Please help paraphrase this sentence

Try moving your last part of the sentence that begins with "and," and move it up front. Then revise your sentence by removing some unnecessary words. Try it.

To parphrase, "Your kids ain't getting jack **** for school".

Hi, what does "Jack ****" mean? (why not Michael ****, or Mary ****?)

I tried, and started to approach the grasp, or kinda during the process.

Thanks for you advice.

bluestblue....... 1

NickFun 0

See that Nick? That is a big fat Zipereedodah

Beautifully done blue baby.

jack **** n. Vulgar Slang. A small or worthless amount:

It seems that A2K is a wonderful website for us to learn not only elegant expressions but also vulgar slangs. That's uber-cool! :wink:

Looks like dadpad's the loser here.

Blue, "jack ****" is sufficiently vulgar that i advise you never to use the expression--it can be offensive when uttered among native English speakers.

C.I.'s advice about the sentence is good. It will help to understand all the expressions in the sentence in order to make sense of it:

Discretionary grants for further education . . .

Something which is discretionary is something in which someone is allowed to exercise discretion--to make a choice among a range of choices. A grant is a gift of money which does not have to be repaid. Therefore, a discretionary grant is a gift of money which is not specifically restricted, but only generally restricted. In this case, the limit is "for further education." You can spend that gift of money however you wish, as long is the money is spent to get more education.

. . . [grants] have suffered in the climate of recent economic cuts . . .

The word climate is often used to refer not just to the weather, but is also used abstractly to mean the general tenor of the times. So "climate of recent economic cuts" means that at the present time, there has been a trend to cut money for many purposes. The expression "recent economic cuts" is rather awkward--there are cuts made because the economy is not as strong as it was previously, but the economy itself is not making cuts.

So far, we have: Discretionary grants for further education have suffered in the climate of recent economic cuts . . .--which means that there has been less money available to be given for furthering education because the economy has been poor.

. . . and local government spending allowances can affect the number and level of grants awards.

The economic cuts referred to means that local governments (which are usually the source of gifts of money for education) have to restrict their spending allowances. Spending allowances means the amount of money which government decides can be spent for any purpose, in this case for furthering education. The number of grants (gifts of money) has an obvious meaning, and the "level of grants" means how much money is included in any one gift.

So, we can put the sentence back together, and reverse the order of the clauses as C.I. suggested:

Local government spending allowances can affect the number and level of grants awards; discretionary grants for further education have suffered in the climate of recent economic cuts.

Now, i will change it a little to make it more clear:

Local government spending allowances will affect the number and level of grants awards; discretionary grants for further education have suffered in this climate of recent spending cuts.

Which means: Because government spending allowances affect the number and amount of gifts of money, such gifts of money for further education have been reduced recently because the poor economy results in less money available to be given.

But U'r not a total winner either, because U haven't' explained why things are unfavorable only to Jack, not to Michael or Mary. That's unfair!

Hi, Setanta

Thank you very much for that elaboration!
The content is informative and helpful.
And I'll reread it again tomorrow word by word, for my reading comprehension of the foreign language gets very poor when I'm sleepy like now.

And thank you also for the further clarification of that slang. Now I know some stuff is potentially dangerous!


Best Regards!
Blues