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The most problematic for me as a non-native has been "the" vs "nothing", i.e. when one can/should put the definite article. Pre-LLM I was joking that real AI i

The most problematic for me as a non-native has been "the" vs "nothing", i.e. when one can/should put the definite article. Pre-LLM I was joking that real AI is whatever can make that decision correctly 100% of times.

jayd16 6d ago
As a patron of the 405, there is no consensus.
geocar 6d ago
Try making it with "a" - if thing can be "a thing" then it could be "the thing" but if it can't be "a thing" it definitely can't be "the thing" either.
- m12k 6d ago
  Right on the money!
  - geocar 6d ago
    In the 16th century, being "on the money" meant an arrow or a dart being on (or near) a specific physical coin (i.e. the money), like in a tossing or shooting bar-bet. Being on merely a money (or some money) would likely not be as impressive in said circumstances, and so whilst being grammatically possible in English, it shouldn't seem so likely the sort of thing anyone would ever have had to say.
- rom1v 6d ago
  "I play the piano" or "I play piano"?
  - ad133 6d ago
    Weirdly, as an en_GB native, neither of these seems wrong to me. I suspect one is British and one is American, and too much TV has driven me to accept the American one.
    - jacobolus 6d ago
      Both of these are common in the US. It doesn't seem like there's any strong regional connection. Judging from a search, "play the piano" is about 5 times as common as "play piano", but there are also many sources which uses both versions in close proximity, apparently interchangeably.
  - geocar 6d ago
    With context these can mean different things. You might also play a piano, or hire either a player piano, or a piano player. If you are answering which instrument you play, it's the former, but if we are talking the profession it's the latter, because you don't say then that you play a piano.
  - landdate 6d ago
    "i play piano" - i know how to play piano "i play the piano" - i am playing the piano that is just my intuition as native english speaker, but the former cojld also mean the latter and i have seen it used like such before.
- deleted 6d ago
  [deleted]
bob1029 6d ago
How do you feel about adjective ordering rules? I always wondered what this was like from the outside.
- theanonymousone 6d ago
  True. That's also a big ambiguity to me. But for some reason I never cared about it as much :/
- Aachen 6d ago
  Background: Dutch, had a few years of English education starting at iirc 11yo (but we also had French and don't parle me avec that so that was really just foundational), got fluent mostly just from chatting in videogames We were never taught adjective ordering, at least that I remember, since the concept was new to me a few years ago (I'm 32). It seems natural to me, but of course it's entirely arbitrary and so it must be that I simply picked it up from reading other people's English (many of whose was not native either, so that it still worked is actually interesting)
Aachen 6d ago
I don't have this problem in English, I have it in my native language. It sounds super wrong to me that people say "that concept is called X in the math" instead of saying "... in math". I've never understood why this feels wrong to me, why couldn't you put a 'the' before it? But in English that's a well-established thing. Maybe my brain is wired wrong and short-circuits on Dutch

jayd16 6d ago

As a patron of the 405, there is no consensus.

geocar 6d ago

Try making it with "a" - if thing can be "a thing" then it could be "the thing" but if it can't be "a thing" it definitely can't be "the thing" either.

m12k 6d ago
Right on the money!
- geocar 6d ago
  In the 16th century, being "on the money" meant an arrow or a dart being on (or near) a specific physical coin (i.e. the money), like in a tossing or shooting bar-bet. Being on merely a money (or some money) would likely not be as impressive in said circumstances, and so whilst being grammatically possible in English, it shouldn't seem so likely the sort of thing anyone would ever have had to say.
rom1v 6d ago
"I play the piano" or "I play piano"?
- ad133 6d ago
  Weirdly, as an en_GB native, neither of these seems wrong to me. I suspect one is British and one is American, and too much TV has driven me to accept the American one.
  - jacobolus 6d ago
    Both of these are common in the US. It doesn't seem like there's any strong regional connection. Judging from a search, "play the piano" is about 5 times as common as "play piano", but there are also many sources which uses both versions in close proximity, apparently interchangeably.
- geocar 6d ago
  With context these can mean different things. You might also play a piano, or hire either a player piano, or a piano player. If you are answering which instrument you play, it's the former, but if we are talking the profession it's the latter, because you don't say then that you play a piano.
- landdate 6d ago
  "i play piano" - i know how to play piano "i play the piano" - i am playing the piano that is just my intuition as native english speaker, but the former cojld also mean the latter and i have seen it used like such before.
deleted 6d ago
[deleted]

bob1029 6d ago

How do you feel about adjective ordering rules? I always wondered what this was like from the outside.

theanonymousone 6d ago
True. That's also a big ambiguity to me. But for some reason I never cared about it as much :/
Aachen 6d ago
Background: Dutch, had a few years of English education starting at iirc 11yo (but we also had French and don't parle me avec that so that was really just foundational), got fluent mostly just from chatting in videogames We were never taught adjective ordering, at least that I remember, since the concept was new to me a few years ago (I'm 32). It seems natural to me, but of course it's entirely arbitrary and so it must be that I simply picked it up from reading other people's English (many of whose was not native either, so that it still worked is actually interesting)

Aachen 6d ago

I don't have this problem in English, I have it in my native language. It sounds super wrong to me that people say "that concept is called X in the math" instead of saying "... in math". I've never understood why this feels wrong to me, why couldn't you put a 'the' before it? But in English that's a well-established thing. Maybe my brain is wired wrong and short-circuits on Dutch