In this journal I'd make one of my secrets public.
Every time I want to use an English expression that I'm not quite familiar with, I always first have a google for it. If there're a lot of hits, I'll then feel pretty confident to write it down. If not, it's still very likely to find the correct form according to the google results. Google is really an extremely rich source of English language materials. It's able to perfectly answer questions like "Do English speakers usually say this way?"
Frankly speaking, all the successful websites, such as Google, eBay, PayPal, and Yahoo, really has changed our ways of life significantly.
I think it'll be a great idea to write this "secret" into my journal. It's doubtless beneficial to share such experience with people from non-English countries all over the world.
Re:my spellchecker
agent on 2005-10-06T14:43:47
Well, I prefer Kingword from the Kingsoft company to check the spellings since it is its forte. On the other hand, verifying phrases and idioms is Google's forte.
I far prefer dict.org when I’m unsure about the spelling of a word. Unfortunately I don’t know of a definitive source for the correct use of phrases, but I don’t trust Google blindly then either.
The reason is pretty simple: a lot of native English speakers are actually awful English speakers. (Which is not surprising. My native language is Greek and my secondary is German, and I've seen that the same goes for Greeks and Germans speaking their respective native languages shoddily.) A lot of the web is misspelt or contains bad phrasage.
F.ex., Google shows “wierd” is a very common misspelling of “weird,” though at least you can still tell which one is correct. Not so with “wiener” vs. “weiner.”
And you won’t find from Google that “irregardless” is an oxymoron that does not appear in an actualy dictionary.
It gets worse yet when you get to phrases. Pop quiz: which of the following is the correct combination:
(FWIW: I know that #2 is wrong, but I have been unable to definitively confirm whether #1 or #3 is the truly correct version. They might both be right; that would explain the trouble. But I’d like to know the etymology so I can use the respectively appropriate one.)
All that said, Google is hugely helpful, and you’re not the first one to use if for the purpose either.
Re:
luqui on 2005-10-06T23:20:56
> The reason is pretty simple: a lot of native > English speakers are actually awful English > speakers.
You must not be a linguist.:-)
If anything, his google searches help him sound like a native speaker, even if they don't help him speak "correct" English, whatever that is.Re:
Aristotle on 2005-10-07T00:04:15
Indeed, I would prefer to speak English like someone who could actually pass a basic English test. Maybe that’s not a laudable goal.
Or maybe you still have plenty of time to break rules once you’ve understood them.
Re: Hear! Hear!
Austin_Hastings on 2005-10-07T10:17:10
About 400 years ago, give or take, the phrase was "Hear him! Hear him!"
Now-a-days it's "Ditto!"
=Austin
