[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 7 KB, 275x183, retard.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3015061 No.3015061[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

I have a huge vocabulary and fully understand most sentences without a dictionary but I can't recall anything when composing sentences. I also have trouble articulating my thoughts.

Am I just retarded or do I have a learning disability or something

>> No.3015087

Someone help. How can I get better?

>> No.3015104

Join the club,bro.

>> No.3015106

>can't recall anything when composing sentences

elaborate

>> No.3015110

>>3015106

I can't remember nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs while trying to write but if I see them in a sentence, I know what they mean.

>> No.3015118

>>3015110
I feel you man. By the way, are you a native speaker? I was thinking about this, if you fully understand what someone says, why can't you speak the same way using the same words.a

>> No.3015120

>>3015110

Get a thesaurus

>> No.3015133

>>3015120

How will that help without remembering a similar word?

>> No.3015138

>Mfw heading to a Russell group university in a couple of days, where I'll be studying English for the next 3+ years
>mfw I still couldn't tell you what an adjective, adverb, verb or noun was
Feels ba

>> No.3015163

>>3015138

Why don't you learn? I had the same problem and just picked up a few grammar books. It's not hard.

>> No.3015165

Were you ever a stoner. Op?

>> No.3015166

>>3015061

That's because people have two vocabularies, the one they understand and the one they use.

It's not just you brah.

>> No.3015169

>>3015163

What do you recommend?

>> No.3015172

>I have a huge vocabulary and fully understand most sentences without a dictionary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOSYiT2iG08

>> No.3015181

>>3015169

C.T. Onions is old-school but comprehensive. Modern grammar is different (more precise in separating gerunds from verbal nouns for example) . For this I can recommend The Penguin Guide to English Grammar supplemented by Wikipedia and a good style guide such as Fowler's or Usage and Abusage.

I'm British so my recommendations for style guides aren't great for American use, but for God's sake don't get Harbrace or The Elements of Style, no matter what people say. They're didactic, shallow and wrong in many places, usually because of over-simplification.

>> No.3015244

>>3015172
This is brilliant.

>> No.3015255

Teach English for a while. Best way to learn grammar, once you realize you won't be able to bluff it for long.

>> No.3015272

I'm with you OP.

t. an assburger

>> No.3015286

Best way to learn Grammar, enough Grammar, and also improve your English from the Latin root side of things, is either to take a Latin primer course, or get yourself a decent Latin primer (Wheelock) and simply learn. In latin the distinction between the parts of speech (noun, verb, adverb) is far more obvious than in English, and it is far easier to pick up a little Latin than a modern European language (where, often, you need that little bit of Grammar to pick them up properly in the first place.) And if a Latin primer is too hard for you, enjoy being a pleb and a fool - forever, no matter what childish contempt Orwell or what silly wit Churchill, who was deeply indebted to the study, might have dumped upon the venerable study.

Honestly, Latin is just the easier route than trying to pick apart the immense analytical edifice of a comprehensive modern Grammar book, or the constipated thinness of the abridged versions thereof.

If you aren't prepared to drop yourself into an study of your own language's origins, down the Germanic and Latin etymological slide, you're not serious at all about writing, reading, or even thinking.

>> No.3015287

>>3015286
>improve your English from the Latin root side of things

English has no roots in Latin, you fucktard.

>> No.3015297

>>3015287

What? It has many roots in Latin. Many words come from Latin. It's also influenced heavily by French.

But learning Latin grammar without an English base is a very bad idea. You'll get ideas like relative attraction and the incorrect pedantry that split infinitives are bad. Not to mention the horrors of reported speech Romans were so keen on.

It can help, but only if you understand the mistakes you can make with it.

>> No.3015299

>>3015297

to boldly go where no man has gone before

it hurts my eyes

>> No.3015301
File: 132 KB, 600x600, 600px-Origins_of_English_PieChart_2D.svg.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3015301

>>3015287

>English has no roots in Latin

What the fuck am I reading?

>> No.3015302

>>3015299

Sometimes a split-infintive is the only option. Prepositions ending sentences share this quality as well. I'm not going to give examples, because people don't read them, but just look up 'Split Infinitives' and 'Preposition at End' in Fowler's. You'll get it.

>> No.3015317

>>3015301
>>3015297

So what, Indonesian also has a great many words that come from Latin.

The point is that English is not related at all to Latin.

>> No.3015323
File: 34 KB, 583x553, mack2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3015323

>>3015287

>> No.3015325

>>3015317

What the fuck are you talking about? It's a Germanic language, but saying it's "not related at all to Latin", or that it has "no roots in Latin" is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.

I'm guessing your talking purely about grammar and sentence structure, but still, word your sentences better.

>> No.3015328

>>3015325
Don't be as mad as this guy.

>> No.3015329

>>3015328
That guy is right, you know.

>> No.3015332

>>3015329
Only insofar as every language borrows words from just about every other language. But we're talking about stronger relation than that.

>> No.3015365

>>3015332
Have you ever heard of a thing called 'Indo-European languages?'

>> No.3015381

>>3015332
Yes. We are talking about a parental relationship between one parent, or grand-parent, etc. - Latin, and its descendant, English. Thus English is related to Latin. Thus English's roots are Latin, if you can comprehend the basic botanic-family metaphor here, and a relation, a re (latin prefix) lat (from latus, p.p.p/ of fero... ion ending, masculine third declension stem... yawn, I could do this all day, even some of the English form of to be, viz. 'is' is derived from Latin - esse. Sometimes etymologies are disputed, or unscientific.

One could almost say of many a serious English writer's prose up until the 20C that it is simply Latin in an English body kit.

>> No.3015384

Any language learner knows that there's a difference between passively knowing a language and actively knowing a language. OP is just better at passively knowing the language.

Of course, this is sorta weird because as far as I can tell he's a native speaker.

>> No.3015386

>>3015381

What? No, that's really really wrong. Latin is only indirectly related to English. English is sure as hell NOT the descendent of Latin. The father of English is Anglo Saxon, the father of that Common West Germanic, father of that Proto-Germanic. so on and so on.

I suggest you buy a book on linguistics.

>> No.3015387

>>3015297
The whole point of my post was that Latin grammar is a crash course in English grammar. Your point is, I see, that without some English grammar you can't master the Latin. This is false - a Latin grammar is just English with the grammatical concepts demonstrated in two languages. Oratio obliqua and attraction are, and grammars make this clear, a peculiarity of Latin, not to be found in the Latin. The so-called pedantry of split infinitives in English is not taught in Latin grammars, why would it be? You can't split a Latin infinitive by adding an adverb or whatever you like so there's no need to discuss it. Oratio obliqua is not a 'horror', again, all Latin grammars drill one on the differences between English and Latin grammar in a way which effectively teaches English grammar by showing what is and is not, and with ample demonstration, while at the same time covering subtler material like points of etymology, necessary to linguistic mastery.

>> No.3015395

>>3015387

No. I'm saying that certain things in Latin grammar incorrectly influence English grammar.

>> No.3015399

>>3015386
It's not wrong at all unless one reads for 'parent' and 'relation' an uncommon sense of the words. Thus your accusation is not far off the pedant who treats as wrong what is generally correct for the sake of a minor academic sophistication of the meaning.

Your use of 'relate' is definitely not pedantic. Modern English is a descendAnt and child of Latinity. These metaphors, though, are unscientific, and a true science of linguistics would recognise only starting points, linguistic origin points, and specify the technical elements taken fro each - from the Germanic, grammar and the basic vocabulary, from the Latin, a vast conceptual apparatus, some basic words, and many more complex syntactical structures - especially in Modern English (15->).

>> No.3015411

>>3015399
Syntax--> Grammar. English does copy Latin grammar. Yes, English is not a SOV language, as Latin only is in the composition books based on Cicero & Caesar, but sometimes English is SOV, and sometimes its OSV, etc. and English has a few centuries worth of prose which, with relatives pronouns, conjunctions, gerunds, and so forth, attempts to replicate the looser style of the Latin period.

>> No.3015413

>>3015399
>Modern English is a descendAnt and child of Latinity.

It is not, you fucktard.

Of the 100 most common English words only 3 come from Latin.

English is a Germanic language.

>> No.3015414

>>3015399

For one, stop talking like that on 4chan. For another, as I said you obviously have no sense of linguistics as you cannot mention a parent-child relationship between languages without that being the literal genetic case. As I said, educate yourself before you go on 4chan blasting my good sense with your disgusting mouth.

>> No.3015420
File: 19 KB, 345x305, 1347209452424.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
3015420

>>3015399

so much pretentious fucktard

this is basically /lit/ in one post

>> No.3017115 [DELETED] 

well

>> No.3017118

you're just inexperienced at speaking. it's a different ballpark, bro.

>> No.3017134

>>3015399
>Thus your accusation is not far off the pedant who treats as wrong what is generally correct for the sake of a minor academic sophistication of the meaning
I don't care what everyone else is saying and could care less if you're trolling; I like this post!

I've always been a bit annoyed by the radical anti-prescriptivists clamoring to declassify any rule of English writing from the rule book, in fact claiming that those rules aren't actually rules—essentially telling native speakers of English that they're using the word 'rule' incorrectly and need to get it synced with a pedantic sense of the word that isn't widely recognized outside of academic linguist circles.

>> No.3017143

>>3017134
a clarification: referring in this post to rules that were added to English to make it conform better with Latin, e.g. no split infinitives

>> No.3017184

>>3015413
And how many are of French, a Latin-based language, origin?

>> No.3017192

>>3017184
This. For example, the word common comes from the old French word comun, which comes from the Latin communis. Many, many English words are of a similar origin. English is heavily influenced, weather directly or not, by Latin.

>> No.3017253

>>3017184
i think that would be exactly the three that poster is referring to.

i pulled up the wiki article on the 100 most common words in English. although i know french, it can't be said exactly which of the ones that look like they might be cognates or near-cognates with french words are actually derived from french, as opposed to being cognates simply due to the fact that Latin & Germanic share a common source tongue & the words haven't undergone a whole lot of change under either string of mutations.

but i think that you (in case you are the sme poster as the english-is-a-latin-language guy) was basing the argument more on grammatical similarities than words.

>> No.3018905

>>3015172
I laughed.

>> No.3018993

this is perfectly normal, as it's been pointed out. if you don't regularly speak or write in a learned style then naturally you're not going to be all that great at it when you do make an attempt to. if it bothers you enough, you can keep a blog or whatever to practice, with a thesaurus on hand, which i imagine every writer uses btw.

i consider myself fairly intelligent and my speech is full of stammering and imprecise word choices. i wouldn't worry about.

>> No.3019281

>>3017184
> And how many are of French, a Latin-based language, origin?

All of the 3. When I talked of Latin words in English I included French as well.

> was basing the argument more on grammatical similarities than words.

Yeah? You're totes right, English and Latin grammar are totally similar. Those horrible English noun declensions and genders are totally annoying, amirite?

>> No.3019294

>>3015399

This is still such a hilariously awful post.