should the unknowns be "the unknown"?

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I am a teacher who wants to learn all the unknowns and a researcher who is fond of the beauty of mathematics and of the beings. I love statistics, which is both my life and my fun; I like bridge, soccer, badminton and skiing. I am fascinated by biology and by nature wonders of all sorts.

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@oristarA,

The whole paragraph is obviously written by a non-native speaker of English. "Unknowns" is merely typical of the overall style and a minor detail compared to "beings", "my life and my fun" and "nature wonders".

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

The whole paragraph is obviously written by a non-native speaker of English. "Unknowns" is merely typical of the overall style and a minor detail compared to "beings", "my life and my fun" and "nature wonders".

Thank you.

More native E speakers come to remark please.

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Rewriting the quote would be appreciated:

Quote:

I am a teacher who wants to learn all the unknowns and a researcher who is fond of the beauty of mathematics and of the beings. I love statistics, which is both my life and my fun; I like bridge, soccer, badminton and skiing. I am fascinated by biology and by nature wonders of all sorts.

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There is nothing wrong with the word unknowns, neither in and of itself, nor in the context of its use here. I agree that the passage was very likely not written by a native speaker of English.

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We can explore or investigate all the great Unknowns - but we can't learn them. Then they would not be unknown.

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@oristarA,

I am a teacher who wants to learn [of/about] all the unknowns and a researcher who is fond of the beauty of mathematics and of the beings [???]. I love statistics, which is both my life and my fun. I like bridge, soccer, badminton and skiing. I am fascinated by biology and by all the wonders of nature.

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@JTT,

JTT wrote:

I am a teacher who wants to learn [of/about] all the unknowns and a researcher who is fond of the beauty of mathematics and of the beings [???]. I love statistics, which is both my life and my fun. I like bridge, soccer, badminton and skiing. I am fascinated by biology and by all the wonders of nature.

Thank you JTT.

The guy who writes this is a distinguished Harvard professor. Click here please:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~junliu/

From his blog can you figure out what "the beings" means there?

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@oristarA,

Note that Einstein's English wasn't too good either ! The difference is that Eastern languages are more difficult to "map" to English than European languages. Such mapping may indeed need to be enhanced by contextual elaboration (e.g. blogs) in order to assist communication.

But the fact remains that your question about unknown/s is irrelevant with respect to the overall style of this guy's "English" because its meaning is clear written either way.

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@oristarA,

He almost certainly came to the US in his late teens, early 20s, so the window of language opportunity had pretty much closed and there almost certainly will be aspects of his language, especially spoken language, that will mark him as a foreign speaker for the rest of his life.

I say this not to denigrate, that's just the way it is. Henry Kissinger arrived at about age 16 and he has never been able to lose his accent. His younger brother was 13 years old and he has no accent, he sounds just like any other native speaker.

He will turn around/confuse the odd phrase or two because of the influence of his mother tongue. You might be able to see instances of that better than I, Ori.

I wasn't able to discern what "the beings" means but that may well be a known to those that surround him, those that share his field.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Note that Einstein's English wasn't too good either ! The difference is that Eastern languages are more difficult to "map" to English than European languages. Such mapping may indeed need to be enhanced by contextual elaboration (e.g. blogs) in order to assist communication.

But the fact remains that your question about unknown/s is irrelevant with respect to the overall style of this guy's "English" because its meaning is clear written either way.

To simplify my question I've left out the puzzle with "the beings".

But you've given me a good point.

Thanks

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@JTT,

JTT wrote:

He almost certainly came to the US in his late teens, early 20s, so the window of language opportunity had pretty much closed and there almost certainly will be aspects of his language, especially spoken language, that will mark him as a foreign speaker for the rest of his life.

I say this not to denigrate, that's just the way it is. Henry Kissinger arrived at about age 16 and he has never been able to lose his accent. His younger brother was 13 years old and he has no accent, he sounds just like any other native speaker.

He will turn around/confuse the odd phrase or two because of the influence of his mother tongue. You might be able to see instances of that better than I, Ori.

I wasn't able to discern what "the beings" means but that may well be a known to those that surround him, those that share his field.

I wonder whether there are good English in his English books. Smile

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should the unknowns be "the unknown"?

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