The English Language

[soheil_hooshdaran]

'prefer' is not quite the word. 'Prefer' suggests they do it as a matter of choice: 'tends' is not normally about what people choose to do but about what they do instinctively. 'many times' is the right idea but perhaps we would say 'usually' or 'more often than not'.

Why?

and What's the difference between 'usually' and 'more often than not'?

[Michael Farthing]

Oh Soheil! These differences are so small we have to think hard to find a difference:

Lets suppose a man counts the number of birds in his garden each morning and in a week he gets these results:

Sunday 7
Monday 3
Tuesday 0
Wednesday 8
Thursday 2
Friday 0
Saturday 4

He could say, "There are usually some birds in the garden"
or "More often than not there are birds in the garden"

He could say,
"More often than not there are more than two birds in the garden"
because this has happened on 4 days out of 7 (more than half the time)

But he probably would not say:
"Usually there more than two birds in the garden"
because usually suggests a bit more than that

[soheil_hooshdaran]

Oh Soheil! These differences are so small we have to think hard to find a difference:

Thinking Hard improves the brain ability I suppose!!

Sunday 7
Monday 3
Tuesday 0
Wednesday 8
Thursday 2
Friday 0
Saturday 4

He could say, "There are usually some birds in the garden"
or "More often than not there are birds in the garden"

He could say,
"More often than not there are more than two birds in the garden"
because this has happened on 4 days out of 7 (more than half the time)

But he probably would not say:
"Usually there more than two birds in the garden"
because usually suggests a bit more than that

Thanks.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

What are "LOVE-MATCH marriages"

[MartinCarpenter]

What it says - a marriage driven by love between the people concerned.

The base impact is much more relevant in older English literature - ~100 years ago (I'm guessing) arranged marriages were very common. Those arranged marriages weren't just aristocrats doing their thing but social progression, pragmatic economic survival for the woman etc. So a marriage arranged entirely outside that was something fairly rare/significant. Especially so for upper class people.

I guess the impact in modern English literature is a bit different as arranged marriages are now basically unknown in the white UK population, if still alive in some of the other ethnic groupings. Similar meaning of course, but perhaps a bit of an implication that it maybe hasn't been entirely thought through

[John McKenna]

Don't forget that David & Victoria was arranged by the ad agencies, and Chas & Di was deranged by the Royal Family.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

What's the difference between 'a mainline continuation' and 'a mainline' (if there is any such term)?

[MartinCarpenter]

About 12 letters The second is shorthand for the first.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

What'd happen if I replace high profile with important in:
...by the late twentieth century a combination of celebrity culture, mass media and the internet has afforded new possibilities for public mourning of high profile deaths.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

What'd happen if I replace high profile with important in:
...by the late twentieth century a combination of celebrity culture, mass media and the internet has afforded new possibilities for public mourning of high profile deaths.

[Alistair Campbell]

What'd happen if I replace high profile with important in:
...by the late twentieth century a combination of celebrity culture, mass media and the internet has afforded new possibilities for public mourning of high profile deaths.

Er - you'd get a sentence with a different meaning.

"High profile" does not equate to "important" assuming deaths can be either in the first place.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

What'd happen if I replace high profile with important in:
...by the late twentieth century a combination of celebrity culture, mass media and the internet has afforded new possibilities for public mourning of high profile deaths.

Er - you'd get a sentence with a different meaning.

"High profile" does not equate to "important" assuming deaths can be either in the first place.

So how does it differ?

[John McKenna]

A 'high-profile death' is the death of a person who is widely and well known to the public.
Such deaths can also be important - the death of Princess Diana, for example.

An 'important death' could be the death of someone who was not high profile. For example the identity of first person to die of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) is uncertain. However, that death indicated that a deadly virus had crossed the species barrier from bats to humans (probably via civets at a live animal market in southern China).

Similarly the virus responsible for MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) evolved over an extended period of time in bat populations before jumping the species boundaries to infect humans (perhaps through an intermediate host).

http://www.economist.com/news/science-a ... s-watching

Whether or not any death - high or low profile - is of any importance at all, in the entire scheme, depends on one's point of view...

... all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated... [Meditation XVII by John Donne (1572-1631)]

Atheists would not agree with Donne's religious interpretation of death, though they might well agree with him that every death should be of concern to every person who hears of it.

[soheil_hooshdaran]

What's the 'funeral tea' in the UK?

[Barry Sandercock]

Soheil Hooshdaran wrote:
What's the 'funeral tea ' ?

The tea you have at a funeral, I guess.