171–180 of 215 posts
Here’s my test for whether you’re qualified to post to Hacker News. Pair the following five comments with their corresponding definitions: 1. “Raganwald is a blowhard whose pathetic attempts to score karma reveal him as an insecure dweeb who can’t get over being kicked around in grammar school. He and his mumblings should be should be flushed down the toilet bowl like the turds that they are.” 2. “What, raganwald is…
I am a non-native speaker, and to me it looks like the second captcha is wrong. According to what they've taught me, it should be "Do you know _____ are we going?" instead of the proposed "Do you know _____ we are going?" , shouldn't it (notice the "we are/are we" swapping)?
(Non native english speaker) isn't the verb "to go TO" and the whole sentence: "Do you know where we're going TO?"
"Where are you at?" is considered nonstandard, but it (and the form "Where you at?" are standard in AAVE.
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One would loose one's temper \ on\ a discussion group, not \ in\ it. I enjoy the perspectives of the ESL folks on HN, though, so I don't want to see any filtering by grammar nitpicking.
I like the ESL comment: that's cute. But to your broader point I ask, "Why?" If I can comment in an online discussion group or I can post on an online discussion group, why is the relation of my temper any different than the relation of my post? The OED is useful here: it literally defines in as equal to on in the second definition of the prepositional form of 'in'. There's an extended history of the relation between…
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I don't think anyone would ever use loose in that manner without preceding it with "let"? Feel free to correct me, but to me that sounds very wrong.
It's correct without "let", but a little archaic. You're unlikely to see that sort of usage outside slightly pretentious plays, but it's correct nonetheless.
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Er, HN already does limit access via arbitrarily-chosen tests of user quality. They just chose different tests. :) I don't think it'd be a 100% bad idea to implement some sort of knowledge-based testing, wire it up to varying levels of initial access/privs on a site, and see what happens, as an experiment. User privs could then evolve once the user had actually posted or commented or rated things.
What are those tests? I haven't joined HN in ages (and then, only once), so I'm not up to date on the current procedures.
I am a non-native speaker, and to me it looks like the second captcha is wrong. According to what they've taught me, it should be "Do you know _____ are we going?" instead of the proposed "Do you know _____ we are going?" , shouldn't it (notice the "we are/are we" swapping)?
No, "Do you know where we are going?" is correct; however, without the "Do you know", "Where are we going?" would be correct.
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I know this is not appropriate, but it made me laugh so hard. I'm trying to write as correct as I can, but the GP just proved that these mistakes happen to everyone, even the people that think that it might make sense. What about non-native speakers? Their point might be valuable, the participation in a discussion really help- and meaningful, but still - these now/know, there/their, you're/your mistakes are common. A…
FYI, you write "correctly". The only thing, grammatically, that you can do "correct" is "come correct", but that's an idiom.
"I'm doing good" instead of "I'm doing well" "He eats real fast" instead of "He eats really quickly"
If enough people speak that way, I don't think you can call it "wrong" so much as a dialect in its own right.
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I beg your pardon, I was trying to crack a funny. It seems it is impossible to parody an extremist belief without somebody mistaking it for the general article. I was attempting to parody the fundamentalist debating pedant point of view. Poe’s Law strikes again: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poes_Law
The depressing thing is I can imagine people genuinely making the exact suggestion you made, with no humour at all. Sorry!