Questions for English Language Learners Stack Exchange

Question

A week ago in chat Grace Note asked us to compile a list of questions we think should be migrated to English Language Learners.

Now, I'm not wholly in favour of migrating to ELL at the moment, because it's new and needs to find its feet without some other site interfering, but many users do want to start migrating things there and it will be useful to form a consensus about what should go.

So let's do that here. Post questions that you think should be migrated as answers (OMG that's totally heinous!) and we can vote up and down on them and Grace can see the list.

Answer 1

Currently, querying Google for "better fit" "english language learners" on ELU comes up with 34 hits, of which 28 appears to be Reg’s suggestions.

Here is an assortment of FIFTY of these ELU questions that were nominated for ELL, generated using the query given above and closely related ones. All but one or two are closed, and many have delete votes (sometimes three of them). They’ve been sorted alphabetically for easier reading.

• can “love” be used in place of “like”
• Can “with” be replaced by “to” after verbs?
• “Children playing” or “Playing children”?
• Contact us “on” or “at”
• Correct use of ‘blond’
• Difference between “anyone” and “everyone”?
• Difference between “hereafter” and “thereafter”?
• Difference between “they aren’t” and “they couldn’t”
• English Grammar
• “Event is raised when maintenance occurs or scheduled” vs. “or is scheduled”
• Feel and Feeling
• General advice on learning English
• Grammatically incorrect sentence?
• How to ask “Where are you going?” when event already passed?
• How to write “only for female” on jeans tag
• “I don’t know nothing” vs “I don’t know anything”
• Is a “perfect participle” right?
• Is “he should be seventeen” correct?
• Is it right to say “my sandals are broken”?
• Is “stuff” a plural word?
• Is the “one's” and “their” used correctly?
• Is the phrase “… or I'm mistaken” correct?
• “Is there anything else we could/will have done?”
• Is this sentence correct in grammar and does it even make sense
• Is word ‘request’ by itself as polite form of asking for something?
• Length of Answer!
• “Match manual” or “match manually”?
• Meaning of “long gone”
• Meaning of the phrase “I am all ears”
• “More” vs. “more than”
• Most is vs most are
• “Mr. Dill works ________ a big library”
• “One should warn” vs. “it should warn”
• “Prices vary state to state” vs. “prices vary from state to state”
• Proper use of “the”
• “Roll” vs. “roll up”
• Talking “on behalf of Iranians” or “instead of Iranians”?
• Usage of “Make Sense”
• Usage of “one other” and “another one”
• Using contractions like “I'm” in text
• What does “an unwillingness of a privileged white author to abandon his frame” mean?
• What does “long enough to” mean?
• what does “the powers that be have to really mean it for the work to matter” mean?
• What is wrong with this sentence? and the correction if necessary
• What’s the difference between order and bill?
• “Where am I?” vs. “Where I am?”
• Which phrase is more natural to a native speaker?
• Why in shops they put “B sold here” instead of “B sells here”?
• Why “the” in “Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)”?
• Word order: “achieved solution” vs. “solution achieved”

Answer 2

Expression "I can / can't tell the things"

Presently, I'm not sure of the sense of the following phrase:

I can tell the things

that lies in this sentence :

I am learning Python and so far I can tell the things below about new and init

I wonder if the phrase in it is correct or if it shouldn't be :

I can't tell the things

Answer 3

What's the difference between these names of moving water?

What is the difference between these forms of moving water?

• Creek
• Brook
• Stream
• River

Are there other forms of moving water that I am missing?

Answer 4

Purpose For, Of

• 1 He has no intention for marriage.
• 2 He has no intention of marriage.

These two sentences are good English and have the same meaning.

In this PDF I read:
A review of the grading permit showed that the permit had not been modified from its original *purpose which was for a minimum use driveway for a mobile home.

Now, since intention means almost the same thing as purpose, could these sentences be okay?

• 3 He has no purpose for marriage.
• 4 He has no purpose of marriage.

This question is obvious Learner's English, and has already been closed here. I think the answers would be of value to ELL's audience.

Answer 5

Here's a good one, I think:

Question: Can I say “Very welcome to talk to you”? A friend wants to talk with me about something that makes her sad, but she's busy at the moment and wants talk later. I want to express that I'll be pleased to listen to her. Can I say: "Very welcome to talk to you"? I guess it's wrong, but how I can express it correctly? Should I use the word "welcome"?

Answer 6

Difference between "anyone" and "everyone"?

What's the difference between Anyone and Everyone?

1. Everyone should keep quiet in the classroom.
2. Anyone should keep quiet in the classroom.

Answer 7

Why does “want” take a preposition but “insist” does not?

Why can't you say:

"I insist you to do that!"

After all, you can say:

"I want you to do that!"

What's the difference between these two verbs, that they need to be used in sentences with different structures?

Answer 8

Choosing “with” vs. “in”

While doing some formal writing at my office, my friend told me that in is more apt than with in the following sentence. However, my understanding says when we talk about tools of action we generally use with.

A gazetted officer is required to sign with/in green ink.

So which is more apt here?

Answer 9

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/104990/thats-no-way-to-go-to-your-mother-what-is-the-actual-letters-word-in-thats

I have read a sentence like this:That's no way to go to your mother.here in this sentence what is implied(by a aportrophe and a "s") in "that's".and what is the meaning and structure of this sentence.

Answer 10

Here's one that could go either way; I only wish the O.P. had provided more context:

He left the house ___ I was still sleeping.

Would this be better completed with when or with while?

Had the O.P. elaborated with something like this:

I don't really understand the rules for when I should use these two words. Which one should I use?

then I would probably suggest migration to ELL. However, had the O.P. provided this exposition instead:

I understand what the two words mean, and how neither one would present grammar issues – I'm just wondering if, given the choice to use either one, there might be some subtle rule that would make one of them the more preferred word in a particular context.

I wanted to call attention to this question because it illustrates how the same basic question could be a good fit for either site, and the appropriate location would depend on the depth of the O.P.'s underlying question, and the O.P.'s background knowledge.

In this case, I'm very impressed with Edwin Ashworth's answer to this question, given the location on which it was asked. Perhaps "Ask an ELU question, get an ELU answer" ought to become a mantra.

Answer 11

Is "Them’s fighting words" a right and received English expression?

I came across the phrase ‘Them’s fighting words’ in the beginning part of a Time magazine (July 12) article ...

I interpret "Them's fighting words" to simply mean "They're fighting words." Can them be used as a subject being followed by the singular of "to be" and a transitive verb (fight) that takes the objective noun (words)? I’m puzzled if this is an established American usage of them or just a fashionable saying.