish and swedish ones on the same shelves, and sometimes there’s no copy of some book in both languages because it’s assumed that everyone speaks both on a passable level, at least enough to understand a book they really want to read.

 I’ve had natively swedish-speaking schoolmates in nursing school who have struggled to write essays in finnish because despite of being fluently bilingual in speech, their whole education until this point has been in swedish, and they’ve never really needed to write proper written finnish - which is a distinct different type of finnish than spoken finnish.

 The only native finns under 30 that I know that personally say they don’t speak any other language than finnish usually mean that they understand swedish and english badly, and aren’t confident in speaking it. Usually someone only speaking finnish is a clue that they’ve got some language-related learning disability. “I don’t speak english” is a similar statement as “I can’t do math”. There’s a problem of young chronically online finns losing vocabulary in finnish because they use english so much online that they’re not as practised in their native language.

 I didn’t go out of my way to become a polyglot who Speaks Six Languages, I picked french, russian and spanish in school because languages were easier for me than STEM subjects, and I’ve already forgotten most of what I learned. If I were to go out of my way to decide to start learning a non-germanic, non-latin language now, without school, I’d have no idea where to start nor would I ever become fluent in them. As a matter of fact, all I know how to say in any other ones than finnish, swedish or english are “I don’t speak [language] very well, I only understand it poorly.” It’s a school subject I learned and have forgotten most about.

[badass-queer-couples-battle]

Simple question- who's your favourite badass couple? Propaganda under the cut, there's a lot of it this time!

Propaganda for Cecilos: "Canonly gay as hell since episode 1 of WTNV. Cecil also won tumblr sexy man, and has been a huge part of Tumblr's history since days of old. As for Carlos... He's a scientist. Scientists are hot and get into trouble way too often."

Propaganda for Barnaby x Kotetsu: "Ugh, they're so GOOD. they've got battle couple. they've got coworkers. They've got silly nicknames for each other. they brought light into each other's life!! the single parent trope!! superheroes!! swearing to be partners forever!!! almost died in each other's arms!!!!!! THEY'VE GOT EVERYTHING they are also supposed to be canon, they're literally listed as each other "partner" in the family section in their respective wikis!!!! It's not like, explicitly canon, but it technically is :D"

"It's not Canon because the statement from the production team is its up to the viewers to decided but the team see them as romantic partners

These two goofballs are my fave right now

Rivals to lovers arc

Red and green colour scheme

They share the same power

They are work partners who hate eachother but then come to love eachother

They literally put their life on the line together

Kotetsu ran out of the hospital still bleeding to give Barnaby a grenade to help him win

Have cute nicknames for eachother (Bunny/ lil bunny and old man)

They constantly fight over the goofiest things

Kotetsu almost died in Barnaby's arms

Barnaby admitted to be practising Kotetsu's favourite food so he can cook it for him

Kotetsu tells him that he has such long eyelashes in return

Barnaby quits hero work when kotetsu retires and joins it again when Kotetsu takes it up

The entirety of the second movie (look, the way Barnaby's VA (ive only watched it in english) says Kotetsu)

The two are called the best buddy duo and the first

The Fugan and Mugab fight when Kotetsu trusts that Barnaby has a plan when everyone else believes that he is in a blind rage because Kotetsu was injured

The manga makes them even more like a married couple then the second season

They are both superheroes and are the first partner duo at first They hate eachother but they come to like eachother (Barnaby adopts Kotetsu's morals)

This is more why they are a couple then why they are a battle couple sorry bout that

They fight crime together everyday for their jobs

They have taken down members of the terrorist group Ouroboros together and help eachither back up

The suit swap

Barnaby hysterically crying in the end episode

But they fight crime together"

#bqcb round 1 #tiger and bunny #wtnv #cecilos #carlos the scientist #cecil wtnv #barnaby brooks jr #kotetsu t. kaburagi #barnaby x kotetsu #tiger & bunny #carlos dave robles #(Carlos' full name according to one of the recent eps) #welcome to night vale

[pompomoo]

This talk is about the Japanese version of Bartimaeus. It also includes elements of BartNat.

The Japanese language has three main types of first person used (in detail, there are more than fifty types). The most commonly used first person is "watashi". In situations where "I" is directly translated, "watashi" is mainly used. Both men and women often use this in formal situations. In everyday life, it is mainly used as the first person by women. When used by men outside formal occasions, it gives a very gentlemanly impression. Government ministers and Faquarl use this. Because of this, I have a rather intelligent image of Faquarl. Nathaniel also uses this first person when he acts as a Mandrake.

Next, "boku". This is the first person used by boys. It is a little childish and cute. When used by adult men, it can give a friendly impression to others. Nathaniel and Ptolemy use this first person. As mentioned above, Nathaniel uses "watashi" when he acts as a Mandrake, but in front of Bartimaeus, he reverts back to "boku". Nathaniel was also back to "boku" in the BartNat bickering scene in PG. It's cute.

The last one is "ore". It is the first person used most by men in real life. "Boku" is sometimes used in formal situations, whereas "ore" is rarely used. It is quite frank and masculine. It is used as the first person of Bartimaeus. And Jabor.

So Bart and Nat have different first person. This is one of my favorite features of the Japanese version.

By the way, Kitty uses "atashi". It is a derivative of "watashi" and gives the impression of being strong-willed. Ascobol also uses this.

I discover many things every day when I compare the original version with the Japanese version. Maybe because it's a children's book, Bartimaeus and Nathaniel are often phrased a little younger in the Japanese version. The original feels smarter. I love them both. I also find some lines that are only available in the Japanese version, which I would like to compile eventually. I would like to know so badly how BartNat is changing in each country's translation. I have recently been practising reading English without a translator, but I still find it difficult to produce sentences. If you find anything wrong with my English, please don't hesitate to let me know for study purposes. Thank you.

#bartimaeus #bartnat

[leviiackrman]

WHAT DOES YOUR SOLE LOOK LIKE & TYPES OF CANNIBALISM;

I was tagged by @faerune @chuckhansen + @corvosattano to take this uquiz for some kiddos, and I also threw in the most recent uquiz tag cus I’m slow tehe! Thank you sm beloveds🤍

Tagging (anyone and everyone cus idk who’s done what lmao): @risingsh0t @bbrocklesnar @roofgeese @unholymilf @florbelles @arklay @captmactavish @shellibisshe @simonxriley @queennymeria @marivenah @nokstella @mrdekarios @thedeadthree @jacobseed @jackiesarch @heroofpenamstan @dameayliins @carlosoliveiraa @shadowglens @fenharel @alexxmason @tekehu @malefiicarum @brujah @solasan @arthrmorgann @garaviel @baldurians @jendoe + @nightbloodbix

A BIRD IN A COVERED CAGE;

They left without you. Put you out of sight and therefore out of mind. You sing every morning like nothing's changed, talk to the walls to keep yourself company. Just you, the darkness and your own denial that you are completely alone. Nurse your wounds, get yourself some water.

RITUALISTIC CANNIBALISM;

eating others as a religious act, a form of human sacrifice or tradition in the name of a deity. you care a lot about your grades, or used to as a child, and would cry if you got a b in English. you are a people pleaser. you are good at self discipline. you desperately want to achieve success, in whatever way that means to you, and feel the need to devote your life to something you find bigger than yourself, in order for your life to have meaning. you probably had an eating disorder. or an anxiety disorder

BLOOD IN A LAMBS WOOL;

You're the victim, right? It hurts, everyday it hurts. It's obvious you're tainted, pulled into hell as soon as you stepped upon earth. You'll never know peace, you'll never know a life without violence. Im sorry. Wash your face and your hands, don't let your wounds carve deeper.

SURVIVAL CANNIBALISM;

eating others to prevent starvation and not as a part of a cultural practice, usually as a result of an emergency or a famine. my sweet baby angel, you have not been touched by the darkness. I'm sorry if this scared you. you are a normal person with normal person problem. you want to get married. you dance with your friends. and you would never ever eat them (right?) it's surprising what can happen to a person, when pushed to the extreme though. have you ever wondered about that?

A PILE OF BUBBLES, AN IRIDESCENT MESS;

Well aren't you just all over? You're appealing but you're fragile, one wrong move and you lose all that you are. You were meant to be stepped on, broken, but the joy you bring to onlookers is unmatched. Do with that as you will and take very good care of yourself, have a snack.

AUTO CANNIBALISM;

the practise of eating parts of ones own body. you consider yourself an introvert. private and reserved. you don't like asking for help, even when you need it. secretly your biggest fear is being abandoned, which is why you abandon others first. in the end you will be your own destroyer. you stay in a dark room, curled up like a worm, eating yourself.

DOG TEETH;

You're vicious, but you're afraid. You have to make the first punch, and make sure your opponent can't land one. But you need to stop seeing everyone as an enemy. The only one being violent is you, your anger and your defensiveness is killing you. Take a nap, rest your head and clear your mind. Come back in the morning.

FILIAL CANNIBALISM;

the eating of one's own offspring. eating offspring has been documented in a variety of mammal and bird species – as well as fish, insects and spiders. hunger and quality control are among the many reasons proposed for this counterintuitive survivor of natural selection. you think of yourself as a logical person, and you probably went through a hardcore atheist phase. you consider this logic a virtue. to you, logic and emotion are two opposites, where one is superior to the other. wait until you find out that logic is an emotion. you are a great problem solver. your partiality towards objectivism though, is often less helpful than you realise. you have a hard time taking criticism.

#tagged* #misc: uquiz #oc: chika hoki #oc: margot durand #oc: mineyo ginnivan #oc: rin kyutoku #faerune #chuckhansen #corvosattano #apologies for being generally mia #I’m back to work tomorrow and I don’t wanna🙃 #ive also JUST finished naruto and im having major withdrawals #so I’ve been distracting myself with my on going chibi project #it’s turning out SO GOOD you guys!! #can’t wait for you all to see it #anyway thank you for the tags!! #love you all🤍🤍🤍

[lovingmny]

BACKSTAGE - han jisung

CONTAINS : you and 2 other skz members are having a collaboration stage and han is not happy about the choreography so he takes matters to his own hands backstage

WARNINGS : 18+, backstage sex, quick, kissing, sex in the changing rooms, mad jisung, overall sex, masturbation, bathroom fuck, swearing

genre: smut, idol au

pairing : han jisung!idol x fem!reader!idol

authors note : my second smut!! btw this was inspired by someone and I don’t remember who so if you see this (the person this is inspired by) forgive me:(!! english isn’t my first language🫣

m.list

under 18+ DNI under the cut

You, Felix and Changbin were having a collaboration stage in music bank this year, you could not be more excited.

The person that wasn’t excited tho was Han Jisung. He was your secret boyfriend of 5years. You guys knew each other since kindergarten amd started dating around his debut. You on the other hand debuted 2 years later than him.

You both were very successful and that’s why JYP decided to make you guys do a collab. The song you guys had to do had a really sexy concept, and the choreography was extremely touchy.

Han did not like the fact that he saw his other members touching your ass and waist in the dance studio everyday since the collaboration stage was announced.

„Are you sure it’s nothing?“ You asked while walking beside him in the halls.

„Yes, it’s nothing. I know felix and changbin very well and I know that they wont get any feelings toward you. Okay?“ He said while sounding quite frustrated.

„Well okay.“ I said and went back to practise. Little did I know Han masturbated himself to sleep everynight thinking about me, which I clearly heard when I went to the bathroom.

After practice I realised that Music Bank was tomorrow so I put a face mask on and brushed my teeth. I showered aswell and took the face mask off and continued off to sleep.

Next day I woke up feeling refreshed. I changed and got ready did my last practising and went into the car that was waiting outside.

„Hey“ I greeted Han but he didn’t respond at all.

„Is everything alright?“ I asked but still no response.

I gave up and looked out the window. Later we arrived and the paparazzi were overflowing the entrance and flashing lights were everywhere.

I changed into a black tight outfit with my hair open and wavy. I looked hot as hell. I stepped on stage and started dancing

Felix ran onto stage and started to come to me. Changbin came aswell and he started rapping. Then I was suddenly laying on the stage and Felix was leaning onto me. The performance was amazing and everyone was going crazy and yelling.

I could spot one person that wasn’t clapping or even smiling tho. It was him. Han Jisung. I knew it. He was not happy. Right when the performance stopped I ran off stage and suddenly he was in the changing room aswell.

He was smirking at me and signaled a „come here“ with his hands. I followed him to the bathrooms and he locked the door.

He sat me on the toilet and unzipped my tight leather pants. He took my underwear off aswell. He dropped his pants and had no underwear on. His cock sprung up in the air. It was really hard and it was noticeable that he had a huge boner.

He didn’t say anything and just straight got inside me. The worst part is that these were public bathrooms, meaning that even the audience had access to these bathrooms.

I was already loud until quickly hushed my mouth with his kiss. The kiss was passionate and his tongue explored every part of my mouth. He was pumping in and out of me and I felt my orgasm coming. He pulled out and I came and so did he. His cum went all over his shirt and face. It was so hot.

Then he started to finger me. And that’s when I knew that it was the end of me. It felt so fucking good. Literally the best fuck ever. He made me cum again and i came all over his fingers. He licked his fingers clean and then pushed them into my mouth.

I pulled my panties and pants back on and I dressed him aswell. We quickly exited the bathrooms before anyone saw us.

We entered the changing room and Changbin started laughing.

“What?” I asked furiously

“I knew he would fuck you” He answered.

———————————————————————————

REQUESTS OPEN!!

masterlist

#han smut #han jisung smut #kpop #skz smut #skz changbin

[fuckinorangecat]

I've never seen myself as important until today.

My life so far has always been indepedent, or at least that's how I've always seen it. I've never thought about being important to other people. It's difficult to explain but I truly felt like an absolute failure of a human being today. Every job I've done so far, I've been unimportant. Not in a depressing, pessimistic sort of way, but just replaceable. I worked at dominos for about three weeks when I was 16, after university I worked at a grocery store, then a library assistant. The common denominator being that they are all customer service jobs, hence "replaceable". This extends even outside the work place, with friends and family I've never seriously considered that I was ever important. My friends and family love me but I always think, as long as I'm alive it should be fine; I've never thought any further than that. I've the absolute bare minimum in all aspects of my existence which has, of course, finally bared its fangs towards me in the results of today.

For the past month I've been "tutoring" a student for an English speech contest. For context, I work as a ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) in Japan and one of my responsibilities in a senior highschool includes the coaching of students for their speeches. It was my first time coaching so it's entirely appropriate to say it's unfair to feel like a failure when I've never had any formal training, but that fuck all to shake the feeling I'm currently feeling. My student is the most hardworking individual I've ever seen. Teachers here say many students have the same routine as her which is fine and all, but that absolutely does not take away from her work-ethic. She has been practising earnestly everyday since her speech got accepted. It was slow in the beginning, mainly because I struggled to find my place as a speech coach but it eventually picked up. We would practise every day after school, repeating lines, practising each paragraph, working on the stress of words and intonation and it really did pay off in her performance today. Once time, my student was teary because of the progress she felt she made in one of our practice sessions. It was one of the most rewarding feelings of my life, I was genuinely so happy and proud of her. However, today she contest she did not win anything. Nor did 14 other students but I just don't care about that. She was on the brink of tears today because she was so disappointed, her mum was the same but she pulled through and said "Shall we go to starbucks then"?

I've never felt so powerless and failed in my life. I think part that hurt the most was that even though it was so clear that she wanted to cry, she still did her best to keep herself together. She was needlessly strong until the very end. My coworkers were completely supportive, agreeing with my opinion that she should've at least gotten at least fourth place, emphasising how much they appreciate me for all I've done. That today's result was just the "preference" of the judges. I work in a genuinely friendly environment and yet it still doesn't hurt any less. After today, I truly felt how important I am to these students, how my presence truly carries an impact. I feel even worse because trufully told, I do nothing important during my deskwarming hours whilst my student works on average 12 hours a day, doing their absolute best to make the most out of their time here.

I fucking hate myself.

#personal #diary

[hxneywilde]

forest meadow

The Darkling, the imposing General Kirigan, did not found his life amusing anymore, until the little Lantsov princess got trapped in his life.

Princess!reader/Aleksander Morozova (The Darkling)

Tagged with 💋 smut/spice but it's really just kissing and the reader being a little bit smitten by the big bad villain.

(Extra): Reader is female but can be any race bc she's not the King and Queen's biological daughter but rather some sort of goddaughter or something.

I just wanted to self indulged my little silly fantasy of being a princess in love with the worst candidate ever.

This is a WIP or a mini fic not sure yet. Mixed POVs.

English is not my first language btw, sorry for any mistakes!

♡♡♡♡♡♡

The life of The Darkling wasn't one fit for anybody. Living for such a long time wasn't easy on the body nor the mind, Aleksander didn't find any pleasure in the mundane things anymore. No sunshine warmed his body, no sugar sweetend the same.

Everyday was the same, he was simply not enjoying life anymore.

Until he fixed eyes on the little Lantsov princess.

On you.

It was strange seeing you out of the Grand Palace. The tsaritsa was protective of you; something he found amusing, as if the woman wasn't aware of the dirt her husband was into; but you were protected anyway, away from the rest of the world, of the Court even.

You were wearing a flowy evening blue —deep sea blue— dress, your hair picked up away from your face with golden clips, orchid-shaped he noticed. You had appeared from the bushes of the Little Palace, looking around and out of breath.

You had scaped from the Grand Palace, and that had picked his interest.

And that interest got bigger when he caught you hiding behind a bush while seeing the Inferni practising outside.

"Enjoying the show, Princess?" he said.

You jumped and your head shoked to his direction. He smirked at you, your big eyes were full of terror.

"I-" you gulped.

Aleksander could see the debate in your eyes and he challenged it, where you going to defend yourself or run away?

Surprisingly you square your shoulders, you were defending yourself. Or so he thought.

"Please, General, don't tell my mother" your sweet voice hit him. Hard. And he found himself wanting to heard it more, to know you.

Oh, little princess.

He was in trouble, in so much trouble.

You were in so much trouble.

So much trouble.

But did it really matter? You asked yourself while you layed on your back, your baby pink dress surely ruined because of the meadow's grass.

But it didn't matter. Not when the General was kissing you this good.

His hands were on either sides of your face, holding you, cuping you as if you were going to dissapear if he didn't. His mouth was hot and eager to devour you, his body was firm against yours and you couldn't do nothing more than moan and accept the delightful feeling of him.

You felt a tingle all over your body, like you were being cured by a Healer, you were itching, craving. For him. For what he could give to you. It was scary, the feeling of needing him so deeply.

Did he feel the same? The same itch and craving that came to you even in the latest hours of the night? When everybody else was sleeping and you could only think about him? You hoped he did, or else you were going to be ruined forever.

But it didn't matter.

Not when he broke the kiss and looked at you that way, his deep dark eyes blown out and his perfect hair undone.

It didn't matter.

Not when he smiled at you. Not when he looked like he was truly alive.

#aleksander morozova/reader #aleksander morozova #the darkling/reader #the darkling #princess reader #shadow and bone #i just want to be a little princess kissing in a meadow with a bad bad man #i think that's reasonable

[kikiikoko]

My Fair Lady

First post!

I mainly started tumblr because I've been watching tumblr related videos and my recent facination with movies. Little backstory I just graduated from high school and always wanted to have a job associated with fashion. I never wanted to do the classic 'fashion designer' that works in a fashion house and recently considered the idea of becoming a costume designer for movies/plays. And thus my movie obsession begun

I'll probably be posting one movie 'review' everyday

So first movie 'review' (I don't know what to call these lol) will be My fair lady directed by George Cukor

Little summary:

My fair lady a 1964 movie stars Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle a homeless girl with a thick accent and a bad attitude who begs and sells flowers for a living. When a rude and snobbish language professor Henry Higgins played by Rex Harrison mets her, argues with her and promtly takes it as a challenge to teach Eliza how to speak as a propper english woman and pass her duchess at an embassy ball. After days of practising and a lot of arguing the professor succeeds and boasts about his accomplishment without giving Eliza any creadit, which makes her feel used causing her to flee his house and go back to her old life. When she tries to leave the professors house she encounters Freddy a man she previously met who was enamoured by her wit and wants to marry her. She refuses and tries to live as she used to, when that doesn't work she goes to Henry's mother's house to tell her about how her son has treated Eliza. That's when they meet again, but again all they do is argue when Eliza announces that she will be marrying Freddy. The professor due to his ego doesn't think that Eliza will actually go through with the plan and will come crawling back to him. But when he returns home alone he realises that he is in love with Eliza and they live happily ever after lol

My thoughts:

Although I don't really like romance movies as an enjoyer of the enemies-to-lovers troupe I found this movie enjoyable. Most of all I loved the costume design, my favourite scene being the massive choreographed horse race scene where the fabulous dresses and the vogue-esk movements show the elegance and prestise of the upper class. All of Elizas dresses are marvelous and show her evolution throught the film. From a poor flower girl, to then slowly dressing more and more elegantly to match her role, to a full glowing duchess and lastly to an elegant lady more true to herself topping of the film with a beautiful pink dress symbolising her new found love for the professor. I liked the dynamic between the two love intrests, both of them being head strong and hot headed, although I did think the professors bad attitude towards Eliza could have been toned down a little to show some moments of sweetness to justify Elizas feelings towards him. Because literaly how did she fall for him? I get that thats how the dynamic works but in the movie he is being sometimes way to unnecesseraly rude to her, even hitting her (if I remember correctly), which, at least for me, wouldn't make me fall in love with someone. I understand that thats his character, that he is so arrogant that he is convinced he could do anything but I don't remember any good moments between them that would make me be convinced that he is right for her. Even when he succeds he is rude and ignores Eliza making her feel like a test subject, her role being to boost the professors ego and then be discarded and forgotten of. The only reason I knew that they would fall in love is because this is a 1964 movie. I don't think that her marrying Freddy would have made for a satisfactory ending but at least he was nice to her. I'm going to comment one more thing about this romance and then I'm going to wrap this ramble, WHY DOES AUDREY HEPBURN ALWAYS PAIRED UP WITH OLD DUDES?????? Seriously... almost all of her movies she falls for the way older dude, not that it's a bad thing but it's especially heinous when that older dude treats her like shit. Anyways, I liked the songs, a staple of any older movie, but I did skip most of them for being a little too long. All in all I understand why this movie is a classic and even though it's of a diffferent time it what quite a fun watch. The premise was interesting and the acting perfect. And I would reccomend this movie, especially to lovers of amazing costume design, romance and old classics.

#films #my fair lady #review #movies #old classics #movie review #opinion #audrey hepburn #costume design #art #film review #film recommendations #romance

[englishlanguagelab]

Fun English Fluency Techniques to Improve Your Speaking Ability

Explore the value of listening, strengthen your vocabulary, avoid translation, and enjoy tongue twisters. Prepare to experience the wonder of spoken English!

Image Source: ( Google — Digital Teacher English Language Lab )

Importance of Spoken English:

Now, imagine improving your English communication skills is like embarking on a fitness journey. Just like you put in intense focus and maintain a positive mindset to stay fit and get that dream physique, becoming a fluent English speaker takes time, dedication, and regular practice. It’s not a one-day miracle, my friends.

So, how do you become a fluent English speaker:

Source: ( Google — englishlab.co.in/blog )

Vocabulary Power:

Now, while you’re on this English-learning adventure, it’s crucial that you keep feeding your brain with the right stuff. Imagine your brain is on a diet, but instead of counting calories, you focus on learning a few new words each day (let’s say 2 or 3). These words will jazz up your English vocabulary and give you more firepower for everyday conversations. And hey, if you can’t find anyone to chat with, you can even have a solo conversation with yourself using those words or record your own voice to check if you’re nailing the pronunciations. Vocabulary power, activate!

Power of Speaking:

Switching gears for a second, let’s talk about Speaking of power,. Many non-native English speakers have a tendency to translate their ideas into English from their native tongue. But here’s the kicker, my friends: it’s time to stop thinking in translation and start thinking in English. I know, I know, it can be a little difficult at first, but trust me, with practise, it becomes second nature. Start out simple by practising some fundamental grammar, then pick a subject, speak about it, and then review any errors you made. It’s an excellent technique to improve your communication abilities.

Video Source: ( Google — Digital Teacher English Language Lab )

Tongue Twisters: A Vocabulary Game

Oh, and here’s a quick tip for pumping up your English learning experience:

Tongue Twisters: They act as verbal roller coasters that enable you speak at breakneck speed while also enhancing your diction. Let’s try it out, shall we? Say it with me: “The thirty-three thieves believed they had delighted the throne all Thursday.” Fun, huh? You’ll quickly master various expressions while learning where you tend to falter if you practise for a short while each day in front of the mirror.

Learning English Anywhere, Anytime

Do not worry if you want for a more trained educational experience. You can choose from a wide selection of English courses offered online. These online courses are available to you from the convenience of your own home. These courses cover every element of English, including the alphabet, vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and more! You’ll have the chance to practise your pronunciation and conversational abilities while reading, writing, and speaking English. Imagine it as a beautiful English production!

So, my friends, speaking English better is not at all difficult, especially with the advantages of online lessons taken from home. All that is required is a constant effort and a passion to learn and the determination to keep going.

We hope you enjoyed reading this post! Keep reading, paying attention, and following our blog for more amazing information.!!! -Thank You

#englishlab #digital language lab #englishlanguagelab #digitallanguagelab #englishvocabulary #language lab #languagelab #digitalteacher #englishlanguage #englishlanguagelabsoftware #Youtube

[pecuniarypriss]

Send me ‘What If’ scenarios for my muse to answer.

Anonymous said: What if.... You ever met a demon??

pecuniarypriss:

────────────

{!!} – That…felt a little bit beyond the realms of mortal circumstance. Brian was a practising Christian, but he supposed that apparitions of demons and those sort of things that went bump in the night were just far less of a tangible concern to him than the common everyday problem such as being irreparably single or desperately clutching at what still remained of his youngest daughter’s English accent since her emigration to Scotland.

❝I suppose I could say that I have met some demons, but that they usually appear to me in the form of sand in my vehicle and people who are unable to avail themselves of basic literacy with which to read a clearly-marked sign above a plot, blissfully content with pilfering my designated parking space!!❞ Who parked in your space this morning, Brian? He clicked his pen with which to jot some numbers down in a writing pad, ❝Now, those - those are the real demons on Earth. I'm sorry, but I've got to get back to work! These accounts won't manage themselves.❞

#✢ Verse; Default Man Down #✢ Interaction; pecuniarypriss/anonymous

[aboulian]

Note on grammar

In 2015 Oliver Kamm gave us Accidence Will Happen, a guide to English usage. Whether by accident or by design, Kamm’s guide traces the steps of Wittgenstein’s conversion from the logical atomism of the Tractatus to the intricately piecemeal non-philosophy of the Investigations.

The parallel isn’t perfect, I know. Kamm is more of an empiricist than Wittgenstein, and Wittgenstein more of a pessimist than Kamm. Both authors make appeals to the empirical, but Kamm’s appeal to the empirical has a statistical literalism that is alien to the Investigations. For Wittgenstein makes scant reference to any entity so literal as a statistic. The items that instantiate Wittgenstein’s doctrine that meaning is ‘use’ include custom, practice, circumstance, history, behaviour, the everyday, the ordinary, ‘form of life’ (Lebensform) and just the various things we’ve done. Any such appeal to the evidence as Kamm makes – an appeal that aspires also to be a citation of data – would have struck him as vulgar.

Kamm adopts the dispassionate attitude of a scholar; he shows little enthusiasm for speculative exploits. But – even so – his book reads like an allegorical play on Wittgenstein’s career. Where in Wittgenstein there are philosophical problems, there are, in Kamm, the well-known cruxes of English usage ('shibboleths', for Kamm). And in the place of philosophical practitioners there are the ‘grammarians’* – the authors of the prescriptive surveys of English usage, running from Fowler in 1926 to lesser lights such as Cochrane, Gwynne, Heffer and Humphrys in this century. Kamm calls these people ‘sticklers’, taking a disobliging delight in cutting them down to size in a compressed, aridly careful English style.

I remember when Kamm was a banker who blogged. He now works as a journalist, writing leaders for the London Times. But, until he got the Times job, he was a blogger. In 2006 or 2007, his must have been one of the first blogs I read. I remember what a sententious scold he was, and how quick he was to take other writers’ offences against good usage as proof of intellectual inadequacy.**

That was Kamm’s Tractarian phase. At that time, he stood for a linguistic essentialism whose equivalent in Wittgenstein is the logical atomism of the first six or so sections of the Tractatus. He confesses to it, too. In his own words he is a ‘reformed’ (or ‘recovering’) stickler. Diagnosing his own disorder, he explains that it is characteristic of sticklers to make an appeal to a kind of essential grammar. This, for sticklers, is a grammar founded in logic. Its invariable presence promises in some way to make good the imperfect flux of day-to-day usage. In its light, and only its, our everyday English shall be judged.

Perhaps Kamm himself once thought he could write in so crystalline and clean a style as never to stray from the logic that underlies language. Perhaps the passionate conviction with which he pursues his anti-pedantic campaign derives from an experience of conversion which he only wishes others could experience as passionately as he did. If this is the case, Kamm’s project is something like that of the reformed addict who guides initiates to the group through the first steps towards a cure. And it is something like that of the later Wittgenstein, who – in the Investigations – had already fallen victim to the philosophical disorder, and who, in practising a therapy, also pursued a cure. One of the critics cited on the back cover of Kamm’s book calls it ‘deeply reassuring’. If so, it is presumably reassuring in the way that therapy is.

I wouldn’t like to overstate the analogy. For one thing, Kamm is as much a satirist as he is a therapist. He has great fun with the risible ranters who write about grammar for a conservative readership. (As he nicely observes, their way of popularising discussion of language seems to be to link it to a generalised kind of declinist nostalgia.†) But, if only pedantry is at issue, there's a surfeit of spite in his satire. In this book, Kamm likes not just to laugh but to lacerate – so that we may wonder whether his anti-pedantic project is in fact a metapedantic one. As far as this ‘metapedantic’ project is concerned, only lesser pedants are his targets, but still, and again and again, they provide him with opportunities to reap a paltry glory from the humiliation of the ignorant – just as did the old pedantry he disowns.

For all that, the parallels are clear. Kamm and Wittgenstein are preoccupied by the same question. Both think they’re in possession of a way to answer it. They both attract the same sorts of antagonists (there are compelling parallels to be drawn between the pathologies of the grammarians and the pathologies of the professional philosophers whom Wittgenstein has in his sights in the Investigations). Both, in the end, succumb to the same problems.

Framed philosophically, the question is this: Are there norms without essences? How can our words mean anything at all without being keyed in some way to a system of reference that lies immutably outside the individual? Of course there aren’t just semantic norms: there are norms of all kinds. In epistemology, for instance, there are ‘epistemic’ norms, and there is this question: What is knowledge without an epistemological guarantee such as Descartes’ God grants in the Meditations? Wittgenstein addresses this question in On Certainty, but Kamm isn’t so interested in it.

Take the question of what art is. This is a question in the philosophy of art. Or take the question of how we ought to use the word ‘art’. This is a linguistic question, or a grammatical one (if you insist). It is a question on which an authority on usage might conceivably wish to issue a verdict.

Both Wittgenstein and Kamm take it for granted that we cannot have recourse to any essential entity in our answers to these questions. Instead, they ask that we appeal to the way the concept (in Wittgenstein’s case) or the word (in Kamm’s) is used. So Wittgenstein asks that we have full confidence in any of his many proxies for ‘use’ – in history, in custom, in practice, in the everyday or the ordinary. (The Wittgensteinian question, then, is not ‘What is art, in essence?’ but ‘What have we customarily [or historically, etc] considered art to be?’) Kamm, for his part, asks that we have full confidence in something he calls ‘Standard English’. When we ask him how to gauge, or even to identify, such a Standard, he is able to give a much more precise answer than Wittgenstein is when he is asked how to define ‘use’. In Kamm’s case – in the case of the grammar of the word ‘art’ – we can have recourse to a corpus, or the OED, or, in quick-and-dirty style, to Google. It’s in terms of bodies of evidence such as linguistic corpora that Standard English is defined. Is there any analogous method we can introduce in philosophy? It would be quite self-defeating to try to appeal to a linguistic corpus to adjudicate the question of what art is. But perhaps there are other literatures or bodies of evidence to which we might turn.

If the question asked by Wittgenstein and Kamm in context of their distinct concerns is the same, their answers are also alike: they would both have us derive definitions from the evidence. Lacking a belief, for instance, in Art Itself, we must derive our definition of it from a study of the concept’s sublunary career, taking into account its history as well as its present state (so the abstract demand as to ‘the evidence’ can be met by citation from a corpus or a historical dictionary). Therefore neither thinks there is one answer. There is no answer in general. They take their questions one at a time. They give their answers case by case. They move from crux to crux, and from problem to problem, in a piecemeal way.

The essentialists' different projects – either the grammarians' project or that of the philosophers who believe that the definition of art is implicit in its essence – suffer the same setback. The grammarians are always getting caught making mistakes. In the treatises in which they lament the mistakes of others they invariably make many of their own. But even a book unblemished by any hypocrisy, an immaculate book that never fell foul of its own prescriptions – even this work would give the lie to the grammarian’s case. Imagine a grammarian who tried to define a certain class of uses of the word ‘art’ as ungrammatical. To refer to any sort of stand-up comedy as art, he says, is categorically bad English. Now if we ask why it is he exactly thinks this ‘bad’ grammar is bad, he typically gives one of two answers that will carry any weight with those of us who can’t expect to share his sense of what is and isn’t artistic. He may say that it is illogical to say stand-up comedy is art or that it is unintelligible.

If he says it is illogical, we should ask him what he means by logic. If he means merely that it doesn’t make sense, he should explain himself (without accounting for the assertion, he’ll just have restated his view). But it’s worth challenging him simply on the principle, here, and asking whether language should 'make sense’ in so rigid a way as to preclude a user of English from, for instance, saying ‘less’ for ‘fewer’ with count nouns. How literally logical should natural language be? For what it’s worth, there are already many languages for writing logic (as there are many systems of logic): the pedant, if they want to communicate as logically as possible – and if they are not already Michael Dummett – should learn one. Natural language has to be recast as logic in a laborious process that bears comparison to translation, and – when it is – much of its content is lost with its context. If it has been so recast, this is no guarantee that it will be logically valid. Indeed, part of the point of rewriting things in logic is to check them for validity. If a sentence in its literal, logical form is found valid, it may still, of itself, make less sense and say far less than the natural-language sentence it was in the beginning. To insist that natural language be logical is something close to a category mistake.

But if he claims that it’s unintelligible to say stand-up is art, we need only turn to the treatise in which he offers a taxonomy of all the errors that offend him. In that treatise there will naturally be an entry for ‘art’, and in that entry there will be examples of the word ‘art’ in the erroneous usage. In that entry, too, the grammarian will seem to have understood the instances of art in this, its erroneous usage: he will seem to have understood them so well as to know exactly why they were in error. Is it not legitimate to infer that he must have understood such usages if he has been able criticise them as systematically as he has? In effect, his treatise will show that the solecisms that afflict the sentences he employs as examples are not so severe as to have made them unintelligible.

It therefore proves impossible for the grammarian to flesh out his complaints without making them seem empty. Perhaps the only way would have been to list them anonymously – that is, to make a list of sentences seen to be in error without glossing it as such. The idea of silence as a solution is familiar from the Tractatus. Wittgenstein's project in that book is to put an end to philosophy, reducing all its questions to an atomised array of answers, and this project falls victim to the same sort of problem as the grammarian's. For if the philosopher aspires to seal off philosophy in a sphere of pure sense, as the grammarian might aspire to separate all correct sentences from their incorrect counterparts, he would seem to have to implement the idea without letting us know, in silence and in secret.

The grammarian’s problem is that the sentence or sentences in which he defines the errors that offend him show those errors not to be errors at all, or are otherwise themselves in error; this problem is illustrated ideally by the pedantic intervention that makes a mistake of its own.‡ The philosopher’s problem is that the sentence in which he might have expected to declare the final unravelling of philosophy, and the full separation of sense from nonsense, may not itself speak sense. If the sentence speaks sense, it invalidates itself: it makes nonsense. If it instead speaks nonsense, and is unintelligible, its success remain unknown. But if its success does become known, it must be undone

The task then is to find a way to fall silent without letting on, for silence is the last thing the word ‘silent’ achieves. The philosopher should perhaps become a performer, a mime. Failing this, the philosopher must give up the project to put an end to philosophy as misguided, as arising finally from a mistake. The grammarian who cures himself of pedantry, and learns to see language as a linguist does, learns also to see grammarians as dilettantes and cranks, each with his own little collection of cheap complaints, each on his own irrelevant crusade against the corruption of language, each claiming to speak more logically than the last.

The philosopher must likewise remake himself. He must be a non-philosopher (and Kamm is ‘non-pedantic’). As a philosopher, he had suffered from a sort of disorder; it left him incurably confused, and the problems of philosophy gave him no relief. It all seemed as vital as if his very life were at stake. But, as a non-philosopher, he knows that these problems are no problems at all. In our difficulties with them we betray a basic confusion, attesting to an approach that does not discover philosophical problems, as it imagines itself to be doing, but creates them. For they are spurious. They are figments, and merely spells to fall under. No one need try to solve them. They are as spurious as the grammarian’s recommendation to use ‘decimate’ only when speaking of divisions by ten.

The philosopher then plays the part of the philosopher against philosophy, as Kamm plays the pedant against pedantry. His philosophy lurches from particular to particular. His solution is not to define, but to do, and do, and do. He has no more disciples: his philosophy is no longer pressed into a package of ideas fit to be digested, disseminated and unpacked again. He has only imitators now. In a sense his method is only to be himself. It does not survive him: it depends on his being there to show us how it’s done

So say he appeals to what people actually do, or to how they actually use the word ‘art’, preferring not to prescribe to them what they should ideally do, or how they should use the word ‘art’ ideally. That’s all well and good – if he is prepared never to stop philosophising, as his previous approach promised he might. The thing is, language is adding to itself all the time. Invoking an evidence-base such as that of the linguist’s corpora, he has to watch it remake itself before his eyes. When he asks ‘How is the word “art” standardly used?’, he’s obliged to answer that ‘art’ must be defined, defined and yet again defined. If he issues a verdict, he's bound to advise that his verdicts are subject to revision from the moment that they are issued. As fresh evidence re-establishes the Standard, and more of our ‘errors’ and lapses become acceptable by its lights, work always remains to be done.

We shouldn't need to be persuaded that Kamm’s problem, the pragmatic problem of repetition, is preferable to the philosophical problem of regress. That the non-philosopher swaps the philosopher’s old problems for newer, better problems – this is undeniable. But he would be wise not to claim too much for his reformed method, result as it is of failure – or of the success that is achieved by an ability to admit defeat where others simply keep going hopelessly on. And Kamm’s way of being high-handed with his antagonists does suggest that he has misjudged the actual power of his approach.

Take the question of art, again. A variable definition of art derived from the evidence was never what we wanted, any more than we wanted an invariable definition derived from its essence. Inconvenient though it is for philosophy, the one definition enters into the other. That’s why the philosopher’s project went wrong: the definition of nonsense is implicated in a dynamic way in the definition of sense, putting into question the project's pivotal sentence, the sentence in which it is to be completed. And it’s not that, when the philosopher underwent his conversion and cured himself of philosophy, his project was saved. No, he gave it up, or at least outsourced it to the ambiguous public whose practice is what ‘ordinary’ language is. Like the philosopher’s, the pedant’s project failed because correct and incorrect language are interdependent and impossible in isolation. Kamm (as an anti-pedant) does not bring this project back to life, crediting the corpus or the OED with the power to determine what is and what is not correct. Instead he credits them – a little circularly – with the power to define what is Standard.§

In his role as a ‘reformed’ pedant, Kamm is required to act as a publicist and even as an activist on behalf of his new programme. He is therefore unable to give due weight to the antithetical principle that makes his analysis possible. No meaningful appeal to the empirical could be made without the involvement of this principle, which – though it needn’t be an essence or even a constellation of atomic propositions – cannot either be supplied by evidence alone. The evidence cannot of itself furnish criteria for its own evaluation: indeed, it provides no intrinsic guarantee that ‘art’ should form any kind of category at all, and still less does it contain any intrinsic criterion that would serve to restrict the instances of ‘art’ as they arise in it to a meaningful minimum. In itself, it lacks the materials to make provision for any degree of limitation such as might be prescribed by an individual set of specifications particular to an individual inquirer. This is why, without any antithetical principle to focus one’s inquiry, one cannot define its terms, and cannot hope for significant results (without such a principle, one is constrained merely to repeat the evidence as it emerges). In the case of the word ‘art’, for example, the evidence does not of itself provide the means for us either to include this quotation in our inquiry or not to include it:

To find out that, good Shepherd, I suppose, In such a scant allowance of Star-light, Would over-task the best Land-Pilots art Without the sure guess of well-practiz’d feet.

When we ask what art is, are we asking about such ‘art’ as a ‘Land-Pilot’ might practise?

Of course Kamm is no kind of fundamentalist, and he never makes the dogmatic claims I criticise here. He is a columnist and, to that extent, he is concerned to impress his opinions on us. His true error is to take his opponents’ indulgence in dogmatism as an occasion for an overreach of his own.

Kamm’s strategy is to insist that the grammarians’ concerns are groundless, but in this he takes the empiricist approach too far. It’s easy to see that, though they aren’t grounded in evidence, they are grounded in intuitions or ‘hunches’ such as most English-speakers share. Had they been purely idiosyncratic, they could not have endured in the unkillable way that they have. The grammarians’ crime isn’t to have conjured up complaints out of snobbery or whatever other prejudice takes their fancy. Their crime is to have raised their aesthetic complaints to the status of logical ones. The split infinitive is an example. Are their complaints about it legitimate? The intuition in this instance is that the split infinitive seems too much to mix adverb and verb, making a new verb where none is wanted and none needed. A split infinitive too often primes us to hear an intrusive hyphen between a verb and its adverb (and is it the same to 'go boldly' as it is to 'boldly-go'?§). But Kamm’s politicised empiricism sees him entangled in still deeper difficulties.

It is to his credit that he has applied a little scholarship to the issue, putting in time at the library in an attempt to produce a history of the prescriptions against this or that pedantic bugbear. To that extent, his appeal to the evidence pays off. But, by the same token, he might feel compelled to produce statistics showing how much traction was gained by all the particular rules at particular points in this broader story. There are judgements he would need to make in order to produce such statistics, and the evidence cannot make these judgements for him. Regarding split infinitives, he would need to determine: did a particular author decide not to split a particular infinitive in deference to a prescription or not? Should any particular non-split infinitive be considered a product of the kind of pedantry his method calls into doubt – and, if it is, should he then exclude it from the evidence constituting the Standard?

The €60 000 question is this. If the evidence shows some infinitives unsplit and some split, but says nothing about whether any one infinitive might stand unsplit as a result of a piece of pedantry, how can Kamm appeal only to the evidence in judging whether or not split infinitives are Standard? Say the evidence is divided 50/50, or even 60/40. If the empiricist knows that infinitives with adverbs only go unsplit when a writer has bought into some piece of false pedantry, can he then avoid recommending that as Standard? Or would his own method compel him to recommend as Standard a prescription that has risen to a regrettable popularity?‖

Above, I made mention of an ‘antithetical principle’ to which Kamm does not give adequate weight in his arguments. Nothing about Kamm’s method works if his appeal to this principle is denied him, and he’s made to rely on evidence alone. It is a principle that could not be derived from any body of evidence; at the same time, it informs all his judgements about the evidence. Once it is admitted, however, there is no knowing how far it will take him back to the arbitrary pedantry he rejects. Insofar as there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that Kamm should not have made his prescription against prescriptions so perversely strict. If his righteous reaction against the pedants leads him never to split, something – somewhere – must be going wrong. He should surely not be seen to be indulging self-consciously in the mistakes he used to scold others for making in ignorance. That is no kind of recovery from pedantry. It is its grisly sequel: Pedantry – The return.

If the appeal to the empirical is to be more than a gesture – that is, if it is to be pursued for more than its effect as a gesture – then it will need to be aided by an antithetical principle, which will complement it as the opposable thumb complements the open hand. But there is a catch here – there is a bug in our code – which is that the moment such a principle is invoked, the empiricist restores to life all the old problems his appeal was supposed to sweep away. So – instead – he holds one hand behind his back. And this is his fate: to proceed serenely, without encountering any pitfall or trap, but to proceed without progress, for all hope of progress has been sacrificed for his serenity, a serenity that the hand behind his back might at any moment sweep aside once again.

This doesn’t make Kamm’s book worthless. It is not. But its readers should bear in mind that its prescriptions against prescription are made in the light of a method with only a little more intrinsic validity than the philosophy it replaces. Its readers should remember, too, that its anti-pedantic practice doesn’t so much arise from an honest desire to offer guidance and advice as from an arbitrary ambition to prove the merits of this method (whose main feature is more that it is not the philosophy that failed us than that it is the method it is). So Kamm recommends his method in the spirit in which a reformed alcoholic might recommend absolute sobriety to an audience of lightweights and social drinkers; perhaps it comes as a shock to him, but they have never had much difficulty keeping their drinking in check.

And the philosopher of art? The aesthetician? Where is he in all this? Dishevelled and spent, is he not now a defeated figure, a figure of fun? Will he not now be the butt of the students’ jokes?

Throwing in his lot neither with the invariable nor in the variable definition of art, and unprepared to claim either that there is one thing art is or that there is no thing it is, he finds himself forced to compromise. Art – he accepts – must lie in the difference between its ideal instance, the last artwork, the art of the infinite, which we may deny, but never renounce, and whatever art we call ‘art’, the finite art of time. In us, each informs the other, and, each being indispensable, neither is privileged. This give-and-take is what is, and what will be, so long as we live without a norm of norms – a rule of rules – that resolves all regresses, and forever justifies their coming to an end with us, here, at this time.

◯

* In Kamm, the term ‘grammarian’ doesn’t always appear in the pejorative sense (as if it was a synonym for ‘pedant’). In this review it is only used in that sense. When I want to refer to grammarians in the positive sense, I call them ‘linguists’.

** I remember too that the Iraq War had few more dogmatic or more vigorous advocates in the British blogosphere. I venture no opinion as to whether his loss of faith in linguistic hawkishness coincided with any comparable loss of faith in the neoconservative ideas he espoused in his 2005 book, Antitotalitarianism.

† Kamm is too confident that the pedant’s sense that his language is in some way suffering a decline amounts to a fallacy (’many of the [language] pundits instinctively confuse change in the language with decline. That’s an error’). This idea of decline may be expressed more colourfully as decadence, debasement, degeneracy, corruption etc. And we may rightly register our distaste for such language, but if we call it fallacious we invest our distaste with a false rigour that is merely rhetorical in force. It is dishonest of the linguist, taking a generalised perspective on the evidence, to so insistently deny the particular perspective of the pedant – for the fact is that there is a pedant. The pedant is a mortal man or woman born in a particular place at a particular time. If there is that mortal man or woman, there is decline. Unless that man or woman is a fallacy, there is no fallacy.

‡ This, from the Guardian, is interesting: ‘So if guns kills people, I guess pencils miss spell words [sic], cars drive drunk and spoons make people fat.’ (I'm quoting a quotation). Does the 'sic' apply to both errors ('guns kills', 'miss spell)', or did the Guardian itself introduce the first error? Is the sign's 'miss'-spelling not ironic, and the Guardian's 'sic' not a bit tin-eared, a sort of subeditor’s kludge?

§ An Ngram on this famous split infinitive (credit: Yian Shang). It’s interesting to see how the rise in popularity of ‘to boldly go’ is reflected in the rise of ‘to go boldly’ in a sort of pedantic afterimage. I’m not sure how a descriptivist wishing to provide guidance on this point should react to what’s happened here. 

‖ Note that when Kamm or any other commentator makes a self-effacing appeal to the evidence as part of an anti-pedantic project, they also assert their authority as a sort of spokesperson. If the grammarian tries to demote himself in deference to something greater than him, the anti-pedant denies that there is any such entity to defer to, and characterises the grammarian as idiosyncratic, as a crank. But the evidence does not have a voice of its own, either. No linguist is its transparent tribune, any more than the grammarian is a mere instrument of a greater truth. Does the anti-pedant demote himself in deferring to the evidence, or does he promote himself as its spokesperson? In Britain in 2016, were we not reminded that, for every poll presuming to take a neutral reading of the nation's temperature, there is also a pollster?

[willadsenpaaske52]

It is no mystery story wherefore baseball has retentive been such a dearest interest for so many. However, at that place are about aspirant players WHO genuinely could do with a turn of counselling when it comes to performing the secret plan fountainhead. The pick to a lower place is intended to assist just that purpose and make believe meliorate players of from each one reviewer.

If you are a baseball handler and it's roughneck to grow your players to check centralised during practice, you may privation to switch things up. Ennui wish mark in if you never vary the everyday of the drills. Exchange up things and tack activities betwixt practices. Run stunned a few at-bat weights to get hold the ane that's rightfulness for you. If a at-bat is heavy, you'll dense toss off your swing, simply put on approximately big businessman. Excessively slow, though, and you Crataegus oxycantha ne'er take in up with the pitches. You've got to light upon the correct balance, specially if you've got a flame throwster on the pile. Practise your Department of Defense. Certainly lurch and batten catch completely of the glory, just organism a eager justificatory player is worth just as much to your squad. The power to bring through a streak is simply as valuable as the ability to produce a test. Both are required to gain ballock games. If you are a catcher, be surely you are in the proper posture when no unrivalled is on foot. This way acquiring into a moo crouch and balancing your weight down on your feet's balls. Bugger off as close-fitting to the underside of the cream as possible, just be sure you wish not catch score. Spell in a comfortable batting position, go on your blazonry forth from your dead body. Your elbows should be up and away, practically duplicate to the run aground. Defy the squash racket at shoulder joint unwavering and shuffle certain you don't bead your tail cubital joint. Apply diamondexch 99 in front end of a gravid mirror to insure that your elbows are decently positioned. Be mindful of the position of to each one baseball thespian. If you cognise where everyone is, it is easier to debar collisions. Concussions are sponsor in collisions. Send for the orb to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba everyone love that you are headed in the charge of the Lucille Ball. Con around pace when it comes to baseball game. If you at-bat correct handed, you can ski lift your remaining branch up when expecting the gear. Left-handed common people should do the polar. Thrust your feet ahead a animal foot or so to increment your impulse as the glob is advent toward you. Ane tread for you English hawthorn really be a small less or a brief More than unmatchable hoof. As a baseball coach, you wish be expected to hand an suitable post-halt utter. Whether your team wins or loses, you should give or so memorable remarks prepared. Your blab out should be positive, and you should pride your players on a gamy comfortably played. Peculiarly hit Federal Reserve note of examples of in effect sportsmanship. Don't occupy as well often nigh the mark. Sustain it positive, close it with your squad jolly up and go your brisk ways smile. Exercise throwing the baseball game every twenty-four hour period. It Crataegus oxycantha look obvious, merely close to brush aside throwing for the shout of the batter's cage in. They retrieve baseball is whole roughly the large murder. It's well-nigh a lot more, and a hard limb put up bastardly a muckle of runs protected all over the row of a season. To sustenance your fingers from acquiring scathe piece bunting, score for sure to support them on your position of the thrash. If you envelop them approximately the bat, the pitching toilet stumble them. You end up with a abominable bunt, with no master concluded where the orb goes, instead of a dandy sacrifice. Take in sure as shooting that you utilize suited batten range in a gamey of baseball. The batten enjoin could be what wins your team the gamy. Generally, you need to avert putt imperfect hitters in the lead of your secure hitters. You postulate to properly program where to set your stronger and weaker hitters so that you don't pack all of your "ammunition" in unmatchable point. The tempt of baseball genuinely is the poppycock of legend. Kids and grown-ups likewise deliver farsighted apprehended the skill and fervour corporate by this grand rollick. Those concerned in erudition Thomas More nigh the gritty and refining their possess skills wish hopefully encounter the advice establish higher up to be a utilitarian consultation going ahead.

[tapwrites]

Tense and Timing

Have written, wrote, write, will write.

The "tense" of a word shows when an event happens in relation to "now." Past tense happened before now, future tense happened after now, and present tense happened... right now in this moment.

There are lots of complex tenses, but I'm talking in this article about writing fiction stories. So I will focus on what's useful to writers in that area--hopefully in a way that is easy to understand and put into practise.

People generally pick up on how various tenses work just by everyday reading. And we all generally do fine, even with the nuances and caveats. But when we come to take writing more seriously, to think about how things work grammatically, we can start to get muddled up and unsure of ourselves.

That's because there's an extra little wrinkle for prose. In our everyday conversations, we all know the reference point now, the present. Anything we are saying is happening "now" is happening in the present. So that has the present tense. Before now is the past, afternow is the future. Simple.

But in a story the "now," the [current time], might be written in a different tense. Usually present tense or past tense, for most fiction. Because it's a decision we are making on how our story is written, we start consciously deciding on how other parts of the text uses different tenses.

We wonder, this looks like the wrong tense, but is it? If it is, how do I fix it? And which tense should I choose? What's the difference between them anyway?

We'll start with the basics. Past, present, and future...

"I eat" [present] tells you that in the present something is in my mouth being chewed.

Past

Say I'm telling you in the present that I ate before now. I would say "I ate" [past] instead. Eating happened in the past, so I use the past tense form of the verb.

If I'm telling you that I slept before I ate, then from the eating reference point the sleeping happened in the past. From the time I'm speaking from, we go back to eating, and back again to sleeping. Double-past! 👀

Although "sleep" doesn't have a double-past form. Verbs just don't have a version that indicates [past + past]. You can go back in time to "slept," but that's as far as you can go... without help!

In english we have [present] verbs and [past] verbs, and use extra words to push them into earlier or later slots of time.

We can push a past tense verb further into the past by using "had." I would say "I ate" [past] "after I had slept" [past + past]. Or, depending on the situation, other words that do the same kind of thing.

Sleep [present] Slept [past] Had [+past] slept [past]

What if you did something before that? Before now, I ate, before that I slept, and before that I brushed my teeth. That would be [past + past + past]. How would that be written? "I had brushed my teeth... before I had slept... before I ate."

Even Past-er-er

Notice how "brushed my teeth" was written in [past + past] the same as "slept"? That's because there is no [past + past + past]. You can't just use more "hads" to push it even further into the past. You can go up to two pasts, and no further! Thems the rules!

Also yes, "I had brushed my teeth before I had slept before I ate" does look real janky. That's because we don't naturally speak like this, stacking things further and further into the past. As human beings we think of things happening in time order, from furthest back, to present, to future, one after the other.

So we'd start from a specific time, and work our way forwards. "Last night [starting point] I brushed my teeth, then slept, then ate." Each "then" says "in relation to the event in the left, the event on the right happened later."

It sort of collapses into something simpler, regular ol' past tense. Which is actually called past simple tense. This is the [past] we used before; "I ate" was also in past simple.

Whereas the [past + past] is the most past-est past you can get--the perfect amount of past out of all the pasts in fact! This is called past perfect tense.

(I do know these technical terms, but I just think of it in terms of being past, or double-past. Far easier to understand in my opinion.)

Alternatively, you could write it as "Last night [starting point] I brushed my teeth before I slept before I ate." The events still all happened in the same order as before, but the timing relative to the next event in the list. Each "before" says "in relation to the event to the right, the event on the left happened earlier."

This version also looks very odd, because again us humans think linearly, one event at a time. We talk about events it in terms of one thing happening after another: and then, and then, and then. But this technically works. Just an interesting quirk to think about.

Future

Future works similarly. "Later this evening I will [future] brush my teeth, then sleep, then eat." We add "will" to indicate the tense because, again, verbs don't have [future] tense forms--just as they don't have [past + past] forms.

(There is the "perfect" future tense, but it rarely comes up. So I'll leave that to your gut feel for how it's written, and you'll probably get it right anyway.)

Fuzzy Tense

There is another type of verb we haven't looked at though. A version of the verb that doesn't even care about time. They hang out in this timeless [fuzzy] area where instead of describing a specific action that happens at a specific time... they're a lot more loosey-goosey about the whole thing.

The technical term for this is: "continuous" tense. These are usually gerunds, forms with an "-ing" on the end, like "eating," "sleeping," and "brushing teeth." These can be mistaken for present tense, so I thought it would be a good idea to cover how these work too.

The little boy is in the park swinging, and see-sawing, and playing in the paddling pool.

These are used when we're not talking about a complete event. If we use the swing at the park, we are "swinging." Because we didn't just have one singular swing and stop. You could say the number of times we had a swing is [fuzzy]. We just weren't counting! So "swinging" leaves the number or amount of repetitions unspecified. We "continue" to swing over some time.

These also don't carry a tense, so again we can indicate the timing in other parts of the sentence. "He was[+past] swinging[fuzzy]" pushes the verb into the past. "He will be[+future] swinging[fuzzy]" pushes the verb into the future.

As a narrative example...

I left[past] the room, swinging[fuzzy] the door shut behind me.

There's a definite, non-continuous, complete, self-contained action shown at the start: "I left the room." By the end of the phrase, I am no longer in the room. That simple. Past simple in fact! 🎉

But tagged onto that period of time (between me starting to walk, and me being out in the hallway) is another action. The door swings shut.

Now, I did say "the door swings shut" which is not continuous. It's a complete action that happens once, and job done. But it's not specified at what point in time during the "leaving" part the "door swinging" part happens. And the writer (me) has chosen not to nail that down. I've just indicated they both happen around the same time. It's still [fuzzy].

To compare, let's see how else you could write the sentence with the same timing, but not using this [fuzzy] tense.

You could say "I swung [past] the door shut as I left the room." That has the same meaning, sure.

But to me, the main action going on is me leaving the room. The door being shut is secondary, not as important. So I'd rather have the important action first. "I left the room while I swung the door shut." This works too, but the "while" (or "as") is saying "the action on the left happens during the action on the right." The action after it is more important timing-wise; the leaving is timed relative to the swinging.

You could do something like "As I left the room, I swung the door shut." Also works. But weakens the act of leaving the room. It's no longer its own clear action... it's dependent on the door closing, for the "as" to work. Again, putting more weight into swinging the door shut.

So I would prefer to put the important action first, and tag the secondary stuff on afterwards making it dependent on the main action. Like: "[primary] I left the room, [secondary] swinging the door shut behind me." Making the swing [fuzzy] lets it borrow the timing from the main action, making it dependent on it. And it becomes a "continuous" form of the verb.

I think of [fuzzy] or "continuous" actions as things that can't be pinned down to an instant in time. Either because...

The timing isn't defined by the text. Because it is unknown like "The wheat will be growing well this winter." Or just doesn't matter as in "I left the room, swinging the door shut behind me." The period during which the action happened might be indicated (the door swung shut during the process of leaving the room), but not necessarily.

Or because it's not an instant in time. The verb captures many instances, like "swinging on the park swing." Or it's not something that can be counted in the first place, as in "I gazed at the water flowing through the gutter."

In-Tense Writing

Now that we know what tense even is... let's get back to the whole reason we're here. Writing prose.

While some genres more commonly use a particular tense, these things come in trends and waves and can change over time. Really what I'd suggest is to write in whatever tense feels right to you.

Me personally, I write in past tense, and that's mainly what I read. Because that's what I'm used to, when I start reading a story in present tense, it feels awkward and weird... at first. But over a chapter or two I get used to it and it's just fine.

Some people giving you feedback might say you "should" use this tense or that, but that might just be down to personal preference or what they are used to reading. It's not a good reason to change your whole text into a different tense.

You might even change tense for certain scenes--for example, writing in present tense but past tense for a flashback. Or you may reframe the time of the flashback as the new [current time] and continue to write in the same tense for that scene.

No matter which tense you use, events that happen before [current time] are written in the [current time + past] tense. And events that happen at [current time] are written in the [current time] tense.

And events that are talked about happening after [current time] are written in [future]; this doesn't change when you write in different tenses. And [fuzzy] just does its own thing either way.

With stories, the writer must choose which tense to write it in. Present tense is straightforward: it's how we speak day to day. You use the tenses just as they are described above. You could see it as providing more "immediacy" to your writing, because it's kind of all happening "right now."

So in present tense [current time] = present. Swapping that into the before-current-time from above, [present + past] = past tense. This is all a bit obvious and didn't need pointing out. But for completeness I thought I'd point this out.

That said, past tense is a very common. It makes the story's [current time], the time it is talking about, have the past tense. Apparently this is used for a lot of fantasy stories, like stories "feel like" a story being told to you in past tense.

Again, I really don't think it matters what you choose. I don't think there are actually pros and cons to either present or past. Either way, some readers will like it, some readers won't be used to it. So don't base the decision on that. Just choose what feels best to write in to you.

Just as before, [current time] = past. Therefore, before the current time, [past + past] = double-past (past perfect). Note that [future] is still future, skipping over present. And [fuzzy] does whatever it pleases.

Future tense isn't really used apart from experimental stuff. So if that's your thing, I'm sure you know enough to be just fine. And double-past tense isn't a viable option for the main tense that [current time] uses. Unless, again, you're a mad scientist (see above).

I hope this article gives you the groundwork you need to know what tense you're looking at, how to write in the tense you choose, and how to spot something that feels off and figure out why.

I hope you have a relaxing, tense day! 👍

#tense #grammar #past #present #future #continuous #timing #time frame

[ao3feed-undertale1]

Something stupid

read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/52886053 by cassandraa Today was the day the two would start dating, Starlo truly wanted to be his North Star persona—twice the man that he was—so that he could impress him, and didn’t have to muck anything up and look like a fool around him. He practised everyday, in front of the mirror, to find some clever line to say. And then he goes and spoils it all, by saying something stupid like;   “I love you.” Words: 3547, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Undertale (Video Game), Undertale Yellow (Video Game) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Starlo (Undertale Yellow), Dalv (Undertale Yellow) Relationships: Dalv/Starlo (Undertale Yellow) Additional Tags: Fluff, idk if it’s ooc i domt write ship fics, First Dates, Dating, i love writing fics inspired by songs, fic so sweet it gives you cavities, ugh they;re so in love it’s annoying ew, Corn Yaoi read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/52886053

#ao3feed #ao3undertalefeed #fanfic #undertale #undertale-fanfic

[about27th]

review 2023

it's been ages since i dropped a post here; couldn't make time for entries ever since working multiple jobs!

2023 was filled with challenges, struggles, and tears; reflecting on it, the year was all about self-healing.

during the first half, couldnt escape the lingering depression, despite trying my best efforts to live life to the fullest; then come the second half, i inevitably had to face those demons head-on

the effects of the devastating event from last year haunted me for what felt like an eternity; fortunately, making the phone call did help and marked the start of my fifth stage of grief

learning to let go, live in the moment, and stop blaming myself hasn't been easy; still, i've tried to embrace the tough times, keep practising, and allow myself a good cry when things got overwhelming

navigating life, especially with some unpleasant inborn traits, isn't a walk in the park.. watching more and more friends tie the knot in recent years, I often wonder how everyone seems to effortlessly sail through life's milestones; why everything seems to fall into place, and all they have to do is kick back and enjoy?

despite past relationship setbacks and an uncertain future, my life goals remain clear: to have freedom—both in the tangible world and within my mind

i still dream to

be a fluent english speaker

build my own business

have cosmetics treatment as desired

travel annually

dance like a pro

become a housewife

learn korean and japanese

.. i hold onto those aspirations tight; slow and steady, with kindness to myself, is the game plan

nowwwwwww, a nod to this year's milestones

March

helped out a new friend with her booth at a commerce fair

landed a costume design project

April

joined the central library as a volunteer

helped manage a friend's social media hustle for three months

kicked off this Tumblr gig—capturing life and honing my English.

May

started my first part-time gig

travelled to Manchester, London and Brisbane

designed five wallpapers for showrooms

June

volunteered as a receptionist in Dudhope Castle for 3 months

August

started an Instagram page to share HK movie aesthetics

rekindled passion for dancing

September

showcased a poster at the BPS postgraduate conference

started another part-time job

October

started my third part-time role

November

graduated!

got a new freelance client

December

pitched graphic design service to a UK small business owner

take a moment to jot these down—it's a good reality check; it reminds me that i've done more than I often give myself credit for :)

continue onto the fun stuffffffffffff -- entertainment hits of the year:

Top Three Destinations

Brisbane, Australia

London, UK

Manchester, UK

Top Three Binge-worthy Shows

The End of the F***ing World

Shrinking

The Dropout

Tunes

didn't delve deep into the music pool, but Nishina's 2021 solo concert "Hatsu" was absolute fire.. made me want to head off to Japan, even though it wasn't high on my list

and a year-end surprise, Sia's "Everyday is Christmas"—straight to the feels

living in the UK has been the best thing that happened in my life so far; if there's one wish, it's to settle down here🤞

it's been a journey, but it's time to say goodbye to 2023; i look forward to a fantastic 2024

#uk life #good vibes #bye 2023 #hello 2024 #postgraduate #study in the uk #closure #self healing #gratitude #stay positive #be kind #achievements #new year wishes

[emma00fin]

Week 47

Conversation group

In the third session of the conversation Zoom group, I was grouped with three other ALMS English students. Gadly this time the conversation was more natural than last time. Our topics ranged from our fields of study to politics to pensions. One interesting topic that was unknown to most of us was the fact that we get pension from studying.

Playing crossword puzzles

I had some free time this week to play some different kinds of crossword puzzles from the website englisch-hilfen.de. I completed a few: one was to convert given verbs into the simple present forms (task 4019), one was doing the same but with irregular verbs (task 3725), converting adjectives into comparatives (task 1027) and converting irregular verbs into past participle (task 3729). Although I am quite fluent with everyday English, these irregularities kept me on my toes.

Listening to Everything goes with emma chamberlain

Episode do we need religion?

This episode was interesting, as I as well am not religious but am baffled by the idea of religion and getting motivation to get through each day from some outer worldly spirit. I somewhat aspire those people who get this light at the end of the tunnel from religion that keeps them going and makes them kind to the world. However, there are good and bad sides to religion, as Emma discussed on the podcast: there are those who "live and breath" religion and those who practise it seldom and take the rules as more of recommendations. In my opinion, religion is taken too far when it is used to restrict not only yourself but other people around you. It was nice to hear these same thoughts from someone else who is atheistic but still thinks about religion.

Episode the fear of missing out

It was nice to listen to this podcast as I have struggled a lot with fear of missing out, or FOMO, when I was in upper secondary school and now again when I moved to a new city for university. I think it comes from the fact that I think, or have thought, a lot about what other people think of me. I also agree with Emma when she said that it also comes from young people being vulnerable and insecure in themselves because they have not found themselves yet. Although I have been able to get rid of a lot of my anxiety, it was good to hear that occasional FOMO is normal. It was also important to acknowledge that you need to work on your self-esteem to be confident in what you are doing, instead of thinking about what you are not doing, which in its core is FOMO.

HOURS

Listening: 62 h 7 min

Reading: 8 h 30 min

Spoken interaction: 3 h

Written and online interaction: 3 h 45 min (included the time it takes to write these posts, about 15 min each)

Spoken production: 3h

Written production: 9 h

Total 89 h 22 min