Subj : Q of an article (sent through demos gate)
To   : alexander koryagin
From : Ardith Hinton
Date : Fri Mar 02 2018 18:00:57

Hi, Alexander!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

ak>  We forget that English has no totalitarian rules as has
ak>  the Russian language, due to the history of Russia.

ak>  English is easier than Russian.
AH>  This is grammatically correct usage.

ak>  The English language is easier than the Russian Language.
AH>  This is also grammatically correct usage. The problem, as
AH>  I see it, is that by changing horses in midstream you ended
AH>  up with a faulty parallelism.

ak>  I was sure that "English" == "the English language".


           In this context the meaning is the same, yes.



ak>  So the reason, why I used both variants in one sentence was
ak>  for the sake of variety. ;)


           Ah... I wondered, because you'd done such a fine job with the verbs 
there.  A better place to introduce a variant would be in some other sentence, 
i.e. assuming you're writing an essay or a long message in ENGLISH_TUTOR where 
xxx & yyy are to be compared in depth and thus mentioned repeatedly.  Within a 
single sentence parallelism can be very effective... as Winston Churchill must 
have known when he used it in his famous "We shall fight on the [etc.]" speech 
during WWII.  It lends the impression that one's thoughts are well-organized & 
helps the audience relate to the logic....  :-)



ak>  So, it's better not to use "due to" to introduce
ak>  an adverb phase.


           Agreed.  I generally prefer to err on the side of caution.  OTOH, I 
hope my readers will feel free to take the risk of experimenting with sentence 
structures they haven't mastered yet.  If something doesn't quite work the way 
the author intended, somebody will help.  That is what we're here for....  :-)



ak>  Maybe the rule "it is better to use 'due to' after
ak>  'to be' only" is easier to remember?


           Makes sense to me.  I remembered it the same way... [chuckle].



ak>  Human eyesight is so imperfect. When a man is concentrated
ak>  on the ball he DOESN'T SEE ANYTHING ELSE. It was the idea
ak>  of this test. It is the main trick any fakir uses during
ak>  his performance.


           We adjust the focal length of our eyes according to what we want to 
look at... in which case surrounding objects may appear blurred.  When we want 
to take a closeup shot of a flower or a person's face we adjust our cameras in 
much the same way.  We're often bombarded with so much visual & auditory input 
that our brains may suppress our conscious awareness of details such as who or 
what is strolling nonchalantly about the room while we're determined to get an 
accurate assessment of a relatively fast-paced series of events.  Once you had 
some assurance that you'd performed the assigned task correctly, you were able 
to relax & take in more of what else was going on at the same time.  I believe 
distraction is indeed a very important element in the art of illusion....  ;-)



ak>  When I think hard what to write, I forget many things. ;)


           Yes... that's human nature too.  While I'm focusing my attention on
a person's question(s) re xxx I often overlook technicalities re yyy & zzz.  I
make a conscious mental gear change in order to proofread, whether the writing
is my own or somebody else's.  I don't try to correct every error here because
I well remember how inhibited I felt as a less than brilliant student of other
languages while struggling with inflections my native language had given up on
centuries ago.  I understand that you are striving for fluency & that you will
probably recognize most of your own errors without any intervention... [grin].




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)

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