Things that make you LOL

[Kuroimaken]

I remember one friend of mine making a joke about English being easy:

"Why do you think American kids have English as their first language?"

[CountArioch]

I can tell that Finnish has the second most vowels per vocals, the aforementioned 100:109 ratio, only Portuguese beats us at that.

That's not all.  I don't know what Portugeuse is, but Hawaiian has a vowel/consonant ratio of 3:2.  However, it is considered to be nearly extinct, but I'd put money on the closely related Maori and Rapa-nui languages beating Finnish as well.

[CountArioch]

I remember one friend of mine making a joke about English being easy:

"Why do you think American kids have English as their first language?"

English is easy on a conversational level, but an unbelievable bitch once you get to higher education.  Most colleges use English as a program to scrub out people who aren't motivated enough.  I failed out of the gen ed english class twice before I managed to get through it.

[Kuroimaken]

I remember one friend of mine making a joke about English being easy:

"Why do you think American kids have English as their first language?"

English is easy on a conversational level, but an unbelievable bitch once you get to higher education.  Most colleges use English as a program to scrub out people who aren't motivated enough.  I failed out of the gen ed english class twice before I managed to get through it.

Really? I can translate college-level papers without so much as breaking a sweat. (Occasional technical terms might elude me, but then again, they do so for everyone.)

[EjoThims]

Yea, the problems I've ever had with English were some of the fancier clause structures (because the formal construction differs greatly from conversational pacing) and in actually identifying things.

To me, it's like putting on shoes; I don't need to know what the top part of the toe area is called, I just have to know whether or not it's thick enough to handle the type of things I plan on doing in those shoes.

[j0lt]

As an English teacher, all I can say is: Future Perfect Continuous Tense!   

[Irthos Levethix]

As an English teacher, all I can say is: Future Perfect Continuous Tense!  

Sometimes, I think you guys just make that shit up.

[InnaBinder]

As an English teacher, all I can say is: Future Perfect Continuous Tense!   

I will have been up for 48 hours come tomorrow morning.

[CountArioch]

I remember one friend of mine making a joke about English being easy:

"Why do you think American kids have English as their first language?"

English is easy on a conversational level, but an unbelievable bitch once you get to higher education.  Most colleges use English as a program to scrub out people who aren't motivated enough.  I failed out of the gen ed english class twice before I managed to get through it.

Really? I can translate college-level papers without so much as breaking a sweat. (Occasional technical terms might elude me, but then again, they do so for everyone.)

Reading is easy.  Writing is a bitch.  Especially when every teacher has a different idea of what constitutes proper written English.  My first-semester English teacher took an entire letter-grade off a paper because I put a period after a quotation mark.  My second semester teacher took off a letter grade because I put a period before a quotation mark.

So to this day, I have no idea which sentence is right:

"I have a towel".


"I have a towel."


I asked a friend that's an English teacher, and she said that her English department was in the middle of a civil war over that punctuation.

Tons of stuff like that.  You are expected to know all that minutiae and use it correctly, and in some cases read the teacher's mind because English is a constantly evolving language with roughly 2 million words in it at the most recent estimate.   

[Bozwevial]

I was given to understand that the period belongs inside the quotation mark.

[CountArioch]

I was given to understand that the period belongs inside the quotation mark.

Three different teachers have given me three different answers on that.   

[BobismyRhino]

The period thing depends.

If you're directly quoting someone but not officially citing them, the period's in the quotation marks. Like if you were writing a story involving a chick named Sue:

Sue said, "How about another hotdog?"

But if you're citing some random fact that you didn't know, you need to cite it, and the period goes after the quotation marks.

As W.E.B Du Bois said, "I like peaches" (102).

[BobismyRhino]

 

This is funny. 

Me and AC think it's funny, at least.

Oh, and it's dedicated to SDK. We thought he'd enjoy it... about as much as the first video we did.

[j0lt]

As an English teacher, all I can say is: Future Perfect Continuous Tense!   

I will have been up for 48 hours come tomorrow morning.

That's the one!  Japanese students get really confused when you start talking about the future as if it was the past, or talking about now from a point in the future.  

I was given to understand that the period belongs inside the quotation mark.

Three different teachers have given me three different answers on that.   

Here's your fourth!  In MOST cases the period goes inside the quotation marks, must like in MOST cases the period goes outside the brackets.  There are exceptions (this is English, after all).    

[EjoThims]

Of course, assuming I was taught correctly, other punctuation goes outside the quotation marks if it is different than the context of the quote.

He actually said "and then I put it in the ice cream"?

Also... I hate that '?!' (or '!?') is not present in formal English, as it's tone in a conversation is obviously different than both a plain question and a normal exclamation.

[BowenSilverclaw]

I remember one friend of mine making a joke about English being easy:

"Why do you think American kids have English as their first language?"

English is easy on a conversational level, but an unbelievable bitch once you get to higher education.  Most colleges use English as a program to scrub out people who aren't motivated enough.  I failed out of the gen ed english class twice before I managed to get through it.

Aye, you've certainly got a point there.

[Solo Phoenix]

This is funny. 

Me and AC think it's funny, at least.

Oh, and it's dedicated to SDK. We thought he'd enjoy it... about as much as the first video we did.

I found the 'scary box' to be hilarious

[Tshern]

I can tell that Finnish has the second most vowels per vocals, the aforementioned 100:109 ratio, only Portuguese beats us at that.

That's not all.  I don't know what Portugeuse is, but Hawaiian has a vowel/consonant ratio of 3:2.  However, it is considered to be nearly extinct, but I'd put money on the closely related Maori and Rapa-nui languages beating Finnish as well.

Sorry, didn't specify I meant European languages...

[CountArioch]

I can tell that Finnish has the second most vowels per vocals, the aforementioned 100:109 ratio, only Portuguese beats us at that.

That's not all.  I don't know what Portugeuse is, but Hawaiian has a vowel/consonant ratio of 3:2.  However, it is considered to be nearly extinct, but I'd put money on the closely related Maori and Rapa-nui languages beating Finnish as well.

Sorry, didn't specify I meant European languages...

Well, honestly I can forgive you for not taking in account a language that's only spoken by about 200 people as a native tongue, and about 27,000 as a second language, mostly concentrated on 7 islands in the middle of the pacific ocean.  I only know because I had a brief e-fling with a hawaiian girl a while back.  Never made anything of it though, and she recently married a guy that isn't me.  I rank that as one of my most colossal failures. 

[InnaBinder]

This is funny. 

Me and AC think it's funny, at least.

Oh, and it's dedicated to SDK. We thought he'd enjoy it... about as much as the first video we did.

Uh, AC?  PANTS, PLEASE!  That is all.