Do you find anything odd/incorrect in the following conversation?
A: What happened to your hand?
B: I got into an accident a couple of days ago.
A. How?
B: My friend and I were going on a motor bike. He was riding and I was sitting behind him. The lorry in front of us suddenly stopped and my friend couldn’t brake in time and the bike crashed into the back of the lorry. He was severely injured. I got away with minor injuries.
A: You were lucky to be sitting in the back then. How is your friend anyway?
B: He’s ok now.
.
A: What happened to your hand?
B: I got into an accident a couple of days ago.
A. How?
B: My friend and I were on his motor bike. He was driving and I was sitting behind him. The lorry in front of us suddenly stopped and my friend couldn’t brake in time sowe crashed into the back of the lorry. He was severely injured. I got away with minor injuries.
A: You were lucky to be sitting on the back then. How is your friend anyway?
B: He’s OK now.
‘Severely injured’ ‘a couple of days ago’ and already ‘OK now’? Not realistic!
.
Riding is fine and the language used is fine. It is just NATIVE! OK grammatically not correct (looking towards America) but hey, a language is alive (smile)
Tollerance in the realms of language experts is very low, but nevertheless, the language will be here long after they have gone.
We ride bikes, horses and wo… whoops I cant say that here can I (laughing)
Rob
Have lots of tollerance people, after all, a native English speaker is as good as any expert.
Should I now check for spelling mistakes … naw … I like native spelling mistakes, but that doesent mean I teach it (smile) Just another tollerance point.
.
From strictly a native speaker’s point of view, I have to agree with Mister Micawber’s take that the word ‘riding’ is inappropriate in Daemon99’s sentence in particular. This has nothing whatsoever to do with tolerance and the ‘usual usage’. It has everything to do with context and meaning.
The use of ‘riding’ sounds weird and wrong to me in Daemon99’s sentence.
From an ESL teacher’s point of view, I agree with MM, too. And I agree with MM despite the fact that probably the majority of ESL grammar books state that 'ride a motor bike/motorcycle’ is correct and ‘drive a motor bike/motorcycle’ is wrong! The categorization of ‘drive a motorcycle’ as being incorrect is just an easy general rule that works much of the time. However, it definitely does not work all the time. Despite what the ‘rules’ usually state, the word ‘driving’ works quite nicely in the context of Daemon99’s sentences.
.
From the point of view of the guy on the back seat, he has the option of saying that he was riding or sitting behind the driver. There are probably a number of other ways he could say that, too. However, unless he was actually operating the motorcycle, he wouldn’t be said to be ‘driving’ it.
Yes, that would be a normal way to say that. However, Daemon’s sentence makes a distinction between the operator (driver) of the motorcycle and the passenger. That’s why I think ‘driving’ sounds far better in Daemon’s particular sentence.
Just a little comment from me about that:
One of my three brothers is notorious for his incredibly bad spelling. We tease him and laugh endlessly about it. However, bad spelling in a formal context can do a lot of damage in terms of accomplishing what you want to accomplish.
If a native speaker came up with the following figurative usage of the word ‘intrude’, would you accept it?
Sorry for intruding into your mailbox (email-box).
Here the writer needs to check on something for which he needs to send an email to a large group of people. He wants to apologize for the inconvenience caused.
