Wordwizard

Greetings to all! For some reason, I woke early this morning. It was still dark, and the stars were out. But I could only see that because the lights were out too - which I thought was odd. I was unsettled about something. Then I remembered. I cannot recall whether it was Hector who was harrying me ...

I have never heard a special phrase for that type of party. My first thought was that we might say something like "a thank-you party for our customers". But a little searching around on Google suggests that the terms "customer/client appreciation party" are quite widespread. Perhaps these terms are ...

Whether or not it is rude to ask a person's age depends on many things. Some people are very touchy about their age. Some people think that it is rude for a man to ask a woman how old she is. Some people think it is rude for younger people to ask older people their age. If an opportunity arises in c...

Nice spot, trolley! One of the more amusing diatribes on the subject. But it also helped me to put the whole thing into sharp focus. As you know, I listen to text nowadays rather than attempting to read it visually. The voices I use to do so are extremely high quality, very natural sounding voices. ...

Where I lived, in the deepest, darkest regions of Bavaria, on the Austrian border, it was the Krampus who came on the 5th of December to scare the crap out of kids. An altogether more alarming figure than even Knecht Ruprecht, the Krampus always disturbed me. I do wonder about the psychological dama...

Which is the same as many English-speaking doctors do.

Indeed. You still hear that occasionally when adults are talking to babies: "Ja, was macht er denn?" (And what are you doing?")

Nowadays, it is familiar to Germans primarily through period drama. My guess is that it was largely lost sometime at the end of the 19th century. I suspect that, if Germany still had a monarchy, it would survive in that context only. Even in the most formal situations, it has gone from the language ...

You ignore the possibility of there being early days when we didn't have proper equipment and early days when we did have proper equipment as well as later days (when we may or may not have had proper equipment). It could well be important to distinguish between the early early days and the later ea...

A bolt of fear went through him As they thundered through the sky Indeed, clever double metaphor. Good song. My favourite version is Robbie Krieger's (of the Doors) tongue-in-cheek version . Incidentally, the whole of that gig with Robbie Krieger and John Densmore is well worth watching if you are ...

Things have been completely clarified for me! This was really complicated. It was a big problem for me. I am glad that things are clear to you. They are far from clear to me. Or, more accurately, they are far from cut and dried. Many of your questions hinge on the fact that, although a particular c...

Erik's point is valid, but that actually goes back largely to your original question. As I said in my first response, there is a possible elliptical meaning to this type of construction, and the meaning you propose, namely that I kicked John while he was coming through the door is possible. The alte...

The presence or absence of the comma has no impact on the fundamentally unnatural structure of the sentence. We would find different ways of expressing the intended meaning clearly. "Tim was playing the bass and Jack was making a dreadful noise on the drums." "Tim was playing the bass and Jack was p...

Trolley is right. I have said before that I think the term "adverbial" is the most useless designation used in linguistics. It has become a midden on which people throw anything they cannot explain adequately using conventional grammar. Always remember that the comma reflects a pause or change of in...

My immediate reaction was the same as Bob's: "You will find this book useful for/in understanding ...". The fact that any given sentence is "grammatically correct" does not mean that it would be a natural choice for native speakers. I often choose "E" in answer to these questions, when my choices ar...