Search engine trick for partial polyglots
I was doing a critique of a piece of short fiction for someone--part of a critical circle I'm in. The piece was principally in English, but had dribs and drabs of French dialogue.
I speak a little French. Not a lot, but enough. And my grammar's good enough that I can usually spot obviously bad stuff. So I could tell, looking at the piece, that the bits of French had some issues. I knew enough to know one of the expressions, while technically gramatically correct, would never be spoken that way by a native speaker. There were also some gender issues (I'm resisting here any obvious jokes regarding the operation a sentence might undergo to resolve its gender issues), and so on, and some grammar problems.
But I'm at the level of fluency where I can spot the bad, but not necessarily correct it particularly reliably. The difference between being able to say 'That's not how you say it' (which I can frequently do) and being able to say 'You say it like this' (which I frequently can't, or can't with much confidence). And it's late at night, and I've got no one I want to wake up to handle it.
Enter the search engine. Google in this case, but any engine that handles phrases will do.
I've done this before; worked like a charm this time. Just enter the phrase, as a phrase, with quotes, and look at the count of occurrences. A few or none, that's not how you say it. Hundreds or tens of thousands, yep, that's how it's usually said. So if you think you might know how it's said, you can try it, and confirm.
You can even sift for expressions you can't even guess at particularly well on your own, if you know enough of the words likely to occur. Enter them (not as a phrase, obviously), look at the previews for a phrase something built roughly like you're looking for. And you can check for arcane little questions--does one tend to use this particular past participle as an object of a linking verb, for instance?
Works much better than a mere dictionary, since it doesn't just tell you what's legal (and thus, what might still be understood, but sound clunky), but what's common. Great stuff, that.
I speak a little French. Not a lot, but enough. And my grammar's good enough that I can usually spot obviously bad stuff. So I could tell, looking at the piece, that the bits of French had some issues. I knew enough to know one of the expressions, while technically gramatically correct, would never be spoken that way by a native speaker. There were also some gender issues (I'm resisting here any obvious jokes regarding the operation a sentence might undergo to resolve its gender issues), and so on, and some grammar problems.
But I'm at the level of fluency where I can spot the bad, but not necessarily correct it particularly reliably. The difference between being able to say 'That's not how you say it' (which I can frequently do) and being able to say 'You say it like this' (which I frequently can't, or can't with much confidence). And it's late at night, and I've got no one I want to wake up to handle it.
Enter the search engine. Google in this case, but any engine that handles phrases will do.
I've done this before; worked like a charm this time. Just enter the phrase, as a phrase, with quotes, and look at the count of occurrences. A few or none, that's not how you say it. Hundreds or tens of thousands, yep, that's how it's usually said. So if you think you might know how it's said, you can try it, and confirm.
You can even sift for expressions you can't even guess at particularly well on your own, if you know enough of the words likely to occur. Enter them (not as a phrase, obviously), look at the previews for a phrase something built roughly like you're looking for. And you can check for arcane little questions--does one tend to use this particular past participle as an object of a linking verb, for instance?
Works much better than a mere dictionary, since it doesn't just tell you what's legal (and thus, what might still be understood, but sound clunky), but what's common. Great stuff, that.
posted by AJM at 2:18 p.m. (Permanent Link)
