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Sep. 15th, 2009 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynneHah, my History of the English Language class was SO AWESOME today. For homework my professor wanted us to bring in examples of complex sentences and also grammatical pet peeves, so we spent about twenty minutes ranting about various grammar issues, which was fun. It's very nice to be around people who understand my love of the Oxford comma and get as annoyed as I do about homonym abuse and the difference between "good" and "well". XD
But the second part of class was both interesting and hilarious. We were talking about grammatical constructions and the parts of a sentence, and for an example, my professor wanted us to put a sentence one of us brought up on the board.
The guy who volunteered put up "the song that never ends" (well, an excerpt of it, at least :p). So we started analyzing the song that never ends.
Then the professor decided we'd build our own sentence, which is when things got even better. We started with the basic subject-verb-direct object construction "the dog chased the cat", but then the prof asked for a prepositional phrase, and someone said "through the zombie den". We just kept adding adverbs and clauses until our basic sentence was "The dog with a bone in his mouth chased the cat erratically through the zombie den, and then they collided with the zombie that was feasting on cheerleaders." We even had an argument about whether it should be "zombie that" or "zombie, which", but decided that we wanted it to be "zombie that" so the clause was identifying the particular zombie the cat and dog collided with as being the one feasting on cheerleaders rather than the one snacking on nurses.
And then he actually explained the difference between which and that! I mean, I knew there were differences in usage, and when I should use each, but I didn't know why, and now I do! They're restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses! Whoo, I learned something new about grammar! :D
And DUDE, very soon we're going to start learning Old English! OLD ENGLISH! This is probably going to be difficult, but SO AWESOME.
I love this class. :D
I also now have more concrete plans for tomorrow. I'm going to make banana bread, and I'm going out for dinner with my suitemates. Possibly I will get a couple of them to come have a drink with me afterwards, but not sure about that. Still, banana bread and dinner are definite plusses. :D
But the second part of class was both interesting and hilarious. We were talking about grammatical constructions and the parts of a sentence, and for an example, my professor wanted us to put a sentence one of us brought up on the board.
The guy who volunteered put up "the song that never ends" (well, an excerpt of it, at least :p). So we started analyzing the song that never ends.
Then the professor decided we'd build our own sentence, which is when things got even better. We started with the basic subject-verb-direct object construction "the dog chased the cat", but then the prof asked for a prepositional phrase, and someone said "through the zombie den". We just kept adding adverbs and clauses until our basic sentence was "The dog with a bone in his mouth chased the cat erratically through the zombie den, and then they collided with the zombie that was feasting on cheerleaders." We even had an argument about whether it should be "zombie that" or "zombie, which", but decided that we wanted it to be "zombie that" so the clause was identifying the particular zombie the cat and dog collided with as being the one feasting on cheerleaders rather than the one snacking on nurses.
And then he actually explained the difference between which and that! I mean, I knew there were differences in usage, and when I should use each, but I didn't know why, and now I do! They're restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses! Whoo, I learned something new about grammar! :D
And DUDE, very soon we're going to start learning Old English! OLD ENGLISH! This is probably going to be difficult, but SO AWESOME.
I love this class. :D
I also now have more concrete plans for tomorrow. I'm going to make banana bread, and I'm going out for dinner with my suitemates. Possibly I will get a couple of them to come have a drink with me afterwards, but not sure about that. Still, banana bread and dinner are definite plusses. :D
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Date: 2009-09-16 12:58 pm (UTC)And the Oxford comma! Squee! A sentence in which it is missing just looks wrong; it's only partially dressed.
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Date: 2009-09-22 12:50 am (UTC)Yes! I love the Oxford comma! Not using it feels to me like people are combining the last two parts of a list into one thing, even when I know they're not. XD
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Date: 2009-09-23 08:14 pm (UTC)Interesting. Thanks for explaining!
Did you ever read Eats Shoots and Leaves? A great book for people like us.
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Date: 2009-09-16 05:38 pm (UTC)OK, so after I worshipped your icon, I moved on to your English class and worshipped it for awhile, as well. Sounds completely fantastic! Enjoy it!
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Date: 2009-09-22 12:51 am (UTC)