Got It!

[rabidsamfan]

You scored 100% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 100% Expert!

The Commonly Confused Words Test
http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=14457200288064322170


After several tries, I admit, and some methodical testing.

Of course, now she's starting to put her reasoning on line at http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/
but here are the answers that work:


1. loose
2. breath
3. barely
4. wish/your
5. went/me
6. she/I
7. It's
8. there/their
9. had gotten/their (I disagree with her on this one, I think that got/their is equally valid.)
10. they're/than
11. principal
12. there/morale
13. who's/whose
14. difficult/accept (again, I disagree, and would take hard/accept as also perfectly within normal usage.)
15. medal
16. paid/biweekly
17. priceless
18. yolks
19. passed/past
20. bare
21. advise
22. either a or b
23. saw/seen
24. device
25. risky
26. necessary/stationery
27. assessing/aspect
28. counsel
29. assure/insure
30. ;/better
31. hanged/practicing (I think hanged/practising also works, btw.)
32. effect/economic
33. all of the above
34. towards/while
35. inquire/who
36. either a or b
37. phenomenon
38. :/sensuous (hmmm. I thought you used a semicolon to separate independent clauses.)
39. irrelevant
40. channel (reaches for dictionary....)

Comments

[lily-the-hobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting the answers! Now some not native speaker like me can see what she did wrong! :)

*hugs*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Double check with me on the ones you think were right in spite of her. She's certainly not authoritative!

[lily-the-hobbit.livejournal.com]

# 9 ... got/their... this sounds much more logical to me since past perfect (I hope that is the right name :p ) is so seldomely used.

# 14 ... I used hard the first time and it still sounds right :)

# 28 this one I used to confuse, but not so since the Council of Elrond :)

# 31 hanged? is hung totally impossible?

and what about economical in the next question?

# 34 this question confused me entirely! I have been told once by my English teacher that "toward" is American and "towards" is British. I guess, the question means she was not right, or was she?

same thing with # 35;
doesn't enquire and inquire mean the same only that one is British and the other American?

last but not least # 40:
I can't help it but channel for me is a TV prgramm :p
so, I would go for canal here.

[unhobbityhobbit.livejournal.com]

Hanged is used when referring to the execution hype hanging and hung is used in every other type of hanging.

[elasg.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Glad to see some of the answers that you had issue with were also ones that I disagreed with. - and I agree, both a channel and a canal can empty into a larger body of water, they both being types of water courses. LOL!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

According to my trusty Websters a canal is an artificial waterway and a channel is either a narrow strait between two landmasses (like the English Channel), the natural bed of a watercourse, or the deeper part of a river, harbor, etc. Given her sentence, neither answer strikes me as being absolutely correct. "The water from the river flows through the _____ into the ocean." Well, yes, it does flow down the natural bed of the river, and the deepest part of the river too (as well as shallow part!), but it could be sent through a canal quite easily. I would have chosen either or.

[unhobbityhobbit.livejournal.com]

Personally, I would have thought estuary as being more correct, seeing as it's the point where a river reaches the sea.

Still, it's a damn odd thing to say anyway.

[dreamflower]

Looks like you and I agree on where we disagree with her! LOL!
Especially the "had gotten/got". Marigold has trained me to look out for the dread "gotten" as a dead giveaway Americanism. And I still slip up sometimes.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Since one is the past perfect tense and one is the simple past tense, both are correct within the context of the sentence given.

Grrr....

[unhobbityhobbit.livejournal.com]

Both got and had gotten are correct in the test, I tried it out. Even though it's a dire example sentence (got done? That's nasty).

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Well, "got" didn't work for me. (And I did the test multiple times.) That was the one fix I had to make to get that section to stop coming up with less than 100% too.

I wonder if she mucked with it after she got complaints (or had gotten complaints! *snert*)

[marigoldg.livejournal.com]

That is one of the questionable questions. According to the big fat Oxford English dictionary "gotten" is a N. American *slang* word. Yes, it is in common usage in the States, but in Britain they look at you like you have two heads if you use it. So I think that it is incorrect of her to say that "gotten" is a right answer. It may be common in speech, but technically it shouldn't be correct in a test of this nature.

And I chose "got/their" both times that I took the test last night and got 100% for that section on my second try (using all the same answers both times), so maybe she has both choices set up as correct.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

She probably does have both answer set up. But "gotten" is perfectly good American -- not just slang. It's an archaic usage in England, too.

[marigoldg.livejournal.com]

I don't have the big fat Oxford here with me, that specifically uses the words N.Am slang past participle of "get" for "gotten" so I can't quote it exactly but here is this definition from the Compact Oxford Dictionary:

"gotten
N. Amer. past participle of GET.

USAGE The form gotten is not used in British English but is very common in North American English, though even there it is often regarded as non-standard."

So it might be a regional thing in the States, used some places and not others, or perhaps is being used more commonly nowadays? Anyway, not something we need to argue about... : )

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

LoL! Well, I've never met an American who blinked when someone used the word "gotten" unless they'd been trying desperately to Britpick a fanfic, so it's a pretty common usage.

There are a number of the irregular verbs which have ceased to be irregular in England and are still irregular in America. If you want to approach it from a usage point of view, the less inflected a verb from Old English is, the farther it's gotten from its origins. It's the people who let older inflections fall by the wayside who've forgotten the "proper" way to use the word! *snicker*

Stephen Pinker's done some excellent work on the topic:

http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/26506;jsessionid=aaagR60jWSMNgN is a review of one of his books.

http://www.cshl.org/public/HT/ss00-cshla.html describes Pinker's theory fairly well.

But if you're really into the thesis you could try reading http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~jlm/papers/PastTenseDebate.pdf ...

[gentlehobbit.livejournal.com]

I don't know what Pinker says (haven't checked the links), but 'gotten' is a perfectly acceptable form of 'got'. And as you say, it is the older of the two variants -- kept alive by the immigrants in the early days of the populating of North America. Meantime, England evolved towards the new form of 'got'. (My use of the word 'evolve' isn't a judgement call! I personally have no problem with either variant although I tend to use 'got'.)

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

answers answers answers plural brain is going to mush... Considering how often I have to catch myself from putting an apostrophy in the possessive form of "it" you would think I had sense not to heave bricks through my glass walls...

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

And apostrophe with an e.

I give up now.

[cara-chapel.livejournal.com]

That test has been pissing me off for days. Thanks for giving the answers according to the author! I still stand beside all of my choices except one, which I will grant I messed up on-- the sensual/sensuous, which I apparently would have missed ANYWAY even if I chose correctly, because she has wrongly put a colon as the correct answer!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it cheesed me off too, which is why I got stubborn and figured out what she was looking for. I forget what my original score was. Advanced, I think, but I don't remember the numbers. I put it in a reply to someone's lj, but I don't remember whose it was!

[unhobbityhobbit.livejournal.com]

When DO you use a colon? Just to start lists?

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

And to connect independent clauses to dependent clauses: lists or examples, perhaps.

At least I think so! I didn't get taught formal grammar until I was in the ninth grade and that year was just a review for the rest of the class. (We'd moved from Denver to Omaha -- imagining being told to diagram a sentence on the board when you didn't know that sentences even could be diagrammed...)

[unhobbityhobbit.livejournal.com]

Diagramming sentences? Do you mean identifying the subject and object of the sentence? We've only just started doing that this year and this is year 12, average age being 17.

[dreamflower]

Yeesh! We had to diagram sentences in fifth grade--age 10. But that was 42 years ago, when geography, history and civics were seperate subjects and not some wimpy thing called "social studies".

[unhobbityhobbit.livejournal.com]

*scratches head* Social studies? Civics? I've only ever done geography and history (well, and humanities at one point, which is the two combined). *is confused*

I'll stick with things I know. Nouns! Verbs! Adjectives! How I love thee!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Something like this:

http://www.geocities.com/gene_moutoux/diagramamend6.htm

If you google "diagram sentences" you get a number of ways to do it, but that example is close to what I was expected to know how to do.

[gentlehobbit.livejournal.com]

That sentence (from the link) is an excellent example of obfustication and botched communication brought about by the old tradition of lawyers being paid by the word. The writer needs to be sent to a Plain English class to learn how to communicate.

(It is, however, a good example of one form of sentence diagramming)

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Au contraire, my dear. I happen to think that sentence is a marvel of clarity, particularly when compared to some of the babble included in contracts and user agreements. It is a clear list of the rights of the accused with appropriate qualifiers where necessary. What makes it seems difficult to a modern reader is a lack of familiarity with compound and complex sentences.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

This has been pissing me off, too, because I couldn't fathom why no one was getting 100% right the way across the board, given all the excellent writers on my flist. I couldn't see where I'd gone wrong, either. Now it turns out that all my answers were correct.

I agree with you about had gotten/got. She's also incorrect about towards/while. 'Towards' is English and 'toward' is US. 'Whilst' is a more formal version of 'while'. As Cara says, #38 should have a semi-colon. And as for 'channel'--I would never use it in the way she suggests. If she wanted the reader to distinguish between 'canal' and 'channel', she should have given a different sample sentence.

Harumph. Thanks for sorting this out. It explains a lot.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Well, she's started to put up her explanations on her blog. Still, I do disagree with her in a number of places.

Dictionary.com is not the be-all and end-all of authoritative usage!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

She got all this from Dictionary.com?? No wonder it's flawed.

[katakanadian.livejournal.com]

I had a real problem with her grammar in number 23. 'saw/seen' was the best choice she offered but it was still wrong. Since she completed the act (seeing) before he even had a chance to see, her verb form should have been past perfect. i.e. She already had seen the movie before he saw it.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

The only clue to steer you towards "seen" in the second instance is the presence of the word "had". Otherwise I would have chosen "saw/saw" as in "She saw the movie before he saw it." But your version works too!

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. I also got a lower score than I anticipated, and couldn't figure out what I had chosen that was wrong. I take a great deal of pride in my grammar, so I was pissed off about it as well. Just goes to show that just because somebody posts a quiz online doesn't mean their results have anything relevant to say. Hell, I could post a quiz about football that sounded like I knew what I was talking about, but I don't know anything about the subject.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've been narky about online quizzes for a while. Even the ones from the commercial sites have a tendency to have been constructed by people who checked their answers against google instead of a good encyclopedia.

*rolleyes*

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Weird, isn't it? Where did people get the idea that just because it's posted on the net it's authoritative? The net is way LESS likely to be correct, seeing as how there's absolutely no control or review process. Anyone can post anything, and as long as the site it's on looks snazzy, people will just lap it up like gravy. Go figure.

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

She's wrong on 38; she's not allowing for variation between British and American idioms on 9,31,and 34; in 35 "enquire" is a legitimate variant; 14 is nonsense. The thing about these quizzes is that anyone can write one, and apparently, anyone has.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Well, on question 34 you don't lose points for "practising", so that one at least she's accounted for British spelling. I didn't check every single answer on every single question. I just kept finagling till I got a perfect score. I didn't keep my notes... I don't think she allowed "enquire" at all, though.

Yeah, it's a flawed quiz. But it's certainly got a lot of us worked up about words!

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

I did that silly thing three times and was thrown out each time by the last two (statistical) questions because there was an unvalid tag appearing on my screen (I couldn't fill it out correctly whatever i tried). I see with enormous satisfaction that I answered everything correctly except for four answers.

*is proud*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Very well done!

[elanorgardner.livejournal.com]

Well THAT explains some things. I agree with fictualities! Apparently anyone can write a quiz these days. I took it and knew right away that the author had fouled up (yes, I am a bit prideful of my grammar - wanna see my medal?). Hmmmpf. And I say HMMMPF.

Thanks so much RSF!! Many accolades for your persistence!!

*goes back to chewing on copy of Strunk & White*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Well, I knew she'd screw up when I saw the line about the "expanse vocabulary" so I wasn't expecting a lot. But I got annoyed with not having answers posted.

[danachan.livejournal.com]

I knew this one was flawed. Not because of my result (which I think I forgot to post, oh well), but for the results of certain others that I saw posted. Something about it made me uneasy, especially with that line about the 'expanse vocabulary'. Massive rolling of my eyes.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. I'm always suspicious of these things. But haven't we had fun tweaking its tail!

[gentlehobbit.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree. Some of her answers are incorrect, or don't allow for variations in U.K. and N.Am English.

As for colons and independent clauses, a full colon can be used if the second independent clause modifies or explains the first one. Otherwise, you'd use the semi-colon.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It wasn't what I was taught, but that was many years ago.