Hi, I come from India! My name is Abecedarian...

English as a Second Language New ESL Forum Member?
1

Hi all,
I am new to this site and like others who have stumbled on to this site I find it to be a very useful site. I have to say that I am impressed with the way moderators and the users respond to questions. (Note: In the above sentence, I wanted to use “I must say” then I corrected myself to “I have to say” :). Was that correction necessary?) This, I think, is just the site I have been looking for all this time. Many thanks to all those who keep this site well and running and special thanks to Alan, Torsten and other contributors for being so patient with all the ESL learners.

I come from India and although I can use english fairly well (or so I think) I think there is much to improve (esp. my prepositions, punctuations, vocabulary, etc.) I hope to improve my English knowledge by being a frequent visitor to this site. I have many doubts about English and about its usage and because of that it is possible that my contribution to this forum might just be in the form of doubts and questions. I hope that will not be a problem :).

There is just one more question that I have, and that is: if I have a suggestion that might help enhance the usability of the site, whom do I address it to?

I wish you all the very best there is and once again many thanks

PS: if you find any mistakes in the post, please feel free to point them out. i will thank you for that :slight_smile:

2

Dear Abecedarian,

Thank you for your introducing yourself - you clearly have a great interest in communicating with others and that’s why your English is very good. What is your job?
Hope to see you soon online often.
Regards
Torsten
PS: If you have any suggestions regarding our website simply let us know.[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, photographs: A bathroom with an oval tub[YSaerTTEW443543]

3

Dear Abecedarian,

Your English is very good. Hope, you have nice things to share with us. Then, your nick name is tough to pronounce. Where did you get it? :smiley: . Then, where do you live in India?. What is your native language?

Thanks,
Samrat

4

Dear Torsten,

Thank you for a warm welcome. And yes I do have a great interest in communicating with others. Although I am from India, right now I live abroad, in USA. I guess when left alone in an alien land, the need to connect with others becomes all the more pronounced. The internet is very helpful in this regard.

To answer your question, I work as a statistical analyst. And thank you for your compliments about my english. Actually, I was on a high yesterday after I tried the GMAT vocabulary tests (I took the first 12 tests and made only 3 mistakes :D). I did not expect to do that well. But don’t let that make you think that I knew all those words, because most of the time I only made some intelligent guesses :-).

Regarding the suggestions, I was going to suggest that if the website could be modified by allowing the user more flexibility in sorting the posts, it would be great. More specifically, if there was a way to sort the posts, for e.g. in the “Grammar and Vocabulary” forum, by the number of views, or the topic that generated the most replies, instead of by the date of the post, it would be great. However, I don’t know how useful the suggestion is or how feasible it is to implement it.

On a completely different matter, I’d like some tools to help improve my vocabulary. I often am unable to say what a person is doing or find it difficult to express the different emotions with appropriate words. For e.g. chuckle/chortle, or grimace/glower are words that describe something very specific. When should I say “The suggestion made Uncle Tom chuckle” instead of “The suggestion made Uncle Tom laugh/chortle”

Are there dictionaries that can help me out in this regard? I know I have a very big, greedy wish-list. I seriously wish there were a cartoon book that could explain/show us every possible emotion pictorially :), so when we read a novel, we could simply refer (to?) this dictionary, and we can almost see what the character is doing, and have a much richer experience. And wouldn’t it be cool if the ESL learners can be tested on these subtleties :stuck_out_tongue: (would it be appropriate if I used the word nuance instead of subtleties?).

Okay, I think I have written more than what was necessary. Sorry to bother you with such a long post.

I wish you a good day/night

5

Thank you. I too hope to share some nice things with all of you. I was hunting for a nick name that will identify me as a beginner/learner and Thesaurus.com helped me find “Abecedarian” :-). I think it is pronounced as ABCdarian. I could be wrong though.

I come the southern part of India, Tamilnadu to be more specific, and my mother tongue is Tamil.

I wish you a good day/night

6

Hi! I am a new here. Hope to improve my English :smiley: :smiley:

How to classify ’ have to’ vs ’ must’?

7

Hello Torsten!
Thank you for your email. I hope learn English . My English is very poor.
My name is Jana. I am 26 year old.

8

Hi Jana,

Thank you for joining our forum. Where are you from?

Talk to you soon,
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, photographs: A mountain walk[YSaerTTEW443543]