世人皆知的10大错误语法规则(上)
日期:2016-03-28 09:52

(单词翻译:单击)

10.Good for You
10.对你来说,Good是什么含义

"How are you?" "I'm good," you reply.
“你好吗?” “还不错(I'm good)”,你回答。
"You're good? No, you're not! You're well!" says the smug friend whom everyone hates. Before you grumble a halfhearted apology for being an ungrammatical nitwit, stop yourself. Because -- get ready for a breakthrough -- you are good.
“you're good?不对,你不能用‘good'表示!你得用‘well',是you're well!”,那些自以为是的朋友总是这么烦人地告诉你。此时又准备为自己是个语法白痴而违心地向朋友道歉?省省吧!勇敢一点,因为你没错(you're good)。

对你来说,Good是什么含义

The long-held myth was that you should use an adverb (such as "well") to describe how you're doing. But most of us get that "am" is a form of the linking verb "to be" (I am, she is, you are), so we can use an adjective for description. You don't need to say, for instance, "I'm busily" when you're trying to finish your crossword in record time and your kid is asking for a snack. In other words, using an adjective is perfectly acceptable, and "well" is -- in fact -- used in adjective form when we say "I'm well." Also not worth hearing? The argument that "good" can only apply to our moral character and that "well" means we're physically OK. That's just a matter of usage. We all commonly accept that "good" can mean "well." You're good. You're well. We're all fine.
关于语法,人们长久以来都信奉这样的金科玉律:你应该用副词(比如“well”)来描述现在你怎么样。但我们大多数人认为,“am”是“to be”连系动词的一种形式(I am, she is, you are),所以后面可接形容词。比如,你正在尝试破纪录完成填字游戏,你的孩子却来找你要零食,此时你表达自己很忙就不必用“I'm busily”。 换句话说,使用形容词完全没问题,而且实际上,当我们说“I'm well”的时候,是把“well”当形容词使用的。你还是认为我刚刚的说法不正确吗?还是纠结于他们那种观点吗?认为“good”只能用于形容我们的道德品质,而“well”指我们的身体状况不错?其实这只是用法的问题。一般我们都认为,“good”也是“well”。“you're good”也好,“you're well”也好,大家都很好。

9.Funky Conjunction Shun
9.避免使用连词

避免使用连词

We all know it's absolutely horrifying to start a sentence with a conjunction. Who would do such a thing?
我们都知道一个句子用连词开头是完全胆战心惊的。谁又喜欢做这样的事?
Everyone. Shakespeare, for one, liked starting with conjunctions so much that sometimes he used two. ("And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.") Or the Beatles: Who can argue that the lovelorn "And I love her" lyric and song title are just not right? And yet, they are perfectly acceptable ways to start sentences. So why do we all think that "so why do we all think that" is an unacceptable starter for a sentence? Linguist Arnold Zwicky posits an interesting theory. He says that because many freshly minted English speakers (children) tend to use a lot of conjunctions when they speak ("And I went to the playground. And then I skinned my knee. And my mom wouldn't feed me because she was working on her crossword."), teachers might have gone a little overboard and declared starting with a conjunction to be verboten in written assignments
答案是,所有人都喜欢。举个例子,莎士比亚就非常喜欢用连词开头,有时候他甚至会用两个连词。比如他这句,“And yet,to say the truth,reason and love keep little company together nowadays”(译为“然而,说实话,如今理性可真难得和爱情并存。”)里面就用到两个连词。再来看看披头士,谁能说他描写失恋的歌词“但是我爱她”和他歌曲的名字是不正确的。其实,这些连词完全可以放在句首来用。那么,我们为什么都认为这个句式“那么,为什么我们都认为”不能用在句首呢?语言学家阿诺德˙兹维基提出一个有趣的理论。他说,很多以英语为母语的入学新生(儿童)在说话时,会使用大量的连词:“然后(and)我去操场,接着(and)我擦破了膝盖,而且(and)我妈妈不给我零食,因为她当时正忙于她的填字游戏。”老师可能会有点偏激,告诉学生,在英文的写作中不允许使用连词作为句子的开头。

8.How-never
8.永远不要把“however”放在句首

永远不要把“however”放在句首

Speaking of conjunctions, the word "however" gets its own special place in the pantheon of Generally Accepted Yet Totally Baseless Grammar Rules. The thinking was this: You shouldn't start a sentence with the word "however" first because it's a conjunction (see previous page) and second because "however" has a few different meanings, which might muddy the waters of understanding.
说到连接词,”however”这个词在“人们普遍接受而又毫无根据的语法规则”中有着特殊的地位。过去人们是这样认为的:句首不能用“however”。首先因为它是一个连接词,其次这个词含有几种不同的意思,可能会让人理解有误。
To wit: If you say "However long I live, I'll never forget you," the meaning of however is either "to whatever extent" or "no matter how". If you say, "However, I will forget you if I meet someone else," you obviously are using "however" like a qualifier. (The word "but," for instance, is pretty interchangeable with "however.") Somehow, these two ideas led people to believe that "however" was a messy, inaccurate way to start a sentence. In fact, you'll be fine if you just follow these easy rules: Add a comma if you're using it to mean "but" and leave the comma out for an expression of extent.
比如,如果你说“However long l live , I'll never forget you”(译为“无论生命多长,我都将永远记得你”或者“只要我活着,你就在我心里活着”),这里的“however”既可以表示程度,也可以指“不论如何”。如果你说,“However ,I will forget you if I meet someone else”(译为“然而,如果遇见别人,我会忘记你”)在这种情况下,“however”就是一个修饰语。(如“but”这个词就完全可以和“however”互换使用)也不知为何,以上这两种情况就导致人们认为:“however”作为一个句子的开头既不准确,又让人混乱。事实上,只要你遵守这条简单的规则就没有问题:使用“however”时,如果想表达“但是”的意思那就加个逗号,表达某种程度的话就去掉逗号。

7.Nopefully
7.别随便用“hopefully(但愿)”

别随便用“hopefully(但愿)”

If you haven't gotten the idea so far, it's time we just said it: Grammar changes. Words are fluid and don't mean the same thing forever, nor are they used the same way throughout eternity. Fittingly, we come to "hopefully," which became a flash point for some grammar wars a few years ago.
如果你现在还没有反应过来,那我们现在就来说说这个:语法规则是变化着的。词汇的意思并非一成不变,其用法也不会始终如一。正好我们谈到这个词,“hopefully”。几年之前,它可是语法论战的焦点问题。
"Hopefully" literally means "in a hopeful manner." That means that using it in the sense of "it is hoped" is incorrect, as in "Hopefully it will rain soon." In that instance, you're really saying, "In a hopeful manner, it will rain." However, the sentence "We watched the clouds hopefully for rain" is correct. Or something like that. The point is, there's a very commonly accepted usage where we mean "it is hoped" when we say "hopefully." So when the Associated Press decided in 2012 that it would begin accepting "hopefully" in such a manner, anarchy reigned. Or at least some people wrote some angry editorials that are totally worth reading.
从文字层面上来看,“hopefully”意指“怀着一种希望的态度”。这就表明,如果用它表达“我希望”就不正确,。比如这个句子“Hopefully it will rain soon”的真正含义是“我希望能下雨”。其实,“We watched the clouds hopefully for rain”这个句子的用法也是正确的,意思相近。还有其他一些句子,用法与之相同。而问题的关键在于,我们使用“hopefully”这个词来表达“我希望”已经非常普及了。因此在2012年,出版协会决定接受这种用法后,一场激烈的争论拉开序幕。起码,有一些人写了几篇非常值得一读的社论来表达其愤慨之情。

6.Passive-aggressive
6.被动语态

被动语态

Passive voice seems to be the bane of every high school teacher's existence. You can certainly see why. It can't be a lot of fun to read paper after paper explaining that "The shot was made by Atticus to kill the dog and save them" or "The book was written by an alcoholic Faulkner." Surely they'd want to read something more enlivening: "Atticus shot the dog and saved them," or "Faulkner wrote the stream of consciousness story, but he often lost consciousness while drinking."
被动语态似乎是每一个高中老师的痛苦之源。原因很简单。如果一份报纸如此报道新闻:“为了杀死狗并救下这些人,这个射杀由阿提克斯实施,”或“这本书是一个酒鬼福克纳写的”,那么读来毫无乐趣。显然人们想读一些更生动有趣的句子,例如:“阿提克斯射杀狗然后救下了他们”或“福克纳写了意识流的故事,但他喝酒时经常失去意识”。
To review: In active voice, the subject of the sentence is doing the action ("I ate the hot dog"). In passive voice, the target of the action is the subject ("The hot dog was eaten by me"). As you can see, passive voice can be a lot clumsier, clunkier or even confusing in many circumstances, but it's not incorrect. Writers may also employ passive voice when they haven't done their homework, as in, "The man was shot and killed on Thursday." By whom? Hmmm, not sure. As with most things, the key to passive voice is moderation. (Someone should've told Faulkner.) And sometimes we must use it. In some professional writing, it's considered a good way to write objectively. For that reason, you might see studies or scholarly work that uses passive voice to say something like, "The experiments were conducted according to strict standards" as opposed to "We conducted the experiments according to strict standards." So watch for passive voice, but don't buy that you're a grammar pariah if you use it.
回顾一下:在一个主动语态里,一个句子的主语是正在做某个动作(“我吃了个热狗”)。在被动语态里,动作的目标是主语(“那个热狗被我吃了”)。正如你所看到的,被动语态有些笨拙、沉重甚至一些情况下能引起困惑,但也不是不正确。作家在打草稿的时候也会使用被动语态,例如,“那个男人在周四的时候被射杀”。“被谁?”嗯,不确定。在大多数情况下,被动语态的关键是适可而止(真应该有人告诉福克纳这件事情的)。但有时候,我们必须使用被动语态。在一些专业写作中,运用被动语态能增强写作的客观性。由于这个原因,研究总结或者学术作品可能会使用被动语态来阐述一些事情,例如描述为“这个实验通过严格的标准实施”,而不是“我们通过严格的标准进行实验”。所以小心使用被动语态,但也不要相信“如果你使用被动语态,就会被语法世界唾弃”这种理论。

审校:Freya然 编辑:Freya然 来源:前十网

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重点单词
  • mythn. 神话
  • lyricadj. 抒情的 n. 抒情诗
  • havenn. 港口,避难所,安息所 v. 安置 ... 于港中,
  • passiveadj. 被动的,消极的 n. 被动性
  • scholarlyadj. 学究气的,学者派头的 名词scholar的形容
  • acceptableadj. 合意的,受欢迎的,可接受的
  • apologyn. 道歉;勉强的替代物
  • halfheartedadj. 不认真的;不热心的;无兴趣的
  • confusingadj. 使人困惑的,令人费解的 动词confuse的现
  • tendv. 趋向,易于,照料,护理