SPAG tests & questions, and language play

[Ian H]

A Belgian friend of mine switches seamlessly between French, English and German. His written English only betrays him in his use of 'since' as in 'depuis'. He gets by in Russian (useful when sweet-talking Russian bandits with guns, intent on stealing your bike). I'm told he speaks Esperanto like a native.

 

[briantrumpet]

If anyone is interested, these three David Crystal books are really interesting, and very well written - he's an academic linguist, but he writes very engagingly for the general reader.

Making A Point (punctuation)
The Glamour of Grammar
Spell It Out (spelling)

 

[Profpointy]

I have to say that one or two of the questions I'd put as debatable, even if I did get 10/10 😉

I only got six but am not entirely convinced all my wrong 'uns were actually wrong!

 

[briantrumpet]

I only got six but am not entirely convinced all my wrong 'uns were actually wrong!

I had to do a bit of thinking about some of them, but got there by a process of elimination about which were *definitely* the wrong answers.

If there's one punctuation mark I am most likely to misuse, it's the comma - I tend to overuse it for parenthesis, or where a dash or colon would be (more) correct.

As for semicolons, I rarely use them. I can't remember in which book i read a detailed list of uses other than in list or contrasted clauses, but having read it and forgotten the other uses, I'm not surprised it's so little used generally.

 

[Reynard]

Is that a typo or are you into cats as well as cars?

No, it's not a typo. I've been involved in the Cat Fancy for near enough twenty years.

Me, judging at the Cambridgeshire Cat Club show earlier this year. Photo courtesy of Lyn, my steward for the day.

 

[Reynard]

My proofreading friend, despite being a proficient linguist (having written GCSE text books for German, and speaks German and Italian fluently, and French as well but not as well as he'd like) will only proofread into English, as he says you can always tell when someone is blagging being a native speaker... often the random prepositions will trip them up, or the auxiliary/modal verbs. But he wasn't raised multi-lingual.

This is one of the problems I had at school, especially with my parents both being first generation immigrants. But fortunately those hiccups got ironed out fairly quickly once I got to prep school and we had grammar lessons. The one legacy I am still left with, is that I struggle with the pronunciation of certain words and sounds in English (gods, I absolutely *hated* having to read out loud in class - except Shakespeare, because then we were all in the same boat with the language LOL) and so I learned to find easy-to-say synonyms to use instead. Tell you what, it did wonders for my vocabulary!

By the sound of it, being raised trilingual, you'd be happy to proofread in any of the three languages, as you probably just know what *sounds* right, even before you analyse the vocab or grammar, or use of idioms.

My spoken French and Polish are both rather rusty these days, but I'm quite happy to navigate a book or a website or listen to a broadcast and such. My command of German and Flemish is on a similar level, except that I have to think a lot more.

 

[briantrumpet]

This is one of the problems I had at school, especially with my parents both being first generation immigrants. But fortunately those hiccups got ironed out fairly quickly once I got to prep school and we had grammar lessons. The one legacy I am still left with, is that I struggle with the pronunciation of certain words and sounds in English (gods, I absolutely *hated* having to read out loud in class - except Shakespeare, because then we were all in the same boat with the language LOL) and so I learned to find easy-to-say synonyms to use instead. Tell you what, it did wonders for my vocabulary!



My spoken French and Polish are both rather rusty these days, but I'm quite happy to navigate a book or a website or listen to a broadcast and such. My command of German and Flemish is on a similar level, except that I have to think a lot more.

Aha, all very interesting, thanks.

I know that amongst many other things, the prepositions in French show me up, and cause some amusement when I copy English expressions directly... on the train/sur le train - they think I must be on the roof. I suspect the same traps in all languages, as so many prepositions are arbitrary (e.g. bored with/by/of), in effect just being the glue that ties a verb to an object. And I know my vowels and nasal consonants leave a lot to be desired!! But despite that, most of the time, we all understand each other!

 

[briantrumpet]

I'll find a good spelling test next...

 

[briantrumpet]

Here's a quick one:

https://global.oup.com/booksites/content/0199296251/testyourself/testyourspelling/

 

[Dogtrousers]

Here's a quick one:

https://global.oup.com/booksites/content/0199296251/testyourself/testyourspelling/

I got one wrong but I put that down to the weeny writing and my terrible eyesight. I can spell tomatoes, honest.

 

[briantrumpet]

These are good too.

https://www.wordsofworth.co.uk/quiz

 

[briantrumpet]

I got one wrong but I put that down to the weeny writing and my terrible eyesight. I can spell tomatoes, honest.

Probably more than Dan Quayle could do.

I got those all correct, but made three silly mistakes in my haste in the second one, grrr.

 

[briantrumpet]

Actually not that many tests in British English - most of the online ones are US English.

 

[Reynard]

Aha, all very interesting, thanks.

I know that amongst many other things, the prepositions in French show me up, and cause some amusement when I copy English expressions directly... on the train/sur le train - they think I must be on the roof. I suspect the same traps in all languages, as so many prepositions are arbitrary (e.g. bored with/by/of), in effect just being the glue that ties a verb to an object. And I know my vowels and nasal consonants leave a lot to be desired!! But despite that, most of the time, we all understand each other!

Mmmmf, well French grammar is fiddlier than a fiddly thing, because every damn rule has a gazillion different exceptions. OK, well maybe not, but it feels like it at times... I got round that issue in French at school by simply working my way backwards from how you said a given phrase - admittedly that did give me something of an unfair advantage in class.

My female parental unit says English grammar is really easy in comparison as the rules are consistent and there are no gendered / neutral nouns. She maintains it's the spelling that's the real killer for someone who isn't a native speaker.

 

[Dogtrousers]

My female parental unit says English grammar is really easy in comparison as the rules are consistent and there are no gendered / neutral nouns. She maintains it's the spelling that's the real killer for someone who isn't a native speaker.

One thing I find interesting is that even extremely fluent non-native speakers of English can slip up by mispronouncing common words with odd spellings. Even though they must have heard it pronounced correctly multiple times they cling to pronouncing it as it's written. Probably something to do with how they learned it.

I've definitely noticed it but I can't think of a real example. Imagine someone pronouncing the B in bomb or thumb.