Adjectives

Linguistic Connections

Adjectives, Foreign Languages, Outsider's Perspective, Verbs

In my opinion, one of the best ways to learn a new language is to connect it to the language(s) that you already know.

I refer to this as “making a linguistic connection”.

For example, yesterday I was discussing someone with my wife, and I realized that the best way to describe that person was to use the adjective “pensive” because one of the definitions of this adjective is expressing thoughtfulness.

Almost immediately, I recognized that the word “thought” in the definition and the letters P-E-N-S in the adjective were connected to verbs in two other languages:

  • “pensar”, which in Spanish means to think;
  • “pensare”, which in Italian means to think.

I could list many other linguistic connections that I have made over the past few years, but that is unnecessary here.

You can also make linguistic connections within your native language (such as English), too. You do not have to be learning another language to make them.

What linguistic connections have you made, either within English or between English and another language? Contact me!

“You are wright, Edward.”

Adjectives, Misspellings, Nouns

I saw this in a comment on someone’s blog.

Problem:
The commenter used a noun where an adjective was required.

Explanation:
The comment appeared below a blog post about three places to shop for Google Android applications.

The commenter wrote “You are wright, Edward.” and was indicating agreement with what another commenter — named Edward — had written.

The word “wright” — spelled W-R-I-G-H-T — is a noun that means someone who repairs or constructs something. For example, a “playwright” is someone who constructs theatrical plays.

The commenter should have used the adjective “right” — spelled R-I-G-H-T — which has many definitions, one of which is correct in opinion.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “you are right” — using R-I-G-H-T — 6,500,000 matches
  • “you are wright” — using W-R-I-G-H-T — 4,320 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the correct spelling versus the incorrect spelling by a ratio of 1,505-to-1, which is superb.

Solution:
“You are right, Edward.”

“He hit the ball hardly.” vs. “He hardly hit the ball.”

Adjectives, Adverbs, Versus

I thought of the adjective “soft” and its adverbial form “softly” and was not sure whether the adverbial form of the adjective “hard” was “hardly”.

Problem:
The most popular meanings of the adverb “hardly” are not the opposite of the adverb “softly”.

Explanation:
If you ask most Americans what the adverbial form of the adjective “soft” is, they very likely will respond that it is the adverb “softly”.

However, if you ask most Americans what the adverbial form of the adjective “hard” is, they probably will not respond that it is the adverb “hardly”.

From most to least popular, here are four definitions of the adverb “hardly”:

  1. barely — as in “He hardly graduated from high school.”;
  2. scarcely — as in “The news is hardly surprising.”;
  3. with small likelihood — as in “She will hardly attend the wedding.”;
  4. forcefully — as in “He threw the baseball hardly.”

So the fourth definition of the adverb “hardly” does go with the adjective “hard” in the same way that the most common definition of adverb “softly” goes with the adjective “soft” .

It is worth noting that — at least in American English — the first three definitions typically go with putting the adverb “hardly” adjacent to the verb, whereas the fourth definition typically goes with putting the adverb “hardly” adjacent to the object upon which the action is performed forcefully.

This gives us the solution.

Solution:
Use “He hit the ball hardly.” as a substitute for “He hit the ball forcefully.” Use “He hardly hit the ball.” as a substitute for “He barely hit the ball.”