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Clocks and Time
Let's imagine that there are many clocks in the room. All of the clocks display different times. Some of them are too fast, some of them are too slow, some of them are broken and display a fixed time. An observer, who is a materialist and who does not know what time is and what clocks are, may think that each clock has its own time. According to his materialistic philosophy, time would not exist if clocks did not exist. Each clock produces its own time by movement of its mechanical parts. If a clock stops, its time stops.
The same theory exists about the human soul. The theory implies that personality is a product of the human brain.
We know that time exists independently of clocks. Clocks just show time. If all clocks get broken, time will not stop. What if the soul exists independently of the brain? What if the human brains just show soul in the same way as clocks show time...?0 votedOctober 9, 20161- Jack is a nickname for the name John, which is a very common name for men. It comes from the Latin name Ioannes, and is the English equivalent of Ivan / Иван. Jack could be something like Vanya / Ваня. Jane is a name for women. It's originally derived from a Biblical character called Joanna, and so the Russian equivalent is Ioanna / Иоанна. Женя is from Евгения, which is Eugenia / Eugenie in English. I suppose a nickname might be something like 'Genie' or 'Nia'.0 votedJune 28, 20151
- A fansite is any website/social media page that is dedicated to someone that has fans, usually set up by the fans themselves. A fanbase is the following that a celebrity/sports player etc. has, and refers collectively to everyone who is a fan of him or her. So fansites are often created by the fanbase. Two examples of the difference from the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_conf/9506134.stm - "Worcester City director Mike Davies says the club are not intending to raise ticket prices as they look to build their fanbase." http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/northampton/hi/tv_and_radio/newsid_8339000/8339677.stm - "A Northamptonshire woman is enjoying the success of over seven million visits to her Strictly Come Dancing fansite."0 votedJune 28, 20151
- All the tenses of English tend to be used by native speakers in conversation, when the time is appropriate. The past perfect (had done, had seen, had studied) and the past present continuous (had been working, had been doing) are both fairly common tenses that I would use and expect to be used in casual conversation to describe events that happened before a certain time in the past. For example, a question I can imagine being asked at a job interview might be: "How long had you been working at the company before you decided to leave?", or "How long had you studied before you were fluent in French?".0 votedJune 28, 20151
- A "middleman" to me is always someone who acts as an agent between a service provider and a customer. For example, a travel agent is a middleman between me and a hotel, or me and an airline company. A supermarket is a middleman between me and a farmer, or me and a dairy. I don't think I'd refer to a trusty employee or a particularly competent one as a middleman unless that was their job (being an intermediary in the way I just described).0 votedJune 28, 20151
Mon français est horrible :)
Bonjour italki !
Je veux parler en français parce que je veux (/j'ai l'intention d') étudier à(1) Paris d'ici quatre années. J'ai besoin d'une personne qui peut m'aider(2) avec mes efforts. Je ne peux pas embaucher(3) un professeur, mais je peux aider une personne (/quelqu'un) qui(4) veut apprendre la langue anglaise. Si vous pouvez m'aider, aidez-moi s'il vous plait ! Merci !(5)
Devorah----------------------------------
(1) cities always take à as a preposition: à Londres, à Berlin, à Moscou.
(2) <em>assister</em> as a verb usually means 'to attend': <em>assister à une réunion</em> 'to attend a meeting' - it's a false friend!
(3) you don't tend to 'buy' a person, you tend to employ them (<em>embaucher quelqu'un</em>)
(4) when you're making relative clauses like this, if a verb directly follows 'that/which', it must be 'qui' and not 'que': <em>l'homme qui m'a parle</em> 'the man who spoke to me' but <em>les romans que Hugo écrivait</em> 'the books that Hugo was writing'
(5) as a note: exclamation marks in French are separated from their sentences by a space, like this !0 votedJune 22, 20152- They are indeed both incorrect and they sound foreign to me. The first sentence could be an absent-minded error by a native speaker: if you change it to "You're wanting to learn English, aren't you?" it makes sense. In its current form it would have to be "You want to learn English, don't you?". The second one is definitely not an error a native speaker would make unless they were bilingual French or Spanish or something like that. It's "I have been a call centre agent for 7 years".0 votedJune 21, 20152
