[Magdalen] Do's and Don'ts.

[Susan Hagen]

I had a Cambodian co-worker who had simply given up trying to master
English verb tenses.  Instead he used the present tense with a qualifier -
Today/tomorrow/yesterday I go to the store.  I thought it was very
efficient.  He and I each retained about equal amounts of high school
French and when English failed us we could sometimes find common ground
there.

Susan

On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 3:15 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com> wrote:

> All languages have things like that when moving into English. The one that
> never failed to amuse me was when taking report from my Indian co-workers
> who were mostly native Malayalam speakers, "So I called the doctor, and he
> told.." instead of "he said".
>
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen <
> magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > My partner, being a native Spanish speaker does well with English,  but
> > he does have some hang ups that make him seem less smart than he is.
> > I teeter between helping and hindering his irregular English verb
> problem,
> > and have almost concluded any attempts at improvement of these hang  ups
> is
> > fruitless.
> >
> > The most prominent of these English verb hang ups is the hard working
> > English verb, to do.  He doesn't get the third person singular  ending.
> > So it's "he/she/it don't".
> >
> > On one occasion, when I tried a low-key correction of this he  surprised
> > me by asking what about the second person singular of this verb.
> >
> > I had to explain that it is "Thou dost" but that form is archaic.   His
> > response was, "Well it isn't in Spanish".
> >
> > Then there is the confusion between the verbs "to stand" and "to  stay".
> >
> > He routinely says, "I stood there for three hours waiting for the  nurse
> > to call me".  Of course he means he "stayed there for three  hours...."
> >
> > Old habits die hard.
> >
> > He is, however, having fun correcting some of his friends who say,
> "Seeing
> > the
> > dead rat made me nauseous", meaning, technically, "Seeing the dead  rat
> > made me nauseating". when the correct word is:  "Seeing the  dead
> > rat made me nauseated."
> >
> >
> >
> > David Strang.
> >
>



-- 
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do laundry.