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Time clauses
It's been a while since I posted last, and it took me long to recall how to write a notebook on italki.
I am an intermediate learner and can communicate what I want to express to an extent.
Though many say "don't care too much about grammar", I sometimes feel that to reach a more advanced level, it is good to know grammar, which I learned at school a long time ago, and so is getting rusty. Therefore, I decided to learn it again and post what I learned today.
I sometimes got confused about the tense of verbs in time clauses like "after I finish/finished my homework, I will go out".
Today, I learned again that the basic rule is to use the present form. So for the above sentence, the right one is "After I finish/have finished my homework, I will go out".
If I understand correctly, the past tense can be used if the main clause is also in the past tense (I forgot the name of this rule). For example, "The director stopped the actress before she had finished her line." or "The thief had escaped when the police arrived."
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A rainy day
The weather this weekend is not good, and the forecast says it will be a record-breaking rainy day tomorrow, in terms of rainfall.
I like being at home when it rains obviously because I don't want to get soaked but also because the sound of rain is soothing, so I want to hear it at a comfortable place.
I find it really interesting that people think of rainy weather in different ways.
Some friends of mine are from countries with low rainfall. Last time we talk, they said a rainy day actually make them happy and even feel like going out, which is, in fact, what they used to do back in their countries. This is a fascinating view point as I am from a country with a plenty of water and never get that excited before.
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Hard to keep posting
It's been a week since I wrote last. I've got too much going on and have been too drained to write something. Therefore, I decided to do nothing but having a rest, ended up binge watching Netflix shows, which actually helped me learn a lot of new words.
1. Intestine （腸）
The only word I knew was "gut". This came out of the show in which Jack Whitehall travels with his father. Jack was eating it at a street food restaurant in Thailand.
2. Ointment (軟膏）
Ointment is a kind of skin cream or something containing medicine. I have never used an ointment outside of Japan and did not know the term. Medical terms are harder to come across than those in other categories because I try to be healthy and not get injured.
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What is the point?
You probably have seen drinks served in a glass with a slice of lemon on the rim. What is the point of having it? Unless put in the drink, the lemon won't do anything taste-wise. It feels like it is just dumped as no one eats.
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Latitude and Longitude
These are two words I often forget. Today, I had a change to use them. I will write a post so I won't forget.
Latitude and longitude are coordinates giving a location on the earth.
Latitude gives a north-south position, whereas a longitude gives a west-south position.
If we draw grids with latitude and longitude on the earth and say that the south to north direction is the vertical direction, latitude lines are given by vertical ones, and longitude lines run horizontally.
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Green beans
I ate beef merlot for dinner. Beef merlot is sliced (or cubed) beef steak cooked with vegetables like carrot, potato, and green beans in gravy sauce (Maybe wine sauce because it is merlot? I am trying to describe what I ate without looking at the correct definition).
I have never known "green beans" until I decided to write this post. This is because, in Japanese, green beans and kidney beans are essentially the same (they are called Ingen); but there is a slight difference between them; while kidney beans are called Ingen, green beans are called "Saya-Ingen = kidney beans in a (sword) case".
Words relating to food are still confusing to me, I need to study harder!
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My first entry
This is my first post on italki. I was looking for a service like lang-8, which I used to use as I can post something short to practice (and remember) what I learned. Italki seems to be a nice alternative, so I decided to use it.
What did I learn today? It is the word "dashboard'. I wanted to describe an Uber driver I met the other day. He is from Australia. Not only did he speak Australian English, but he had a kangaroo figure on the car dashboard, which helped guess where he was from. But I did not know the name of the space on top of the AC or the car navigation of a car, which is where you can put figures and presumably called a dashboard.
Anyway, I want to practice making sentences like this quickly. Hopefully I can continue and make this a habit.
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