Do you know?
1. What (Use 'what' when there is a wide choice of possible answers.)
What sport do you play?
Which ( Use 'which' when there is a limited number of possible answers.)
Which sport do you play?
2. The windows need cleaning.=The windows need to be cleaned.
3. Stop to do something (to stop so that you can do it)
An old man walking along the road stopped to talk to us.
Stop doing something (to end an action, to finish doing it)
There's too much noise. Can you all stop talking, please?
4. We saw Tom plant the tree. (He planted the tree. We saw him do the whole job.)
We saw Tom planting the tree. (He was planting the tree. We saw him in the middle of the job.)
5. He seems to be a great athlete.=It seems that he is a great athlete.
Sarosh Khan
Pakistan
'Tom is foolish.' (which means Tom always acts or talks foolishly.)
'Tom is being foolish.' (which means Tom is acting or talking foolishly now. It implies that the subject is showing this quality at this time.)
'1. None of my friends is interested. (Formal)
Not just formal, but correct.
>None of my friends are interested. (Informal)
Informal, yes, but also ungrammatical.<<
Ok I'm anglophone and I am confused as to how the first one is correct. If we had used that in any of our english classes at school we would have been told off for not speaking properly. We would have been told to use the second one instead. '
The first one is correct.
None is short for Not one, so therefore singular. The verb form should therefore agree with this, i.e. not one IS interested, and not with either the plural friends i.e. friends are or none as a plural i.e. none are.
However in informal speech I would probably find myself using the second version. There does seem to be a tendency in English to make the verb agree with the word it is directly following as opposed to the word it actually relates to. Also the word none itself is often perceived to be a plural.
A decent English teacher should not advise that the second option is correct, however.
>>None is short for Not one, so therefore singular. The verb form should therefore agree with this, i.e. not one IS interested, and not with either the plural friends i.e. friends are or none as a plural i.e. none are.<<
Just because it originated from Old English "ne" + "án" does not mean that it necessarily acts like Late Modern English "one" in and of itself at all.
>>A decent English teacher should not advise that the second option is correct, however.<<
Why? Actual usage by native speakers clearly strongly favors the second case here. Just because such may not fit some particular prescriptive notion of how things "should" work does not mean it is not how things actually work in reality.
Travis
Can I ask what your native language is? English I assume. I don't know about your theory of where 'none' originated from in Old English, I haven't studied that I'm afraid. I just know I was told it was short for 'not one' by teachers at school. But of course they could be wrong. But are you trying to tell me in correct English 'none' should be used with the plural form of the verb?
I stated in my post that I would be just as likley as anyone to say 'None of my friends ARE', that would come much more naturally to me, that ACTUAL USAGE would dictate I say that.
But in terms of actual correct English grammar, it's indefensible isn't it?
<<don't know about your theory of where 'none' originated from in Old English, I haven't studied that I'm afraid. I just know I was told it was short for 'not one' by teachers at school. But of course they could be wrong. But are you trying to tell me in correct English 'none' should be used with the plural form of the verb? >>
Travis' comment wasn't a theory. Anyway, in a way, yes, "none" does ultimately come from "not one" but it happened long ago and is not analyzed morphologically that way anymore by speakers so its etymology is largely inconsequential if we're talking about which morphology the verb form takes on in Modern English. Native speakers use both singular and plural referents with it. Either way is fine.
Just in case anyone is curious, English "none" comes from Old English "nan," which itself came from "ne" ("not") + "an" ("one").
I don't argue that native speakers use both forms (I am a native speaker after all). Actually I would argue that native speakers use the plural verb form far more frequently.
Anyone learning English need not worry in any way about which construction they use, they will be understood either way, and actually probably sound more English if they use the plural form 'None of my friends are'.
But I still believe this is not strictly grammatically correct. In another language such as German, this kind of mangling of grammar would never happen, whether in spoken or written language.
Isn't English one of the few languages that manages to mangle such basic grammatical concepts in this way?
<<But I still believe this is not strictly grammatically correct. In another language such as German, this kind of mangling of grammar would never happen, whether in spoken or written language.>>
So you acknowledge that native speakers use a form but because speakers of *another* language have different usage it's somehow "mangled?" That doesn't make sense. A language's rules are defined by how it's used by its native speakers. Other languages don't have anything to do with it. Also, there is obviously no language universal dictating that "none" goes with singular or plural forms. Where the option exists to morphologically mark them, languages choose either or even both (as English does).
<<Isn't English one of the few languages that manages to mangle such basic grammatical concepts in this way?>>
How is that in any way "mangled?" That implies it's somehow imperfect, not up to par, or somehow deviant. First of all, there are thousands of languages in the world and they sometimes go about different ways of doing things. However, any one language is not superior to another in expressing concepts despite the fact that the way they're structured may be different.
Hello Kirk, I am new to this forum, but I am quite enjoying the passionate debates which go on with regard to language. Where are you from? I am from the UK and I have learnt German, so I am quite interested in languages in general. However I don't pretend to be an expert in any way. However, what I have learnt from learning German, is, first of all how basic grammatical concepts work, and then after that, that the German language adheres much more strictly to these concepts. I am not saying that it is necessary to adhere to all these grammatical concepts in order to make yourself understood, but from what I understand of most languages, they take grammar much more seriously than English.
I wasn't suggesting that English was in any way inferior to other languages, but I do think that it doesn't take the minimal grammar that it has, that seriously.
OK, I speak German and I would have thought that 'keiner/e meiner Freunde ist' would be correct, as I thought keine = not one as in English. But, any German speakers here, could I say keine meiner Freunde sind...? I was under the impression keine had to be singular in German, but I'm getting a bit confused now, so please clarify!
Anyway Kirk, just because I think English grammar might be a bit up the creek, doesn't mean I think it's some inferior language. My first post on this site was about why so many people (non-native speakers) were going on about English being a really easy language as opposed to German. I think it is a difficult language precisely because of its lack of formal rules. A language such as German seems a lot easier to learn in terms of learning formal grammatical rules, whereas English doesn't have all these strict rules. Yet there are all these downfalls for the learner of English in terms of the fact that we might say things a certain way, even though it doesn't make a great deal of sense. It's more vague and therefore difficult I think.
But I would not imply that any language is inferior or imperfect, I'm sure they all have their beauty and their relative faults.