Mr flyez

Whom, on here wants to be my english professor onine? i will trade my knowledge in computers. Forgive me admins if this is the wrong place to post this. I am young, still learning, full of energy.

BadNick

While you're waiting for a master/expert, I'll throw in a little bit:

mundane finger issue you missed hitting the "l" key in onine ...online.

Excessive/incorrect comma use is common even by otherwise well educated English/American people, so drop the comma after "Whom,". Also, your use of "Whom" is incorrect; I hope you understand this below, which I just cut&pasted from other sources:
**************************
Rule Use the he/him method to decide which word is correct.
he = who
him = whom
Examples Who/Whom wrote the letter?
He wrote the letter. Therefore, who is correct.
For who/whom should I vote?
Should I vote for him? Therefore, whom is correct.
We all know who/whom pulled that prank.
This sentence contains two clauses: We all know and who/whom pulled that prank. We are interested in the second clause because it contains the who/whom. He pulled that prank. Therefore, who is correct.
(Are you starting to sound like a hooting owl yet?)
We want to know on who/whom the prank was pulled.
This sentence contains two clauses: We want to know and the prank was pulled on who/whom. Again, we are interested in the second clause because it contains the who/whom. The prank was pulled on him. Therefore, whom is correct.

Best wishes for continued desire to learn and keep up the energy.

Mr flyez

well done, sir I thank you for your help. However, best wishes to you.

All my life I have rejected english, like a bat at day time afriad of darkness. Now I am in college, english is my favorite food, I want more of it everyday especally writing. Best wishes to everyone here, god bless.

Plan9

Baraka_Guru is a master of languages and a real wordsmith.

I would recommend climbing his mountain to consult his genius.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

DaveOrion

Yea, I use commas to much also, not really worried by it, who really cares??? Unless you're in college, or want all your posts perfect.....If I'm serious about writing something I use microsoft word..... That helps alot.

__________________
Syriana...have you ever tried liquid MDMA?....Liquid MDMA? No....Arash, when you wanna do this?.....After prayer...

Crack

Perhaps if you were to tell us of your background or first language we might be able to better assist you in your endeavor.

__________________
Crack, you and I are long overdue for a vicious bout of mansex.

~Halx

Plan9

Do you get your editorial advice from Clippy, too!?

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Lasereth

Damn Mr Flyez you need some serious comma work. You write like English is your second language. Is it? We need some background information. Your sentences don't flow and they're extremely disjointed. Give us some infos!

DaveOrion

Another attempt at humor??? Keep workin on that bro....

__________________
Syriana...have you ever tried liquid MDMA?....Liquid MDMA? No....Arash, when you wanna do this?.....After prayer...

Plan9

What can I say, Dave? This audience? I'm up here working with Playdoh people!

You don't use Clippy, do you? You use that annoying dog, I bet.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

DaveOrion

Hey, the virtual dog is dead, my actual dogs are alive & well, thank God and the powers that be.... As far as word is concerned, I use it all the time, along with many other office apps.... As far as punctuation, spelling, & syntax, word is, once again, a great app for that. As far as humor, I still consider you the best of the lot....Live Long & prosper you Fuckin Cocksucker!!! I should most definitely receive a strike for that comment.....

__________________
Syriana...have you ever tried liquid MDMA?....Liquid MDMA? No....Arash, when you wanna do this?.....After prayer...

The_Jazz

Fixed...

__________________
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Baraka_Guru

Hey, I found it funny. Heh, Clippy....


And, Crompsin, thanks for the compliment. You actually made me sound infallible.

And, Mr flyez, as with many languages, mastering English requires balancing components such as grammar, spelling, and usage. If anything, English will trip you up on its idioms and inconsistent logic when it come to rules. Take word forms, for example. If something is confusing, don't be afraid to ask. I'll tackle anything.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

snowy

There are a lot of us on this board who have English degrees. I'll count myself because I finished my major components last term. My written English on this forum is perhaps not the best it could be; I tend to adopt a more conversational style when engaging in discourse on an internet forum. However, my commitment to good rhetoric remains whatever my grammatical mistakes may be.

Perhaps that is the best expression of the written language--the well-written, well-cited argument. But even a good argument gets lost when the writer ignores conventions (though I will make an exception here for RB: his mechanics are solid, despite his lack of capitalization).

A visiting writer to my university, William Kittredge, says that the trick to being a good writer is to read like a writer. Personally, I've found reading improves my writing, period. For instance, after reading "Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde this summer, I found myself writing in the same style as Wilde adopts. I have had this happen to me before, so there is no doubt in my mind as to whether or not reading has an impact on a person's writing. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Read. Write. These are the two things you must do in order to better your English. Devote yourself to good conventions. Buy a style guide. I have several style and writing guides on my bookshelves. The classic is Strunk and White's "Elements of Style." Currently, for my grammar class, I am reading a book called "Rhetorical Grammar" by Kolln. I find it to be a great cross between a writing guide and a grammar book. But beyond that, just read, period. Read the newspaper daily; read a good news magazine once a week. Read lots of books. Try your hand at some of the greats of Western literature. Read, period.

When you feel like listening, try public radio. Most of it is talk-based, and so it gives you a good sense of how to put what you've learned from reading into practice. Most of the people featured on public radio, both broadcasters and guests, are fairly well-spoken.

Hope that helps.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Baraka_Guru

Good advice, snowy. You get bonus points for using a semi-colon twice. Though stylistically, I tend to put book titles and the titles of longer works in italics, while reserving quotation marks for shorter works, such as songs and poems.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

snowy

I use italics when writing in Word, but I find typing the tags for italics on a forum to be cumbersome, and therefore resort to using quotation marks.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Willravel

If it weren't for the spellcheck in my browser, no one would know what I was talking about. Color me useless in matters grammatical.

dlish

will..ure absolutely right... u keep talking about seamen.

__________________
An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

Mr flyez

i just got off from work, i saw all of your guys replys. English is not my first language. I was born in africa, had a mother and a father like you guys.

This is a small story I typed on microsoft word early today.


The traffic light turns blue, as Jane fiercely hammered on the brakes of his rainbow colored 1995 honda accord civic. Cruising with the winds, the feeling of comfort, restless covered his inter thought. There was a sound, about a mile away, felt forever to reach. As the sound approach, Jane was slower than a turtle. His heart rate dropped like a glass from a 12 story building, which was impossible to repair. A man dressed like a clown was behind him, but, his face was motionless. He came face to face with Jane. He demanded, “May I see your driver license and Insurance, sir?” Jane obeyed. The officer was done investigating; Jane thought he was free as a bird since he had all his documents. Sadly, his luck was defeated, and he received a ticket for running a red light.

snowy

Can we correct your posts? This is what a foreign language teacher would do.

Here are a few fixes:

"I just got off from work. I saw everyone's replies. English is not my first language. I was born in Africa."

Your last sentence does not make much sense, as most people have mothers and fathers. Perhaps you could clarify that for us.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Mr flyez

I just meet you onesnowyowl and Baraka_Guru. thanks for your help

Plan9

Fuck, now I'm afraid to write in a normal paragraph format around Baraka.

*hangs head in literary shame*

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Willravel

Actually, I was spelling it that way intentionally. It's a game I play, like when I spell grammar "grammer".

DaveOrion

What I find even more hilarious, is an editor who never actually reads the books he's reviewing....

__________________
Syriana...have you ever tried liquid MDMA?....Liquid MDMA? No....Arash, when you wanna do this?.....After prayer...

Jetée

Be most proud and accomplished on how far you have progressed your English studies; your actual usage is not as bad as some who have been taught and exposed to the language early on. In fact, I understand your conveyances and intentions perhaps more clearly than others I have encountered in daily life who have certainly had more education and practice with it than you have.

In addition, it is, again, very admirable to admit your faults and lack of knowledge in the area, all in an effort to continually improve upon your understandings of the English language. If only because I viewed the film only yesterday, this situation somewhat resembles that of Tom Hanks' character in 'The Terminal', where he is portrayed as a foreigner with no solid understanding of English, but in his stay, he has the forebearance to progressively learn the language, and subsequently utilize it to his avail.

Diligence is the word of the day, Mr flyez.

__________________
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi

Mr flyez

thank you sir. I am trying very hard to improve my usage in english.

Jinn

Tip: Try using CTRL+I while typing a forum reply, as you would if you were in Microsoft Word. It inserts the tags for you.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

roachboy

practice. (<---------vaguely imperative)
practice. (<---------a noun)
practice. (<---------you are abjured.)

my favorite style book is by raymond queneau.
it doesn't translate easily into english, but it is translated (from french).
the book tells the same story 40 ways.


english is a small set of rules beneath which you find an enormous heap of idiomatic usages. the rules set you string idioms together. nothing really makes much sense.
korean is a rational language.
english is an ant heap.

be patient and practice more. keep practicing. put stuff up here or start a journal in the journal zone and put stuff there. just keep writing.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

Who does that?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Tophat665

My advice is to lay hands on a copy of The Deluxe Transitive Vampire by Karen Elizabeth Gordon. The subtitle says it all: "The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed". Who and Whom, for instance:
Entertaining and vaguely menacing examples abound.

__________________
Light a man a fire, and he will be warm while it burns.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

Mr flyez

I don't want to be rude or anything, but you guys are all off subject.

thank you, people that are on subject and are helping.

snowy

That is an awesome book. Hilarious read, and highly educational.

What do you mean we're not on topic? Roachboy gave you some excellent advice, and Tophat's book recommendation is a great one. You should check it out. "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" is also a good popular book about grammar.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Nimetic

Native speakers learn the language mostly by listening and repeating.

We don't always understand the rules.

We can help with corrections, but we might not have good explanations. Although we can try.

Mr flyez

the hell with the books lol, what i need is a good teacher. topic closed.

Jetée

Nothing beats it.

__________________
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world (that is the myth of the Atomic Age) as in being able to remake ourselves.

—Mohandas K. Gandhi