The Improve Your English Thread v4.

[ominous]

The following excerpt is from an interview with James Cameron.

“I’m in the ‘Avatar’ business. That’s it,” he told The New York Times. “I’m making ‘Avatar 2’, ‘Avatar 3,’ maybe ‘Avatar 4’ and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts,” he continued.

What does "taking scripts" mean? Does it mean "writing scripts for movies"?

[Pox Voldius]

Originally Posted by ominous

The following excerpt is from an interview with James Cameron.

“I’m in the ‘Avatar’ business. That’s it,” he told The New York Times. “I’m making ‘Avatar 2’, ‘Avatar 3,’ maybe ‘Avatar 4’ and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts,” he continued.

What does "taking scripts" mean? Does it mean "writing scripts for movies"?

No, what he means is that he's not interested in making movies from scripts that other people have written. That he's not going to accept unsolicited spec scripts* sent to him by other people. That, instead, he's going to write his own scripts, and they're all going to be for Avatar sequels.

*(spec script = a script that was written "on speculation" in someone's spare time, without having been commissioned by any studios or production companies that plan to make a movie from that script; a script that someone wrote and then tried to sell to a filmmaker or studio after it was already written, that no one paid this person to spend time writing)

[ominous]

Thanks, Pox Voldius...
Now I see...

[ominous]

You guys probably know that Charles Dickens wrote a novel called "Great Expectations".
I would like to know which the correct meaning of "Great" in the title is between the following two definitions. Korean translation works of this novel say "Great" in the title has the meaning of the second definition. Are they right about this?

great:
1. (usually before noun) very large; much bigger than average in size or quantity : A great crowd had gathered.

2. extremely good in ability or quality and therefore admired by many people: Sherlock Holmes, the great detective

And one more.
Does "Expectations" have any meaning of "property handed down from father to son" or something like that?

[Tenshi]

Originally Posted by ominous

You guys probably know that Charles Dickens wrote a novel called "Great Expectations".
I would like to know which the correct meaning of "Great" in the title is between the following two definitions. Korean translation works of this novel say "Great" in the title has the meaning of the second definition. Are they right about this?

great:
1. (usually before noun) very large; much bigger than average in size or quantity : A great crowd had gathered.

2. extremely good in ability or quality and therefore admired by many people: Sherlock Holmes, the great detective

And one more.
Does "Expectations" have any meaning of "property handed down from father to son" or something like that?

In this case it's the fist one and expectations means something like hope, belief, anticipation. To expect s.th. or s.o., to wait for something to happen etc.

[Mundungus Fletc]

In the nineteenth century if someone "had expectations" it meant they were going to inherit something (usually money) at some time, not necessarily from a father or indeed a relative - as in the Dickens book.

So in the title both meanings of expectations apply - Pip is going to inherit something that is good and is also large. (assuming you think inheriting a large sum of money is good)

[ominous]

Is it worth reading English novels in the 19th century?
Some people say if you are a non-native speaker, you don't need to take pains to read the 19th century's English novels. You'd better read translation works. This is because their English is quite different from English today so you'll never get more from them than what you may get from comtemporary English novels.

Do you agree with this?

[canismajoris]

Originally Posted by ominous

Is it worth reading English novels in the 19th century?
Some people say if you are a non-native speaker, you don't need to take pains to read the 19th century's English novels. You'd better read translation works. This is because their English is quite different from English today so you'll never get more from them than what you may get from comtemporary English novels.

Do you agree with this?

Setting aside matters of taste--not everyone would enjoy the English literature of this era--I don't think there's any particular obstacle in the language.

I have heard before from non-native speakers that some Victorian works are moderately taxing, and I admit that on occasion I come across bewildering words and passages. But if I don't know a word I look it up, and if I get confused I re-read a page--which I'm sure are familiar tactics for anyone working with another language.

What I'm getting at is that over all the language is really not quite different from ours. Many of the novels of that era use a different style and register from what modern readers feel might be appealing, but it still checks all the boxes for Modern English. Aside from some inevitable holes in vocabulary, I think a modern reader in English can read works back to the 16th century without a great deal of regularization or translation. Prior to that, and prior to the introduction of printing and the Chancery Standard, among other things, English was what you might call "quite different" enough to be unintelligible. But since then, and certainly as recently as the 19th century, our language has changed relatively little.

[Mundungus Fletc]

Originally Posted by ominous

Is it worth reading English novels in the 19th century?

Personally I find most books from before the twentieth century far too wordy - Dickens for example never seems to have used one word when twenty would do. Having said that I love Trollope and whilst I don't read Austen she is enormously popular and as canis said they are perfectly comprehensible.

[Melaszka]

Some words mean slightly different things in Victorian English than they do today (e.g. "friends" tends to mean "people with your best interests at heart" in 19th century novels, rather than people of your own age that you socialise with e.g. 2 in Wuthering Heights, when Nellie describes Heathcliff and Cathy as "very thick", she means they are very close friends, but in Modern British English, "very thick" means "extremely stupid"!), but it's usually clear from the context.

[ominous]

Charles Dickens Great Expectations
Chapter 1

To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine ... ... I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Q. What's the meaning of "be born on one's backs"?

[Pox Voldius]

Originally Posted by ominous

Charles Dickens Great Expectations
Chapter 1

To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine ... ... I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Q. What's the meaning of "be born on one's backs"?

That's not a common phrase in that particular usage, I think it was probably coined by Dickens specifically for that book.

*goes to look up the rest of the context*

I could be wrong here, but my impression is that the narrator is saying he had 5 brothers that he doesn't really remember who died in infancy or childhood (which was a fairly common occurrence at that time), and he likes to imagine that they were born in the same way they were buried: already lying down, peacefully relaxed, and dead.

[ominous]

Do "crossroads" and "junction" refer to the same thing???

[Mundungus Fletc]

A crossroads is where two roads cross - a junction is where any two or more roads meet. So a crossroads is always a junction but a junction is not necessarily a crossroads (you can have, for example, a T junction)

[ominous]

Is there any significant difference between "I got that" and "I've got that"?

More specifically,

A: Would you like me to e-mail you the details now?
B: Good idea. My e-mail address is parkyj@campaq.com.
A: parkyj@compaq.com. OK, I've got that. Thank you for your order, Mr. Park.

In the above conversation, can I use 'I got that' instead of 'I've got that'?

[Tiberius]

Originally Posted by ominous

Is there any significant difference between "I got that" and "I've got that"?

More specifically,

A: Would you like me to e-mail you the details now?
B: Good idea. My e-mail address is parkyj@campaq.com.
A: parkyj@compaq.com. OK, I've got that. Thank you for your order, Mr. Park.

In the above conversation, can I use 'I got that' instead of 'I've got that'?

The phrase "I got that" can, in some circumstances, indicate the past tense. "I got that DVD yesterday."

The other phrasing is short for "I have got that", which wouldn't be quite grammatically correct. "I have got that DVD yesterday" isn't correct. But you could use it in the sense, "I have got that DVD at home already."

[ashleysnape]

would like to improve my english here. Wonder if you guys could tell me the difference between bring and fetch and how to use them in a sentence? Are they the same meaning?

[Melaszka]

Originally Posted by ashleysnape

would like to improve my english here. Wonder if you guys could tell me the difference between bring and fetch and how to use them in a sentence? Are they the same meaning?

For me, the main difference is that if you say "Could you fetch me my bag?" to someone, it implies that the person is with you at the moment and you want them to go away, get the bag, and come back again. If you say "Could you bring me my bag?", the person you are addressing is not necessarily with you at the moment, in fact they are probably where the bag is.

[BrianTung]

Originally Posted by ominous

Is there any significant difference between "I got that" and "I've got that"?

More specifically,

A: Would you like me to e-mail you the details now?
B: Good idea. My e-mail address is parkyj@campaq.com.
A: parkyj@compaq.com. OK, I've got that. Thank you for your order, Mr. Park.

In the above conversation, can I use 'I got that' instead of 'I've got that'?

Although it looks like the difference between simple past and present perfect, in practice, they're used rather differently in English (especially spoken English). "I got that" means "I received it"; "I've got that" means "I have it." Yes, literally, it does mean "I've received it," but because once one receives something, one has it, in essence it just means "I have it."

In the above exchange, "I got that" is not wrong, exactly, but it does sound somewhat unidiomatic. One would be more likely to say it in a situation as follows:

A: parkyj@compaq.com--
B: No, it's P, A, R, K, Y, J--
A: Yes, I got that, but thanks. And thank you for your order!

Meaning, in this case, that the correction was technically unnecessary, A had taken down the address correctly in the first place.

Incidentally, I'd be more likely to say, in either case, "I've got it" or "I got it" rather than "...that," but that may simply be a matter of personal preference.

Originally Posted by ominous

Do "crossroads" and "junction" refer to the same thing???

In addition to what Mundungus Fletcher pointed out, "crossroads" can be used metaphorically to refer to any point in time and circumstance in which decisions may effect momentous changes for the future, as in "He had reached a crossroads in his life; which job offer should he take?" "Junction" could be used in that way, but it simply doesn't have that kind of currency.

Originally Posted by ominous

Is it worth reading English novels in the 19th century?
Some people say if you are a non-native speaker, you don't need to take pains to read the 19th century's English novels. You'd better read translation works. This is because their English is quite different from English today so you'll never get more from them than what you may get from comtemporary English novels.

Do you agree with this?

It's worth it, but I suspect it's rather a bit more effort than native speakers might think.

Chinese is my first language, but it's by no means my best--the inevitable consequence of having grown up in the United States. And although I can follow most casual conversation in Chinese, if the technical level of the vocabulary rises just a bit, it becomes considerably more difficult.

What I think happens is that I'll be following along just fine, and then some term or turn of phrase goes by that's just a little bit unfamiliar. Eventually, I may get it (or figure it out from context), but in the meantime, more conversation has gone by, and I have to search recent aural memory to figure out what's happened. If it only happens once in a long while, I can recover and follow just fine, but if it happens often enough (say, once every couple of sentences, which may take just several seconds), my deficit increases and I end up missing part of the conversation.

I suspect something similar happens when modern non-native speakers attempt (say) Dickens. There's nothing at all wrong with Dickens, but the register is just different enough that non-native speakers will be tripped up. Of course, there's no possibility of falling behind, as one can read at whatever pace one likes, but there can be a kind of fatigue as one always has to stop and figure out how Dickens put together this particular sentence. For native speakers, even, there can be a delay, but it's rather short and happens far less frequently, so fatigue is much less of a problem.

Anyway, I would just try it! It can be an effective measure of how far along you've developed your English skills, and even if you do have some problems, the only way to mitigate them is to read more of that kind of work.

Incidentally, there are variations even within the 19th century. I mean, Twain also wrote primarily in the 19th century, and yet I think most native speakers would intuitively feel that his prose was more modern in style than Dickens's.

[Tenshi]

What's the difference between "tangible assets" and "physical assets"?