One of you is gonna fall and die, and I'm not cleaning it up!

Mal ,'War Stories'


Natter 54: Right here, dammit.  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


megan walker - Oct 01, 2007 10:36:52 am PDT #4257 of 10001
"What kind of magical sunshine and lollipop world do you live in? Because you need to be medicated."-SFist

Because it's ambiguous, I would rephrase the whole sentence.

I'm just tired of rewriting these authors (they are native French speakers so there is much tweaking to be done).

Now I'm just intrigued. If one were to use "number" instead of "variety" would that change things?

Here's the whole sentence as it now stands:
A variety of communicative activities follows in order to allow the student ample opportunity to work with and acquire the new vocabulary.


shrift - Oct 01, 2007 10:42:53 am PDT #4258 of 10001
"You can't put a price on the joy of not giving a shit." -Zenkitty

Waffler!

Mm, waffles.


juliana - Oct 01, 2007 10:44:56 am PDT #4259 of 10001
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I miss them all tonight…

A variety of communicative activities follows in order to allow the student ample opportunity to work with and acquire the new vocabulary.

I would definitely say "follow" in that sentence. Or replace "variety" with "list", and use "follows".


Jesse - Oct 01, 2007 10:54:41 am PDT #4260 of 10001
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

I think the Cuban is a little heavier since it's pork and the jambalay is chicken and sausage. Neither really makes me droopy though.

Oh, see, carbs make me snooze. Pork makes me happy!

I had a surprisingly good pork sandwich in the Charlotte airport the other day.


Theodosia - Oct 01, 2007 10:55:11 am PDT #4261 of 10001
'we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn't end any time soon"

Or 'Various communicative activities follow in order'?


flea - Oct 01, 2007 10:58:22 am PDT #4262 of 10001
information libertarian

Nutty! I request that your praise me effusively for my diligence! In email is fine.


Nutty - Oct 01, 2007 11:07:19 am PDT #4263 of 10001
"Mister Spock is on his fanny, sir. Reports heavy damage."

People, I have 10 emails from flea in my inbox. None of which I have read yet. She is very dilligent and enterprising! (I am not.)

A variety of communicative activities follows in order to allow the student ample opportunity to work with and acquire the new vocabulary.

I think "a variety of" is a construction that must work better in French than in English, because it's just sounding wrong to me as I read the sentence aloud. Like those wrongheaded people who say "a myriad of".

I guess I would replace variety with number, and then allow the plural verb.


§ ita § - Oct 01, 2007 11:10:03 am PDT #4264 of 10001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Like those wrongheaded people who say "a myriad of".

Just because most of them are dead it doesn't mean you should be mean to them! I'm pretty sure that the preceding sentence parses--it might take more than one try, is all.

Throughout most of its history in English myriad was used as a noun, as in a myriad of men. In the 19th century it began to be used in poetry as an adjective, as in myriad men. Both usages in English are acceptable, as in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's “Myriad myriads of lives.” This poetic, adjectival use became so well entrenched generally that many people came to consider it as the only correct use. In fact, both uses in English are parallel with those of the original ancient Greek. The Greek word mūrias, from which myriad derives, could be used as either a noun or an adjective, but the noun mūrias was used in general prose and in mathematics while the adjective mūrias was used only in poetry.


flea - Oct 01, 2007 11:18:30 am PDT #4265 of 10001
information libertarian

Go read those 10 emails! They are interesting!


megan walker - Oct 01, 2007 11:19:13 am PDT #4266 of 10001
"What kind of magical sunshine and lollipop world do you live in? Because you need to be medicated."-SFist

One might even say a myriad of interesting emails awaits you!

ETA: Or is it await? Hah!