Help with English

English is weird, the words brother/sister do not tell you elder or younger?
Chinese language got different words for younger and elder sister/brother.
 
Saint said:
systemic vs. systematic
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Systemic refers to the system as a whole as in "systemic racism". Systematic refers to an ordered way of doing something. A systematic way of solving a problem is to start from the beginning and not skipping any steps along the way.
 
Grandmother and grandfather,
in Chinese, the mother/father of your mother and father, are of different words.
Normally, we call the grandparents of mother as "outer grandparents"
father's one as "inner grandparents".
 
linguists.png



"Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you're currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out."
 
Seattle said:
Yet there is no difference between "him" and "her", right?
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Funny you should say that

I have a Transaction app
English / Indonesian, Indonesian / English

Most of the girls I chat with are much better with their understanding of English than I am with Indonesian

If I do need to translate for them I type English top window and obtain Indonesian bottom window

I have learnt to copy the transaction, place it under the English in top window and select Translate to English

I get the bottom two when translating the top two into Indonesian
  • boyfriend
  • girlfriend

  • pacar
  • pacar perempuan
When I put all four of the above in top window and ask to translate to English I get
  • boyfriend
  • girlfriend

  • girlfriend
  • girlfriend
Screenshot_2020-11-27-08-06-09-36_a01ed461b58c8e915de3f150881d0ab1.jpg

:)
 
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Saint said:
Grandmother and grandfather,
in Chinese, the mother/father of your mother and father, are of different words.
Normally, we call the grandparents of mother as "outer grandparents"
father's one as "inner grandparents".
Click to expand...
Doesn't Chinese tend to use compound words, though, where they build a single word from multiple smaller words ? Such as your example of different words for paternal and maternal grandparents. If you broke it down into those simpler words, you'd still be using two ideas - as you describe "inner/outer grandparent" etc?

In English we tend to keep the ideas separately expressed (the grandparent, and whether on mother's or father's side etc), separating adjective from noun, adverb from verb etc, although we still do use plenty of compound words (e.g. weekend etc).

There are languages in Europe that use far more compound words than English, and almost seem to prefer to just push smaller words together to form one word. So where as in English we would say "legislative law for the monitoring of pork-meat labeling", in Germany they came up with the single word Schweinefleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz.

Now that is what I would call weird. ;)
 
Saint said:
ability vs. capability,
any difference?
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Yes, and it can be exampled as follows:
Most people have the capability of searching the internet for answers to questions they might have.
However, some show less of an ability than others in doing so.
;)

i.e. A capability is either a yes/no matter - you either have the capability or you don't.
An ability is a skill that can be quantified / compared.

But people do tend to use them interchangeably.
 
Wow, this Grammarly program is really interesting. It is much more than a spell checker
Grammarly
is a cross-platform cloud-based[4] writing assistant[5][6] that reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement and delivery mistakes in real-time.[7] It uses AI to identify and search for an appropriate replacement for the mistake it locates. It also allows users to customize their style, tone, and context-specific language.[8] It was launched in 2009 by Alex Shevchenko, Max Lytvyn, and Dmytro Lider.[9]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammarly

Here are some notifications from Grammarly in context of this post;
Fix spelling and grammar; 2

PREDICTIONS
1f917.svg

Sounds friendly
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Saint said:
Why fisherman count in fathom (=6 ft)? Instead of meter, feet?
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Depth in modern nautical charts is expressed in metres.

The fathom is just one of many old units of measure, deriving from the times when trades and professions were much more self-contained than today, so the need to compare measures across different applications was far less. According to Wikipedia, the fathom seems to go back to the Ancient Greeks (ὀργυιά, meaning "outstretched" - the distance of a man's outstretched arms, approx 2 m or 6ft.).
 
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