It is an irresponsible idea to captive animals in zoos.
This is a word with many forms. Let’s look at how they work in sample sentences and then try some practice. Continue reading
word forms
Success failure effort belief
These words – success, failure, effort, belief – take different forms and collocate strongly with other words.
They’re also problematic for Indonesian scholars. Success has become sukses, effort is translated from upaya, and belief is subject to the same word form error as life (see note below).
Use a dictionary to complete the following text with suitable forms of these words. Continue reading
Photos that never forget
I keep my photos because they can memorise the moment.
But in order to memorise anything they would need consciousness, which is of course impossible. A photograph does not have a brain:
Only humans can memorise things, so perhaps you mean:
- I keep my photos because they help me to remember the moment.
Be careful with ‘memorise‘. We don’t usually memorise ‘moments’. We generally memorise information, and this often requires continued and intensive concentration. For example if you want to remember somebody’s phone number, you must first of all memorise it. The memory of the number then stays in your head ready for the next time you need it. With a photograph, the memory might not stay in your head. Rather, you remember the moment whenever you look at the photograph. In this sense the photo acts as ‘a reminder‘.
Indonesians would do well to read through the previous paragraph and consider the translations of ingat and its forms, and also hafal and its forms.
Ethnic(ity)
Different ethnics will have different languages to communicate.
This is one of those situations where the English word has been borrowed and its use altered. In this case what was in English an adjective has been turned into a noun.
English offers two word forms – ethnic (adjective), ethnicity (noun):
- Different ethnic groups will have different languages to communicate.
- People with different ethnicity will have different languages to communicate.
And by the way, how exactly do you describe your own ethnicity? Comments below!