週二讀「又中又英」，見以下問答：
Do you still remember what lose your cool means? It
means lose your temper.
朗讀時並沒感到不妥，但細看便覺得答案礙眼。mean
跟
lose 同是動詞，不能就這樣連在一起吧？栗以為答案應更改如下：
It means to lose/losing your temper.
至於問題部分，如果
lose your cool 三字能加上引號，應該會順眼一點的。
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提起英文標點，栗立即想起 if 句。記得讀書時，老師說若 if 放在句子頭，主句與子句之間應用逗點分開，例如：
If you do not get up now, you will be late for
school.
不過近年看高中的英文教科書，那個逗點已不復見。到底是因為人聰明了，不用靠標點協助分句，還是因為人愈來愈懶，可省則省？
我認為標點符號不是以分句為目的，而是以句子中的意念的層次為主；故有時候我也懶於加上任何標點符號，重要的是只要我認為句中的意念已經很清晰就可以了。
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哈哈~ 懶人總是很多藉口.....
[版主回覆12/17/2010 08:09:00]我說得不好. 我覺得標點的用途, 在於協助讀者理清句子的意思和層次, 可能中英文有不同吧, 中文少標點我覺得是好事, 反而是英文的長句子, 少了標點真的不行.
For your example: 〝If you do not get up now, you will be late for school.〞and most sentences starting with 〝if〞, the comma in between is indispensable. In contrast, the punctuation mark can be omitted if the sentence is reshuffled in a way like this: 〝You will be late for school if you do not get up now.〞I am afraid the quality of 現在的 高中英文教科書 is highly questionable.
回覆刪除I agree that quotation marks should better be added to 「又中又英」's sentence, esp in written English.
[版主回覆12/17/2010 08:11:00]我懷疑我的外國同事不覺得那是 indispensable, 因為他們很多都早已丟棄那逗點.
又中又英的內容我覺得不錯, 但細讀便發覺行文有點求其, 典型 "我手寫我口", 唉
That first line came from a secondary school English textbook...?
回覆刪除[版主回覆12/20/2010 08:11:00]You meant 'lose your cool'? No, it came from a newspaper column.
As for the second example, it was made up by me.
Yeah, some columnists have terrible English nowadays. But, if there were quotations around "lose your cool" and "lose your temper", then it would've been okay.
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