usage

What on Earth Is a Dangling Participle Anyway?

By in Language 2 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Hanging_Off_Cliff

Some people remember that their teachers told them a dangling participle is a bad thing. But that’s all they remember! It’s hard to avoid dangling participles unless you know exactly what they are.

First, a (present) participle is a verb form ending in -ing. Dancing, laughing, eating, drinking, sleeping, dreaming, and so on! (You can also have past participles, but we’ll deal with them in a later article.)

Now let’s use one in a sentence without dangling!

Dancing my way down the garden path, I felt excited as I approached the little house.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Now let’s dangle!

Dancing my way down the garden path, the house instantly made me feel welcome and excited.

The participle (dancing) is dangling because the subject of the sentence (the house) wasn’t dancing! I was. When you use a participle, it should refer to an action performed by the subject of the sentence.

Let’s consider a few more. Try to sort out the danglers from the correct sentences. Which ones are danglers?

  1. Working until the small hours of the morning, the proposal was finally ready for submission.
  2. Studying until the library closed every night, she deserved a little break.
  3. Dangling on the rope that held him captive, the prisoner howled with pain while his captors tortured him.
  4. Considering the impact of global warming, a new bill was passed in the Senate.
  5. Rolling in the grass, the children squealed with delight.
  6. Rolling a cigarette for the last time, the condemned man wondered whether his pardon would be granted.
  7. Smiling in anticipation of a great wine, the cork came easily out of the last bottle he opened.
  8. Bickering and quarreling from start to finish, the dinner was nothing short of a disaster.
  9. Kicking and screaming as loudly as she could, the kidnappers forced the little girl into the waiting car.
  10. Sending what was to be her last text message, her car collided with the oncoming truck.
  11. Roaring in anger, the lion watched the hunters put the bodies of the cubs into the truck.
  12. Realizing that we had to reduce our spending or face certain bankruptcy, our credit cards were locked in our a safe deposit box and used only for emergencies.

And here are the answers!

The danglers: 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12.

 

False Friends. The Enormity of the Problem.

By in Language No Comments Tags: , , , ,

FalseFriend

Maria was spending a semester in Washington with her husband. The newly married Spanish couple had decided that they could greatly improve their career prospects if they improved their English. They arrived in Washington and registered for language classes and settled happily in an apartment in the pleasant Foggy Bottom area.

One day Maria asked to speak to her teacher after class. She explained that she was embarrassed and she would not be able to attend classes any more because she was going to have a baby rather soon. Her teacher told her not to be embarrassed. She said that this was wonderful news, and that it was cause for celebration.

Maria left the conversation in a state of total confusion. What on earth did the teacher mean by telling her not to be embarrassed? Why was that any of her business? Her confusion quickly turned to irritation.

The misunderstanding turned out to be a case of what language teachers often call “false friends.” Most of the time, if a word in one language sounds like a word in your own language, it can really help you. For example, the Spanish word, revolución, looks, sounds, and means almost the same as the English word, revolution. That’s an example of a true friend! But there are some words that look and sound almost the same in two languages, but the meaning is completely different. When Maria told her teacher that she was embarrassed, she was thinking of the Spanish word, embarazada, which means pregnant. Her teacher probably should have known that and what Maria was really talking about. Embarazada is a good example of a false friend.

Click here to see a list of 50 Spanish-English false friends.

There are also false friends that cause us to use our native language incorrectly. Enormity is a good example. People naturally associate enormity with enormous and assume that it is a noun that can be used to describe the immense size of something. Correctly, the word should be used to describe extreme wickedness.

For example, it is correct to talk about the enormity of a crime. Merriam Webster’s dictionary provides the following synonyms: atrociousness, atrocity, depravity, and monstrosity. But you can’t talk about the enormity of the trees in the redwood forests of California. They’ve done nothing wrong!

Pin It on Pinterest