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I'm not currently looking for language exchange partners. I'm happily married and am only here to improve my language skills.
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  • Posted
    About translating the Danish “I have tried it before” - for native English speakers. I went to an eye doctor recently and the nurse put some drops in my eyes to dilate my pupils. Before she did it she said it was going to sting a bit. My reply in Danish was literally “Yes, I have tried it before”(=I know what it feels like because it’s been done to me before). This is something about Danish that English speakers will find odd. In Danish “to try” can mean something like “this has happened to me/I have experienced this before”. So it would be natural to say in Danish things like “I have never tried breaking my leg”(=It has never happened to me that I broke my leg). So my question is, what would be a natural way to express in English that I have had drops put in my eyes before (and thus know that it stings)? Are the following natural?: 1. “Yes, it’s been done to me before.” 2. “Yes, I have experienced it before.” 3. “Yes, I’ve had it done to me before.” (I’m unsure if “had it done” means I told someone to do it to me”.) Thanks for your help!
    October 26, 2018
    8
    0
  • Posted
    What do you normally call a specific variety of apple? - for native English speakers What do you normally call a specific variety of apple? The botanical word is “cultivar”, but I’m not sure if it’s a specialised word or it’s what people colloquially call it. With variety I mean for instance Golden Delicious or Jonagold. Thanks for your help!
    September 23, 2018
    7
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  • Answered
    “Little bitty” is an informal way of saying “tiny”. So it means that the jet plane is a tiny jet plane. That's the way I understand it at least. http://learnersdictionary.com/definition/little%20bitty
    0 voted
    September 21, 2018
    2
  • Posted
    About “skittish” - for native English speakers I know the meaning of "skittish" when used about animals , but have so far only encountered it used about people in a novel from 1965. I wanted to check if “skittish” is still used about people with a meaning along the lines of “not very serious and with ideas and feelings that keep changing”. Thanks for your help!
    September 21, 2018
    8
    1
  • Commented

    I’m just more or less saying the same thing as Marina.


    I don’t speak Russian, so what I'm saying here should be taken with a grain of salt, but my wife is Russian, so we have talked a bit about Russian grammar.

    Russian word order is freer than English word order. Word order does not change the grammatical function of a word in Russian. Instead the inflection of the word will show whether it's a subject or object, etc. Notice that in the sentence "I like the book which recommended my friend." everything is correct, except the word order.


    0 voted
    September 15, 2018
    0
  • Commented
    In Denmark films are always with the original audio and subtitled, unless it's a film for children - Disney films for instance.
    0 voted
    September 12, 2018
    0
  • Posted
    "smush" - for native English speakers Is "smush" (meaning crush or smash) a word you ever use or come across? I write down unfamiliar words when I encounter then, but often it takes a while before I get around to practicing them (so that I can make them part of my active vocabulary) and in this case I don't remember where I encountered "smush". It seems pretty rare since it's not in Merriam-Webster. But it does exist: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/smush
    September 12, 2018
    14
    0
  • Posted
    ‘the road is a sluice of squishy mud’ - for native English speakers. Oxford dictionary has the following sentence below as an example sentence when you look up the word “squishy”: ‘the road is a sluice of squishy mud’ https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/squishy I just wanted to hear if this use of “sluice” sounds natural to native speakers, because as a non-native speaker I don’t find the image natural. Why a sluice? Where are the sluice gates in the road? I can imagine that a sluice (not that I see many sluices where I live) emptied of water is pretty muddy and perhaps that’s all there is to this image in terms of trying to make sense of it. I found the article from where the sentence has been taken and it has to do with off-road driving, so perhaps the road is literally a sluice. You don’t have to help me understand that article. I just wanted to know if the sentence would make sense immediately to a native speaker. Thanks for your help!
    September 10, 2018
    16
    1
  • Posted
    "You’re making it into too big a problem" ... - for native English speakers. Are the two sentences below natural? I suppose North Americans would use “deal” instead of “problem”. 1. You’re making it into too big a problem. 2. You’re making too big a problem out of it.
    September 7, 2018
    6
    0
  • Answered
    Based on the answers I have received and dictionary entries I have consulted I have now come up with my own personal definition: 1. A spool and a reel are basically the same thing - a cylinder on which film, wire, thread, or other flexible materials can be wound - but they have different collocations, which you have to know if you want to use the words natively. 2. reel: A device for winding and unwinding a line as required, that is, it contains some sort of winding mechanism. The part that actually holds the line can in this contexts be referred to as the spool.
    0 voted
    September 2, 2018
    0